Road To Mentzer - Dungeons & Dragons Mentzer Expert to Companion & the X1 The Isle of Dread By David Cook & Tom Moldvay

"This box contains all you need to continue the Adventure:

• Endless hours of adventures.
• The D&D Expert Set for character levels 4-14, including more combat rules, magic spells, treasures, monsters and added rules for Wilderness adventures.
• Module X1, Isle of Dread. A combined wilderness and dungeon adventure on a remote island filled with savages and prehistoric monsters!
• All the dice you need - six different kinds included, with marker crayon."
  

Over the last couple of days I've allowed myself to get drawn way to deeply into several controversies that are literally swirling over the OSR & table top hobby. Well that's gonna stop & I want to get back into Mentzer Expert Dungeons & Dragons 

The reason why the Eighty Three Mentzer Expert edition was a bit of a game changer was the change up in well just about everything: " The D&D Expert Set for character levels 4-14, including more combat rules, magic spells, treasures, monsters and added rules for Wilderness adventures."

See its the wilderness adventures that mean everything here or the great frontier. In Gamma World its the wasteland but in the Menzter blue box its the 'wilderness' of the adventures that allows the PC's to really get ready for next jump in the box sets! Expert is where your slugging through wilderness & dungeons to become the next royals. The Mentzer box set more then any other in the Mentzer boxes is the cross point into whole cloth of Dungeons & Dragons Set three Companion rules. 

For our group it was Companion where things started to get very dangerous indeed. The players started to realize that we could & would either form alliances, treaties, and back stab the crap outta of each other in Eighty four. This is because we had seen that X1 Isle of Dread was very exploitable. Sure various old school & OSR folks will talk about having played X1 Isle of Dread but did they every talk about making treaties with the native rulers or exploiting the dungeons surrounding the island?! 

With excellent Tim Truman cover artwork this is one of my favorites & the Vaults of Pandius website has issue #3 of  Threshold magazine which contains a whole slew of articles on exploiting the Seas of Dread. The The Minor Islands of the Sea of Dread by Simone Neri from Threshold Magazine issue 3 is perfect for expanding the dungeons or ruins of the former empires of the seas! 

This gives the player's PC's the perfect opportunity to jump levels & layers of PC baggage whist getting them on the road of royal play.