What Does a Work Not Need?
Ten years ago, Steven Soderbergh released an unusual cut of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark: he put the entire film in black and white, then removed all the audio and replaced it with Trent Reznor’s soundtrack to The Social Network.
I watched this cut of Raiders for the first time only recently, and it struck me. It’s like watching the most exciting 1940s action movie ever made set to music that sounds like it belongs in Cyberpunk. I’ve seen Raiders before, years ago, and I know the basic plot beats, but it hit me, again and again, how tense and fun and engaging the movie remains even without the detail of spoken words or Williams’ iconic soundtrack. Even the dialogue-heavy scenes, where Dr. Jones talks with the feds or Belloq flirtily captures Marion, are still dramatic and gripping. It was stunning, shocking, to realize I could watch and fall in love with a movie that seemingly lacked so much of what, in other films, felt essential.
Before I watched this Soderbergh cut of Raiders, if you asked me what components made a film, I would’ve listed the usual things: acting, directing, lighting, cinematography, sound, costumes, set design, etc. Now, though, I feel like my third eye has cracked open just a slit, and I can see lots of other elements, things I’d never noticed before until everything else was taken away—blocking, staging, choreography, composition, props, cuts, pans, silhouettes, and more that I lack the film vocabulary to describe.
The next few hours and days were spent googling film terminology and rewatching old “Every Frame a Painting” videos with new eyes. I started to grapple less with Soderbergh’s Raiders cut in its own right and more with the academic-artistic process the film pushed me through. It’s rare for me (perhaps embarassingly) to find a work that really makes me re-evaluate my understanding of a medium, and even rarer to find a work that does that through the process of subtraction. Soderbergh’s cut is, basically, just Raiders. Sure, he removed the colors and solors and tacked on the Reznor soundtrack, but the resulting piece feels like less than the original. In reducing the work—the form, even—down, Soderbergh illuminates all of the artistry in the piece. And, indeed, reveals all the artistry that other films sometimes lack. Do you think you could watch a Marvel flick in black and white with no dialogue and still understand what was happening, let alone enjoy the experience?
In short, by removing many elements I took as necessary, Soderbergh’s cut of Raiders revealed all the depth and meaning I had previously missed. By cutting away elements I typically fixate on, Soderbergh illuminated new dimensions of what was possible.
And now, a small confession:
This post is not about Steven Soderbergh’s cut of Raiders of the Lost Ark. This post is about The Isle.
The Isle is a 2022 tabletop RPG adventure written by Luke Gearing with editing by Jared Sinclair and graphic design by Micah Anderson, published by Spear Witch. Its stats are for The Vanilla Game, but it’s easily converted to other rulesets.
The headline: The Isle completely changed the way I thought about RPG adventures. It completely changed the way I thought about writing in RPGs. It completely changed the way I thought about the work I want to make and the projects I want to release. If I had to point at a single project as the thing that made me most change my views on making RPG books as a craft and medium, it would be The Isle.
As a work, The Isle is an enigma. On the one hand, it’s basically just another dungeon. On the other, it’s unlike any adventure I’ve ever read before. When I reached the last page, alone in my room the night before my session, I literally gasped aloud from shock and surprise. The confusing thing about The Isle, the almost paradoxical nature of it, is that it doesn’t actually do anything new, really. Rather, it just strips out everything I thought was necessary, and the remaining result made me rethink what an adventure could be.
So, what doesn’t The Isle have? Well, for one thing, it doesn’t have an overview. There’s the briefest of introductions, and then it launches straight in; I had no idea what I was in for when I started reading. It doesn’t have illustrations or major graphic design elements; Anderson’s work is sparse and simple, and their cartography is equally minimal. It doesn’t have fancy typography or text effects (Cormorant body text; Neue Haas Grotesk headers; stat blocks and details done in italicized newlines; all in black and white). It doesn’t have sidebars, advice, “how to use” sections, or other explicit author-to-GM asides. And barring that very short introduction, it doesn’t have any text that isn’t a location or description of things in a location.
To put it bluntly, The Isle is basically just a bunch of room descriptions. And yet, reading the book was a continual process of repeatedly asking myself “Why did they [not] do it this way?” thinking about it for a minute, and realizing “Oh, of course.”
Why doesn’t it have an overview? Oh, of course, to make reading the book a process of discovery. I had to read the book to know what was in it so I could run it; I wanted to read the book because I was desperate to know what was on the next page and in the next room.
Why are the rooms in sometimes slightly odd orders on the map? Oh, of course, so that the most impactful, most exciting, most jaw-dropping reveals come last. Whenever I finished a floor, I wanted to go back and read the whole thing again just to pick up all the hints and connections I realized I missed.
Why isn’t there a sliced-up minimap on each page? Oh, of course, because these map files are included so you can print them out next to the book and write all over them. This is a text meant to be used at the table, and it’s vastly easier to just have another page with the map on it.
Why do all these rooms have little preview descriptions as their first lines? Oh, of course, because they’re what you can detect from another room, so when you need to scan through from one room to the next they’re easy to find and read. This is a piece of design tech that, while it requires careful coordination and consistency across the map, makes huge strides in making the dungeon a more connected place.
Why is there no bold text, no keywords, no summaries? Oh, of course, because this is a book to be read and not a reference manual to be skimmed. This is also why, I suspect, the rooms have keyed numbers but not names: if you want to know what’s in a room, you have to read it.
This goes on and on. There are dozens of minor technical choices in the writing, editing, and presentation that depart from the standard of contemporary adventures in favor of a blunter, more direct, more impactful methods.
The Isle was, I think, the first adventure I’ve read where I felt like I actually had—and yet also wanted—to read. If you want to know what the dungeon holds, there’s no other way to find out than to simply read the text and learn. In so many RPG books, the text of the book opens with a pitch (“It’s a cursed vampire’s castle in a haunted land!”) followed by explication of that pitch over the course of dozens or hundreds of pages. Sometimes the keyed locations of an adventure elaborate on that pitch in exciting, unexpected ways, but so often it’s simply more words detailing what you, as a reader and sometimes as a player, basically already knew. That the summary exists at the front encourages readers to skim the main text; it gives writers a sense that their writing won’t be read. The Isle is not like that. It plays its cards close to the chest; if you want to sniff out its secrets, you have to read the words on the page. It’s an adventure that’s impossible to wing your way through without reading it first, but at the same time, after reading the adventure you have everything you need.
And this is without touching on the words themselves, really. The imaginary dungeon described in The Isle is a text in its own right: it has embedded histories, recurring motifs, foreshadowed mysteries, overarching themes, and ideas about the world and human condition it wants to communicate. Dark, horrific, disturbing ideas, often, but ones that shine throughout. Gearing is a veteran RPG writer, and understands better than anyone how to seed key concepts early, hook the reader (and player in), then pay it all off by the end.
One of the most striking moments running the dungeon (after reading the book) was when my players made a realization—a sneaky hidden lore thing—that I myself had not. I was the one narrating the rooms they saw and the creatures and objects within, but I’d missed the secret connection between a couple different areas. As a reader, I had access to more or less all the same information they did as players, moreso even, but I hadn’t made the same realizations. By not revealing its secrets directly, by not explaining itself, The Isle places the GM in the unusual and delightful position of sometimes being more or less equally informed as the players. At the same time, when my players went to execute on that information by exploiting an enemy’s vulnerability they garnered from that lore, I found that the module had already written that vulnerability into the monster’s statblock. Despite not knowing all the secrets of the module as GM, by simply following the text I provided my players with an exciting game.
This is exceptional writing and design. It removes a layer of interpretation, of noise, between the author of the dungeon and the players at the table. Once I realized that I didn’t need to know everything, that I didn’t need to worry about patching holes or filling in gaps, I could simply relax. Gearing’s writing (and Sinclair’s editing) is such that, once I read the book, my work was done. I needed to adjudicate as referee, of course, but I never felt pressured to guide them along some intended story or deliberate outcome. Some adventures feel like they’ll fall apart if I don’t hold them together, but The Isle is the opposite—I don’t think I could break it if I tried.
The Isle is unique in that is meant to be read and meant to be played, but little else. Many RPG books seem obsessed with GM tools, resources, options, generators, and other such things. They serve up a glut of raw stuff with the expectation that a GM will pick and choose their favorites for a given table or session. By packing every conceivable feature into a book, there’s an expectation that a given GM is getting more value. These are books designed as compendiums for out-of-session; bits and pieces to use when making a campaign, but not actually seeing live use behind the screen at the table. The Isle isn’t like that. While you certainly could rip out its monsters, items, and other content, it’s not designed to do so. There are no tables, no generators, no lists of isolated content to slot elsewhere. Rather, it’s a very specifically designed adventure to be read, cover to cover by a GM, and then used behind the screen as you play a session.
Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, I think this actually enhances the degree of impact that Gearing has over play. Because The Isle is just a series of rooms, of content, it means that players moving through it necessarily engage with his work. As a complete imaginary space, the Isle—the literal island—defines the possibilities of the game being played vastly moreso than any ruleset or series of touchstones could hope to.
People love to talk about the importance of vibes in an RPG book, but I think The Isle makes the opposite case: if your technical foundations are solid, if the writing is clear and the content exciting, then you don’t need to know the vibe at all. The GM just needs to read, and the players just need to play. Will their vibes match the adventure? Will their character smoothly fit into the world Gearing made? Will they get the “intended experience?” No, of course not, but that’s the point—Gearing’s monsters and locations and setting simply exist. What you do with them, as players and GM alike, is up to you; nowhere in the text does the trite RPG declaration of “The Isle is a game about [X]…” appear. The Isle isn’t a game, and it never claims to be one, and yet rests confident in the strength of its content. If you want to play in the pseudo-historical Viking-horror mode that most of The Isle exists in, you certainly can—but you never have to, and Gearing makes no claims regarding the best way to play.
Herein lies the contradiction of game design in RPGs and the adventure: the author of the adventure presents the world, the contents of the space the players move through, and thus many of its diegetic rules. At the same time, the adventure makes no assertions over what players want, or how they might go about fulfilling those desires, or indeed even the means available to players to achieve those goals. A typical RPG book offers a thousand options and variations, none of which need be followed, but in their width and breadth ensure that every table more-or-less follows in the designer’s vast footsteps. The Isle—and adventures in its style—forcibly inserts a spare few elements into the imaginary world that demand action and reaction by the players, but offers nothing beyond. No player can avoid Gearing’s influence when playing through The Isle, but Gearing’s work never escapes unmarked: no two tables will play through The Isle in the same way, and none will play like Gearing. By presenting direct authority over the imaginary world, he imposes more than a ruleset ever could; by presenting nothing else, Gearing ensures the players need never respect his wishes.
This seeming-paradox, this ultimate enforcement of the diegetic world-rules combined with total abdication of the exogenous and endogenous game-rules, presents a solution to a question that’s vexed me for years: how can I be a game designer without being an authoritarian? That is, how can I make games and game-like things without needing to enforce my whims and will at every turn? Most RPG scenes are filled to bursting with designers very eager to dictate their exact intended experience, but that mode of design has long left me cold.
The answer that The Isle opened my eyes to is the adventure. Adventures present a world, but no constraints. Good adventures present a playground to romp through, but have no intentions. In the medium of imaginary worlds that RPGs play with, the adventure is not the game but rather the toy. Players can do whatever they please with a toy; in all likelihood, they’ll invent new games to play with it that I never dreamed of.
But adventures are also full of game design! Really classic game design, even—building a dungeon that’s fun and exciting and engaging to navigate through uses every skill of what we call “game design.” So much of what goes into RPG books comprises less active game design than a kind of meta-instructional game design: there are myriad books that tell a GM how to play and run a campaign or session, but far fewer that present the content needed for those same sessions. The Isle contains no explicit advice, yet presents dozens of extremely deliberate examples of stellar design in action, ranging from the information NPCs possess to the floorplan of the dungeon levels to the symbolism of recovered magic items. The Isle is not a book about good game design but instead is a book of good game design.
The Isle contains almost none of what I expect an RPG book to have, yet remains among the most playable RPG books I possess. Gearing, Sinclair, and Anderson stripped out the shiny components that sell an RPG book and instead present merely the most basic elements of their medium: words, maps, and the imaginary world.
What if every movie, stripped of color and sound, looked as good as Raiders?