Land of Eem Bestiary Volume One (2025) is obviously my favorite book in the box.

It threads a challenging needle. For a combat-oriented game like D&D, most monsters need only to be some combination of cool and scary. For Land of Eem, where combat is probably the least effective way to deal with monsters, they need to strike a balance between cool, scary, interesting, silly and so on. Sometimes, a monster winds up being too eye-roll inducing (the Humongoose is just…too much goose for me), but for the most part, the collection of monsters provides a wide range of experiences for players.

Particularly helpful is the mix of advice that isn’t normally present in a monster book. First is vulnerabilities, which offer players paths to parlay and also ways to make combat decisive (I don’t think I mention that rather than physical damage, combat inflicts Dread, which eventually makes opponents give up). So, the humanoid crabs known as Krabrak’s like shiny objects, which they’ll trade for; and the mancatcher weapon inflicts extra dread (probably because it is so similar to the nutcrackers that accompany crabs to the table at restaurants). The Social section is reserved for sentient creatures and provides further information on how they interact and how to deal with them peaceably. Finally, the Defeat and Victory sections explain what they do to vanquished foes and how they act when defeated. Altogether, this gives the GM (and the players) a heap of information on how to deal with monsters that isn’t just running at the party with their claws out.

The art throughout is fun and cartoonish. Which is not to say that none of the monsters seem dangerous. Plenty do! I don’t want to meet a Darkling or run into a Gwarglebeast! It’s interesting too how this friendly art style hides some very real dangers. I wonder how a party wipe feels in Eem?