Hellfrost Encounters, Book 1 (Savage Worlds) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Book:
Hellfrost: Encounters Book 1
Cover: Hardback
Pagecount: 96
Art: Color cover, black and white interior.

I was quite excited when I got this book. I let it warm up before cracking the cover (it's getting awfully cold here in Alaska) and when I did I'm afraid I found myself frowning and more than a little disappointed right off the bat.

Let's start with the aesthetics. The cover is the beautiful glossy hard cover that has come to have me dub Hellfrost my "Shiny new RPG". It features a gruff looking spellcaster battling what I can only imagine is a Hellfrost Dragon, it's wings neatly framing the circle that provides the viewer a window onto this scene as though scrying through a crystal ball. Beautiful in it's 'almost comic cover' style art that has been a signature of the series.

If you have purchased and read the core books then you might be more than a little disappointed upon opening the cover. Rather than the glossy color paper that has been the standard of the books thus far, you have black and white interior printed on a paper that might be marginally heavier than what comes out of your printer. The art within is... far simler and basic, reminiscent of old D&D sourcebooks and a lot of 3rd party sourcebooks that came out during the d20 publishing glut. It takes up space but isn't really all that special to look at.

The maps are fairly simple either, the cartography easy to understand but it's all black and white and thus of a simpler design that took me back to my old 2nd edition sourcebooks, this isn't a bad thing, and don't take it as such, especially given most players and GM's will likely draw from the book onto a battlemat something far more crude and jarring to the eye. In the end the maps do their job, which is all maps need to do. In my not-so-humble opinion, having a beautiful map is a treat, not something one should require.

That being said, one cannot judge a book by it's cover (granted I admit that was first pulled me to Hellfrost) or it's black and white pages, let's look at it's content!

This is where the book shines and delivers. If you were expecting full on adventures or something then you obviously didn't spend a few seconds reading the description of the book before you bought it. It was made for the busy GM in mind, and gives you easy to read and run encounters, in simple 1-2 page layouts similar to the onesheets you can download over at Pinnacles website. Only it's a whole book of them perfect for your Hellfrost campaign or any Savage Worlds fantasy campaign. For the most part all you need is this book, but sometimes they reference things from the Hellfrost Bestiary which is a must-have whether you're running a Hellfrost campaign or your own Savage Worlds Fantasy themed campaign (Heck, you could probably use that plethora of monsters and NPC's in any Savage World campaign with few tweaks). As for the quality of the encounters within, your milage may vary, but in the end they're designed as something to slip in here and there in between or in the middle of adventures and, in my opinion, are incredibly useful.

There are mercenary rules in the back of the book that provide inspiration for adventures should the PC's seek to play in a military campaign. There's not too much content there and it really gives you the barebones, which is kind of the point, a little bonus should that be your thing but in the end the book is all about the encounters.

I saw few typos, nothing too jarring at least, no more than one might expect from a small (but well run ;) RPG company.

The downside.

This is my biggest complaint, and the reason why this book is rated what it is, a little bit of false advertising.

The entry on the TAG (Triple Ace Games) website lists this book as being 126 pages, of a count similar to the Player's Guide and the Bestiary, alas this isn't the case. It's last page ends with the number 96 in it's lower left hand corner. This was a major disappointment, I could handle the black and white interior, the 29.99 price tag, provided I received as much good content as the other books of similar price. Instead I got fewer pages than advertised, in black and white, with lower quality paper, all of a price with the Player's Guide. I can't say I would buy a volume two, perhaps if this series was published for $15-20 and of a size with Daring Tales Compendiums, but $30 for a 96 page black and white hardcover book is, I daresay, something of a ripoff. By way of example, for $10 dollars less I get a perfect bound, full color, adventure path module complete with articles and monsters from Paizo for their Pathfinder system and setting, also weighing in at 96 pages. I could expect to spend $20 if the color was taken out and the perfect bound softcover was replaced with a hardcover.

All in all three stars, I would have likely given it 2 if not for the good content.

Art: **
Great cover, interior art leaves much to be desired.

Content: ****
As always great content, few typos, maps are a little rough but that's not an issue in my opinion.

Price to content ratio: **
False advertisment of pagecount left me feeling sore, the price is rather steep when compared to their other products, but especially with compared to the products of other companies.

Overall: ***
While I'm kind of miffed about the lower pagecount the content makes up for it. All in all I'd say it's the least of the Hellfrost books, which is kind of like saying you have the ugliest of the gold bars, sure it's ugly but it's still a frickin' gold bar.

All in all I hope they change their publishing model for this series (given the "Book 1" in the title I can only assume they intend on publishing a Book 2 and so on). I would strongly suggest they consider a compendium size and price for future books, either that or drop the retail price to $25 if not $20 which is what I feel is it's true worth. I would much rather have such great content in an affordable and portable compendium size anyway.

Good Gaming,
Zach Gowdy (DM Doom)