Retrospective: The Lost Island of Castanamir

I'm a fan of the first two entries in the C-series of AD&D modules, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and The Ghost Tower of Inverness, but a guarded one. That's because these modules, filled as they are with tricks, traps, and puzzles designed to challenge the wits – and patience – of the players, are hard to run properly and, in my youth, I was not always up to the task. I don't mean that as a knock against either module, which I do like, but I do recall that they were frustrating for both me and my players, albeit for different reasons. 

To some extent, my experiences were probably due to my ignorance of the very idea of tournament modules. I remember being somewhat confused by the scoring guidelines and sheets included with many of TSR's AD&D modules from the early '80s, since I'd never attended a convention, let alone participated in a tournament. Moreover, our preferred style of play was very loose and rambling and most tournament modules included very contrived framing devices that were hard to fit into that style. 

By the time the third module in the C-series, The Lost Island of Castanamir, was published in 1984, our style of play had evolved further, this time in the direction of epic fantasy under the influence of Dragonlance. Consequently, tournament modules fit even less into our campaigns than they had before. Skeptical as I was, I remained a TSR fanboy, which meant I often snapped up anything new the company might publish, including this module. Besides, it had a colorfully eye-catching cover, courtesy of Jeff Easley, whose art I'd come to like a great deal – though I did wonder about why it looked like the elf was preparing to shoot his bow at the little yappy white dog in front of him. 

Written by Ken Rolston, who'd later go on to bigger and better things both within the tabletop RPG and video game worlds, The Lost Island of Castanamir is, alas, not a very good adventure. Or at least, as presented, it's not very good. 

Its premise is that the player characters are hired by a magician to investigate a mysterious island that, until recently, had disappeared entirely. This island had once been the abode of a powerful magic-user named Castanamir the Mad. Castanamir was eccentric and paranoid, believing that his rivals sought to steal his wealth. Therefore, he protected his island home with all manner of spells to ward off would-be thieves. One of those spells caused the island to vanish without a trace. Its sudden return has aroused the suspicion – and greed – of the magician who hires the PCs to see why the island has returned and what, if anything, remains of Castanamir and his treasures.

As backgrounds to fantasy adventures go, this isn't a bad one. You've got a forbidding locale, a mystery, danger, and, of course, the promise of treasure. That this is an adventure designed for 1st–3rd level characters is also quite appealing, since many low-level modules are much blander and limited in scope. Despite this, the final product is less than it could have been, which is a shame, as there are some genuinely interesting ideas in it. 

For example, the characters soon discover that Castanamir was a master of planar sorcery and his abode isn't laid out according to a straightforward plan. Instead, doors act as magical portals that connect to one another in unexpected ways. The module's maps include codes to indicate how the various doors connect to one another. Initially, this cartographic idiosyncrasy will foil with efforts by the characters to map the place, disorienting them. In time, they'll likely figure out how the various doors and rooms related to one another. It's a fairly simply trick but an effective one. I've used similar tricks in my own adventure locales over the years. 

Other tricks and challenges are more whimsical, even silly, to the point that I'm not sure it's fair to call them "challenges" so much as vexations. I've never been a fan of "Mother, may I?" tricks or traps that depend on the players' ability to read the referee's mind or to use out of character knowledge to succeed. I much prefer challenges that are, in the terminology of commentators more pretentious than even I, call "diegetic," which is to say, explicable solely within the context of the game world. This isn't a damning criticism of the module. Indeed, it's very much in keeping with venerable tradition within the hobby, but, at the time I first read this, I had tired of it and, even now, my feelings about it are decidedly negative.

Perhaps The Lost Island of Castanamir plays better than it reads – I wouldn't know, as I never ran it for my friends back in the day – but I doubt it. In charity, I suppose it could be called a "funhouse dungeon" that just didn't click the way that, say, White Plume Mountain did. I can't quite put my finger on the source of my dissatisfaction. Maybe I'd simply lost interest in that kind of dungeon and was looking for something more naturalistic. By this point, I'd been playing Dungeons & Dragons in one form or another for five years more or less non-stop. Perhaps the truth is that I was simply tiring of D&D itself and workmanlike modules of this sort were simply not up to the task of firing my imagination in the way they might have even a year or two earlier. 

Regardless, The Lost Island of Castanamir was a something of a letdown for me and, in the years since, I've come to associate it with my waning enthusiasm for D&D in the mid-1980s. That's terribly unfair to the module and Ken Rolston, who, as I said, has produced some truly remarkable stuff, but such is the power of memory, I guess.