Why Isle of Dread?

 Why run Isle of Dread?

With so many published adventures and campaign settings out there, why should you consider the Isle of Dread for your group? Here are a few reasons:

Ranger ready to range in the jungle

A lot of fifth edition hardback adventures focus on plot and combat, and the exploration angle to Dungeons and Dragons takes a back seat. But Isle of Dread leans into the exploration portion of the game pretty well. With this massive island almost completely unexplored and pockets of civilization rare, it really becomes a setting where characters like Rangers and Druids can shine. There are also a few abilities and feats in the game that are focused on the exploration side, and these will finally get some play. Finally there is a real element of the unknown to this setting. Upon landing on the Isle of Dread it really feels like the characters are entering a unique land with different rules, culture and natural phenomena.

As a campaign setting Isle of Dread is extremely flexible. You can run it right out of the book, and create a very classic 80s D&D experience. You can pick and choose your favorite set pieces, NPCs and monsters and use them in your homebrew world. There are plenty of fascinating elements to this setting that could work in just about any game with only a minor adjustment or two. I've also heard from several old timer GMs that they have run Isle of Dread multiple times over the years and it has been a unique experience each time. Some GMs shifted the focus of the campaign each time, but usually the players explored the island in a unique way from party to party. You can get a lot of use out of this setting over the years.

I'm sure it was all a mistranslation.

When this was released in 1980, this adventure was very unique compared to its contemporaries. Most D&D adventures of the era stuck with the traditional medieval inspired fantasy. But Isle of Dread is a unique setting. It is a tropical island filled with dinosaurs and long extinct giant mammals like saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths. You've got the villagers of Taneroa who use the undead was a workforce. There is an enclave of pirates - full on eyepatch, peg-leg pirates. Add to that the unique creatures you encounter like the flying squirrel/monkey hybrids the Phanaton. You also meet the wickedly intelligent giant spiders known as the Aranea who have disturbing chitinous hands. And then the first of the cat-people in D&D, the nomadic Rakasta. And of course who can forget the sinister Kopru and their mind control powers. Mix this in with some classic movie and novel tropes ranging from King Kong to Jurassic Park and you have something that your players will remember.

And that is the final reason to run this adventure. Because it has been around since 1980 and included in a widely available box set and then adapted several times over numerous editions of D&D, you run into a lot of folks how have played it. Isle of Dread links generations of game players, and they can share war stories about meeting the phanton tribe, their encounter with a T-rex and how they dealt with Kopru. 

For me those are four great reasons to give the Isle of Dread a try, or at least pick it up and read through.