What do you think about Grim Hollow?

Hi there, Midgardians!

So I'm planning to get this third party campaign setting called Grim Hollow, but I'd like to ask you what you think about it.

Is it worth it? Pros and cons?

Thanks in advance.

I’ve got both the original 5e Grim Hollow books and the 5.5 updates they released last year. I’ve run two campaigns and a few one shots in the world. Honestly it’s one of my favourite settings but it’s not for everyone. It’s very Grim Dark, lots of hopelessness and enemies that aren’t meant to be fought just avoided.

With that in mind the biggest pro for me is variety, although it’s all set in one world (Etharis) there’s a lot of variety. Each country within Etharis has its own flavour of fantasy horror, there’s a country ruled by vampire, one under the shadow of an Eldritch horror that mutates and corrupts all around it if you want folk horror, a very Viking themed country experiencing a long night, twisted fey creatures, or religion gone mad. It gives a lot of freedom to run the campaign you want (so long as the campaign you want is horror themed)

The con is that a lot of the player facing options are a little all over the place. Some are wildly under powered compared to official releases and some are massively over. They’re all very flavourful but you might want to review them before allowing anyone at the table to use them. There’s also a very limited number of prewritten adventures and campaigns for it so you’re largely in your own.

Best advice would be to grab the Campaign Setting and read that to see if you like it before going all in. You can buy the pdf from Ghostfire Gaming’s website for a reasonable amount, wait a few days afterwards and they usually send you an email asking for a review that gives $5 off the next purchase which you can just keep repeating to save a bit of money 

Quote from CunningSmile >>

I’ve got both the original 5e Grim Hollow books and the 5.5 updates they released last year. I’ve run two campaigns and a few one shots in the world. Honestly it’s one of my favourite settings but it’s not for everyone. It’s very Grim Dark, lots of hopelessness and enemies that aren’t meant to be fought just avoided.

With that in mind the biggest pro for me is variety, although it’s all set in one world (Etharis) there’s a lot of variety. Each country within Etharis has its own flavour of fantasy horror, there’s a country ruled by vampire, one under the shadow of an Eldritch horror that mutates and corrupts all around it if you want folk horror, a very Viking themed country experiencing a long night, twisted fey creatures, or religion gone mad. It gives a lot of freedom to run the campaign you want (so long as the campaign you want is horror themed)

The con is that a lot of the player facing options are a little all over the place. Some are wildly under powered compared to official releases and some are massively over. They’re all very flavourful but you might want to review them before allowing anyone at the table to use them. There’s also a very limited number of prewritten adventures and campaigns for it so you’re largely in your own.

Best advice would be to grab the Campaign Setting and read that to see if you like it before going all in. You can buy the pdf from Ghostfire Gaming’s website for a reasonable amount, wait a few days afterwards and they usually send you an email asking for a review that gives $5 off the next purchase which you can just keep repeating to save a bit of money 

Thank you so much for your advices. I do appreciate it! You gave me a pretty solid perspective. I will buy the campaign book and then see if I'll buy the other books. 

Thank you again for your help. 😊

My pleasure. Just occurred to me but take a look at Ghostfire Gaming’s YouTube channel. They do a lot of really good 10-15 minute videos on how to run various aspects of horror and grim dark games (how to run hags, how to run ghosts, how to run vampires etc) but they always use Grim Hollow as an example so you can get a pretty good feel for the flavour of the setting that way