Men & Monsters of Polynesia Review

Men & Monsters of Polynesia is a monster source book by Skirmisher Games. The pdf is 22 pages, though only about 15 are actual game content or background information behind the design. Illustrations were created by by Travis Hanson and they are phenomenal! The book is OSR and the stats are provided for 1e D&D, though could be easily adapted to other editions. Obviously, the creatures included are based on legends and things from the islands of Polynesia, specifically Oahu, Hawaii, Kauai, Bora Bora, Moorea, Tahiti, and both the main islands of New Zealand.

Before proper stats are given to the new creatures, there's discussion of guardian animals and divine creatures, important concepts in many Polynesian cultures. There's also discussion about how to make them using existing animals and such. This is followed by a random encounters table (because every old school monster book has one, right?) and then the "monster manual" proper. In addition to the new monsters presented here, existing MM monsters that are fitting to the setting are mentioned.

Here's a quick run down of the new monsters:

• Boar, Monstrous - gigantic destructive beast touched by the divine
• Green Lady - an evil undead spirit of a mother that's lost or even slain their own children
•  Kawekaweau and Kawekaweau, Giant - island geckos, the smaller aren't normally aggressive but the giant variety can be
• Kupua E'epa - were sharks
• Kumi - large monitor lizards bites that can cause awful infections
• Maero - man-size woodland troll-kin (these are the creatures on the cover
• Menehune - island demihumans who were the original inhabitants of Lemuria
• Mo'o - female guardian creatures of natural sites, their natural form is a man-sized lizard
• Night Marcher - undead warriors who rise from the graves at certain times of their year and can draw others into their marches
• Tiki Statues (Wood and Stone) - Tiki are spirits that serve the gods and can be drawn into statues of stone or wood to protect sacred sites.
• Weta, Monstrous - heavily armored spikey giant crickets
• Weta, Workshop - intelligent spell casting giant crickets and a nice joke

The monsters are well designed and if you want to include some non-standard European inspired monsters you can't go wrong with this one. If you're running a pirate game such as Freeport, Skull & Shackles, or Razor Coast, this would be really good to have.

Normally a 1.99, its currently only .99 because of the Christmas in July sale.