Ep 10. Isle of Dread - Dungeons & Dragons

Run the Adventure

For the tenth episode, I go back to the beginning with my favourite module from back in the day, the Isle of Dread. Like many gamers of a certain generation, I got introduced to RPGs with Frank Mentzer’s Red Box Dungeons & Dragons. But it was the blue Expert set that really made me a lifelong roleplayer. Inside that box was contained the orange cover of X1 Isle of Dread which gave not just a sea adventure, not just a wilderness hex crawl but also the first rough sketch of the Known World.
In an effort to see if it holds up against my boyhood memories, I've been playing through it in a lunchtime game using pared down rules based on Old School Essentials. I talk about how that goes. I also approach the structural and content problems that the module throws up for modern gamers.
Further resources:

• X1 Isle of Dread from DriveThruRPG
• Old School Essentials

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Chapters

1. Ep 10. Isle of Dread - Dungeons & Dragons (00:00:00)

2. Introduction (00:00:20)

3. Summary of the Adventure (00:05:33)

4. Adventure Structure (00:09:36)

5. Where the fun is at (00:11:55)

6. What doesn't work (00:14:48)

7. Make it your own (00:22:27)

8. How it played (00:26:06)

9. And finally... (00:29:58)