Dragonbane Bestiary review – Let the monsters run wild

The Dragonbane Bestiary is simply gorgeous. If you haven’t read the rulebook, we have a review for it right here on Gamingtrend! Essentially, Dragonbane is a tabletop role-playing game set in a low-magic setting. This rulebook is a supplement for that game, and boy, is it fantastic. If you’re not familiar with a bestiary, it is a collection of creatures. For tabletop roleplaying games, these take many forms. Dungeons and Dragons 5e had the Monster Manual while Starfinder has the Alien Archives, for example. 

The Dragonbane Bestiary is 146 pages of monsters, and each monster comes with a random encounter chart that you can roll for, beautiful descriptions, and fantastic artwork. The random encounter charts and adventure seeds add a special amount of flavor to this book that I enjoy. It makes adding these monsters to the game simple for the game master. 

The Dragonbane Bestiary is divided into the following sections: 

• Nightkin
• Rare Kin
• Insectoids
• Trolls
• Giants
• Beasts 
• Undead
• Dragons
• Demons

Nightkin and Rare Kin have a total of 9 new Kin to play as, bringing the total amount of Kin to 15. The book includes a chart to show you this, and this chart lists the Ability each Kin has as well as a number to roll on a D20 to determine which Kin you’d like to play as. 

The charts that are included with each monster are laid out beautifully. You’ll find that each monster takes up two pages. One of these pages will always feature gorgeous illustrated artwork. The introduction page to each section is simple and informative. For example, the Rare Kin section features a paragraph talking about what a Rare Kin actually is. 

The issue with this bestiary can be boiled down to two things. First, many of the entries could do with more information about how that creature exists or how the Kin exists in the Dragonbane world. Second, while the Dragonbane setting itself is pretty open, having the bestiary written from the point of view of an in-universe character feels slightly out of place. 

Having more information about the behavior of the monsters makes them feel more alive. Of course, having fewer makes it slightly easier to insert into any setting. So really, this can be a pro or a con depending on how you like your monster books to be written. I tend to change monsters, but I always like having fluff to play with. 

This book is written from the perspective of an in-universe character. I tuned this all out while reading. I’d prefer my manuals to cut right to the goodies about the monsters and such. The narrator didn’t take anything away, but it’s definitely not written in a style I’d prefer. With that being said, this bestiary is gorgeous and is fun to use and world build with.