Expedition to Skull Island
A downloadable Printable Adventure
Outfit your ship, choose your crew, and set sail for Skull Island!
Expedition to Skull Island is a long-form solitaire print-and-play expedition, where you take the role of captain and try to bring back as much fame and treasure you can from the mystery-shrouded shores of Skull Island.
- Almost fifty pages of adventure paragraphs, across several different island environments. With the rules and printable sheets, over 65 pages in all!
- Simple rules that give you complex simulation, from your food supplies, to ammunition, to mementos to bring back to Tortuga and regale other pirates with!
- Use the pre-drawn map for the exciting hex-crawl exploration of the island, or use the island generation rules to randomize and draw your own hex map of the island on the included template.
- Make camp on the island, row upriver in your longboats, and use lamp oil to explore the extensive cave systems on the island.
- As you explore, earn wonder and treasure points to measure your success. Your final score depends on whether you choose to be a Pirate, Privateer, or an Explorer, each with their own scoring systems. Will your name go down in history, or will a mutiny end your career with a dagger between the ribs?
To play, you will need this PDF, either printed or in digital form, and a few of the pages of the document (a crew roster and a map, either the blank ones you fill out or the pre-generated ones) printed out. You'll also need some six-sided dice, a pencil, and some tokens to represent your ship, your landing party, your longboats, and your base camp. Colored pencils and a bottle of rum optional!
Featuring cover art by Gerritt McGill.
Purchase
In order to download this Printable Adventure you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this Printable Adventure at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
If the requested price is a hardship, help yourself to a free copy.
This is an experiment to see how offering community copies goes. I haven't done this before! If you claim a community copy and enjoy the game, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Development log
- It's "Talk Like a Pirate Day!"Sep 19, 2023
- "Expedition to Skull Island" updated to v1.4Jun 28, 2022
- "Expedition to Skull Island" updated to v1.3Jun 24, 2022
- "Expedition to Skull Island" 50% off for the summer saleJun 22, 2022
- Another minor update to "Expedition to Skull Island"Jun 21, 2022
- Minor update to "Expedition to Skull Island"Jun 20, 2022
- Avast! "Expedition to Skull Island" is released!Sep 18, 2020
Comments
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Will trade a review for a Community Copy!
Needed to figure out the community copy thing anyway, so now's as good a time as any. I've added some. Enjoy. Hope you like the game.
Hi! I'm very keen to try this, and I wouldn't ask if I could but... is there any chance for community copies of this? No worries at all if not. Maybe one day I'll play it :)
I haven't set up community copies, but I'm happy to comp you a copy. DM me your email address - I'm @lonespelunker@mastodon.social.
Thank you very much! I'll send a DM! :)
I managed to follow you there but can't find a DM option. Mastodon being mastodon I guess haha
Hi, I bought this through pnp arcade. Unfortunately its the first version without corrections. Could you send me a list of them (have got stuck on Beach #66.
Thanks
DM me your email at @lonespelunker on Twitter and I'll send you a code to download the updated files. The changes are all listed in the dev logs of which this is the latest with the summaries.
No problem. All sorted. PNP have sent an update. (Great game BTW)!
Glad it's sorted out, and thanks for taking the time to ask about this - it brought the fact that the PNPArcade version hadn't been updated to my attention.
Glad you are enjoying the game! Thanks for playing.
I have worked with the folks at PNPArcade and you should have received an email with an update. Included in the update package is a summary of the changes and the pages they are on.
Hi, I just embarked towards Skull Island and I'm enjoying it. Just wanted to suggest a little rewording. I'm not mother tongue so it may be just me but I was stuck at 'rolling for ocean encounters' because at first you say 'if you did not stop at an island, you must roll for an ocean encounter', then there's the d6 check, then the encounter. It got me stuck there for a good 15 minutes trying to understand the logic of 1d6 and the table for 2d6 and that double roll. Now it's clear but I think that the very first sentence should be something like 'if you did not stop at an island, you must roll to check whether you have an ocean encounter'. Then comes the 1d6 for the check and eventually the 2d6 for the encounter.
Cheers!
Hey! Got very interested into your game by looking thedungeondive video when it was released, bought it and printed it at that time. I started my first expedition two days ago and noticed somthing unclear: how many sets of longboats the expedition has? One or more? Because I reached an hostile village with them, had to flee leaving the longboats in the center of the village as an unexpected present and I can't go there anymore.
Also, if you want to change your ship position, you may want to leave your longboats where they are without doing an expedition to get them back on board.
Three possible fixes:
- we consider the ship has as multiple longboats (infinite? Or we have to buy them at the start of the expedition?)
- we consider we have only one set, if you lose it, too bad, you still have your feets
- you can build new ones by spending one full day in a jungle
What do you think? For my current game, I hesitate between infinite longboats and the fact they are gone forever...
Glad you're enjoying the game!
As to the longboat loss problem, the intent is that you only have one, but that's mainly so the player doesn't have to keep track of a bunch of different longboats all over the island and read rules for managing them all. I think it's entirely reasonable to assume the ship could have another if you lose one, or that you could build one in the jungle in a pinch.
Another possibility is to just assume that you grabbed your longboats as you hoofed it out of the village, or that you can enter the village's hex without entering the village itself and retrieve the longboat.
Any of these should work for your purposes without having to add any new rules. Feel free to use any of them with my blessing as designer – or anything else you come up with that feels satisfying.
I decided to do it the simplest and closest to the rules way: the longboat is lost :D. That's not much of a deal and was a fun event.
Just for information (and in case it gives an idea to others), I'm tracking the crew with blank cards filled with their information: it's easier (and more fun/visual) to manage them, to group them by specialities depending on the events and regroup skill checks (like all the guys with soldier + ammo, or put doctors cards on the top of the guys they are trying to heal, etc.). I've uploaded a picture on bgg, waiting for moderation now.
Also doing something I find convenient for random crew selection by throwing 1D20 + 1D6. If the D6 does 6 I choose the target, else I trust the D20 or rethrow if it's invalid. Counting the position based on the way the cards are currently aligned on the table.
I think a digital version would be a killer. It would streamline all the book keeping and would let the player entirely focus on events and choices. If I was still young with free time I would propose to try, but that's not the case so I'll just hope someones does it one day... :D.
Wow, that's great. Looking forward to seeing the photo.
I've thought about making a digital version, and have had a few people interested in adapting it, but so far the physical/PNP version is all there is. But maybe someday!
My setup: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7091566/expedition-skull-island
Nice setup! Using cards to organize is a great idea.
Really enjoying this so far. Would there be a possibility to get an editable version of the Ships roster as it would be handy to be able to fill it out on my ipad :)
Hmm. I don't have any experience making editable versions of these kinds of forms, and I'm not sure my current layout program is able to export something like a form-fillable PDF, but I will look into it.
Anyway, glad you're enjoying the game! In the mean time, maybe try exporting it to an image and annotating the image in Photos or some other program? I've done that successfully with some PNP games. Even if I eventually figure it out, it'll probably be a while!
About supplies, it says "There are three types of supplies" and then there are 5 options?
Looks like a typo! I probably wrote that back when there were only three types. But yes, there are five types, not three types.
I've made the change to the source document. In the next release, it should be fixed. I probably won't release a new version just to fix this typo – I try to keep the "noise" to a minimum and only release when there's something impactful to play.
But thanks for taking the time to bring it to my attention!
ok, thanks for the info!
And one other thing that stood out to me:
The Bestiary entry Rat, Giant has two defense entries:
Soldier + Ammunition
Soldier
This doesn't make sense, does it?
Nobody would waste ammo if there's no advantage or at least a disadvantage for the regular defense.
Ah, yeah, good catch. That should be Soldier+1+Ammunition.
I’ve updated the document with this fix.
Great, thx!
Hey there!
I'm preparing right now for my first expedition and I got a question concerning the conclusion of the expedition,especially killed crew members. I'm not sure if the first 6 killed must be added twice:
If let's say 7 were killed, does this mean 7x-3 -30 points (-51 overall) , or 1x-3 -30 points (-33 overall) ?
Thx a lot in advance!
Best regards
Phil
It would be -51 points overall. The idea is that six crew lost is the "threshold" before your crew seriously starts considering mutiny, so there's a big jump at 6 lost. Try to keep your crew alive!
OK! Thx for clarifying! 😊👍🏻
This game is great. I love all of its content, the replay ability, and the mountains of inspiration it gives me.
Glad you are enjoying it!
Just purchased it! I loved Fable on Your Table, and the review from the Dungeon Dive sealed the deal!
I hope you enjoy it!
Having a lot of fun. Great game. There is a typo on beach #66, it should point you to read paragraph 71.
Wow, nice catch! It looks like Beach #66 should point you to #75, not #71. (#71 is reached from #64.)
I'll try to get an updated version with a fix for this up tonight. Thanks for taking the time to bring this to my attention.
Oh, and glad you're enjoying the game!
Okay, I've updated the game with a fix for that issue. Again, thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Wow that was quick, thanks. I was just scanning and saw the word “outcropping” and guessed on 71. Maybe I’ll find that again…
I found one more thing, for Foraging the sustain and fail tables don’t quite match up in the rules and the quick reference. The quick reference is a little kinder to the crew. Let me know if there’s a better place to report these when I see them.
The discrepancy on Natural is pretty common to hit.
Featured on the Dungeon Dive!
Yes! A great overview from someone who really seems to get what I was going for with the game.
That's me! :)
Yes! It's a great video. Thanks for taking the time to make it. I definitely saw a burst of interest from it.
Sorry to spam you, but another couple of questions while it's on my mind. One, at the start of the game, I rolled 4 days of sea travel, so was I right to start the Skull Island portion on the morning of the 5th day?
Second, it's not totally clear how stopping at a small island works. It seems that you first choose whether to press onward or search for an island, and then you roll for progress. If you choose to press onward, you roll for an ocean encounter, but if you choose to search for an island and fail the progress roll, do you then roll for an ocean encounter? If so, I think there could be something under Stopping at a Small Island like, "If you failed your progress roll, you must roll for an Ocean Encounter." I know it says, "If you did not stop at an island" under Ocean Encounters, but it wasn't clear to me if that included first failing to find one.
Likewise, when you say that "you may decide not to try to make landfall after rolling", is that after rolling for progress or rolling on the small island table? It seems illogical that I can choose to not try to make landfaull after rolling for "what happens when you make landfall", but if it's saying that I can decide to not roll on the small island table even if I passed my progress roll to find one, that makes more sense. But then I think it should say, "You may decide to not try to make landfall after passing your progress roll, in which case, you must then roll for an Ocean Encounter."
I'm having an absolute blast with the game. These are just a couple little issues that haven't hurt my experience whatsoever, but could be good to address in a v1.1 update.
Yes, that's correct. You spent four days at sea, and then on the start of the fifth day, you reach the island. (This is assuming, of course, that you chose to head for the island and made progress each day. Weather effects or stopping at an island can make a "four-day" trip take longer. For instance, if you roll that it's a four-day journey, but on two days you fail to make progress, then you won't reach the island until the morning of the seventh day because it took you six days instead of four.)
That's after rolling on the small island table. For instance, suppose you decide to try to make for a small island and roll that there are rum runners there. Peering through the spyglass, you see them and their ship at the island. You may choose to not make landfall, but that means you also can't stick around after encountering them to repair your hull. Or you can go ahead and risk it if you really need to repair your hull. Then, it's up to your Lookout to determine whether you have to fight them or whether you can evade them.
But perhaps what I should do is just have you roll on the table and not give that option; presumably if you go looking for an island, you'll explore one you find. That would certainly make the "attacked by warriors" encounter more likely.
As you mentioned, the rule is that if you did not stop at an island, you roll for an ocean encounter, so yes, in that case you would, because you did not stop at an island. (In the above example, too, if you choose not to make landfall to avoid the rum runners, you'd also roll for an ocean encounter.) Basically, if you're not walking around on an island, you're going to be rolling for an ocean encounter. But perhaps that can be made clearer!
Well, thanks for saying so - and taking the time to say so. Glad you're enjoying the game. I'm taking notes for a future update.
If a combat defense says "Soldier+1+ammunition" does only a soldier get the +1? And can only a soldier spend ammunition for a bonus? Loving the game!
Hi, thanks for playing!
"Soldier+1+ammunition" is shorthand for: "
If the crew member is a soldierIf the crew member makes a soldier check and they spend an ammunition, they can roll their attack at +1 (which would be +3 with their skill advantage)." If the crew memberis not a soldier, orcannot/does not expend ammunition from their personal supply, then they can't use that manner to attack and must choose another (or pass).Since it's a personal item, you can freely trade ammunition between crew members at any time, so while another character couldn't spend ammunition for the bonus, they could hand some ammunition they have to another soldier during battle.
But it occurs to me that I might need to restrict that rule a bit, since you could then just pass a totem around to fight a ghost, which wasn't the intent. Maybe during a combat, it takes that crew member's action to pass a personal item around. Anyway, notes for an update!
Glad you're enjoying the game!
"Maybe during a combat, it takes that crew member's action to pass a personal item around."
That's a smart restriction. I'm a big fan of tradeoffs in games. You get to do something useful, but at the cost of something else. It deepens the decision-making. And so far I have found the combat a tad on the easy side, but I'm only on my 5th day on the island. And I was playing that any crew member with ammo could spend it for a bonus if it was listed in the defense, which now I know is wrong, so things are about to get a little rougher for my motley crew. 😬
Thanks for the replies and the awesome game!
I’m confused by the soldier+1+ammunition rule. Why couldn’t a non soldier do this and just not get the +2 advantage? As I understand it anyone can roll any skill check they just don’t necessarily have advantage.
Ah, I need to edit what I wrote above. That was incorrect.
When it says, "soldier+1+ammunition", what it means is "perform a soldier check at +1 but spend an ammunition". It is not specifying that the crew member must be trained in the soldier skill; it's just telling you what type of check you're making. (This is different than what I wrote above which was incorrect. Sorry; an earlier setup of the game split out attacks by soldier/non-soldier, but it was replaced by just giving soldier-trained crew a roll bonus. This is cleaner.)
Every crew member may attempt a soldier check. It's just that the ones trained in it get a bonus on the roll, so they're more likely to succeed when they do.
So any crew member can take advantage of that method to attack (assuming they have the ammunition to spend on it). It's just that when they do so, solider-trained crew have a +3 on their roll, while non-soldier-trained crew have only a +1 on their roll.
This distinction is important in case all your soldier-trained crew have been killed or are otherwise unavailable in the fight. It is entirely possible, especially in the late game, that no one on the crew will have a given skill. They still need to be able to fight!
Sorry for the confusion!
Cool I was playing it that way originally. “(Spend ammunition) soldier +1” or something along those lines might be clearer, but I realize there’s a lot of places that would need to be changed. Btw finally got into the center of the island for the first time. This will definitely help for that.
Nice. Thanks for bringing this up in the comments. I'm going to try to get an update out that will clarify this stuff.
Okay, I just pushed up a new version that includes clarifying language for this and adds the restriction about swapping personal items around, along with a few other tweaks. See the devlog for information on which pages need to be reprinted if you're playing from a printed version.