...or just a few dozen?

I have to admit I really don't get the necessity some people have to collect "monster manuals" of different kinds.  I've never found the need for it in any of my fantasy campaigns; for starters, usually the list of monsters in, say, the basic 1e monster manual or the monster section of the Rules Cyclopedia has more than enough variety.

And beyond that, I find it much simpler to just take one of those, and put some slight spin on it (it can even be precisely the same stats but with a different physical appearance), than to have a collection of a dozen monster-books full of unique creatures.

RPGPundit

I always collected the MM's. I rather like being spoilt for choice.

What I want from monster books:

(1) Clever ideas for new monsters that I wouldn't have thought of
(2) Awesome illustrations that I can show to my players
(3) Clever mechanical variations
(4) For sufficiently complex rule systems, advanced variants of common "base types"

("Clever ideas" can include conceptual cleverness, clever details, and clever hooks that I can use for bait.)

What I don't need from a monster book:

(1) Stupid creatures
(2) Generic Humanoid #156
(3) Generic Demon #198

One of the first things I'll do when prepping a new D&D campaign is to flip through my very large collection of monster manuals: I'm looking for stuff that intrigues me and that ties into the themes or schemes of the campaign I'm planning.

Basically, it's the same as any other supplemental material: I incorporate the creations of other people for the same reason that, when I'm doing theater, I don't always produce new work. Interpreting that work and bridging the gap between your own creativity and the creativity of another will often result in a richer and deeper product.

Absolutely need them. My opinion of D&D as a system is that it isn't great, but what distinguishes it from other games is the tremendous depth of resources it brings to the gaming table. Monsters, spells, magical artifacts, and to a lesser degree campaign worlds.

Any hack can throw a couple of darts at a dictionary and crank out "dogs" in say.. a "vinyard"... but the variety is something that takes hard work, real creative talent, and plenty of it. Even just browsing through the listings fires the imagination for me.

Anyway commentary aside, its great to have as many options as possible when spinning up game worlds, random encounters and adventures.

I see what you did Traveller. Dogs in the Vineyard indeed. And 7 Demon bags to boot!:D

My solution ...

A toolkit to build monsters.

A couple of dozen or so examples of monsters

In the setting book an ecology of Monsters built from the toolkit.

In DnD beyond the very basica orc ogre stuff I usually create my own monsters anyway.

Art work in monster books is often of dubious quality apart from the old 1e D&D books of course which had 10 decent illustrations and a lot of stuff that would look ameteruish if it had been handed in by my daughters class as projects on monsters. There is so much fantastic artwork about.

These days for monsters I take a lot of inspiration from MtG which has monsters with nice unique ideas and uniformly excellent art work

I have lots of magic cards, I can type 'dragon' MtG into a search engine and get 100 images, likewise for orc, cat, shadow, ghoul, etc etc

Nope. For the longest towards the end of me playing it, I ran 2E AD&D, using just the PHB.

Most of the monsters I used were custom versions that were world specific anyway, so it made it a lot easier to let go of AD&D's pre-built elements and go with what I wanted.

I find with 4e D&D it's helpful to have huge numbers of stat blocks, with lots of different (eg) orc stat blocks, since it's almost impossible to improvise in play the variety of attack routines the game expects.

Most versions of D&D only need one Monster Manual, IME, although 3e & Pathfinder really need generic NPC stat blocks. For 1e AD&D I find having MM-FF-MM2 is useful, but not vital.

I like having the choices.  I know I can make them up on my own, but if they're already done (and done well, which isn't always the case), so much the better.

The vast majority of monsters in any game I run are deployed as unique entities (or a unique nest of a few such entities).  The common exception being stuff like humanoids and low-level undead, etc.

I firmly believe that the existence of a well-stocked monster manual is why D&D has never been successfully toppled.

The ability to run a game without having to generate a single stat for oneself is a massive advantage in D&D's favor, one that the competition has perpetually failed to grasp, and constantly slacked off on providing.

I've run combat-oriented campaigns with a "monster of the week" and for those types of games I could never have enough nasty critters statted out. So yes, I bought Monster Manual volume one thru whatever and used them. OTOH, I've also run social/political-oriented RPGs in which most of the monsters turned out to be... humans! Didn't need a monster manual of any kind for those, but I had to create a metric butt-load of NPCs instead. It turns out the monster-of-the-week game is really much easier to run. Not as rewarding, though.

Short version: It depends.

I'm a sucker for monster stats, D&D or otherwise.

The one flaw I see in BECMI/RC (and now ACKS) is the scarcity of demonic and/or planar critters for heroic characters to fight (and for evil characters to summon and bind).

Of course, converting from AD&D 1e is easy enough, and making up your own is easier still. I don't "need" them statted out, anymore than I "need", say, any setting supplement ever; I can make up something on my own just as easily. Nevertheless, it's nice to have things notched and ready when your prep time is at a premium (as mine is).

So bring on the monsters.

Quote from: J Arcane;558782I firmly believe that the existence of a well-stocked monster manual is why D&D has never been successfully toppled.

The ability to run a game without having to generate a single stat for oneself is a massive advantage in D&D's favor, one that the competition has perpetually failed to grasp, and constantly slacked off on providing.

Hell yes. Prep time is a crucial factor in my preference towards older editions. Familiarity with the systems and subsystems plays a big role, but I suppose ease to run is also hardcoded to some degree in the game itself.

I need 20,000 stat blocks. But that's for RuneQuest.

A few dozen probably aren't enough - 20,000 is probably more than I need.

First off, having a hundred or two-hundred 'normal monsters' is probably fine.  But I absolutely think templates are great (I mean - the idea, not always the implementation).  The fact that 3.5 used a template for skeletons was great - it made it pretty easy to make a skeletal hydra, for instance, rather than assuming all skeletons are humans (or equivalent).  

I also like to have a variety of stat blocks.  What I don't need is a bunch of stat-blocks for Level 1 humanoid warriors (ie, dwarf, elf, etc).  That's seriously annoying.  For humanoids, stats for a 'standard war party' would be much more useful.  In 2nd edition, for instance, a troop might be listed as 5-10 Lvl 1 Ftrs, 1 2nd level Seargeant (Ftr 3) and Wizard 1 (50% chance).  I'd want to see the stats for each of those three creatures so I can quickly insert the whole group, rather than having to advance the 'base monster' to the right format - or worse, remove the crap that the 1st level of the class provided and then put on the right 'class'...

Quote from: The Traveller;558756Absolutely need them. My opinion of D&D as a system is that it isn't great, but what distinguishes it from other games is the tremendous depth of resources it brings to the gaming table. Monsters, spells, magical artifacts, and to a lesser degree campaign worlds.

This.

Personally I'm always looking for ideas, and D&D books up to 3.5 were always full of them. Not all of the same quality, of course, but if half of the monsters in MM XVII are interesting I'm already happy to have bought the book.

I'm not specifically talking about monsters/items stats. History, lore, behavior, physical description and other useful info are enough. Sometimes I even made up stats on the spot after reading something interesting by chance while the players were readying for playing - but the contents alone were enough to spice up the session.