What is The Isle of Dread?

Introduction 

The return of the classic.

The first successfully completed campaign I ran for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition was based on The Isle of Dread. This module was created for the Basic version of D&D back in 1980. I picked up the Goodman Games conversion to 5th Edition published in 2018. I bought it mostly for nostalgia sake, but also with a thin hope of running a retro campaign one day.

I got that chance in 2020, for a group of five players online for over a year. It was a ton of fun, and we created some great stories and memories that we still talk about to this day. In this series, I'm going to talk about my experiences running the Isle of Dread. I'll tell you what worked, what didn't and what I changed and what I wish had done differently. 

I will front load the advice at the start, and then save my reminiscing for the second half with section called My Experience.

What is the Isle of Dread

The Isle of Dread module is actually a campaign setting. It doesn't matter if you are using the classic module or the Goodman Games update - you are essentially getting the same material. 

Time, why are you so forgetful?

This setting is a tropical island campaign involving lots of exploration on land and at sea. The focus is a large island (the Isle of Dread) and its surrounding smaller islands and reefs. You get a bunch of adventuring locations and set pieces on the island. There are a large number of non-player characters (NPCs) to interact with including pirates, cultists, villagers and four unique races with their own societies/cultures and goals. 

Adventure locations include unique natural formations, strange ancient monuments, cave networks and even a couple good sized dungeons to crawl through. There are settlements on the main island, but also on the smaller islands and even under the water. Player characters (PCs) can befriend or antagonize the locals in a multitude of ways.

The Isle itself is very much inspired by Skull Island from King Kong and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (such as The Land that Time Forgot) with dense jungles, roaming dinosaurs, and cave people. The adventure is targeted at characters from 3rd to 7th level, and is fairly grounded when it comes to magic. 

Treasures and secrets abound on the island, the players are expected to explore to find them. You get a nifty player map that only shows the basic outline of the island itself, with a few coastal details. The rest is for the players to fill in.

You don't get an overarching plot or central antagonist. There is a very powerful monster on the island who can act as your Big Bad, if you like. But there are no story threads leading the players to this monster. Story hooks to get the adventure started are provided, and they focus on your players seeking fame and fortune, and having a vessel to travel to the island. Depending on the group, the DM may need to create a bit more of a story to get everything moving.

You don't get any material for a ship or crew. These are things the DM will need to create, depending on how much you want that to be a part of the game.

Classic art of Kopru from the original print.

You get some bare bones material to get the adventure rolling from a port in civilized lands. Your mileage may vary with the provided material. But the focus of the adventure text is the setting and the encounters within.

The Isle of Dread is a rich adventure location with plenty to offer a DM. You can run it right from the book as straight exploration focused sandbox. Or you can modify it to fit your existing campaign but making it a key location in the larger scope of the story. It has some great locations to hide that special treasure of macguffin the party is seeking out. You have plenty of dangerous antagonists that can become a focal point for the adventurers including the pirates, the shark cultists, and of course the infamous monster Kopru and his dedicated followers.

This adventure book is very versatile and is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a fun island location with lots of dinosaurs, exploration and unique characters to meet.

My Experience

My first experience with D&D was the red box Basic set by Frank Mentzer created in 1983. I probably ran into it a couple years after that, when a friend of mine tried to run me through the castle adventure included in the book. This was a hurried session during recess in fifth grade or so. I remember creating a thief and then failing to climb a wall and getting killed by a carrion crawler monster.

Red and blue box sets for the win!

I got the box set myself later that year, and was immediately drawn into the solo adventure where you meet Aleena the cleric and Bargle the infamous. I had already read some of the early Endless Quest books and had a couple in my collection. So I was familiar with the concept of D&D. But I struggled to get any of my friends to give it a try. Eventually the same friend who ran me through the castle adventure gave me the rules to the Expert set. But by this point I was more interested in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons - and thought that regular "basic" rules were for kids. Yeah I was kid myself, don't judge me.

I read through the Expert rulebook, and somewhere in it or with it was information about this module called The Isle of Dread, which just sounded cool! I remember seeing the cover with the characters fighting a T-Rex and it just got my mind going. But I never got my hands on the module, even though I'm pretty sure I saw it at the local bookstore on a number of occasions.

Jump forward to around 2019 or so. I'm thinking of running my own campaign for a group of friends online. I want to set it in a low magic low fantasy setting like my memories of old school D&D. I grab a bunch of world building notes for a fantasy novel I wrote around 2016 or so, and then looked for an old school module to combine it with. doing some internet research, I find the name Isle of Dread and it sparks all kinds of memories and ideas. 

Let the voyage to the isle begin!

Looking into it, this module is fondly remembered by a lot of older players. Plenty of war stories of exploring the mysteries of the island, battling pirates and facing down Kopru. Reviews also mentioned how it was a teaching module designed to show the new DM how to focus on exploration outside of a dungeon. This sounded useful, and when I discovered that Goodman Games had just published a revised version for 5th Edition, including the original versions of the old module and interviews with the original writers and creators of the module - it just sounded like a good buy. I do love me some RPG history.

So picked it up for myself, even if I didn't end up running it. And it was a fun read all the way around. When I ended up pitching campaign ideas to the online group, I threw in Isle of Dread as an option. Not really thinking anyone would be up for a nautical exploration campaign.

But I was wrong, nearly everyone selected Isle of Dread as their first pick for the campaign. And so I got to serious work re-reading the module and prepping it for play. In the end I fused several of my other campaign ideas into this one, turning it into a rather clunky but entertaining saga that took over a year to complete. But it all started here, with memories of an old copy of the Expert rules and the mention of that title.