The Isle: The Review (Mostly)
Well shucks. I read The Isle (Luke "Fever Swamp" Gearing's minimalist "masterpiece"), knowing many people loved it, knowing I hadn't loved the demo of Wolves Upon the Coast , knowing this type of module isn't really even my style. But Gradient Descent (also by Gearing) is one of my all-time favorite adventures, so I figured I'd give this a shot! Wouldn't you know I was thoroughly unimpressed with the Isle? I shudder to call this a review because that takes so much effort and there's certainly a chance I "didn't get it", but that is what this is in essence. The core inspiration for talking about it in the first place is as a kind of ideological wrap-up for the pseudo-trilogy of posts I made this week. In The Glamour we talked about the overwrought, overproduced nature of modern tabletop games. In Coloring Book Game Design we discussed the benefits of maximalism, and how scaffolding can be incredibly beneficial to a certain ki...
