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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dead Scribe" data-source="post: 5673747" data-attributes="member: 21288">Hammerfast is basically a backdrop for players to use as a home base as they go off on other adventures.  Most of the details are focused on describing the city itself, with a paragraph or so on major businesses, and a lot of color detail that keeps the city interesting enough that it's not just an inn and a weapon shop to the players.  There are a couple villains and suggested adventures based around the city, including a pretty nasty high-level dragon, but not really enough to make anything but a barebones story for a multi-level campaign.  For what it is, Hammerfast is a very nice product, and I recommend it highly.Neverwinter is not a backdrop--it's a campaign construction manual.  It has half a dozen major factions with distinct themes and leaders, and detailed information on the leaders plots.  It also has a lot of space devoted to how those factions interact with the players, and with each other.  It also has has  at least half a dozen smaller factions who play supporting roles to the players and their enemies.  The city itself gets quite a bit of page space, but focuses on bigger-picture locations that are likely to feature as adventure spots and player destinations (Castle Neverwinter, the Graveyard, the spellplagued chasm and the Wall that surrounds it)--unlike Hammerfast, it doesn't really linger on color details about the local seamstress and alchemist.  The book also details half a dozen other major locations, and numerous minor ones, that surround Neverwinter--and explains why they are important to Neverwinter and to the players.All of this is linked together by the Character Themes that are provided to players.  The book is littered with sidebars explaining how to tie character Themes to the locations and people of Neverwinter--in other words, how to build a campaign. And the Theme descriptions themselves give the player that chooses them a strong concept of their character's background and motivations in the campaign.So when people say things like "Neverwinter doesn't tell me how to build a campaign," or "It's just Hammerfast with more locations" without mentioning the Themes, that tells me that the people talking haven't actually read the book.  Hammerfast is a location--Neverwinter is a campaign.  It's much more useful for a DM and their players build a tightly focused campaign than any previous campaign guide.  If you just want a colorful location to base your adventures that you're creating or getting from another source, Hammerfast is a great product.  If you have no interest in actually running a Neverwinter campaign, you probably shouldn't buy the Neverwinter Campaign Book.  But if you want a book that tells you how to put together a Neverwinter campaign--one that can be used over and over and produce a different campaign every time--then Neverwinter is a great resource, I think.</blockquote>

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