Frost & Fur is the first part of
Monkey God Enterprise's Explorer's Guide Series. This 256 page, black & white hardcover book focuses on arctic and sub-arctic environments, the cultures that can be found in them and various rules for use in your d20 campaign.
So, what exactly does that mean for you? The answer depends on how much work you want to put into using this book.
Premise
Frost & Fur is touted as a guide to exploring frozen lands and dealing with the various hazards, cultures and wonders within. As a writer and sometimes-DM, I've been working on a homebrew world set in a sub-arctic environment. Naturally, when this book was announced, I was quite interested to see what I could do with it. The book is meant to provide extra rules for arctic hazards, equipment of arctic-living peoples, plus spells and monsters one might find useful in cold-weather climates.
To be plain, this isn't just a book about cold-weather environments. At its core, this supplement is designed to provide you with certain cold-themed campaign settings, based on historic cultures of our own world. As a DM, you can either set your entire campaign in one of these cultural backdrops, plug them into your own world, or use parts of them to enhance the colder environments of your campaign setting.
For this reason, the book may end up being more work than you might expect. It does some things very right but, in doing so, makes it harder to pick and choose which aspects of the rules presented fit into your own world.
Chapter 1 - Cold Terrains
We start off with a chapter describing what exactly a "cold-weather" region is made of. Environments from Cold Mountains to Cold Aquatic are presented, giving you an overview of the various climates one might encounter in an arctic or sub-arctic region. Having lived in Alaska for some time, most of the descriptions seem spot-on. In addition, each region is given its own random encounter table, which includes creatures from the Monster Manual as well as those from
Frost & Fur itself.
Chapter 2 - Environmental Hazards
Here we have the rules most useful to the average DM. This chapter expands on the dangers of exposure in cold-weather climates, adding various facts and rules to those presented in the DMG.
Most of the climate effects and hazard rules make perfect sense. An example is the phenomenon called "Fata Morgana." Because the air is so cold, clean and still, it often makes depth perception difficult, leading travelers to think that mountain is closer than it really is. Such mistakes can prove fatal when caught in the open after dark on a windy arctic night, after traveling too far.
Another is the dreaded
jökulhlaups, where a glacier has trapped melted water until the ice can no longer stand under the strain. Imagine a dam bursting open... only the dam is made of ice, and the water is freezing cold. Entire adventures can be made around preventing a
jökulhlaup from bursting, or saving a village that's in one's path.
However, one effect has been given a bit more power than you would expect: auroras. An aurora is a natural effect where radiation from the sun strikes the Earth's magnetic field. The interaction between these two energies causes rippling lights to appear in the skies over the poles, and can be seen further south when they are more powerful. According to some legends, the auroras will sometimes touch the ground, and one may be affected by strange magics if you are there when it happens.
Frost & Fur takes this into account by providing a random table of effects which can be rolled when an aurora appears. But, when the effects are as powerful as
gate,
time stop and
teleport, a DM should be wary of what it may do to their campaign!
Chapter 3 - Races
If you want to use the standard PC races in your campaign, this chapter may not provide much in the way of help. There are several adjustments made to the races for a general fantasy arctic campaign, as well as many sub-races appropriate to the mini-campaign settings given in the book.
While most of them tend to be unique to their setting, a few could provide great inspiration to players for new characters. In addition, a few variants make good replacements for their standard counterparts. The Neanderthal is given as a possible replacement for the half-orc, and would be well-suited to any campaign that doesn't rely on orcs as antagonists.
Chapter 4 - Classes
A very short chapter, these pages exist to give you an idea of how to use the standard PHB classes and NPC classes in an arctic campaign, or one of the mini-campaigns. Often, the more supernatural classes are listed as inappropriate for the specific mini-settings, but some fit in with few changes.
Chapter 5 - Equipment
Next to the environment rules, this chapter is probably the easiest to use in any campaign. Whether you're running an Ice Age game, the North region of Forgotten Realms, or just want some unusual weapons for another game, you can find plenty of useful items here.
Though I haven't playtested them, the stats on the weapons seem reasonable and balanced. There are a variety of unique and interesting arms to choose from, and each are given both good descriptions and illustrations. Armor, boats, and shelters round out the rest of this chapter. Perhaps the only items that many DMs will dismiss outright are the two firearms intended for the Slavic mini-campaign, but it's a welcome addition for the appropriate setting.
Chapter 6 - Skills & Feats
After a brief run-down of the basic skills & how they are useful in a cold-weather campaign, we get to the new rules. This is the first time potential DMs will start to run into trouble in this book.
Many of the feats given are sensible and quite useful. The
Behead feat, for instance, provides a useful way to take a popular house-rule and turn it into a real benefit in your campaign. PCs with this feat, who roll a natural 20 to
confirm a critical hit, automatically behead their opponent. The requirements for the feat are modest, but fair, meaning that one needs to have at least BAB +4 before qualifying as well as a few other combat feats.
Other feats, like
Controlled Shiver and
Fearless are not only practical in-game, but carry some unique flavor of their own. The latter feat is described as allowing the PC to be "utterly, stupidly fearless of all things." This DM can think of quite a few PCs that would have benefited from having this feat, since their characters act the part anyway!
There are a few feats, however, which seem problematic. For one, the authors fall prey to the old cliche that the Charisma stat dictates a character's physical attractiveness. This shows up in the
Evil Eye feat, where one must have a CHA of 8 or lower as a prerequisite. In addition, the feat itself seems rather strong, doubling the variable numeric effects of the character's Necromancy spells & effects.
This chapter is quite a mixed bag, and it is recommended that great care be taken before allowing the feats inside into your own game.
Chapter 7 - Magic
The magic section of the book starts out on the right foot, detailing changes to the PHB spells when in a cold-weather environment. Some nice touches about, from
ray of frost triggering an Exposure check (detailed in chapter 1), to altering the
grease spell to create a sheet of ice.
New spells are then introduced and, like the Feats section, we get another mixed bag. For the most part, the spells are useful and very entertaining. But, with some names like
nerazmennyi rubl and
sbatatdaq, it seems that prospective DMs will have to do a little renaming to keep their players from being overly frustrated with their spellbooks.
Spells such as
remove hypothermia are only natural for this book, and others like
mara ride provide interesting ways to deal with villains (or frustrate the plans of PCs). Then there are a few reworks of existing spells:
freezing hands is a cold-variant of
burning hands, and
flesh to ice is an appropriate reworking of
flesh to stone. However, at least one duplicate from
Tome & Blood does appear, in the case of
corpse candle. I assume the author intended to update the 2e version of the spell, without knowing it had already been done in a Wizards book.
Another interesting aspect of this chapter is the number of spells that have more roleplay result than mechanics ones. This is where one can begin to see how heavily the book relies on the legends and beliefs of the cultures outlined later in
Frost & Fur, giving us spells such as
bladder dance that are based on Inuit tradition. Others, though, seem more cryptic:
maturity rite is actually a requirement for the given Ice Age mini-setting, and no character can advance in level without it being cast. This brings up a few interesting questions in that setting, and can lead to adventure or frustration depending on the situation. In addition, this spell is never mentioned in the Ice Age campaign chapter, meaning it could easily be overlooked. This would be better handled through roleplaying than as a spell.
Chapter 8 - Monsters
The author gets a real chance to shine here, as do the artists. Beasties in this section run the gamut from entertaining to evocative, scary to silly, and obvious to odd.
A few of the monsters are just a bit too silly for serious campaigns. The Snowman Golem is one of the most obvious examples (literally described as "two large balls of snow, with a carrot for a nose, buttons for eyes, branches for arms and a hat of some sort.") In addition, there is the Singing Bun: a construct pastry with the Enthrall supernatural ability. No one can accuse the MGE folks of lacking a sense of humor, or failing to draw upon some very interesting legends.
For more practical monsters, we get the expected Ice Elemental, Arctic Fox, and Freezescum Ooze. There are also some good ideas borrowed from sub-arctic cultures, like the Aleutian Mummy, Arulataq, and the eerie Corpse Shroud. Perhaps my favorite is the Kam, a humanoid race with the unique ability to split in two when damaged. Each time one is hit, it splits into two creatures, each with one-half the hit points of the original! They cannot be killed until reduced to a bunch of 1 HP Kam, at which point they take damage normally.
Duplicates appear again, such as the Linnorm. However,
Frost & Fur gives the linnorm age categories, as dragons get, making them a unique version of the creature from Wizards' version.
A nice touch are Ice Age versions of historical beasts, such as the Megatherium (giant sloth) and Megalocerous (giant deer). No saber-toothed tiger or wooly mammoth, though.
Some templates round out the section, including a few alternate lycanthropes. Perhaps the best is the Cold Stranger, a vampire replacement that has a wonderful, haunting image about it.
Chapter 9 - Magic Items
This is quite a treat. Various magic items from each of the cultures are presented here, and they don't disappoint. Classics like the Apple of Sleep, Shirt of Invulnerability and Millstone of Plenty are just a taste of what you'll find here.
Though I have little experience with magic item creation, the stats seem balanced and reasonably priced for each one listed.
Cultures
Finally, we get to see just where some of these unique names and items came from. We are given four chapters, each of which details a different sub-arctic culture from Earth's history and how to turn it into a fantasy campaign. This is where it becomes quite clear that
Frost & Fur is really more of a setting book with environmental rules, than an pure environment book itself. Great detail was given to each culture (given space constraints), and they seem quite respectful to the beliefs of those people. Each culture campaign gives appropriate monsters,
summon nature's ally tables and an overview of spells that are unique to the culture.
Beginning with Norse culture, we get a simple introduction that most folks will be familiar with. Now, we get the unique classes and Prestige Classes for this setting, each of which is tied strongly to the setting. Some, such as the 20 level Godi divine caster, are perfectly suited to a fantasy adventuring campaign; the Voelva, however, suffers from a crippling requirement to spellcasting that unfortunately seems to relegate it to the realm of NPCs. The Artificer PrC would easily be ported to other campaigns, while the Leech would be vastly underpowered in the average fantasy setting.
In addition, the Norse chapter provides its own rules for Runecasting. These are different from other published sources, and seem well-suited to a Norse campaign, while being a unique alternative to scrolls in fantasy worlds. A woefully short pantheon is also provided, but only the most bare-bones information about each deity is presented.
Eskimo culture is next, with a caveat that there are several such cultures spread across the planet, many of whom still thrive to this day. As a setting, the Eskimo campaign is a rather animistic campaign, and the spells & classes reflect this. The Angakoq class is a very good alternative to the standard cleric, while the Haldawit PrC would make a good villain in any campaign. Again, the pantheon is given in brief form. Outside readings of the beliefs and legends of each culture seem necessary to really get a feel for the deities listed.
The Slavic Culture campain perhaps intrigues me the most. This is where many European supernatural tales originate from, giving rise to some classic storytelling options. A few unique human sub-races are given as a possibility for playing as unusual characters within this setting.
Classes in the slavic campaign are quite enjoyable. Who could resist playing a Cossack? Perhaps my favorite full-level class in the book is the Koldun, a wizard-type who deals with infernal beings to gain his powers, and trades away the wizard bonus feats for the
wild shape ability into a single animal form.
Finishing out the cultures is the most fantastic and most barbaric at the same time: the Ice Age. Here, the various races struggle to survive, while mysterious Atlanteans posess magic and psionic powers unheard of elsewhere. This is perhaps the most portable culture out of all, since so much is left to DM interpretation.
The classes and PrCs in these chapters do exactly what they're supposed to do, providing unique adventuring possibilities for players and interesting villains for DMs. They are all tied fairly heavily to their campaigns, though whether this is a strength or a weakness is dependent on your own setting plans.
Presentation
Frost & Fur has an overall clean and trim look. The front cover is lovely, painted by William O'Connor and very evocative of a fantasy arctic setting. Interior art varies, but ranges from average all the way up to excellent. Many of the black & white monster illustrations by Andy Brase surpass the full-color images from the
Monster Manual.
Each of the main chapters are surrounded by parts of a short story, detailing the struggles of an arctic tribe against invaders. The story manages to blend the various cultural and magical aspects into the book very well, while placing each part into the appropriate chapter.
Page layout is the standard two-column spread, though the font is a bit larger than the PHB, with more space between lines of text. There does seem to be a greater impression of whitespace here, perhaps in part due to the plain white paper used for printing the book. This does make it somewhat easier on the eyes than the standard D&D books, though, so may be of more benefit for those with difficulty reading Wizards' small print.
Some typos and formatting errors are present, though nothing too glaring. The only real disappointment is what seems to be errors in the OGL itself. Though there was indication that most of the book would be open, the "Open Content" portion of
Frost & Fur's OGL page omits mention of the spells, full-progression classes or the environment rules from chapter 1 & 2. Hopefully the OGL listing will be corrected when errata is eventually published, so that other developers can take advantage of the book's magic and unique classes & rules additions.
Conclusion
Frost & Fur is primarily a book of arctic culture and settings, with spells, monsters and equipment to support them. This leaves DMs in something of a dilemma if they wish to use the rules presented in a different setting. It will take some extra work to determine which rules are properly balanced for their own campaign, and extract the rules from the related settings.
There should be no trouble using the equipment or environmental rules of the book wherever you like. Choosing appropriate feats & spells will be more challenging, and porting the classes & PrCs to another setting may be somewhat daunting. If you are willing to put the effort into it, however, the book should prove worthy for any campaign that wanders into colder climes.
If you plan on running a lengthy campaign in an arctic or sub-arctic environment, or are interested in running a semi-historical setting based on one of the included campaigns,
Frost & Fur is well worth the money. However, if you are simply making a casual visit to a colder region, or need a supplement you can grab off the shelf and make quick use of for a pick-up game, you may wish to pass on this one and stick to the rules given in the DMG.
I would rate this book a 3.5 out of 5, but the system won't take half-steps. So, reluctantly, I give it 3/5. The amount of work involved in conversion and questionable balance tend to offset the imaginative setting options and useful rules. Overall, it's still a good addition to your campaign, provided you're willing to put some effort into its use.
