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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wocky" data-source="post: 2011547" data-attributes="member: 11408">When I design adventures I like to start with a loose plot, but a strong theme. Once I have the theme nailed down I get every monster book at hand and start looking for appropriate encounters, which often lead to new ideas for the plot and hooks. No matter the amount of monsters at hand, once I narrow it down with CR and plot in mind I end up with just a few which are usable. The new monster book by Expeditious Retreat Press, "Monster Geographica: Underground", is not only a very welcome source for yet more monsters, but also one organized with the process of monster searching in mind.This book, authored by Joseph Browning, Suzi Yee and Kevin Baase, is the first offering in the "Monster Geographica" line. Books in this series compile two hundred monsters that inhabit a particular type of terrain from different Open Game licensed sources in a pocket-sized affordable format. Twenty different sources from different publishers were used to collect all the underground monsters, with the fifty percent that needed it having received a conversion to the 3.5 rules.At first I made the mistake of assuming this book was about Underdark creatures. Though many of them are, monsters in this book fall into a broader "creatures living underground" category that includes dungeon denizens and creations of pure horror. However, be it the Underdark you want to populate, or a cave or dungeon, this book is filled with creatures that can be used for the thorough design of a realistic underground ecology. There are around twenty creatures for every CR between 1 and 8. Twenty in total between CRs 9 and 12, and two or less for every CR until 20. Most of them fall into the Aberration, Magical Beast or Undead types, though some of the types get much more creatures than we'd expect: there are sixteen oozes, twelve vermin, eight fey and thirteen constructs. Being a compilation the style and flavor is quite varied, with monsters covering a number of different campaign styles. Interesting creatures include the Eldlorn, a race of fey connected to dwarves that can contact their ancestors for advice, the Corpse Fungus, which can animate zombies, the Abroan, a sound sensitive swarm, the Skunk Goblins and Snailfolk. Horror flavored creatures include the Fowl Spawners, which are large undead who hide more of their kind within, the Blood Pudding, which gets inside of it's victim body and forces their blood out, the Bone Sovereign, an amalgamation of skeletons that becomes more powerful by assimilating other undead, and the Silent Reaper, who steals people memories and their shrunken heads. There are many bizarre creatures, like the Time Spider, who weaves a four-dimensional web, the sneaky Shadow Ooze, the Gremmins, undead prospectors that cause Gold Fever, and the Crystal Moss, a seemingly harmless psionic plant. There's also the Ambush, which is... ehhr... an ambushing bush. Monsters can be either designed around an idea, or around a game mechanics concept. The first might seem better, but sometimes leads to encounters which aren't unique enough, and just differ in their description. Monsters in this book were mostly designed around an idea, and either use standard mechanics, or new mechanics which don't depart much from the norm. It's not to say that there aren't some very interesting concepts flavor-wise, and standard mechanics are extensively explored with creatures like a tiny flying ooze, but some creatures, like the two-headed Troll, don't contribute enough.The format for the entries, beyond the game stats, is somewhat varied (which I'd expect in a compilation), though usually very close to the 3.5 version Monster Manual. In some cases the departures are good, like monsters that have extended ecology information. True to the 3.5 spirit, appropriate monsters have Level Adjustment listed, and some even include information on how to play them as characters.It's hard to evaluate this in a review, but I think many of the CRs are too low for the creatures, mostly when abilities dealing with paralysis, venom, etc. are involved. Like the Addlevetch, a plant that at CR 1 has initiative +7 and can make a ranged touch attack with a +8 attack bonus to Inflict Light Wounds for 1d8+5. The diminutive Cave Beetle also has CR 1 and may be able to slay it's victim unless it's treated with a Remove Disease or Heal spell in about an hour and a half. Obviously, this kind of problem would depend on the source a monster was taken from and isn't generalized, but caution is advised.An outstanding feature of this book is that monsters are organized by Challenge Rating. When you're searching for an encounter of a particular level you can just browse through adjacent pages, instead of going back and forth between monsters and the CR table. Alphabetical and type/subtype indexes are also given in the first pages, and the PDF edition of the book is bookmarked by these three criteria as well. The page layout is also very good, most monster entries begin at the top of a page. This is not only great in the print edition, but also very good if you're printing a couple of monsters off the PDF. Besides the cover by Ravindra Rana this book has no art. Though I find art very useful to get a general notion of what a monster's abilities are, and description purposes (I'm of the old "Here, it looks like this..." school), I know that good art is expensive and having two hundred bad illustrations is no good.The print edition is pocket sized and comes with lay-flat binding. If you buy the PDF you'll get two versions, one that matches the page distribution of the print edition, and one in landscape format that has two book pages for every PDF page. I'm no big fan of the landscape edition, but if you have a program that allows you to print in booklet format (such as FinePrint) you can use the portrait oriented version of the PDF to get a portable copy. In any case, thanks to the thorough bookmarking and good page layout, printing only the monsters you're using has been quite facilitated."Monster Geographica: Underground" excels at it's usability as a research and reference tool because of it's format and layout. Between it's covers you can find a large and very varied selection of monsters that can help you populate the dark corners of your world or give you new ideas for an adventures and encounters.Score: 3.5</blockquote>

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