 Goto [ Index ] |
The Isle of Dread
The original 32-page module, X1 "The Isle of Dread", came in a boxed set with the Expert rulebook, a 64 page rulebook on how to play characters from levels 4 to 14 for the new "Basic" D&D. It was designed to provide a first outdoors adventure site for the new Expert site, which provided rules for doing something outside the dungeon. The D&D Basic set really had no rules or advice for wilderness or town adventures at all.
Different Versions
There were at least two major versions of the module with different artwork, though the content was essentially the same. The blue version with a green dinosaur attacking natives while two adventurers beach their sailboat by Jeff Dee came with the older 1981 Expert book with the wizard scrying on the adventurers from the 1981 Basic book. The newer red version shows a green dinosaur attacking three vaguely Mongol warriors on a beach with a larger sailboat in the background by Tim Truman. (See the two versions here and here courtesy of the Acaeum.)The interiors of the two versions are visually very different, with very different artists. In general the older versions had much more evocative illustrations, from phanaton jumping a warrior on the first page, to a full body portrait of a kopru. The contents, however, are substantially the same, except for one strange error where a small sketch showing how to access the dungeon levels was left off and it looks like one can no longer get into the lower levels. The entrance is underneath another passageway, which the sketch makes clear in the older version, but this sketch is missing in the red version. For the rest of this review, I will ignore the differences between the editions.
Original Module
The Isle of Dread (IoD) was really a framework or sourcebook for adventures on the aforementioned Isle of Dread in the Thanegioth Archipelago, about 1000 miles south of the coast of the main continent, where the characters were expected to be adventuring at this point. It also contained discussion on the lands of the "Known World", later named Mystara when TSR wanted to resurrect it for 2nd edition AD&D. These were little one-paragraph blurbs about the Minorathad Guilds or Alfheim, but they were all the information available at that point. The module included a two page map of part of the continent and the Thanegioth Archipelago.
I'll be the first to admit that Mystara is dumb in certain ways. The designers exhibited no knowledge of climate or cultural development in the creation of the world, and most of the countries were ill-concealed ripoffs of Earth cultures, easily recognizable as the Mongols, Arabs, Vikings, etc. A good example of the unseriousness of the world was the placement of the Arab culture (Emirate of Ylarum) in a huge desert just south of the frozen peaks of the Vikings, who in turn were south and east of the Mongols. Interestingly, the least whacked of the countries, the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, was where the majority of adventurers started and had reasonable cultural and historical and even climatological roots. It was an interesting blend of Polish culture with an overlay of Italian/Greek-like conquerors and was superbly described in the first Gazetteer, GAZ 1. As unserious as the "Known World" was, the module was firmly placed in its milieu, and the whole focus of the module rests on the characters setting out on a sea voyage from the coast of the continent to find the Isle of Dread.
The hook for this adventure is that the PCs find a scroll case containing a letter from an explorer describing his voyage there and tales of treasure and a great black pearl in the heart of the island. As the explorer had lost most of his crew, he settled for making a map of the coastline of the island and sailing home. A little research will show that the explorer Rory Barbarosa was recruiting for a return voyage south when he was killed by a wizard over a lost wager. True-blooded adventurers will leap at the chance to explore the island and gain treasure.
The southern part of the island is a peninsula surrounded by small ancillary islands, and it is in this part of the island that the characters are likely to land first, especially since the native villages there are recorded by Barbarosa as being friendly. These villages are matriarchal and organized around a female chief, a male war chief, and four clans (the same clan in each village): Elk, Hawk, Tiger, and Sea Turtle. (How an Elk clan developed in the steaming jungle is beyond me, but there you go.) This is a reasonable home base for the adventurers, and the natives are eager for trade, but, sensibly for ostensible red shirts, absolutely refuse to hire themselves out as warriors.
There are essentially two more sections to the adventure. One section is most of the rest of the island and the seas around. These areas are described by a series of locations keyed to numbers on the map. Essentially, David Cook and Tom Moldvay throw the kitchen sink at you. Sharks - check. Giant Squid - check. Pirates - check. Weird new monsters - rakasta, phanaton, aranea - check. Old standbys - lizard men, gargoyles, dragons, troglodytes - check. Also, dinosaurs, including a deranged one that's eaten "a patch of loco weed", are also there to threaten the players. Many of the encounters have maps and short descriptions of what is going on in each settlement. In general, the authors did maintain some kind of thematic unity. They set up the phanatons (intelligent flying raccoons) and aranea (intelligent spell-using large spiders) as natural enemies. It's unclear exactly what the rakasta, a nomadic people, are doing on this island and how they got there, especially with their sabretooth tigers. I actually like all three races, but it seems to me their placement here is a little haphazard, especially the rakasta.
The reason this is an issue really appears in later modules in the X series. Because of this somewhat haphazard placement of elements, you can get truly bad modules like X6 Quagmire! and X9 The Savage Coast by Merle and Jackie Rasmussen and the equally bad two-part adventure "Tortles of the Purple Sage" in Dungeon issues 6 and 7, also by Merle and Jackie Rasmussen. Though they contained some good ideas, they were just a laundry list of locations with no real connections or internal logic. There were no names, no recurring plot themes, no real hooks for adventure - just lists of locations with implausible elements. The Rasmussens were the nadir of this approach, but I do believe it had a negative impact on adventure development. Of course, X1 is the beginning, and though it is somewhat implausible, at least they also have the kopru threat as the Big Bad of the setting.
The kopru appear in the final part of the module, where the central plateau, the inner lake, and the ruined temple and undercaverns of the central island are discussed. They are a degenerate race, and are just hanging around to charm the characters when they stumble upon their mud pits. Strangely, the kopru don't seem to be up to much in this module - they are the ultimate end to the module, but they don't have any evil plans. They just don't like being disturbed.
Dungeon 114
Dungeon 114 contains four separate sections and a poster map. (The cover can be seen here.) The adventures "The Mad God's Key" and "Thirteen Cages" don't concern us here. The new element in this issue is called the Backdrop, and it focuses on covering in a general way a site for adventuring. In this case it updates the Isle of Dread and includes a nice poster map of the Isle of Dread.
Exploring the Isle of Dread
This is a reimagining of the original setting that places it in the Greyhawk setting. I find this a little annoying for several reasons. First, Mystara is a perfectly good setting for the Isle of Dread, and I see no reason not to leave it in that setting and provide sidebars for adapting it to the three current D&D settings: Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron. (I think the Isle of Dread would make a great setting off Xen'drik, and you could replace the natives with primitive elves who are neither standard elves nor drow.) Second, it's a little rich for the Greyhawk guys to always be complaining about lack of support for Greyhawk when they can't even be bothered to develop their own world and have to rip off even less well-supported settings to build up their own world. Third, the background of the article makes no sense to you if you don't own the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (LGG), so it's pushing the point to call Greyhawk the "default" setting of D&D when there is no map in any of the core rulebooks and no Greyhawk specific information there aside from a sample of deities. I would have no idea who the Olman were if I hadn't bought the LGG a few months ago out of curiosity. Of course, if you are into Greyhawk, you will probably like this aspect a lot.
So, anyway, how have they changed the backstory of the isle? The short answer is that in most ways it was changed very little but in other ways quite a lot. The general setup is the same, with the same villages (even with the same names) in the same places and many of the other encounters on the isle remaining the same. There is a rewritten log of Rory Barbarossa with the requisite Greyhawkisms thrown in. Unfortunately, this writeup is a lot more flowery than the original, and it gives the game away by directly mentioning the kopru and giving a decent description of them. I think this is overall a net negative.
The next part of the article covers the history of the island. Essentially, the Olman discovered the island and settled it and grew in power, but were oblivious to the kopru living below the island and in the surrounding seas. The kopru turn out to be followers of Demogorgon and in competition with the ixitxachitl. The koprus created a huge magical pearl tainted with evil and caused the Olman to find it, whereupon the brought it to their temple and it corrupted everything. Once they realized their mistake, they attempted to send it to another plane, but that failed and now mists shroud the center of the island, from which monsters frequently emerge. There is now a semi-permanent gate to the Demogorgon's Abyssal domain.
I really didn't like this change. Instead of the kopru having their own alien gods or objectives, they are just ho-hum worshipers of a demon prince, like every other eeeevil race in the Monster Manual. And now that the island is demon-infested, that means we get demons on the wandering monster table instead of phanatons. Frankly, the phanatons are a lot more interesting. Also, they replaced troglodytes with bullywugs. Always a mistake, as troglodytes are inherently more interesting. And now, we have the mists that spawn demons. Who decided to make Ravenloft in the jungle?
Everything else about this section is well described, and it is nice to see the kopru actually controlling the village of Mantru instead of letting them live in peace as in X1. The replacement of the Elk cult with the Sea Turtle cult is also good. The descriptions of the various locations on the isle are flavorful and make this a good resource. I would just get rid of the whole demon and mists angle, because frankly, it isn't necessary. Rampaging dinosaurs are plenty troublesome enough to prevent random villagers from crossing the Great Wall. Frankly, it's boring to have every evil plot reduced to bringing in demons from the Abyss. Something like having the kopru worshiping entities from the Far Realm would have been much more interesting. Another interesting tack would have been to have the koprus have no religion at all.
The poster map is very pretty and follows the old map closely. The geographic features and coastline are exactly the same as before. It adds a number of new locations that were not in the original module, though. The most glaring one is a Scarlet Brotherhood encampment on an island right next to the islands in the southeast, populated by peaceful natives. Like they aren't going to notice a Scarlet Brotherhood encampment. Other new additions are a Lost Citadel, a set of Standing Stones, a Kopru tunnel entrance, and a shipwreck where the old sea hydra was located. In general all the old interesting locations were kept, and it's a quite handsome looking map. It of course is not appropriate for the PCs to see.
Torrents of Dread
This module essentially takes one of the alternate scenarios ideas from X1 (Destroy the Zombie Master) and turns it into an adventure. It's a natural one to make into an adventure, and I like the clear descent from the original module, which the author admits. The hook for this adventure boils down to destroying a rogue Zombie Master (the caretaker for the dead in native villages) who now threatens the village.
Of course, the real culprits in this case are the koprus, who are using the Zombie Master to gather sacrifices for a ritual to summon an inter-dimensional horror. The characters must first solve the mystery of a skilled assassin who is already dead, then must confront the Zombie Master in the secret flooded catacombs underneath the village and interrupt the kopru ritual.
In general the village of Mora is very evocative and the little details, like the Zombie Master's creation of a mudslide to destroy one of the town cults, are great touches. The use of zombies in this adventure is inspired, and in general I like this module. Of course, the bullywugs raise their froggy heads again, but Paizo has obviously firmly decided on a pro-bullywug, anti-troglodyte policy and will defend it to the death.
I particularly liked the variant flesh golem and the buried zombies who grab at the characters. The use of partially flooded catacombs also makes the adventure much more memorable. I just wish everything wasn't again tied directly into the kopru contacting the beyond, although at least this time it isn't just the kopru conjuring up a standard demon thrall of Demogorgon.
Conclusions
It is nice to see the Isle of Dread return in published form, and in general I think they did a good job within their design constraints. The original module had a lot packed into it, but suffered from a little too much randomness. I think they have fixed that in the current incarnation, but unfortunately, some of the creativity was removed as well. The whole demon angle is unexpected to me and seems to offer no real benefit, and making the kopru worshipers of Demogorgon seems to serve no purpose. Making the mists of the island demon-spawning and overrunning the central part of the island with demons doesn't improve it for me. Weren't lots of different dinosaurs enough? I don't think the demon angle and the shoehorning into Greyhawk improved the setting at all, and frankly I was a little hurt that no mention at all was made of the original Known World/Mystara Basic D&D setting.
Some of us liked Basic D&D and the Known World and aren't willing to be subsumed by the Greyhawkers in their attempts to revive their own setting. Frankly, we don't have a dog in that fight.
