Monsters of the Dungeon: Brave the Darkness is a new supplement by Cawood Publishing in their “Monsters of…” series, containing a massive number of new enemies that inhabit various types of dungeons.

The book is divided in 7 chapters, each one with a different type of dungeon: Arcane, Castle, Manor, Thieves’ Guild, Tomb, Wilderness, and Mountain. For each of them, there’s a page of introduction with some information about the dungeons, including an encounter roll table and an event roll table, followed by 15 to 25 creatures that can be found there. Every part also has a new NPC, who’s an expert in that particular type of dungeon.

Since the whole concept of the supplement revolves around dungeons and dungeon crawling, there are lots of monsters that ambush and trick players; mimics, animated constructs, and the like, blending in with the background and general clutter of a dungeon and even the walls and structures themselves. They’re not the only ones though, there are several undead, fey, elementals, aberrations, pretty much the whole spectrum of creature types and even humanoids that, while not strictly NPCs, can easily be used as such. As for the CR ratings, again we have a wide variety from 1/2 all the way to 20 (well, CR 30 actually, if you count the “Master of Dungeons”… I wonder what he’s supposed to be up to?).

Every creature entry contains its general description, a statblock, and 3 short quest hooks for it. Each and every creature is also illustrated, which in my opinion is a pretty big deal; it’s a lot of work, and all the the classic style we’ve come to know for Cawood Publishing courtesy of Travis Hanson. Interspersed in some of the creatures, there are also some magic items you can use as well.

At the very end, we have some nice helpful tables organizing the creatures by type and CR, as well as a set of auxilliary tables that can help any aspiring game masters convert the creatures to some other systems of their choice. Notably, those being Pathfinder 1e, Pathfinder 2e, Old School Essentials (OSE), and Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC). It might seem like a small thing, but I’m sure there are a lot of people who will appreciate it very much and I’m happy to see support for other systems included.

Overall, Cawood has done it again – he can’t keep getting away with it! Well, he can and I hope he does actually, because I’m always excited for their releases, and as expected Monsters of the Dungeon: Brave the Darkness is a fantastic supplement for all your dungeon crawling (and more) needs.

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