Grimtooth’s Traps Fore is another sourcebook of traps absurd and marvelous and a delightful look back at a different era of adventure gaming, when dungeon crawling was partly a competition of cleverness between players and GMs. Confront the dangers of dungeon designs past.

Grimtooth’s Traps provides traps amazing, dangerous and unusual, mostly designed for a classic dungeon-type setting. The book was originally published in 1986, for those who are among the grognards of the hobby, it can be a very nostalgic read.

The traps are organized by type: room, corridor, door, items and artefacts, and lastly, things. Each is given a deadliness rating (marked in skulls) showing how lethal it is as presented and most have a lovely illustration by Steven S Crompton or Michael Von Glahn.

Many of the traps are classic bait and switch setups to penalize the characters using trickery (and sometimes powerful magic and illusions) to hide the nature of the actual trap. It was written in an era when dungeons were often contests between players and GM, leading to an ‘arms race’ of traps and counter-trap techniques and magic. A very different era of gaming but one that lead to great inventiveness in such things as crazy trap design and defenses against them. Of course, many of the traps in this book involve extremely powerful magic (or advanced technology or both) and would be hard to explain in a low magic campaign world, but even then, they are usually quite fun to read.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Grimtooth’s Traps is a sourcebook of traps absurd and marvelous and a delightful look back at a different era of adventure gaming, when dungeon crawling was nearly a competitive sport between players and GMs. Enjoy the deviousness of old school trap design in this wonderful update of a classic.

Grimtooth’s Traps provides traps wondrous, deadly and bizarre mostly designed for a classic dungeon-type setting. The book was originally published in 1981, so for some (like me) reading it is tinged with nostalgia for old school gaming and the wacky, early days of dungeon adventuring.

The traps are organized by type: room, corridor, door, items and artefacts, and lastly, things. Each is given a deadliness rating (marked in skulls) showing how lethal it is as presented and most have a lovely illustration by Steven S Crompton, who revised and expanded on his original artwork, and there are a hundred traps in all (the hundred and first trap is special).

Many of the traps are classic screw the characters setups using trickery (and sometimes powerful magic and illusions) to disguise the nature of the actual trap. It was built for an age when dungeons were a contest between players and GM cleverness, played out through the character against dungeon stage, and realism (and roleplaying) was a secondary consideration at best. A different era of RPGs but one that lead to great inventiveness in such things as trap design and counters to them. Of course, many of the traps in this book involve extremely powerful magic (or advanced technology) and would be hard to explain in a low magic campaign world, but even then, they are inspirational and fun to read.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Solos don't get better than this! Period!

Not a Sudden Death solo. (You know: "To go left, go to 15b; To go right, go to 16c. You're dead.") Some real roleplaying opportunities here, and - if you get through this - experiences which will change your character forever.

Arguably the best Tunnels & Trolls magazine ever published; certainly the best still being published. And the price! How could one ever argue about the price?! At least 91% of this issue, for instance, is far above average and approaches excellence. These include a GM-moderated adventure and a solo adventure, the latter of which can be a direct sequel to a famous old T&T solo, the former of which deals with the usual Slumbering Eeeeevil and includes a well-done letter of warning from the wizard who sees through a glass darkly, at best. I'm a sucker for good props, and this letter (designed as an open scroll) is a very nice prop.

There's a VERY revealing article (including correspondence between original creator and translator/adaptor) by Patrice Geille, who translated and adapted T&T 7.5 to French. It manages to make clear some rules within T&T 7.5 which might be misconstrued, while still emphasizing T&T's greatest rule of adapting as the game goes along. This article alone would be worth the price of the magazine, if it had a price.

I guess we could say that TrollsZine #5 is priceless. We wouldn't be far wrong.

Really good fun, and as other reviewers have mentioned, interesting from a 'history of RPGs' point of view. I love the fact that the game doesn't take itself too seriously, with spells like "Take that, you fiend!" and "Poor baby". The solo adventure is equally irreverent and excellent fun (and/but) completely deadly!

With multiple solos and a chapter of T&T fiction, TrollsZine is really coming into its own! The Interdimensional Pawn Shoppe is inspired!

With several groupings of monsters, concrete advice on writing your own solo, and other goodies, this TrollsZine is well worth a read. Highly recommended!

Well worth a read! I enjoyed the article on "Selling Used Equipment" especially.

Good stuff in there! And of course the price is unbeatable.

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/03/12/tabletop-review-grimtooths-traps-fore/

If you’ve been playing RPGs since the days when Elves were both a race and a class, you’ve probably seen a copy of Grimtooth’s Traps. This download is a 2011 scan of the 1990 second edition of the third book in the Grimtooth’s Traps series originally printed in 1986. Grimtooth’s Traps Fore is a bit of a misnomer, but if it keeps your players needlessly searching for a mythical “third” book, one they shouldn’t have, then I guess that is a trap in and of itself.

This book details a series of 101 user-submitted traps. The traps range from insanely difficult to insanely absurd and all manner in between. The traps are loosely organized by function: room traps, corridor traps, door traps, item traps, and “thing” traps. Sprinkled throughout the book are humorous illustrations.

When I design a trap I try to make ones that seem feasible given the restraints of the system and setting. A lot of these traps seem to be an exercise in hitting the party “sideways” and anyone using them is likely to be labeled a Killer GM. There are a lot of great ideas though and even these “bad” traps have some potential with GM tweaks.

I find this book useful from both a practical and a nostalgic point of view. The only issues I had with the book is that the scan wasn’t perfect. The inside edge of the printed book is slightly distorted, as if they didn’t create the PDF from pages, but instead pressed a printed book flat on a scanner. I’m sure many wouldn’t even notice this distortion and it isn’t a terrible distraction at any rate.

A great rules system, classic fantasy roleplaying at its best. Simple easy to use, and whats more its free.

This magazine is packed full of interesting articles written by people with both knowledge and enthusiasm. The quality and quantity of content would be good value in any product, but in a free 'zine it is amazing. I'm sure every T&T fan already gets it, but the ideas, advice and adventures would be of interest to anyone who plays in the fantasy genre.

Hard to believe these TrollZines are for free. Fun and informative articles and editorials, good adventures, lots of art using various styles. All in a good-sized mag. I think every RPG system player would enjoy these issues. TrollZine No. 4 is no exception. "Buy" it today. Then if you are new to "Tunnels & Trolls" come on over and join the ranks of the 2nd oldest RPG in the world. Our secret to our longevity---we just have more fun than the others!

It took about a year and a half to get here, and I'm not sure the work was worth the wait. I'm not a big fan of waiting. I want the next one to come out a lot quicker. I'll drive ten miles to avoid waiting ten minutes in line, but . . . I am certainly happy to see TrollZine 4 available at last! TrollZine is an e-zine full of contents for players and fans of Tunnels and Trolls. For the most part, the contents come from the fertile minds of the international T & T fanclub TROLLHALLA which can be found at http://trollhalla.com. (Trollhalla the internet fan group came long before Trollhalla the board game.) However, outsiders may also contribute--it is open to all who wish to participate. The members of the Trollbridge group are also strongly represented in these pages. TrollZine 4 is 60 pages long, and contains fiction, a solo adventure, adventure hooks for Game Masters, rules extensions, an article about mass combat in T & T, an article about horsemanship, art ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. The zine has enough in it to keep the dedicated gamer busy for days, maybe weeks. And like any commercial magazine TrollZine has a few ads in it--just to let the reader know what new products are available. Interestingly enough, I had nothing to do with the creation of this ezine--well, I put an ad in it for a forthcoming production of mne, tut that isn't real content. TrollZine can stand on its own merits. I liked it all, but of course I liked different parts of it better than others. My absolute favorite is Michael Eidson's solo adventure DOWN TIME--the adventure that answers the question what does the player character do between adventures? Mike's solo is as good or better than anything available for T & T solo players, and the illustrations by David Ullery are superb. A close second for me was Patrice Geille's article about how to handle mass combats in T & T. He's talking about armies--not just a big melee between a dozen characters and a bunch of monsters. T & T has always been known for its "buckets of dice" approach to combat, and you would think that mass combat would exacerbate the problem. Well, maybe . . . And I really enjoyed the Two Magicians cartoon also by Mr. Ullery. And there is so much more.

And you can't beat the price--FREE. The contributors to TrollZine don't let the zine be free because it isn't any good. They do it because they love role-playing and they want to offer gifts to other roleplayers--passing it forward, so to speak. Now, I'm biased. Tunnels and Trolls is my game, and these contributors are my friends and fans, but I think I can still be pretty objective here. Parts of TrollZine 4 are better than other parts--that's true of every large creative endeavor. On the whole, it is very good. I prefer to praise the excellent, rather than knock the not-quite-so-good. YMMV. I rate TZ4 a good pickup for roleplayers in general--even players of That Other Game, and an excellent acquisition for Tunnels & Trolls players of all ages. And if you just enjoy fantasy art, you're going to get both chuckles and appreciation out of it. 5 stars!

A classic from the early years of roleplaying, when any room could contain instant death for intrepid adventurers. For those who aren't familiar with them, the Grimtooth books were collections of trapped rooms, corridors, and items that scheming gamemasters could place in their dungeons, catacombs, hideouts, and other places of exploration. Most of them involved a seemingly easy workaround that would end up backfiring on the not-quite clever-enough PCs. All of them were presented system-free, for use with most any RPG.

This is the first of those classic volumes, lovingly formatted for PDF viewing. The page scans are crisp and the images are clear (some have even been redone by the original artist for this digital edition).

What always struck me about the Traps series is the amount of detail devoted to the diagrams, which display the mechanics of each device to the point that it almost seems as if one could build working models of these traps, if one were so inclined (but please don't - the disclaimer in the front warns against it).