Isle of the Dead

Chill Adventure

Review by Aaron Allston

Written by Jon Brunelle
Pacesetter Limited PO. Box 451, Delavan, WI 53115
Released: August, 1984
Catalogue No: 2008
Price: $6.00
Complexity: Beginner
Solitaire Suitability: Low

Isle of the Dead is the latest scenario for Chill, Pacesetter game of horror-story adventuring. It involves the player-characters with a vigorously haunted amusement park. (I'm giving away no surprises here. The cover art is an adequate illustration of various undead creatures uproariously enjoying a roller-coaster ride. When you see that, it's pretty obvious we're not talking about a Parisian werewolf story.

This adventure comes as an 81/2" x 11", 32-page booklet, with hype on the back, and cover painting on the front. The painting is surrounded by the mottled-brown color framing all Chill releases. I'm gradually becoming more and more fond of this brown frame, which gives the line a distinctive look and allows me to identify all Chill releases at a glance. Pacesetter's other products do the same thing; the Timemaster series has a red frame and the Star Ace series a blue frame.

Overall, this is an entertaining horror adventure-depending on your Gamemaster's play-style (more on that later). It's not eminently replayable-one longish session should finish it off However, when you're through, you do have the plans for an amusement park you can use at a later time.

Isle of the Dead is organized like other Pacesetter adventures: introduction (with a short history of the site in question, new skills and disciplines, and the character sheets of the ghoulies and ghosties); a section on getting the characters into the adventure; a timetable of chronologicallyarranged events; a section on "location" (keyed to the map) encounters; and adventure wrap-up notes. I can't say that I'm particularly fond of this arrangement. As Gamemaster, I prefer to have the history first, adventure (or encounters) next, and the rest presented in appendix fashion. On the other hand, Isle of the Dead gets points for being organized in the first place; this is a "luxury" many publishers seem unable to afford. So I can't complain too much.

How does Isle of die Dead play? well, it's rather like an old movie where our hapless heroes careen from one scene to another, tripping over intelligent, conversant ghosts which rear up and go, "Boo!"or worse. It's extremely easy to Gamemaster; I'd recommend it whole-heartedly to beginning referees.

On the other hand, I wasn't very fond of the undead encounters. Ghostly creepiness, to me, seems to stem from the weirdness of the creatures and the unseen set of rules that they seem to have to follow and which we the living can't understand. in Isle of the Dead, we have ghosts which know they're ghosts, ghosts which have egos to offend, and ghosts who beg quarters. in short, they were pretty pedestrian-even as they were trying to frighten the characters to death.

I had fun. However, I think it would have been more fun had we played in a more tongue-in-cheek style, along the lines of the Bob Hope movie The Ghost Breakers. The ghosts weren't really creepy (even though they were dangerous), so a more comic approach to Gamemastering the adventure is probably not inappropriate.

Adventures sporting haunted amusement parks aren't terribly common, so Isle of the Dead picks, up a point for innovation there. And theres nothing to argue with in the field of authenticity; the island amusement park is quite useable as a normal park if you want to populate it with the living instead of the noisy dead.

So, overall, I was mostly favorably impressed with the adventure. it's an easy scenario to run. And, while Isle of the Dead doesn't contain game stats for any game but Chill, its still mostly adventure text instead of game mechanic text; with a few simple conversions, you can play it with Call of Cthulhu, justice, Inc., Daredevils, Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, and any other-horror, pulp, or contemporary RPG.

I'd recommend it to Gamemasters of all those games, IF: (1) they're beginners, (2) they don't mind somewhat pedestrian ghosts, or (3) they do indeed play tonguein- cheek horror campaigns. If you meet any one of those criteria, you should like it.

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