frostbitten and mutilated review:
a. it's exactly what it says it is; a complete and concise and useful guide to running black metal amazons
b. the front matter bit about meditating on the heart of the devoured lands is good
c. the amazon stats are kinda meh for me but maybe the only thing that wakes me up is apocalyptic power stuff
d. the characterization of animals as brutal and intelligent is good and the snippet of dialogue explaining that you can just suddenly kill the players with wolves is good
e. the two included dungeons are kinda meh, the first has a couple good bits, like the necrobutcher at the bottom of the snake library and the weakend cage at the end with 300,000 gp in it. I'm not a fan of the second dungeon's concept (multiple moral choices ending in an unkillable witch turning you into animals). that being said they're both pretty simple, and I appreciate the dim fortress as an arrangement of all the worst threats in the game
f. its funny I know zak is super critical of apoc-world-style white cutouts on black background and I'm pretty sure frostbitten and mutilated is an intentional rebuke of that style, by doing it better, but I was paging through and thinking, is this better? that being said I've just had the pdf so I'm reserving judgement. in any case the layout, and by extension the concise, efficient writing, is faaar superior to something like blades in the dark, and wayy cooler than apoc world's layout, osr better at this
g. frostbitten and mutilated describes a straightforward and brutal landscape; it seems eminently more easy to run than A Red & Pleasant Land or Veins of the Earth, it's a snow-covered wilderness like norway. the base environment is something quite familiar. the particular brutality the book prescribes seems easier to focus on with such a familiar base.
I'm excited to run Frostbitten & Mutilated, when I get the chance, for these reasons:
-its particular brutality in the context of black metal amazons. dis is exactly that kill-or-be-killed, political, clear threats shit that I 100% love, and the tone is killer.
-it seems easy to run. I trust the layout to have all the stats in the right places, the map easy to consult, etc. etc., and it's all there, a complete squarecrawl, nothing I have to generate. moreover as I said the environment is familiar and easy to describe
-the prose is good and in a style I enjoy reading, a huge deal for me
FOLLOWUP: I RECEIVE THE PHYSICAL BOOK
its probably the best-looking rpg book I own, except maybe the dungeon crawl classics corebook. note that I do not particularly like the dcc prose. I do like zak's prose, see above.
the binding is tight, the paper is just the right kind where you can write on it, but it's tough, like a good quality bible. the foil emboss looks grand, on the spine too, the front/end paper is perfectly readable. the leathersh material of the whole cover is good, not puffy, got a durable feeling. the size is good too- I worry about this alot in lotfp's books, feel like a lot of the art (such as in "veins") is not given enough room to breathe. in general I prefer A4 like the old 3.0 player's guide but frostbitten's a5 feels good in the hand and I think the art is spacey and abstract enough to fit at that size, the layout helps.
like, I didn't like Vornheim, crazy tho the layout was, bc the "roll dice on me" frontcover backcovers were too small, imo, for rolling dice. also the book was kinda short. f&b's better.
talking about the art, it is really the case that some portraiture in here is not good, for me, it's sorta blotchier "a red & pleasant land" photo-reference stuff sometimes- the "witch sisters three" image fer example. like, compare to zak's objects, check out the visual search the body table, the sketchy little objects look awesome. that being said there are at least several amazon portraits which look great, like Jer Amon on pg 20.
to get more into it: sometime's zaks portraits, drawn from photo references as far as I know, look too much like the reference such that it jars me from the painting. pg 23's rindr is a good example, the eyes look fine, but then the lips come in- they look too 3d, you get the sorta photographic reflections off the lips, it sorta offsets the entire image so that I can tell it is painted from a photographic reference with extra stuff (the eyes) drawn on it.
it may not even just be that, look at the decapitated head on page 19-- it's the face of a zak friend with a sorta fierce expression with a little bit of gore drawn on the bottom. not very convincing as a "cut off head" which I dunno would have a more scrunched up face or be slumped or look more like a head-object than a collaged piece of a photograph.
that being said; the scrappiness of the art, portraits included, the way they're laid out, the general whole vision along with the really standout pieces like the necrobutcher makes the art tops.
