Traps Collection 2015V3.Qxp

Sample file A gigantic collection of over 500 awesome engines of destruction, delver dicers, character crushers, adventurer anxieties, minion munchers, hero harangers, general tricks, traps, and other rare and dangerous items for use in defending game master treasures!

By GRIMTOOTH the TROLL

Foreword by Harley Stroh Interview by Jim Wampler, Rick Loomis, Paul Ryan O’Connor & Bear Peters Graphics & additional material by Steven S. Crompton New materialSample edited by Josephfile Goodman

With art by Steven S. Crompton, Liz Danforth, Michael Von Glahn, Steve Jackson, Jim Wampler & Jeff Dee. Additional credits for original books as indicated in individual credit pages.

Published by Goodman Games www.goodman-games.com Sample file

“Don’t steal anything... or else!” Grimtina

All new material in this volume is copyright © 2015 Goodman Games, produced under license from Flying Buffalo, Inc. All rights reserved. Grimtooth and associated imagery are trademarks of Flying Buffalo, Inc. Original Grimtooth works are copyright of Flying Buffalo, Inc., as indicated in scans of each volume, and published under license. No material in this work may be reproduced without explicit permission of Flying Buffalo, Inc. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents...... Here! Foreword...... 4 Interview: Grimtooth & Friends...... 5 Grimtooth Letters & Submissions ...... 13 The Grimtooth Traps Boardgame?...... 17 Traps Cover Lost & Found ...... 20 Traps Covers Around the World...... 21 Traps Cover Gallery...... 24 Grimtooth’s 250,000 Traps?...... 29 Grimtooth’s Traps (One)...... 31 Grimtooth’s Traps Too...... 97 Grimtooth’s Traps Four...... 189 Grimtooth’s Traps Ate...... 267 Grimtooth’s Traps Lite...... 355 Grimtooth’s NEW Traps ...... 437

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First time ever: The original black and white cover illustration for Traps Too by Jeff Dee, with no tones or shading. page 3 Foreword By Harley Stroh

arning, dear reader: This book is a trap. drive helpless livestock (or hirelings) into the dun- W geon before them, pour water over flagstones in Within you will find the occult renderings and mad search of trapdoors, and question whether the scribblings of a monster responsible for the deaths smoke from their torches is being driven by the of thousands. Between these covers are more than faintest of drafts, that's when it is time for 500 traps, tricks and ruses, created over the span of Grimtooth's Traps. three decades and collected for the first time for your grisly amusement. Herein, you will find what you seek: the devious and the demented; traps that encompass entire No greater catalog of gruesome death and dismem- rooms, or can be concealed within a keyhole; traps berment exists in all the Known Worlds. that hide in plain sight, and traps concealed behind traps. All rendered in sufficient detail to ensure that *** they can be defeated and circumvented by cau- Of all the tools in a judge's arsenal, the well-execut- tious play, while offering death in ways never ed trap is the worst. Monsters - be they immune to before imagined. mundane weapons, titanic in size, or fearsome in their wrath - can all be undone by clever players, And a trap that can't be imagined by a character usually with not much more than a mule and a bar- (or his player) is a trap that can kill. rel of flammable lard. Monsters are quantifiable; if something has hit points then it can be killed. If not *** today, then perhaps tomorrow, with better tactics If you read this far, is already too late. and more mules. (There is a reason gods should never be given stats.) This tome is perhaps Grimtooth's most nefarious cre- ation: a temporal trap in the guise of a guide. Turn But not traps. They are a betrayal of the player's these leaves, decipher these runes, and you will find imagination: when the safe corridor or chamber that entire hours and days have vanished from your they had pictured in their minds is revealed - all too life. In their place you will find that the spirit of late - to conceal their doom. Worse is the realiza- Grimtooth himself has found a home. tion that a beloved character's death could haveSample file been avoided with different choices - now obvious Five hundred traps? That might satisfy an apprentice in hindsight. Every veteran dungeoneer has experi- or journeyman. But surely the world could use just a enced this initial disbelief and frustration, emotions few more. And before long you will be doing HIS that eventually mature into a cagey wariness and work, designing your own ever-more fiendish traps understanding of a simple truth: In the dim light of to inflict on PCs the Worlds over. a flickering torch, anything could be a trap. We have been warned. But with experience also comes the wisdom that any trap can be averted through clever, creative - Harley Stroh, October 2014 play; that with attention to detail and the proper application of a 10' pole, even Sezrekan's famed Passage of Ten-Thousand-and-One Dooms can be Harley Stroh has designed dozens of adventure mod- discovered, dismantled, and finally repurposed. ules for the Dungeon Crawl Classics series, including (Spikes with no-save poison, you say? I order the several with nefarious traps inspired by a longtime hirelings to affix them to my shield.) appreciation of Grimtooth's work. The DCC series has more than 80 adventures in print as of this writ- At this level, the crime isn't in a trap being deadly, ing, and Harley's fearsome traps have been hard at but in being boring. When your players have work killing characters since Dungeon Crawl Classics honed their wit to a razor's edge and hang on your #12.5: The Iron Crypt of the Heretics. Harley lives in Colorado with his wife, his dog, his daughter, and far every word in the hopes of gleaning a vital clue, too many gaming books. another pit trap simply won't do. When their PCs page 4 Goodman Interview: Grimtooth & Friends by Jim Wampler Candid conversations with the chaotic crew that devised hundreds of deadly and diabolical traps guaranteed to scare the plate mail off even the most seasoned of dungeon delvers.

hey, I can admit when I'm wrong Rick Loomis - I came home and asked Ken if I Founder Flying Buffalo could publish it. Goodman Games: So, let's start with a brief history recap: you Shortly afterwards, another founded Flying Buffalo in 1970, friend of Ken's, Steve McAllister, initially to facilitate a new play- in a conversation right after a by-mail game that you had writ- local science fiction convention, ten called Nuclear Destruction. suggested that someone should You incorporated the company make an RPG adventure like a later in 1972, and later still, even "programmed text." I probably purchased a micro-computer should explain that: back in the (before such a thing as personal 70's there was a fad in education computers even existed) in order called programmed texts. The to run your game so that you textbook would present a prob- D&D rules. Tell us how that led could play yourself. So Flying lem: "What is 7 minus 3? If your to Tunnels & Trolls (T&T), the Buffalo started out as the world's answer is 10, turn to page world's second published fantasy first play-by-mail game company? twelve. If your answer is 4, turn role playing game. to page fifteen." If you turned to Rick Loomis: I bought the com- page twelve, it would say: "No, puter so that I could handle as RL: KenSample had borrowed file a copy of sorry, you added instead of sub- many customers as would sign D&D from an employee of mine, tracted. Now go back to page up for my game. Those MMOG's read through it in an evening, one and try again." If you turned that are so popular with millions and decided it was too compli- to page fifteen, it would say: of players? That is exactly what I cated and "not done right." He "Yes, congratulations, you sub- had in mind back in 1972 when I invented his own RPG, and tracted correctly. Now here is bought the computer. If I only played it with his friends, then your next problem." He thought had 100 customers, I could run printed 100 copies to sell to his it would be interesting if the everything by hand. But I knew friends. He knew I was going to book could lead you through an that would never make enough the Origins game convention in adventure that way. I agreed and money. The idea, and hope, was Baltimore and brought me his immediately went home and to handle thousands, and possi- last 40 copies and asked me to wrote Buffalo Castle, which was bly millions. Yes, there were sell them at the convention. I the very first solo adventure for other people running Diplomacy knew this was a stupid idea - the any RPG. It was in 1975, before games by mail, but I was the first game had no board, no counters, any of those Choose Your Own person to do it for a living, and no one "wins" at the end. No Adventure or Fighting Fantasy instead of a hobby. one would want this nonsense. books. Then Ken quickly wrote But Ken was a friend and I didn't "Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon" GG: Then in 1975 a very young want to hurt his feelings. I figured and "Naked Doom" and solo Ken St. Andre approached you I'd take them to Origins, put adventures became T&T's niche. to sell a game that he had written them on the corner of the table, primarily out of frustration with and then when no one bought GG: In 1981, Flying Buffalo con- trying to understand the original them, I could tell Ken I tried. But tinued to pioneer the burgeoning to my surprise I sold all 40. So page 5