{"id":10342,"date":"2026-03-25T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10342"},"modified":"2026-03-03T11:24:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:24:34","slug":"the-mysterious-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10342","title":{"rendered":"The Mysterious Island"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Pedro Gil
La Marco del Este
OSR
Levels 4-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Beyond the Pirate Islands, in the southern seas, there is said to be a mysterious island, eternally shrouded in a thick fog, as cold as a corpse’s shroud, where monstrous creatures, strange artifacts, and relics of the ancient world await. Who will be brave enough to explore it and uncover its secrets?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 23 page adventure presents a jungle island with an old temple on it and seven-ish other locations presented in about twelve pages. It\u2019s yet another poor and confusing Dread knockoff, with even less going on than usual, described in a poor manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hey, this is, I think, an EASL adventure. There is a decent amount of awkwardness that comes from the language, but none of it is all together too indecipherable. For example, it uses \u201cvoyages\u201d for \u201cnights at sea.\u201d So, three voyages is three nights at sea. It\u2019s nothing you can\u2019t handle though. On to the review!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For some reason you are going to the Isle of Mystery. You pull up and find a rock formation that looks like a skull. Inside you find three rooms and it MIGHT have some pirates. Yeah! Fun! You can find a village of natives! You can go fight some giant apes! There\u2019s a rope bridge over a chasm! And, of course, there\u2019s the ancient ruins at the end with the fabulous treasure! One room. \u201cNote to the Narrator: We recommend you compile a comprehensive list of treasures and artifacts to be found here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What, I wonder, do designers believe that the purpose of an adventure actually is? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
About eight locations, about twelve pages used to describe them out of the adventures 23 or so pages. Each of them is described quite \u2026 loosely. An ancient ruins\/temple that is barely a column long, with three paragraphs of that being read aloud! Very loosy goosy stuff. There could be pirates here. The pirates might be friendly. You are attacked by giant apes. Or might be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are all written in this weird manner. It looks for all the world like it might just be a standard encounter that you might find anywhere. But then it is kind of zoomed out, abstracted, in something more generic. It\u2019s like the adventure is afraid to get tied down in specifics for fear of ever treading on the DM. \u201cYou might make friends with them.\u201d Uh, sure? That\u2019s true for every adventure, right? That you might make friends with the star-eating chthonic monster? Instead of responding with the specifics of how that might happen, what happens, or what opportunities are there to make THIS friendship-is-magic thing special, instead we just get a generic \u201cyou can maybe be friends if the DM wants them to be!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hey man, for a wandering encounter with humpback whales you get this as the first line \u201cIt is a group of humpback whales, or humpbacks, as they are known in Cyrinea.\u201d Yup. This is a pattern. The encounters take up too much space for what they are. It\u2019s padded out. And yet anything that could be useful or interesting is just not present. \u201cOnce the characters access this accessory cavern, we can read or paraphrase the following paragraph:\u201d Yes. That IS how read-aloud works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read-aloud that is all in the second person. \u201cYou arrive at the beach, and you cannot help but be amazed by its wild beauty.\u201d I\u2019m blind you insensitive clod! Seriously, don\u2019t do second person writing. Nothing is worse. Yes, it\u2019s even worse than italics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, hey, look, here\u2019s a peaceful beach locale! \u201cThere is nothing of interest here\u201d Well, hey, that\u2019s nice! Oh, wait, \u201c, except that the characters will be attacked by a huge crab that emerges from the water and comes ashore as the adventurers pass by.\u201d Ok, so, I guess there is something there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, very generic, ideas? As locations. And then weirdly specific read-aloud with the second person thing. But then offloading all of the location stuff on to the DM with that hated word \u201cpossabilities.\u201d Overly long, padded out, weirdly specific in non-useful ways and then not specific at all in the ways that matter. Dread was far from a masterpiece, but at least it knew what it wanted to do. This, I think, had no concept of what it wanted to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. Alas, no preview. Bad designer! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/536769\/the-mysterious-island?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Pedro GilLa Marco del EsteOSRLevels 4-6 Beyond the Pirate Islands, in the southern seas, there is said to be a mysterious island, eternally shrouded in a thick fog, as cold as a corpse’s shroud, where monstrous creatures, strange artifacts, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/536769.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10343,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10342\/revisions\/10343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}