The premise of the book sounded very interesting to me as it is a story. I don’t know that I would call it massively unique, but it’s a topic that is interesting to delve into. So I picked up the first volume and gave it a read, and I thought I’d do a review on that as well as some first impressions on it.

The idea behind Freeze is that randomly, one day, everyone in the world freezes, stops moving, but isn’t dead, just isn’t moving anymore. That is, except for one man, Ray. Not only that, but Ray has the power to unfreeze people by touching them, which he figures out by accident. However, he quickly finds out what sort of responsibility comes along with that.

Obviously, the landscape of the world changes a lot when something like everyone freezes, planes are fell out of the sky, there are a lot of accidents. You can still very much die when you freeze. However, that isn’t an aspect that they dwell on too much in the story. They focus more on the human side of things, like what it would be to be one of the people that Ray unfreezes, but also how the decisions are made as to who to unfreeze. While you could certainly go around unfreezing everyone you run across, which I think that a lot of people would be tempted to do, they realize that with the disaster that this is, that they need to slowly reintroduce people back into the world as the world can handle it, starting in there area.

That then brings up the question of if the people helping Ray actually have the best interest for the world. And who has the power to make the judgement as to who should be unfrozen. Those who are helping Ray talk about not unfreezing bad people, people have criminal records, people they believe to be doing something wrong in life, but are they actually making a true judgement on that? I think the book opens up a lot of interesting questions and does a pretty good job dealing with them.

I will knock the first volume a little bit though. While I like the concept and while I like getting into the story or at least a brief first arc of the story, I think that Dan Wickline glosses too quickly over the fallout from the freeze. We get to see the freeze happen and a scene or two to really tell us how this is going to work and how big this is, but then we leap forward a few months or more, I forget exactly. I would have liked to see some more of the house keeping and the freaking out that happened with unfreezing people and them finding out what the world is like now, and how they were making their decisions.

Also, I think the storyline for the first arc, while it is well done, it a little bit predictable. I won’t go into details, but it’s kind of the low hanging fruit of the story where one character has a special power. I am fine getting the story out of way, but I’m hoping, if and when I pick up another volume of the trade paper back (tpb) for Freeze, that the story has a bit more depth.

Finally, I will say that it reminds me some of The Walking Dead. Now, you don’t have the threat of the “walkers” like you do in that series, but it’s a series about a disaster that isn’t so much about surviving the disaster, but is more about the human element of dealing and coping as survivors. That’s another reason that I wish the story hadn’t jumped ahead like it did, you feel like you end up missing some of that information, which is a real shame.

Overall, I liked the book, and I think that I’ll likely get another volume and see how that tpb holds up. It’s a very interesting concept that has a lot of things to explore which I enjoy. I suspect that it’s going to become more and more intense as more people are unfrozen and the challenges that come from that.

If you’ve read this comic run, what do I think of it? Does the premise sound interesting to you?

A portal from the abyss has opened up a few generations ago in terms of humans, and probably pushing it for some elves if they were around when it happened. Obviously, crap hit the proverbial fan and the nations banded together.

Now, there is a no way known to close to the Devil’s Maw as it’s known, but it’s turned the civilization into something that more closely resembles a steampunk world, but while there is some steam, it’s also based off of runic magic where they can harness different aspects of the Devil’s Maw to power the vehicles and contraptions.

The demons are also being held kind of at bay, but that’s still a fulltime job that the heartiest are recruited for. It’s a glamorous position, but not a long lasting one with the heat from the maw and the constant fighting. Meanwhile, the cities around the maw are the opulent places where the rich live and like to brush elbows with heroes who have survived fighting the demons.

I’m thinking that this is going to be a pretty rich world. With the world, I think there are a number of ways that you can do a story. The obvious choice would be that the demons somehow are slipping out and now the players have to deal with those rogue demons that are attacking from another direction or unexpected direction, and then try and plug that whole where they are slipping through.

However, I personally think it would be more interesting to run a conspiracy sort of game. The players catch wind of some dealings that seem shady, but they don’t know how shady. Eventually, it would lead to something big where the players are finding out that the Devil’s Maw could actually be closed, but it would cause all the runic magic to stop working. So, is it worth, whatever the cost is to keep it open, besides keeping back the demon hordes? That would be the big question for the players before the last mission, probably some sort of infiltration mission.

This setting does have one interesting thing. With the runic magic, I personally think that you could create another wizard subclass or it’s own class where they use “magic”, but that magic is mainly done by creating runes. It would be an interesting playable character since that is going to be something that maybe you are known for it. I had at one point in time started developing my own class for it, but there’s still a ton of work to do with that, I should probably go back to it at some point in time and then release it somewhere. I’m also seeing what’s already available on the Dungeons Masters Guild to see if there are options or things that I can tweak for my game.

Anyways, what do you think of the game ideas and the setting? Is it something you’d be interested in building a game in?

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