Monster Geographica?

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero

• Jul 28, 2006

• #1

With the BIG BIG sale on these over at Expeditious Retreat, I'm thinking of picking up the forest and mountain books, but wanted to hear from people who actually have them.

How good are they? Are the monsters worth having? How much fluff is in the entries? I know there's no art -- is there a good amount of description?

 

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Voadam

Legend

• Jul 28, 2006

• #2

It is nice to have them organized by CR. I have three of the pdfs and find myself clicking through the CR range I'm looking for when thinking up encounters in the woods and underground (as well as flipping through my "Into the ..." and wanderer's guild books).

The descriptions are adequate but not deep, think more Tome of Horrors than 2e compendium ecology entries.

I have most of the original sources but still find them useful and plan to eventually get the counter collections for them. I'm bummed I didn't take advantage of FD's brief pregencon sale.

 

Crothian

First Post

• Jul 28, 2006

• #3

I like them, I have two of them in print. They are basic in that one doesn't get much descriptions but the stat blocks are solid and I really like how they are organized.

 

BOZ

Creature Cataloguer

• Jul 28, 2006

• #4

the descriptive text is slim, but was mostly kept the same as the source it came from. now, claudio pozas' art should help out in that regard.

 

Klaus

First Post

• Jul 28, 2006

• #5

You rang, BOZ?



Fiery Dragon has released Counter Collection tie-ins for all products in the Monster Geographica series, except for Plains & Desert ('cause I still have to draw those 200).

 

Treebore

First Post

• Jul 28, 2006

• #6

I have them. They aren't gorgeous like Monstermonicon or anything, but they are solid Joe Browning work with Claudio counters to buy if you want illo's to go with them.

I really like the little inclusions of dangerous lichens and other "By the way" kind of notes thrown in there. That really got me for some reason I have yet to fathom. Just hit the "thats cool" button just right for me. I guess it is because it gives a "biological notebook" kind of feel to it rather than a "this is a monster book" feel.

So I say get them. Can't go wrong at $10 each, IMO. Besides, how do you think they are trying to pay for going to GenCon? So instead of loaning them money they give you these cool books instead as an "exchange".

Plus I like the inherent "logic" that is in so many of these monsters. An element that I like and is missing in a lot of todays MM's entries. I don't mean in how they fit into a given setting either. I mean the "why they exist" question and the "why are they that way" question is often answered.

Cool/good/solid books.

 

P

Pinotage

Explorer

• Jul 28, 2006

• #7

Klaus said:

You rang, BOZ?



Fiery Dragon has released Counter Collection tie-ins for all products in the Monster Geographica series, except for Plains & Desert ('cause I still have to draw those 200).

Click to expand...

And let it be said that these are a very good reason to pick up the Monster Geographica series!

Pinotage

 

BOZ

Creature Cataloguer

• Jul 29, 2006

• #8

two great tastes that taste great together?

 

demiurge1138

Inventor of Super-Toast

• Jul 29, 2006

• #9

So this thread finally got me to realize "hey, there's a bunch of cool monsters in the Monster Geographica line I don't have!" and so I sprang for the 4-pack bundle (I'll pick up the Plains issue and the counters when there's more room in my gaming budget - so far I'm very pleased).

And I'm sitting down for a nice read of Hills and Mountains, and I see this in the introduction. "Kevin Baase gives special thanks to Nicholas Herold for his help with this batch of critters."

Thanks, BOZ!

Demiurge out.

 

TheAuldGrump

First Post

• Jul 30, 2006

• #10

For me the one thing that makes the MG series useful (very useful) is that it is organized by A. Geographical Location (surprise, surprise) and B. CR. If the PCs are in a desert and I want a CR4 encounter for the table I can find one very quickly, copy and paste from the PDF to my word processor, and am good to go.

My only complaint is that it does not include the SRD critters in that same format, it would likely double the utility of both MG and the SRD critters...

That said, the books get used at least once every week.

The Auld Grump