Review: Death Frost Doom (Part 1)

James Raggi has said, here, that the OSR needs people who are more critical.  He was referring to the tendency of the people who write reviews (of OSR material) to be almost singularly positive and commenting that this, in his opinion, weakens the movement.  He is absolutely correct--no person or organization of any kind that fails to conduct critical self analysis will be as strong, as meaningful, or ultimately as important as those that do.  Looking in the mirror with honesty and candor is a necessity.

I had not purchased any of his products before reading that post.  Despite reading a good bit about Death Frost Doom and Green Devil Face and becoming a regular reader of LotFP, I hadn't pulled out the wallet.  After reading the post, I decided that I should buy something, if only to see what the fuss is about.  And if I'm going to do that, I may as well review it.

[As someone who has had several products reviewed, I take the writing of a review very seriously.  I have some strong thoughts on reviews, and although I haven't yet posted them here, I am working on several different posts on the topic.]

In that same post, concerning people who might choose to write more than sunshine-and-rainbow reviews James goes on to say, "Pursuing this is going to mean drama and hurt feelings. Whoever bothers to do this has to have a thick skin, and probably should have no publishing aspirations of their own."  I do have publishing aspirations of my own, so there is a little voice in my head telling me not to do this.  But I feel very strongly that well-written, honest, and informative reviews are an important way for this little niche to grow and demonstrate that it is serious about more than nostalgia.  I'm going to take a stab at it.

I've purchased Death Frost Doom.  I've read it twice.  I've not had the chance to DM it, but my review will focus on the adventure and the product.  Note that I believe that a good review should discuss both of those halves of any gaming material--the content and the presentation.  The review will be posted a little later on today.