The history of the Garden of the Plantmaster extends back to the forgotten days of ancient alien design. To fully impart the history of the garden and its originator, the Plantmaster, would entail relating a story so long, so diverse, that a companion volume to this work would be required to relate the tale's complete and weird essence. In brief, the garden was an adjunct of the Lost City of the Elders. Though not "lost" in the extreme sense, memory and record of it has ceased. Now only scattered rhymes and withered histories, scrawled in equally forgotten and worm eaten tomes of lore, will ever distantly attest to this city's previous existence [emphasis mine -DCS].

At some point in the 1990s the Creations Unlimited version of the module was re-released in an electronic version (please note that the supplied link from an archive and the actual page has been removed). The latest stage in the evolution of this adventure will come in May of this year, when it is released by Kenzer & Co. for their Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign. In this forthcoming version of the Garden, the setting has been changed from the Lost City of the Elders to the Arboretum of Clahz (mentioned in passing in the Kalamar sourcebook).

That said, the only version of the module I own is the (print) Creations Unlimited version, so I will limit my comments to that edition.

The module is 71 pages long (page 72 is a blank page for 'Notes') in what I would guess to be 10 point type. The front cover is used for a large map 'key' and a small area map, while the back cover is used for a large map of the entire Garden. The layout seems amateurish by today's standards, but the overall visual effect is not unappealing and — with the possible exception of the illustrations and cartography — is at least as good as what TSR was putting out at the time. The interior illustrations, while abundant, are more reminiscent of the early years of D&D art than anything else. The maps — particular the full map of the Garden on the back cover — are hard to read, although this is partly due to the fact that they are printed on glossy paper rather than matte. Furthermore, the map scale appears to be missing.

Statistics are given in the module in "generic" (i.e., thinly-disguised AD&D) terms — "hits to kill" (HtK) instead of hit points (HP), "magic immunity" (MI) instead of magic resistance, etc. A table of terms, including their AD&D translations, is included at the very beginning of the module (p. 5), but most of the terms are familiar enough that translation is unnecessary — especially if the GM has been exposed to products from the likes of Judges Guild and Mayfair Games' Role-Aids line of sourcebooks and adventures.

Garden of the Plantmaster is unusual in that what some would consider its chief weaknesses are that others would call its strengths. First, the players' introduction to the adventure is generic — their characters are summoned to the Garden by its creator, the Plantmaster. The summons comes to them in a vision while they are traveling to an unnamed town, and characters who heed the vision are transported to the Garden by means of a magical waterfall.

Background information is sparse. Here the GM is expected to do some work — as the author writes, "[g]ood characters will want to investigate the vision further upon learning [its] true circumstances." Exactly what happens when the PCs decide the investigate the vision is left entirely up to the GM. As I noted before, some may perceive this as a weakness — the adventure is not "complete"; a significant amount of GM preparation is required (unless the GM excels at "seat-of-the-pants" game mastering); etc. Likewise, it can be seen as a strength of the module, because the GM can place the Garden in his own milieu with little effort and truly make the adventure his own.

The other unusual feature of the module is its adaptability. The GM need not worry about his players reading the module beforehand, because so much of the adventure depends on his rendering of it. The first ten pages of the module proper are generic notes and hints for the GM — random encounters, "nighttime" in the Garden, notes on the Garden's denizens, both flora and fauna, and detailed notes on the "Purple River of Lamash," a major area within the Garden. Lamash is the Wood Demon, originally summoned by the Plantmaster to help in the creation of the Garden, but who now holds his former "master" captive — hence the PCs calling to the Garden!

This feature of the module, like the generic introduction, might also be considered a flaw. Once again, the GM is called upon to do more work to make the adventure viable.

However, Garden of the Plantmaster is more than just a bare-bones framework. There are 65 numbered encounters, five river encounters, and three additional encounters with the "garns," a sentient race of gargoyle-like creatures. The garn encounters are separate from the rest of the numbered encounters because they have their own area in the Garden and because they are not under the control of Lamash. Also included in the module are 15 pages of new monsters, including a detailed entry on Lamash the Wood Demon, and a 12-page appendix on "garden dressing," with an emphasis on the different flora that might be found in the Garden — flowers, vines, insectivorous plants, fungi, and especially herbs.

In short, Garden of the Plantmaster is an old-school module with a style of its own that probably won't appeal to everyone. Game masters who prefer an all-inclusive module that they can just take out of the shrinkwrap and run will be disappointed, while those who remember fondly the days when TSR published such modules will be delighted to have a "generic" module that they can set in their own campaign worlds.

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