Which Environment book would you buy?
Robert Ranting
First Post
"In this world, massive cities line the coasts of an inland sea, the last refuge of the world's living things in the wake of a cataclysm that has gripped the extreme latitudes in an Ice Age, and parched the rest of the land into a vast desert."
The above would pretty adequately sum up my campaign setting's geography, so you can probably see why theoretically, every one of these books would be of some use to me. However, it has been my experience that my Players will do anything and everything in their power to stay away from glaciers, deserts, oceans, or major cities. While I own a copy of Sandstorm, and for a while had access to a friend with Frostburn, the PCs steadfastly avoided any contact with the extreme areas of the globe. The only one of these environs they visited was the sea, since there was no other means of travel available, and I had already bought the Seafarer's Handbook long before even the first environment book had been released. I've looked over Stormwrack, and while overall the book looks to be of decent quality, I feel like it would not give me much that the Seafarer's handbook hasn't already given me. Moreover, since Stormwrack assumes a purely Dark Age level of technology, and I simply don't have any interest in sea travel before the age of Blackpowder canons and flintlocks (which my campaign has), it doesn't seem to offer me much in the way of usable content besides monsters and some equipment.
That said, I'm currently running an Urban Game set in my homebrew's largest city, so I've been looking for a book that would help me flesh out cities. Today I looked at Cityscape, Cityworks, Ptolus, and Five Fingers: Port of Intrigue, and of the four, I think that Cityscape might be the weakest, even considering that two of them are campaign specific! I'll probably end up picking up CityWorks (to complement The SeaFarer's Handbook and Sorcery & Steam) and maybe Ptolus if I can scrape together the money.
Robert "Third Party Material Just Seems To Work Better For Me" Ranting
The above would pretty adequately sum up my campaign setting's geography, so you can probably see why theoretically, every one of these books would be of some use to me. However, it has been my experience that my Players will do anything and everything in their power to stay away from glaciers, deserts, oceans, or major cities. While I own a copy of Sandstorm, and for a while had access to a friend with Frostburn, the PCs steadfastly avoided any contact with the extreme areas of the globe. The only one of these environs they visited was the sea, since there was no other means of travel available, and I had already bought the Seafarer's Handbook long before even the first environment book had been released. I've looked over Stormwrack, and while overall the book looks to be of decent quality, I feel like it would not give me much that the Seafarer's handbook hasn't already given me. Moreover, since Stormwrack assumes a purely Dark Age level of technology, and I simply don't have any interest in sea travel before the age of Blackpowder canons and flintlocks (which my campaign has), it doesn't seem to offer me much in the way of usable content besides monsters and some equipment.
That said, I'm currently running an Urban Game set in my homebrew's largest city, so I've been looking for a book that would help me flesh out cities. Today I looked at Cityscape, Cityworks, Ptolus, and Five Fingers: Port of Intrigue, and of the four, I think that Cityscape might be the weakest, even considering that two of them are campaign specific! I'll probably end up picking up CityWorks (to complement The SeaFarer's Handbook and Sorcery & Steam) and maybe Ptolus if I can scrape together the money.
Robert "Third Party Material Just Seems To Work Better For Me" Ranting
Nyeshet
First Post
I already own Frostburn, so I chose Sandstorm. Stormwrack would be next, but I am uncertain of it, as I do not need rules for dealing with underwater combat / travel, and several other books have been suggested to me for dealing with situations involving ships. Cityscape is near the bottom of the list, as from what I've seen of it I think I prefer Cityworks (which I already own) more.
Thomas Percy
First Post
Frost
Frostburn is one of the worst rpg books I've ever read. 75% of monsters have improved grab, 1d6 frost damage and nothing new. 75% of the spells are ice variants of PHB spells. Adventures are typical boring dungeon crawls by Baur.
Sand
I've used a lot of material from Sandstorm at my game sessions, especially: touchstones, adventure sites, monsters, spells and sand / water / fire/ wind shaper as a base class for genies.
Storm
Stormwrack - hard to say, it seems to be useful, but I don't run sea-based game until this time. But it will change.
City
Citysomething - I don't know it yet, but I count on it most.
Frostburn is one of the worst rpg books I've ever read. 75% of monsters have improved grab, 1d6 frost damage and nothing new. 75% of the spells are ice variants of PHB spells. Adventures are typical boring dungeon crawls by Baur.
Sand
I've used a lot of material from Sandstorm at my game sessions, especially: touchstones, adventure sites, monsters, spells and sand / water / fire/ wind shaper as a base class for genies.
Storm
Stormwrack - hard to say, it seems to be useful, but I don't run sea-based game until this time. But it will change.
City
Citysomething - I don't know it yet, but I count on it most.
delericho
Legend
I haven't seen Cityscape yet, so can't comment on it.
I have found the Environment books to all be very good. In fact, since I expected them to be terrible, I was very pleasantly surprised. That said, Frostburn is the best I've seen so far, followed by Sandstorm, with Stormwrack a distant third. (I don't know what it was - I liked the concept of Stormwrack, and the contents were technically good. It just didn't grab me the way the others did.)
FWIW, all of these books are better than the "Heroes of..." books, and Heroes of Horror is slightly better than Heroes of Battle. That said, both of those books are also very good, with the latter initially leaving me cold, but growing in my estimation as time passes.
I have found the Environment books to all be very good. In fact, since I expected them to be terrible, I was very pleasantly surprised. That said, Frostburn is the best I've seen so far, followed by Sandstorm, with Stormwrack a distant third. (I don't know what it was - I liked the concept of Stormwrack, and the contents were technically good. It just didn't grab me the way the others did.)
FWIW, all of these books are better than the "Heroes of..." books, and Heroes of Horror is slightly better than Heroes of Battle. That said, both of those books are also very good, with the latter initially leaving me cold, but growing in my estimation as time passes.
DragonLancer
Adventurer
Based on the criteria, I'd buy Stormwrack. The reason being that IMX oceans and lakes with their respective travel and environment, are more often used in D&D than arctic or desert regions.
