The Dragonbane core set includes an entire multipart campaign, much more adventure content than many roleplaying games offer right out of the gate. But what is a voracious gaming group to do once they’ve played through the campaign? The game has been a success so further published adventures seem more than likely, but for now, the Dragonbane Bestiary provides not only a ton of suggestions for encounters with the monsters detailed within, but the potential to adapt adventures from any number of other games – all you really need is substitute monsters.
One of Dragonbane’s greatest features is the system that it uses to handle monsters. Rather than a block of statistics that require already overworked gamemasters to run them as though they were player characters, Dragonbane instead gives minimal information on movement and defense, and a random table of possible attacks and other options – interesting, descriptive things for the monster to do on its turn. It’s a great system that makes things easy for the gamemaster, but if an encounter you have in mind requires a new monster, it will require some heavy lifting to create a new table of actions.
The core rules detail a handful of basic fantasy creatures, a selection that is rounded out nicely by the Bestiary. which adds over 50 new creatures to the mix, and includes most of the monsters from the core rules in order to be a one-stop guide. Each monster entry includes an adventure seed describing a scenario where the players might encounter the monster, which the gamemaster can incorporate into an existing adventure or flesh out into a full-fledged encounter.
Dragonbane already has a wide variety of species for players to choose from for their characters, from the routine elves, dwarves and halflings to the more unusual Wolfkin and Mallard (yes, you can play a duck). The Bestiary adds many of the more humanoid monsters such as goblins or ogres as playable characters. It’s a simple addition, often no more than an extra paragraph per entry, that adds a ton of value to the book.
- Dragonbane Bestiary official website