The Cauldron Supplier's Guidebook, Vol. 1 is a generic fantasy PDF from Top Fashion Games that aims to list some commodities that adventurers would find and be able to sell to magicians, witches, and other magic-users. As with their other products, Dave Woodrum does the writing and cover art. Again, like their other products, the cover is fairly basic -- pictures of eyes, modified with either a paint program or Photoshop, are set against a green background. It's not a great cover, but is inoffensive, neither helping nor hurting the product. Another pair eyes pops up in the product itself, and a small sketch of a box of spell components appears on the last page. Although rough, I found this sketch rather charming and prefer it to the gems and eyes I've found in their other products. In total, the PDF numbers 7 pages.
As with their other products, layout and editing leave something to be desired but are, on the whole, better in this product than most others I've seen from them. The main problems that I see here are a curious use of block paragraphing without double spacing, ragged right margins, and some odd typographical choices ("1copper" as opposed to "1 copper" in the beginning and the reverse later -- the latter is far easier to read and process and should be standard in my opinion). I want to emphasize, however, that I received these products from the publisher in bulk, so the lack of response to my feedback should not be taken as an indication of stubbornness on the part of Top Fashion Games. One thing that I'm happy to see here is that all the pages of the product have text -- the terminal blank page that I've found at the end of most of the other PDFs I've looked at from them can't be found here. Certainly a good thing.
Content-wise, this product bears more similarity to Cargo Commodities, Vol. 1 than any of the other products I've seen from them so far. A big difference between that product and this one can be found in the descriptions of the commodities. More care is taken in giving solid descriptions here -- I found most of the descriptions in the other to be very basic. I also liked how some of the supplies receive a brief note as to how they're used by spellcasters; for instance, albino frogs are frequently used when making items that deal with invisibility and eyes of medusa can be used to create items that paralyze or turn to stone.
On the whole, I have no real problem with any of the items presented here in and of themselves. They're fine. My main concern is that the PDF does little other than offer a laundry list of prices and some brief descriptions of how they might be used. I was disappointed that the PDF did not go into more uses than it does. I understand that Top Fashion games might not want to get too specific in a system-independent RPG product, but rather than have the items simply be useful for a certain spell, it might have been nice to have them be useful for amplifying or altering spells -- in d20 terms, they could almost function like the metamagic components in Unearthed Arcana. Perhaps invisibility potions brewed with albino frog's blood could function for twice the normal duration of the potion's effects, are more effective underground, or can even be used as invisible ink -- you could run into balance issues, certainly, but this would have been more inspiring to me than the information presented here.
The PDF is solid, if unexciting, and could be useful to a DM that is looking for alternate treasures to present to his party. Compared to other Top Fashion releases, the layout is also solid. I would have liked to have seen more here, but if you're just sick of giving your party gems and gold, this might help get your creative juices flowing.
Score: 3
