Friday, June 22, 2012

1e Monster Cards

I picked up a set of these on eBay on a whim, and they are officially my favorite RPG aid of all time. A picture of the monster on one side, monster stats on the other.  Perfect!  The GM reads the info, and the players get a visualization of what they're fighting.  It would have come in handy in my last game session, when the party was convinced that they were fighting giant crabs instead of Umber Hulks, because they misunderstood my description of the monsters (or I just described them poorly.  It could be either, really).

What makes these shine, though, is that each picture was drawn by one of the greats of early D&D - Jeff Dee, David S. LaForce, Erol Otus, Jim Roslof, Harry Quinn, Darlene Pekuland Bill Willingham each contributed to the collection.  I was excited when I found that there was something similar for Labyrinth Lord, but disappointed with the actual product.  For one thing, they're single sided, which (in my mind) defeats the purpose of the whole thing to begin with.  If I just want stats and a picture, there are other ways to get them.  For another, they're downloads, which makes it even more difficult to turn it into a product that is usable. 

Seriously folks, this is a project that has Kickstarter written all over it - let's get some quality Monster Cards out there, how can there not be a market for this sort of thing?

3 comments:

  1. Or perhaps we thought they were crabs because we are stupid?

    I was all prepared for a crab boil and stuff - found a bib and everything. ;)

    - Ark

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  2. I have the four sets, and yes, the art is fantastic. Wish there were more!

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  3. Back in the day, one of my players finally admitted to not knowing what an Ogre looked like. He thought it was an animated cube since I used big six-siders to note their location. Eventually, he bought the Monster Manual.

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