Simon Collins
Explorer
Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is the eighth booster adventure by AEG. It is designed for four to six characters of level 5-6. It costs $2.49.
Production and Presentation: This module is 16 pages but each page is only ½ the width of an A4 page. The front (soft)cover features poor colour artwork, the back cover features an introduction for the players to the adventure. There are two mediocre internal pieces of black & white artwork and the central pages contain a poor map of the village of Darbin and the garden of the title, barely sufficient to run the adventure. The final page and the inside back cover contains OGL bumpf. The inside front cover contains advertising.
The Story: In a town, the PCs are asked to investigate the lack of delivery of fruit and vegetables from a nearby village. A wizard who attempted to reincarnate himself into a beautiful plant with spellcasting powers upon death, actually turns into a shambling mound. Becoming insane due to this failure, the shambling mound creates a mutated plant called a brainvine that attach themselves to the villagers and control their bodies but not their minds. When the PCs arrive, the villagers attack them under the control of the shambling mound’s brainvines, all the while screaming for merciful release. The PCs must defeat the shambling mound to finally release all the villagers.
The High Points: The premise reminded me of ‘Day Of The Triffids’ and I liked the idea that the villagers scream for release or even shout a warning to the PCs before attacking them.
The Low Points: There are several places where a scene is described with scant explanation as to it’s relevance to the adventure nor explanation of the circumstances leading up to the scene described – this left me searching through the module several times to try and find an explanation. Sometimes I found the information elsewhere in the booklet, other times not at all. This gave it a disjointed feel. There is little background information or opportunity for roleplaying NPCs.
Conclusion: This poorly written module fails despite the interesting idea at its heart because of a lack of information and roleplaying opportunities. The combats involved are repetitive and the plot is linear.
This is the eighth booster adventure by AEG. It is designed for four to six characters of level 5-6. It costs $2.49.
Production and Presentation: This module is 16 pages but each page is only ½ the width of an A4 page. The front (soft)cover features poor colour artwork, the back cover features an introduction for the players to the adventure. There are two mediocre internal pieces of black & white artwork and the central pages contain a poor map of the village of Darbin and the garden of the title, barely sufficient to run the adventure. The final page and the inside back cover contains OGL bumpf. The inside front cover contains advertising.
The Story: In a town, the PCs are asked to investigate the lack of delivery of fruit and vegetables from a nearby village. A wizard who attempted to reincarnate himself into a beautiful plant with spellcasting powers upon death, actually turns into a shambling mound. Becoming insane due to this failure, the shambling mound creates a mutated plant called a brainvine that attach themselves to the villagers and control their bodies but not their minds. When the PCs arrive, the villagers attack them under the control of the shambling mound’s brainvines, all the while screaming for merciful release. The PCs must defeat the shambling mound to finally release all the villagers.
The High Points: The premise reminded me of ‘Day Of The Triffids’ and I liked the idea that the villagers scream for release or even shout a warning to the PCs before attacking them.
The Low Points: There are several places where a scene is described with scant explanation as to it’s relevance to the adventure nor explanation of the circumstances leading up to the scene described – this left me searching through the module several times to try and find an explanation. Sometimes I found the information elsewhere in the booklet, other times not at all. This gave it a disjointed feel. There is little background information or opportunity for roleplaying NPCs.
Conclusion: This poorly written module fails despite the interesting idea at its heart because of a lack of information and roleplaying opportunities. The combats involved are repetitive and the plot is linear.
