Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

Isle of Hex is a 64 page module for Dungeon Crawl Classics, written and illustrated by Diogo Barros. In it, you explore an island full of terror and comedy, featuring a semi-modern setting filled with cults and class politics. I was provided a digital complementary copy; this one would be best in print, though.

My first impression of Isle of Hex is fun, and that’s driven by the art and layout, so I’ll start there. Its key and tables are sprinkled with diegetic content: letters, postcards, tourist maps and advertising. It doesn’t lean so heavily into it that it overwhelms the playability of the text though. The art outside of this conceit is of a pleasant, leisurely doodle style that feels scrawled in a notebook on a train. My main issue is that there are no section headers and very little in-text highlighting to help guide you through the paragraphs of text. This would help me with running things: Most locations on the island (there are 11 of them) are a page or over of paragraph text, which means unless I’m memorising things I’m marking it up with my own highlighting or lingering at the table while I figure out what comes next. It would be a better book in print than it was in digital because of this.

It’s good paragraph text though: It’s funny, “Séverin Crickard is nominally the law around here, but Hexians are beholden to an older, deeper power.”, its evocative, “A child lies on the middle of the cave floor, elbows and knees bloodied, whimpering softly. The body is lit by a single shaft of natural light” and it is also hyperdiegetic in a really compelling way: “The War left in its wake a long trail of orphaned children, left to fend for themselves in a cruel and unforgiving world. The community decided that this would not do, and promptly came together to dump them somewhere…”. It manages to communicate history and story without a lot of front loading, which makes the Isle of Hex is an absolute pleasure to read, but for someone like me, it’s a challenge to run. I’d have to take notes or else read it a bunch of times. Luckily, it tends to throw in page references for NPCs.

It has a fully illustrated bestiary, with a bunch of fun unique creatures in it. The random encounter table is excellent, almost universally featuring hooks to plots that are occurring in the background. There is a timer ticking along in the background, with festivals that tie into plots or trigger them, as well as impact the main enemy, the great Worm. This is all really cool stuff, with the main barrier to entry is that there aren’t any reasons to go anywhere: no hooks or rumours except those you extract from the paragraph text. There is an elegance to burying things in the text for the sake of a surprising and compelling read, but some front loading or other explanation of how things are likely to proceed in the absence of the players interference, and some ways to get them interested in the locations aside from wondering about, would be appreciated.

If you run paragraph text well, and you’re looking for an island adventure, most of what you need is here, although you’ll have to read it closely to extract it. It will be a pleasure to extract — imagine if the Isle was less dry and had more interesting secrets and characters. If this sounds like what you’re after, pick up the Isle of Hex. I can’t understate how excellent the writing and worldbuilding is in this. It feels like Wes Anderson shot the Wicker Man and turned it into a meat grinder for my DCC table, which is a vibe we don’t often get for DCC, but retains the necessary humour. For me, though, I’d prefer it feature hooks, rumours, and more internal flagging or summarising so that I don’t have to parse a fairly long text in order to put it into play. Irregardless, Barros’ writing and worldbuilding is compelling as, and I can’t wait to see what else he comes up with.

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