Horrors of the Dark Expands Your Dungeons & Dragons Campaign With Darkest Dungeon Monsters (2024)

Horrors of the Dark is a PDF featuring the various enemies and monsters of Red Hook Studio’s Darkest Dungeon written up to work in the 5th edition rules set of . As a tool, it helps diversify any Dungeon Master's game with new and interesting challenging foes for players to overcome.

Written by Dungeon Master Tuz, this PDF makes use of the official artwork developed for the game as well as effectively making use of the official Dungeons& Dragons Monster Manual’s formatting, giving the whole thing a very professional feel. As for the bestiary itself – it covers all the foes a player faces in the video game, including the DLCs.

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From the lowly cultists to the damned Miller and even the bloodthirsty Countess, all have been faithfully adapted to function within the format of Dungeons & Dragons and present a challenge for even veteran players. The PDF even includes a collection of phrases from the game and the best time to read them out to players to convey Darkest Dungeon's spirit better. However, it should be noted that Horrors of the Dark does not contain any encounters or pre-built adventures. Those have to be built by the Dungeon Master themselves using the monster statistics presented in the PDF.

As it stands, there are two main ways to use this PDF. Firstly, a Dungeon Master can use it as another source for monsters in their games, increasing the variety of foes faced by their players – pulling a surprise on veterans, who will suddenly be confronted by creatures whose capabilities they are unsure of. They also make an interesting change from the mostly high-fantasy stable of foes provided by the official RPG books, allowing dungeon masters to introduce elements of the eldritch and even cosmic horror to their games. There are also a fair few monsters in the PDF with special abilities and attacks that require saving throws, with the creatures in question having several variants at increasingly high Challenge Ratings so that a Dungeon Master can always have something to challenge their party with, no matter their current level. Players will need more than a high AC to survive these encounters, and even adding one or two of the foes from Horrors of the Dark to a regular encounter will force players to prioritize their targets or else face a swift defeat.

The second way to use this PDF is in conjunction with the upcomingVan Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. The information in that sourcebook combined with the monsters detailed in Horrors of the Dark would allow a Dungeon Master to retell Darkest Dungeon with a Dungeons & Dragons spin. Ravenloft is in itself a grim-dark setting, a plane of reality that acts as a prison for heinous individuals known as Dreadlords, forever tortured and doomed to repeat their failings and punishments. A perfect place to set a retelling of Darkest Dungeon, with the domain being the hamlet and its surrounding locales, with the Ancestor as its Dreadlord.

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However, such a campaign would also require some rewriting to give the adventuring party more agency than heroes have in the video game and help set a differing pace to the story. For example, the players could discover the hamlet and its troubles, slowly learning about the Darkest Dungeon and the various dangers within by helping the locals with nearby threats and monsters, discovering over time the link between them all. Then, seeking more information on the Ancestor leads to their discovery of the titular dungeon, and their forays into it and confrontation with the darkness at its heart.

Either way it is used, the Horrors of the Dark PDF is a great little resource for Dungeon Masters. It works well as a source of more varied foes or as inspiration for a full campaign. As it’s free, players definitely shouldn't shy away from giving it a read to see what terrors they can inflict on their players.

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