Starting New: Hellfrost or Beasts & Barbarians

[greentongue]

If you were starting a new campaign, or new to FG in general, would you start with the published material for Hellfrost or Beasts & Barbarians?

Or, do you think that making everything from scratch is easy enough that you would just use the base SWADE rules?

[Talyn]

Depends what you're looking for. Both are good Conan-esque swords & sorcery settings. Rule-wise, Hellfrost is SWEX so you'll have to pay attention while reading to notice if something doesn't match SWD, especially if you're translating up to SWADE. B&B is SWD so that should be a simpler translation. DLC-wise, Hellfrost has an incredible amount of stuff in the store, and Doswelk is still in the process of adding more. B&B on the other hand, had a very troubled development process because of the publisher. There's the setting and I think two adventures? That's probably all there will ever be, unless some other developer does some adventures. If you'd rather plug things in yourself then either one works well, just run whichever setting appeals to you.

[Trenloe]

If you were starting a new campaign, or new to FG in general, would you start with the published material for Hellfrost or Beasts & Barbarians?

If you're new, get the published stuff. Even if you're not new, get the published stuff. Having some base material in FG will allow you to better react to the players decisions and also give you a bunch of material you can draw on if you're making your own adventures.

[robert4818]

If you were starting a new campaign, or new to FG in general, would you start with the published material for Hellfrost or Beasts & Barbarians?

Or, do you think that making everything from scratch is easy enough that you would just use the base SWADE rules?

Hellfrost has more "stuff" for it in terms of books. However, with the exception of "Resource management" (read kingdoms, inns, taverns, etc) most of this stuff is bog-standard expansion. I.E. more information about places, more lore about aspects of the world, more character options (edges, spells, etc.), more adventures.

Beasts and Barbarians doesn't have as much lore expansion, but has more in the way of "campaign options". I.E. Gladiatorial campaigns, mercenary campaigns, etc. However, only the core book is implemented into fantasy grounds, and the other books might require more than simple translation if you want FG to help handle the extra campaign bits.

[rodney418]

Hellfrost has lots of stuff available, but a lot of it is very out of date. B&B seems to be kept a lot more current.

For my fantasy campaigns I just run with basic SWADE, and some of the Adventure-a-Week modules. If I was going to get any additional setting material I'd consider getting Lankhmar.

[greentongue]

If I was going to get any additional setting material I'd consider getting Lankhmar.

What do you think makes it better than the other two?

[Nurgelrot]

I don't see as Hell Frost as being a very Conan-esque swords & sorcery settings as others have stated. I feel HF is a much more High Fantasy setting. Beasts and Barbarians or Lankhmar are the best Low Fantasy choices for SW on Fantasy Grounds right now. With IMO B&B the better of the two despite their being more stuff for Lankhmar. So it all comes down to what you want. All three of the ones mentioned here are good solid settings. If you want medium to high magic and lots of races and a classic fantasy feel (with the added benefit of a ton of ready to run adventures) go Hell Frost. If you want to crush the jeweled kingdoms under your sandaled feet go B&B or Lankhmar. Personaly I run B&B most of the time with home brew stuff from Primeval Thule and Totems of the Dead thrown in. I'd love to see a Totems added as a SW extension to FG. But then I have about a million things I'd like to see added to FG

[rodney418]

I don't think Lankhmar is better as such, but I think the material on FG is better supported, since it's an official PEG product. It's got some great extra bits & pieces that you can easily drop into any Fantasy campaign, and the magic system is excellent.

[rodney418]

Personaly I run B&B most of the time with home brew stuff from Primeval Thule

Primeval Thule is by far my favourite fantasy setting, but the SW version hasn't been translated to FG yet. If it was, my entire gaming group would be buying it in a heartbeat.

[Nurgelrot]

Primeval Thule is by far my favourite fantasy setting, but the SW version hasn't been translated to FG yet. If it was, my entire gaming group would be buying it in a heartbeat.

Well there isn't much to translate really. It an awesome setting but the conversion Sasquatch did for their 5e product to SW was minimal at best. So much lost potential there. But it works very well as a location for the B&B extension. Actually with what I've done I bet I have 90% of the Thule book already in my own extension... I may clean it up take my custom stuff out. Make a mod for the book text and ask for official permission to make it available. Ideas...