This "dozen" was part of Wave 01 of a Kickstarter back in 2021.

It is a system agnostic book making it excellent for any system at all. I play with 5e, Level Up 5e and Starfinder. I have read Pathfinder 1 & 2 and I could see this book easily fitting to three of these and needing slight tweaking to fit Starfinder. I believe that this book could easily fit any of the other systems out there. Cairn, Shadowdark, Tales of the Valiant, Daggerheart, DragonBane, 13th Age and so on.

Dont be fooled by the small page count. It might only be 12 pages of content but it does put other works of many more pages to shame.

As the title suggests it features a dozen ancient dragons.

An intro page explaining the premise of the booklet.

a second page including a four-step system detailing how to read [understand] the following 12 Dragons

1. Every dragon includes an illustration to help spark your imagination as you think through how to best use the creature in your campaign. 2 The dragon's name. 3 Each dragon includes background information to setup the dragon's possible place in your campaign. At times, when appropriate, a description of the dragon's personality has also been included. 4 Involving the party. This section describes the way(s) in which you may introduce the dragon to the adventurers. At times, it is less of a direct introduction between the two and more of how they could become involved with the dragon and/or the events in motion around the beast.

On the same page is the following excellent advice:

Using The Dragons Most campaigns never see a single dragon, let alone twelve, so the dragons that have been detailed on the following pages should last for your entire career as a gamemaster, right? Or not. I know that some are far more liberal when tossing dragons into their campaigns; if you're running a game world that is swarming with dragons, it is possible that you will burn through all twelve of these dragons in a single session. I certainly hope not; your player characters won't know what hit them if you do that.

Background. You may never even introduce the PCs to the dragons, instead keeping the stories of the various dragons as background matter for your game world. When used in this way, these dragon descriptions are used to help add flavour and depth to your world.

Adventure. You're an insane one, aren't you? You truly plan to bring one of these dragons into the campaign and pit the party against the wyrm and its situation. When used in this way, you'll want to take time to prepare the dragon's game stats, using your preferred game system and the description that follows as a guide in your efforts.

Inspiration. Maybe none of these dragons are an exact fit for your campaign and you instead find the dozen wyrms a source of inspiration when writing up your own dragon. Awesome. I am always honoured and excited to learn when someone uses my work as a guide to devising something of their own. If you do create a dragon after reading the twelve, I've detailed, please let me know on Twitter: @philipjreed.

Because there is no sample to download, I have included the first Dragon. Sections Numbered to help.

1. Image ---> Due to the nature of the review process no images are allowed. I can tell you in 5e Terms you are looking at a 5e Ancient sized dragon spewing its breath weapon at a lone adventurer.

2. The Dragons name - Mokaelmiakra. Tiny critique here. I wish that there was a pronunciation guide for these guys. dragon names see to thrive on being difficult to pronounce

3. Dragon Background. A giant of a black dragon, Mokaelmiakra – also known as The Betrayer – lives in the ruins of Castle Graymaw several days ride from the port cities of the eastern plains. The castle, once home to King Graymaw, was reduced to its current state during a battle between the king and the dragon. The king was defeated, his home destroyed, and his army scattered, though the dragon paid a serious price for the victory; Mokaelmiakra tapped into dark magicks and traded his soul to a devil for the power necessary to defeat Graymaw. Now, when the dragon dies, he will forever suffer in the hells of the devil who owns his soul.

Mokaelmiakra is working on the problem and thinks he has found a way to break the bond and free his soul from the devil’s grasp. Mokaelmiakra has uncovered the resting place of an artifact, the Crown of Holy Defense, that is rumored to make the wearer strong enough to bend a demon’s will to his own. If true, he can use this artifact to make the devil release his soul from captivity.

The crown is in a distant dungeon, too far for the dragon to risk visiting since it would mean passing through the lands of competing dragons. Mokaelmiakra has issued a reward for the item, paying rogues to spread leaflets to the larger cities in an attempt to spur adventurers into seeking out and recovering the artifact.

Unfortunately for the dragon, the stories of the artifact are inaccurate. While the Crown of Holy Defense truly does exist, it is not the powerful magic item as told in the tales of bards and sages. The crown provides good-aligned characters with protection against attacks, and nothing more. The crown will not free the dragon’s soul from its hellish prison.

Involving the party. The group comes across one of the parchment notices, tacked to the wall of a tavern, and may either leave the promise of a ruby worth hundreds of gold or seek out one Noqia Anyll, the dragon’s representative in their city. Anyll is a human male thief, forty-odd winters of age and missing his left hand, who shows them sketches of the promised ruby as well as a promissory note signed by a local magistrate promising that the ruby is being held safely and will be traded for the powerful crown.

If they accept the assignment, Anyll provides them with a map and directions to the distant dungeon. The thief has no knowledge or information on the dungeon beyond its location; what is inside, or where the crown may be resting, are details that are unknown and will have to be learned on the fly. Will the party go weeks out of their way for a chance at finding the crown?

When I say that this description is typical of the whole booklet, I am really saying the booklet sets a high standard and keeps to it!

As you can see for yourself, this really does deliver on the promise to provide inspiration and dont forget the picture that you cant see in this review.

edited for typos