The Inside Scoop on Gaming

"'Kurishan's Garden' is a d20 System adventure booster designed for 4-6 characters levels 5-6. It can be played as a stand-alone adventure or dropped into any ongoing campaign setting."

Like the other adventure boosters in this line, this one is a sturdy cardstock cover folded around four pieces of writing paper that have been folded in half lengthwise. The result is a portable 16 page booklet containing a single evening's worth of adventure with the added bonus of both a new monster and a new magic item in every booster.

The adventure begins with the characters being hired by some city merchants to investigate the nearby thorp of Darbin. It seems that Darbin provides much of the fruits and vegetables for the city and no deliveries have been made in two months. I found this opening to be cliche, but the nature of the adventure is such that it's unnecessary anyway. The DM can simply put Darbin in the adventurer's path as they travel from one place to the next, or give them some other reason for going there depending on what the players will enjoy the most.

The real fun begins when the characters arrive in Darbin only to find it seemingly abandoned. A good DM can emphasize the horror here as the adventurer's puzzle through clues and fight off some of the locals who cry things like: "Help me!" and "Save yourselves!" while attacking the party. Moral quandaries aside, the group must still puzzle out what has happened and what to do about it. The explanation for all the strangeness in Darbin is original and, better yet, provided in such a way that the players as well as the DM can appreciate it.

Most of the encounters are EL3 to EL5 with the climax being EL6. I did find that the treasure was about double what is considered average (per DMG table 7-2), but that's easily fixed if the DM desires. Overall, the players in our group found Kurishan's Garden to be a refreshing change of pace from more standard dungeon adventuring.

The only real glitch encountered is that the party can, and did in our case, sniff out where the trouble lies and essentially skip the first half of the adventure. This isn't a problem unless the DM has nothing else ready, but be advised: this adventure may take 5 hours to complete, or it might be over in an hour and a half.