And whining about it on the ODD boards, and amusingly trying to claim that I'm not a "real" old-school gamer but one of those newfangled "1980s" 2e type that must like Dragonlance and the 2e Forgotten Realms.

Thought you'd like to get a glimpse of that, and join in the fun.

Meanwhile, expect a rebuttal blog real soon. Oh, its on, bitch.

RPGPundit

Oh, this I have to see.

Meh. Free publicity ahoy.

Reading the article and the review, it sounds like Isle of the Unknown is exactly the sort of product that falls between the cracks for me. I like products that give me a toolkit that lets me work up the skeleton of a setting in a fun and efficient manner. I like products that provide a nicely fleshed-out setting that's ready to go as written. What I don't like are products which focus mainly on presenting a skeletal sketch and leave me to do the work of fleshing it out; if I want to invest the time in fleshing this stuff out, I'd work up my own skeletal sketch from scratch, and if I don't want to spend the time doing that then I'll go for a product which is ready to go out of the book.

The author's response to the view seems to work on the assumption that you're meant to use Isle of the Unknown as a springboard for your imagination, and that you're meant to cook up your own rationale for all these random monsters and work out the interconnections between hexes yourself. But if I wanted a bunch of hexes with randomised terrain and monsters and stuff, I'd roll that up myself, because it's much harder to come up with those rationales if you're just presented with the dense printout of someone else's random generation process than it is to come up with rationales as you are rolling these things yourself and seeing patterns occurring. (I found that recently rolling up my own Traveller sector by hand).

As it stands it really does sound like you'd have to do a lot of rationalising work beforehand if you're going to make the Isle feel like a living, breathing place for player characters to visit, rather than a gonzo funhouse where the complete lack of rhyme or reason or consequence to all this stuff wrecks verisimilitude. In other words, it's exactly the sort of product which requires too much work to be a time-saver but is too blandly random to be an effective springboard for imagination.

As for what Geoffrey has on Raggi, I chalk it up to Raggi being the sort of guy who likes controversial content for its own sake, and therefore considers Geoffrey a hero thanks to the Carcosa controversy.

I'm not sure you are a real old school gamer, not least as you're generally pretty hostile to the OSR thing.

Not that it matters, because you are a very good rpg reviewer and generally pretty fair with the games you review.

Besides, even your negative reviews tend to be clear about the nature of the product and what it does, which means someone with different tastes still gets enough detail that they can take an informed decision about whether or not it might work for them.

An internet cage-fight between egotistical nerds in their mid-40's?  Hot diggity, I can't wait!

Quote from: P&P;745533An internet cage-fight between egotistical nerds in their mid-40's?  Hot diggity, I can't wait!

It could only be improved by converting it into an actual cage fight, with mud filling the bottom floor of the cage.

And live video feed, obviously.

The first comment on your review page mirrors my own feelings quite accurately:

   I suspect Raggi liked it well enough to publish because all the creatures came from (or maybe just could have come from) rolls on his Random Esoteric Creature Generator.

At the very least, I felt that the book is an interesting collection of STUFF that could be mined for ideas. I have no idea how it could be used in anything but a surrealistic dream world.

Neither Jim Raggi nor Geoffry ever did anything of value for D&D, in my opinion.

So this should be entertaining to say the least.

And, yes, I'm aware you've got a hard-on for LotFP, pundit.

I've always been under the impression that IotU was just a random collection of weirdness with little or no justification for anything going on, further complicated by the minimal mechanics that accompany hexcrawling.

The linked thread seems to indicate that there might be more to it. The whole "well here's just a bunch of stuff, you (or your DM) should figure out what to do with the hints and what-not" is... I don't know. Seems like a bit of a cop-out. If I'm paying for a product, I want to be able to use it, not spend a bunch of time screwing with it to figure out the themes I could be working with.

All of the critical reviews, including my own, have been the same. There's nothing going on in Isle. It's devoid of actions and pretexts.

It's the difference between "The room has 3 orcs" and "the room has 3 orcs shooting dice over a fairy strung up nearby."

Or: There's a (description of a statue) here and There's a (description of a statue) here with a virgin from the nearby village tied to it and several giant torn off claws."

An adventure supplement must be more than "I rolled randomly on a table a couple of hundred times." It needs a pretext for adventure and action.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;745582All of the critical reviews, including my own, have been the same. There's nothing going on in Isle. It's devoid of actions and pretexts.

From your review:

QuoteIsle: “Orchids grow from the rumps of squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, etc that are prolific in these woods.”
Isle: “A 6′ tall wolf-man slithers on the ground, moving with its arms. It has antlers on its head.”
Isle: “A 7′ long caterpillar has skin made of metal. It can crawls on the walls and ceilings as easily as the ground.”

Wild: “Abode of four huge ogres which relish human flesh. Every ogre has 3 eyes and flaming hair. A pet giant crocodile follows them to feast on their leavings.”
Wild: “3 Harpies harass 12 dwarves on this rocky land fall. Unknown to all except 1, a yawning cave is the treasure trove of pirate. 3 chests are guarded by 4 skeletons.”
Wild: “A blackened Great Keep whose roof has caved-in and the gates have rotted down, provide shelter for four giant pigs.”

HCC1: “There are a number of tall conical spires here topped by large balancing stones. If the stones are removed then thousands of mechanical locusts will pour from the spires and descend on the Valley, making it a wasteland until stopped.”
HCC1: “An old, grey horse wanders this area, grazing on the grasses and accompanied by twenty zombies in leather harnesses and carrying barbed spears. The zombies were under the command of the necromancer Bethnay, whose body is still dragged by the horse after a fall cracked open her skull. The zombies accompany their mute master, waiting for new orders. The remains of Bethnay still hold a treasure map in one boot.”
HCC1: A small village of ancient men in his hex is plagued by pixies. The woodsmen live in leather tents surrounded by a thicket. They are tall and thin, with golden skin, reddish-brown hair and long noses. The men are bison riders, capable of communicating with and controlling not only their bisons but all mammals. They wield throwing clubs called knobkerries and long, serrated daggers and wear leather armor.

Is Isle like this throughout? I mean, I could theoretically run a game on this, why not, but that's a little thin to me. Wilderlands descriptions are already much much better to my taste, and HCC1's are the kind of things that throw my imagination out for a loop, which I like a lot.

Quote from: Benoist;745597Is Isle like this throughout? I mean, I could theoretically run a game on this, why not, but that's a little thin to me. Wilderlands descriptions are already much much better to my taste, and HCC1's are the kind of things that throw my imagination out for a loop, which I like a lot.

It seems like a bunch of disconnected crap rolled on hidden random tables.  There's nothing that ties everything together to make it seem like a place, and the critters are laughable mashups of random animals.  It's like a bunch of wizards created the place high on a cocktail of cocaine and LSD.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuyIt's like a bunch of wizards created the place high on a cocktail of cocaine and LSD.

This actually sounds a lot cooler than the Pundit's review made Isle of the Unknown out to be

Quote from: RPGPundit;745509Meanwhile, expect a rebuttal blog real soon. Oh, its on, bitch.