In celebration of Friday, I’ve finished a new Dungeons & Dragons map at Wizards of the Coast’s website: Dungeon Module X2, The Isle of Dread!

When I was young (I started playing D&D at 7 or 8, or at least trying to play D&D) I owned the D&D Basic and Expert sets; Advanced D&D was a little too complicated. “Isle of Dread,” which was included with the Expert set, was one of my favorite adventures. I honestly can’t remember whether I ever played or ran it (until 20 years later when I adapted it for a 3rd edition one-shot) or if so how it worked out, but the whole jungle-island setting and lost-world feel was always inspiring. (I actually think it’d run great as a pair with “Dwellers in the Forbidden City”, expanding the kopru’s forbidden plateau into the aboleths’ lost valley…) Unlike the other cartoon walkthroughs I’ve drawn, this one also includes a ‘blank map’ which you can use as a handout if you’re actually running “The Isle of Dread”: both in hexagonal and non-hexagonal versions! It was a lot of fun to mimic the antique-map feel (or at least aspects of it).

NEXT UPDATE: Monday!