No other tabletop RPG experience could ever match the obsessive bliss of my junior high self flipping through the copy of Fiend Folio he’d found marked down to $3.95 at the local Kay*Bee Toys store. It didn’t matter than I was a neophyte Basic Set player who had no idea what most of the statlines meant, only that the book contained a host of weird and wicked creatures drawn in a lurid style befitting their roots as the products of British fandom.
Browsing the book felt like a transgressive act, and made both 1st Edition Monster Manuals — when I eventually acquired them — profoundly disappointing by comparison.
Recommended listening:
