Tuesday, January 18, 2011

I Got A Request!

Courtesy of Khyron1144:

"Is the Fiend Folio (1e) ridiculous, stupid, inadequate, or perfectly serviceable? I've been looking at my copy with an eye towards writing a review one of these days, but I was not part of the 1e generation to whom it was soemthing new at the time."

A lot from column A & B, a bit from column D.  It's easy to point to all the goofy stuff (very easy) and laugh the whole book off, but to do so is to ignore a lot of awesome material  Death Knights, the Githzerai and Githyanki (all created by SF author Charles Stross, btw), the first write-up of Lolth, Slaad, and the Drow.  Yeah, the Drow made their first non-module appearance in the FF.

As far as I can remember (bearing in mind it was over 30 years ago), a lot of the stuff in the FF just puzzled and confounded me.  I was familiar with White Dwarf, which was a generic gaming mag at the time, and knew a lot of the material in the book came from the magazine, so I just put it down to it being "British."  But even then, I knew it was a window into a different take on fantasy, one I really didn't grok from my middle-class American POV.

(Looking back on it, I think some of my confusion was due to the utter lack of overlap between D&D players and stoners in my teenaged years.  Classic '70s stereotypes be damned, all of the RPGers I knew were in ROTC and definitely not stoners.  Probably to our collective detriment.)

3 comments:

  1. ...and even the goofy stuff had its uses. Planar travel or alternate world trips were great times to use anything from FF.

    I loved it! It was different from the American POV, but that's what I loved about it. Expect the unexpected!

    Ciao!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The correct answer is:
    E:
    As in Esoteric, Eldritch, Exemplary, Excellent, etc...

    and of course, what Grendelwulf said!

    In all seriousness, this book is pure, unadulterated awesome; there was nothing like it then, and precious little now. Check it out, FF cf. Monster Manual 2, hardly any retread material, and fan-sourced from the UK, to boot! This was a revelation. As I jokingly stated in another blog: Fiend Folio should be in effect for all games everywhere, at any time, under each system! :-)

    Of course, Gygax wanted to omit it from his proposed Edition 2, and AD&D 2nd Editon used a fair amount, so it's controversial appeal is on record. I'm pro-FF, as you can guess. Seriously, it's the crazy cousin everyone has. Know it, and love it.

    'Stoners'? I don't think the bud has anything to do with enjoying the weirder aspects of the game. And I played with a few, some of whom were not that imaginative, actually....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for using my request. That was nifty.

    ReplyDelete