Well, it's about friggin' time I reviewed a PDF product, don't you think? I mean, I talk a lot about my own downloadable electronic products, so let's see what others are doing, right?

First up for review is The Toad God's Treasure. This 36-page adventure for 4th-level characters details a ruined temple and associated caves. Now, let's be open and honest here. If you're the type who says, "Ugh, it's just a dungeon crawl," then stop reading right here and don't buy this product. Because that's what The Toad God's Treasure is, and I get tired of seeing people bash products for simply being what they are. Lots of people like dungeon crawls, and if you're one of them, there are lots of reasons to consider buying this product.

When a designer sits down to work on a product like this, he immediately finds himself forced to fit his adventure into a spectrum that ranges from "lots and lots of encounters and detailed areas, so that the adventure will last many, many sessions and DMs will get a lot of value for their money" to "just a few encounters, but all well-described and detailed, with plenty of context, background and DM tips to make it easier to run." The designers of The Toad God's Treasure chose to lean fairly heavily toward the latter (I tend to lean slightly toward the former, but have a lot of respect for the latter).

Thus, with this adventure, while there are not a lot of encounter areas (there are 28), each is well thought out and described. The text provides plenty of context -- what each creature eats, why it's there, and how it relates to the other creatures in the adventure. I love that. We all secretly know that dungeons don't make perfect sense, but the authors here have taken the few steps necessary to lend just enough verisimilitude to the adventure so that even the most cynical player has few excuses to say, "Now wait a minute..."

Now for some tastes, the authors might have even gone a little too far in their level of detail. For a 36-page adventure, 28 encounter areas is not a lot. But what you get is a very interesting read, and the details empower you to run the adventure not only with relative ease, but with a fair bit of surety that you know what you're doing and it all makes sense.

For the most part, the product is enjoyable and well written. It provides a good mix of encounters, in both type and difficulty. It's not just a hack-and-slash affair. The background for the whole adventure is interesting (but not groundbreaking), and the adventure hooks and material available for those willing to use Bardic Knowledge or Gather Information ahead of time is extensive. The whole thing reads very much like a Dungeon magazine adventure, right down to the format. It's fairly clear that the writers used the magazine's guidelines and suggested design tips (which is fine -- heck, I helped develop them).

I do have a couple nits to pick, however, and some of them do definitely detract. First and foremost, there are errors I will chalk up to a lack of editing. A few typos in the text (you've certainly seen worse, but they're there), and -- what's worse -- in the game mechanics. The EL listings for each encounter provided in the back contain errors: some miscalculations and some bad editorial gaffes (the CR for the new creature provided in the book, the Malfeasant, and the EL in the back do not jive, for example).

The product contains a few odd applications of the d20 rules. First and foremost, while the authors helpfully provide many DCs for skills used in the various encounters are, some of them are just weird. For example, there's an encounter where you come into templelike room with a statue of a giant toad up on a pedestal. According to the adventure, it takes a DC 21 Knowledge (religion) check to recognize that is the Toad God. Now wait a minute. Metagame thinking aside (assume somehow the players don't know what module they're playing), what player character -- even the dimmest barbarian -- will go into that room and not be able to figure out that's "the Toad God"?

The Toad God's Treasure offers some new rules in the form of a monster, some spells and feats, a skill, and three variant rules. The monster is interesting but the description of its powers leave a few questions open and its CR seems too high (playtesting could prove me wrong, however). The spells range from poor (successive shot -- a spell that allows you extra ranged attacks, but treats the fire rates of bows and crossbows the same, among other problems ) to pretty bad (push -- the description allows you to move an oil tanker with a 1st-level spell). The rest is fairly forgettable. One of the three variant rules in the book is actually from the DMG, so it's not "new," and another shows a real lack of understanding of how drowning works in d20). Perhaps worst of all, most of this has very little to do with the adventure. In short, don't buy this product for the couple pages of new rules. Ironically, if this "bonus" material weren't included, I'd be tempted to rate the adventure higher than three stars.

For those of you interested in electronic products because they're, well, electronic, this product offers you very little. There are no bookmarks for those of you using Acrobat 5.0, and there are even references to "writing in the margins," so clearly the folks at Anubium intend this to be just an adventure you print out and use as you would a print product. I think that's okay, but it's worth noting.

The art is adequate, and the map is not great: It's hard to read, in fact, and its blandness is a letdown compared to the text, which describes the mapped areas as a real, dynamic underground setting.

Overall, The Toad God's Treasure is a decent dungeon-style adventure and a very good value for the money ($5). I'm particularly impressed because this seems to be the authors' first published work. If you're at all interested in PDF products -- and, speaking as someone who publishes them, I hope you are -- this is better than most of the material you can find out there.

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