Suzi Lee Joeph Browning

"Monster Geographica - Forest" by Various
Published and Distributed by Expeditious Retreat Press
ISBN-10: 0-972-9376-7-6 -- Digest Sized - 208 Pages

This slim volume is simply a collection of creatures and monsters. There are 200 critters to baffle your players with. There are no drawings in the book, which might prove to be a problem, but I found that this made the book smaller and less expensive. You should normally give players only a description of a creature anyway. These creatures are from a wide variety of sources, mostly Third-Party - so your players won't know what to expect!

The format of the book is digest-sized, making it easier to carry around for outside the home use. This particular book lists creatures that prefer Forest living areas. This unique idea allows a GM to quickly seize a book that complements the environment that players are passing through.

The entries are not sorted alphabetically (there is a Table of Contents that does this), but by Creature Rating, so that GM's can turn to an appropriate CR for the group playing their game. There's also an index of monsters by type in case you need a specific type. So, instead of seeing an Arboleth (for instance), the first creature in this book is a "Stinging Woodfly" CR rating 1/8! Although this seems pretty small (in fact, the smallest I have ever seen) it is provided for GMs to use for a swarm of these! The final entry in the book is for a "Humbaba", CR 24! In the upper corner of every page is the creature's CR. This feature makes it easy for a GM to choose creatures that will perplex characters, and give them a workout without Total Party Kill.

This unique idea is almost invaluable to a harried GM! There are five of these books altogether, making a library of various monsters that might be in your setting. At first, I thought that not putting them in alphabetical order was a bit strange, but I quickly warmed up to the idea of sorting by Challenge Rating.

There are five of these "Monster Geographica" books:
1) Underground
2) Marsh and Aquatic
3) Forest (this volume)
4) Hill and Mountain
5) Plain and Desert

This is the third of these that I have bought, and the third published, but I am certainly looking for the remaining two! Even though the statistics for creatures is for D&D 3.5, most GM's can convert these easily. My recommendation for GM's needing a few unusual monsters is very high!… (mer)