Dragonbane remains one of my favorite products to recommend to new role playing gamers. It contains everything for a lovely campaign in the Misty Vale. Free League Publishing recently released the first expansion for the game with Dragonbane Bestiary. For a game that’s steeped in classic fantasy role playing game presentation, a monster manual seems like the perfect fit. The company sent along a review copy for me to look over. Does the latest work from Magnus Seter, Mattias Johnson Haake, Andreas Marklund and Tomas Harenstam make me want to drop them into a campaign? Let’s play to find out.
Monster manuals are often a choice between quality and quantity. The more monsters fit inside a book the more options the Game Master has to find the book useful. But other bestiary books dive into the details of their creatures that they want passed onto the players. Dragonbane Bestiary lends a little closer to the latter style with each creature getting two pages in the book. This style takes advantage of one of Free League’s great strengths featuring full page David Brasgalla art that fits in with Johan Egerkrans’s art style seamlessly. Part of why I enjoy Dragonbane is the unique visual style and this book keeps that flame burning. In addition to the stat blocks and the attack charts, each monster gets two short hooks. One is for an encounter that can be slipped into one of the wandering monster charts used by the dungeons and the other as an adventure hook where the creature becomes central to that session’s story. These options are short but flavorful and feel very useful for getting these monsters out of the book and onto the table.
Monster books tend to be for the Game Master but Free League opens this book up to players. The first two chapters offer multiple new kin options. The nightkin make up the first chapter as goblins, hobgoblins, ogres and orcs get heroic traits to use as player characters. They do have to deal with a sunlight allergy (hence their name) but it seems pretty manageable for anyone wanted to play one of these green-skinned kin. The rare kin chapter includes cat people, lizard people, frog people and satyrs as player options. The most unusual choice is a karkion a flying cat-like demon beast with the power of flight. All of the playable choices fit under the rules for non-monsters so they don’t have an attack chart and mst roll to hit just like the players do. I suspect future releases will include more playable monsters like some of the insect kin featured in their own chapter.
The rest of the monsters walk the line between things fantasy players expect in these sorts of books, like trolls and zombies, to things that give the world a more unique flavor. A couple of the monsters feel like they are making a very special guest star lost from Vaesen like the dire boar or brook horse. Many monsters also come with discussion about their weaknesses or ways to avoid their encounters. Given how often players try to sneak past set piece encounters,I appreciate taking the time to tell Game Masters the best way to go about avoiding Dragonbane’s brutal combat.
While I like what I got in the book, there are two areas I would have liked to see. The first is more guidance on how to use monsters against parties of differing power levels. I understand that game balance is more art than science and the game doesn’t have a CR style setup, but it’s still nice to have a heads up about what monsters work under the minion rules and which work under the boss rules. I also would have liked to see some legendary enemies to help build out the backstory of the setting further. Liked the Ancient Dragon write up, but even a sidebar with the legend surrounding Arknarath your players have probably heard would be useful. This is stuff that experienced Game Masters can do, but given how newbie friendly the original boxed set is, it seems like a missed opportunity to develop the skills of those budding storytellers.
Dragonbane Bestiary will delight fans of the original boxed set with options on both sides of the screen.