Men & Monsters of Ethiopia: An RPG Sourcebook for 5th Edition

by Michael O. Varhola

Men and monsters of Ethiopia is a somewhat different sourcebook for a system like 5th D&D. This book gets players and GMs out of the western Europe setting that most players are used to and takes them to a more desert and dry environment that most Players are not familiar with, and to very good effect.

The book is just full of new monsters and NPCs for this new setting. The NPCs are very well done and are my favorite part of the book A competent GM should be able to come up with many types of encounters with these NPCs and should have a large range of reactions ranging from information gathering, to dire combat.

The monsters range from the mildly irritating, to extremely deadly. The ARWEAN DRAGON was my favorite of the bunch, and I am really looking forward to putting this Dragon in my game.

The monsters listings have a detailed description. I think lots of plot seeds are in these descriptions and the start of many adventures are in here.

The book over all is well laid out and easily printed on my Black and white lazer printer. The color pages looked ok in grey scale. The line are is quite nice and prints out well. The color pages on my rather cheap ink jet printer look good and are easy to read for the most part.

If I have a complaint about the book, I would have liked to have seen a bit more background on a fantasy setting for Ethiopia, perhaps a small part of the Kos World that Skirmisher books also publishes. A fe more photos of what Ethiopia looks like would have been helpful to describe what the various terrain looks like

Also, the one page on Religion is a bit terse and could have used some extra information.

These are minor nit pics and the books is worth the price.

Ill be looking forward to more such location books from Mr Varhola, so use those frequent miles , Bub, and get cracking….