Today I’m going to take a look at the Triple Ace Games production of the Hellfrost Player’s Guide. Released in 2009 for the Savage Worlds setting, this core book comes in at 128 pages, in hardcover, and was written by Paul ‘Wiggy’ Wade-Williams & Snowy [who I assume is his cat].
Now for any of you who read my blog regularly, you know that I’m a huge fan of Savage Worlds. To me, it is probably the most Gamemaster friendly mechanic I’ve ever experienced, and as my time is more limited the older I get, running in such a setting makes perfect sense for me.
As for Hellfrost, it is a very interesting campaign setting, as players find themselves in a world locked in the mortal battle between wasting ice and life. For five centuries the Blizzard War raged, and although the southern lands might have won, now magic is failing and the Hellfrost Wind is threatening to drown the temperate zones once spared the doom of the icy north.
Truly, this is an inspired fantasy setting if you’d like to keep characters cold and have a nice Viking/Norse feel with Frost Giants still lurking the lands.
As for the artwork, this book is reminiscent of some Troll Lord productions as a single artist gets all the book credits.
Artist Chris Kulmann does both the cover and all interiors for the supplement. Chris is a fine talent, but keeps his work in-line with much of the standard anime-inspired and western-washed images one might find coming out of a publishing house like Paizo. There is nothing about the art that sings ‘special’ to me, but it does its job to frame the setting and give good examples of life in the frozen world of Rassilon. I’ll also give credit to the amount of artwork in the book [which is all color]. Triple Ace Games at the very least, had a budget that I can respect.
In all, Hellfrost gets a nice nod from me.
Artistic Rating: 3 [out of 5]
