BiggusGeekus
That's Latin for "cool"
I'm having trouble posting on the reviews section, so here's my review
========
What It Is
(objective)
Monster Geographica: Forest is a paperback (available as PDF) 208 page small paperback by Expeditious Retreat Press. It is a fantasy d20 product and compatible with 3.5. There are 200 monsters in this product, all open gaming content. There are no illustrations.
What I expected
(subjective expectations)
200 monsters in a well organized format. Little to no background as this is a generic fantasy product meant to be used in any traditional fantasy homebrew game.
What I got
(subjective first impressions)
The organization of this book is amazing and it is hard to convey to someone who has used standard monster books. While the Monster Manual is good for reference, Monster Geographica is at its best when used in the middle of a game or when building an adventure. There are additional notes about flora and fauna in a forest environment meant to inspire my game. The monsters are drawn from original creations as well as a sizeable portion that have appeared in other OGL products, at a glance, the Tome of Horrors seemed to be well represented.
What I liked
(subjetive overview)
The monsters tend to hover in the lower end of the CR spectrum. I appreciated this as I start many games in the low end and work up, so these are the monsters the players are going to be the most familiar with. Variety at these levels is always nice. While the monsters appear in the pages in order of CR, there is a listing of them alphabetically in the beginning and there is also a listing of them by type right after that. So, my players are in a forest and I need a 7th level encounter with undead. I look to the beginning, see that there are two CR 7 undead creatures, flip to the CR7s and there they are.
This is a terrific supplement because what it is also very convenient to tailoring store-bought adventures. There are a total of five books in this series, so if you see a mountain-based adventure in Dungeon magazine and it has too many orcs for your taste, the Monster Geographica series is terrific for being able to quickly reference replacements to keep the players on their toes. After all, it's rather pointless to have a great monster book on your shelf if you keep flipping pages around trying to find what you want.
The monsters themselves are solid. Some I didn't care for such as the Royal Stag. Some I wanted to use right away like the Treelost Dryad. The book is heavy on magical beasts and plants, but as this is a forest book, that is to be expected and desired. There is one dragon making an appearance and it is very nice to see all of it's stats on one page. The toughest critter is a CR24 giant that I liked very much. Enough special powers to disrupt the high-level characters, but not so many that the creature is hard to use, which is often the case for epic-level encounters. The Makesh are an odd-looking, but cool evil foil to elves. Wood Giants look like they'll surprise the players. And the Ebon Spider is Just. Plain. Nasty!
What I did not like
(subjective overview)
The lack of illustrations was disappointing. I would have also liked to have seen some templates, because I can never get enough of those. Ideally, a kind of "forest-touched" template in the -1/+0/+1 range, to help me pull monsters from other settings into the woods.
The "flora and fauna" insets ranged wildly. The monsters in the book are solid and while some might not be to my taste, they're all a good addition to a fantasy game. But the flora and fauna challenges were all over the place. In the CR6 section we have a challenge in the form of a "Fright Owl" who makes you do a WILL save for fear DC14. OK, now what? Is this a CR6 challenge? How does a Fright Owl modify the EL of a given encounter. There are also real-life non-magical entries, but there's no distinguishing the real from the fantasy until you read through them. However, keeping with the book's fantastic level of organization, these are all referenced at the beginning.
Conclusions
(subjective recommendations to the purchaser)
This book is more portable than other monster collections on the market. It is more usable than most monster books on the market. It is best used in the nitty-gritty process of building or tailoring an adventure AFTER the DM has a rough mental outline already prepared. I was reading this book in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles and I thought it was the greatest thing on earth. But I noticed that when I was looking at a "blank canvas" with no idea what I wanted to put before the adventurers, I pulled out the MM3 and looked at the pretty pictures until I got an idea.
This book is a workhorse product. It is not a show pony. I give it a solid thumbs up and I hope other publishers follow in Expeditious Retreat Press's footsteps.
rating: 4/5
========
What It Is
(objective)
Monster Geographica: Forest is a paperback (available as PDF) 208 page small paperback by Expeditious Retreat Press. It is a fantasy d20 product and compatible with 3.5. There are 200 monsters in this product, all open gaming content. There are no illustrations.
What I expected
(subjective expectations)
200 monsters in a well organized format. Little to no background as this is a generic fantasy product meant to be used in any traditional fantasy homebrew game.
What I got
(subjective first impressions)
The organization of this book is amazing and it is hard to convey to someone who has used standard monster books. While the Monster Manual is good for reference, Monster Geographica is at its best when used in the middle of a game or when building an adventure. There are additional notes about flora and fauna in a forest environment meant to inspire my game. The monsters are drawn from original creations as well as a sizeable portion that have appeared in other OGL products, at a glance, the Tome of Horrors seemed to be well represented.
What I liked
(subjetive overview)
The monsters tend to hover in the lower end of the CR spectrum. I appreciated this as I start many games in the low end and work up, so these are the monsters the players are going to be the most familiar with. Variety at these levels is always nice. While the monsters appear in the pages in order of CR, there is a listing of them alphabetically in the beginning and there is also a listing of them by type right after that. So, my players are in a forest and I need a 7th level encounter with undead. I look to the beginning, see that there are two CR 7 undead creatures, flip to the CR7s and there they are.
This is a terrific supplement because what it is also very convenient to tailoring store-bought adventures. There are a total of five books in this series, so if you see a mountain-based adventure in Dungeon magazine and it has too many orcs for your taste, the Monster Geographica series is terrific for being able to quickly reference replacements to keep the players on their toes. After all, it's rather pointless to have a great monster book on your shelf if you keep flipping pages around trying to find what you want.
The monsters themselves are solid. Some I didn't care for such as the Royal Stag. Some I wanted to use right away like the Treelost Dryad. The book is heavy on magical beasts and plants, but as this is a forest book, that is to be expected and desired. There is one dragon making an appearance and it is very nice to see all of it's stats on one page. The toughest critter is a CR24 giant that I liked very much. Enough special powers to disrupt the high-level characters, but not so many that the creature is hard to use, which is often the case for epic-level encounters. The Makesh are an odd-looking, but cool evil foil to elves. Wood Giants look like they'll surprise the players. And the Ebon Spider is Just. Plain. Nasty!
What I did not like
(subjective overview)
The lack of illustrations was disappointing. I would have also liked to have seen some templates, because I can never get enough of those. Ideally, a kind of "forest-touched" template in the -1/+0/+1 range, to help me pull monsters from other settings into the woods.
The "flora and fauna" insets ranged wildly. The monsters in the book are solid and while some might not be to my taste, they're all a good addition to a fantasy game. But the flora and fauna challenges were all over the place. In the CR6 section we have a challenge in the form of a "Fright Owl" who makes you do a WILL save for fear DC14. OK, now what? Is this a CR6 challenge? How does a Fright Owl modify the EL of a given encounter. There are also real-life non-magical entries, but there's no distinguishing the real from the fantasy until you read through them. However, keeping with the book's fantastic level of organization, these are all referenced at the beginning.
Conclusions
(subjective recommendations to the purchaser)
This book is more portable than other monster collections on the market. It is more usable than most monster books on the market. It is best used in the nitty-gritty process of building or tailoring an adventure AFTER the DM has a rough mental outline already prepared. I was reading this book in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles and I thought it was the greatest thing on earth. But I noticed that when I was looking at a "blank canvas" with no idea what I wanted to put before the adventurers, I pulled out the MM3 and looked at the pretty pictures until I got an idea.
This book is a workhorse product. It is not a show pony. I give it a solid thumbs up and I hope other publishers follow in Expeditious Retreat Press's footsteps.
rating: 4/5
