I come at this with one with both a lot and a little baggage.  On the one hand, I’ve been playing and running tabletop RPGs since the 80s.  I’ve been aware of a lot of Dungeons & Dragons material that whole time, though I’ve only played the game in its various editions on a handful of occasions.  Early on, I tried raiding some modules for my own games of Basic Roleplaying, but wasn’t skilled, knowledgeable, or unencumbered enough to adapt them well.  Instead, I read them, saw that they didn’t make much sense for my own games, and abandoned modules as a general thing.  Consequently, I have no nostalgic feeling for these genre classics.  I’ve never played or run The Keep on the Borderlands, Ravenloft, The Temple of Elemental Evil, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, or The Isle of Dread.  In fact, until a couple years ago, I’d only ever run one published scenario, The Haunting aka The Haunted House for Call of Cthulhu.  And even then, it was heavily rewritten to fit my own tastes.  

Goodman Games impressed me when I got back into the hobby in 2019, with their take on “old school” gaming.  I often refer to Dungeon Crawl Classics as “what if D&D was actually fun?”  It’s not the only way I want to play tabletop.  Hell, it’s not even my go-to game.  But, if I’m itching for that crazy, 70s van art, cranking early Sabbath, and channeling Bakshi’s Wizards, kind of gaming, DCC is perfect.  When their Original Adventures Reincarnated books started coming out, I didn’t give it too much thought, as they were meant for D&D 5e.  But then I ended up figuring out how easy converting modules from 5e over to DCC was, and I started getting more curious.  Certainly, some of those early books had a bit of the zaniness that appealed to me in DCC.  Long story long, I wanted to pick up Goodman’s version of The Isle of Dread, but I was broke and it went out of print rather suddenly, jumping onto the secondary market at wildly overinflated, collector prices.  It happened with The Lost City, too, right around the same time.  Very frustrating.  Still, at least for now, the old TSR versions are still available as print on demand books from DriveThruRPG, so I grabbed this, the POD of the 1981 version.

That rambling introduction is mostly to let folks know that I’m coming into this with an awareness of the book, an interest in the book, but no first hand knowledge of it.  I’ve never played through it, nor run it.  I didn’t pick up or play the boxed set it originally appeared in.  Like anyone, I have my biases, but in this case, those biases aren’t based on an overattachment to something I enjoyed in my youth.

The long and short of it is that The Isle of Dread provides a pretty good framework from which a GM/DM/Judge is going to have to build upon in order to make it interesting for players.  Few books, even those that make a lot of noise claiming to be so, are really able to be run straight out of the book.  This is no exception.

Ostensibly set in the Known World, a D&D setting that I think has largely been abandoned, but was for quite some time the default, it will not take much effort to plug into whatever Fantasy setting is your bag.  Apparently, TSR & WotC have shuffled it around to different settings a few times.  Even putting it in the Elemental Plane of Water, apparently.  Which makes about as much sense as August Derleth associating Cthulhu with the power of the ocean…you know…the thing he was trapped within.  The island is meant to be part of a chain of islands, which makes sense as there is a pirate faction and some other things that imply there should be other islands nearby.  Again, that shouldn’t be a problem for a GM to port over into their own setting.  I agree with some suggestions that the island might be best if it is shrouded by a bank of clouds and fog, keeping it out of view from passers by and giving a reason for its relative isolation.

The adventure itself, which takes up about 20 of the book’s 32 pages, is meant to be a hex-crawl/sandbox sort of setting.  There are several factions, a bunch of locations, some vague rumors, and a few plot hooks.  But what your players actually decide to do is mostly in their hands.  I think that’s pretty great, and at the time this first came out, that was apparently pretty new as an idea.  However, this is also where my reference to it being a framework comes into play.  There is very little detail.  There’s almost no guidance or handholding for a GM/DM trying to learn how to run a sandbox.  

A lot of detail is left up to the GM to build and flesh out.  And it has the problem I noticed when I first tried my hand at reading D&D modules way back when, a whole bunch of what the map is stocked with is off theme and makes little sense.  The Isle of Dread is clearly inspired by King Kong and some other similar lost world stories.  The overall vibe is very much in keeping with those sorts of prehistoric wilderness adventures.  Dinosaurs?  Absolutely.  Sea snakes?  OK.  Neanderthals?  I guess.  Lizardmen?  Maybe.  Gargoyles?  What?  Ogres, a roc, and a green dragon?  I’m sorry.  No.  Theme is important, and having critters that are very off theme is a great way to spoil the mood.  If you come up with some good reason and weave them in, great.  But as they’re presented here, they scream of “you gotta put in some of the classics, man” coming down from corporate.  So, if I bring this to the table, I’ll definitely be restocking several of the encounters, and if I use the random encounter charts, I’ll be modifying them.
There are other things I’d change, because I’m me.  Fleshing out the villages so that each one has more character, and so there’s trade and maybe conflict between them.  Adding a couple of other tribes of Neanderthals and Troglodytes, and having them interact.  I’d definitely get rid of the very Arabian Nights styled feline people, the Rakasta, who feel super out of place in the setting.  I’m not sure if I’d keep the sentient spider-things or the arboreal Phanaton.  I could see keeping them, but I’d probably rework the encounters.  There are also elements of the Kopru, who are sort of the overall villains of the module, that don’t make a ton of sense.  I could see subbing them with an Aboleth, or simply rewriting them to make a bit more sense and be a bit more interesting.  I’ve seen some folks talk about leaning into the lost civilization aspect, and making sure to have the whole island covered in ruins.  I like that.  Again, I really like the island being shrouded in fog and storms.  I think there’s a lot of potential in befriending either the villagers or the pirates, or both.  

Again, this has a ton of potential.  Obviously, it must, as many people have reported having a great time playing it over the decades.  It has also spawned several spiritual successors, like The Dark of Hot Springs Island, Monkey Isle, and Moon-Slaves of the Cannibal Kingdom.  While the book feels woefully incomplete by today’s standards, and I’d need to put in a crap-ton of prep before I ran it, I think there’s plenty of great stuff here that you could easily build upon and raid for your own games.  Since it’s been around for so long and run by so many people, there’s also a lot of good advice and resources out there.  Though I really wish I’d managed to get my hands on the Original Adventures Reincarnated edition (if I wasn’t able to pay $50., I am NOT willing to pay $200., that’s for sure).  I’m glad I was able to get this POD version on DriveThru for like $12.  It’s definitely worth that, if you like the sounds of a sandbox setting inspired by King Kong’s Skull Island. 

If you like what I do, you can buy me a coffee. Check out my Facebook, YouTube, or Goodreads.  And take a look at my Patreon page, where I’m working on a novel and developing a tabletop RPG setting. I’m proud to be an affiliate of DriveThru RPG. I’m an independent author. You can also read my fiction over on Amazon. A rating & review would make a world of difference. I now have an Amazon Wishlist.