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Grimtooth's Traps: A Game-Master's Aid for All Role-Playing Systems
Flying Buffalo Grimtooth's Traps, Fantasy Role Playing Game Guide, Paperback
a game-master's aid for all role-playing systems.
A compendium of catastrophic traps, sinster snares, engines of evil, and deadly devices with passing comments made on a folio of fearful fates. In all, one hundred and one ways to influence adventurers, delvers, tunnellers, and all player characters...
This is the first book in a series of Grimtooth's Traps books.
a game-master's aid for all role-playing systems.
A compendium of catastrophic traps, sinster snares, engines of evil, and deadly devices with passing comments made on a folio of fearful fates. In all, one hundred and one ways to influence adventurers, delvers, tunnellers, and all player characters...
This is the first book in a series of Grimtooth's Traps books.
64 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 19, 2025
Excellent book of interesting traps to spring on your characters. Awesome pics detailing the traps. Very recommended
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May 15, 2021I do not have any idea why I bought this particular Bundle of Holding set, a collection of game books from Flying Buffalo, a company that produced some games in the 80s (ads for which are in the backs of some of these books and worth looking at for the sense of time at least), but also produced a lot of generic fantasy books for use with, oh, whatever fantasy roleplaying game you happened to be playing, cough cough.
This bundle includes:
* four books in the Grimtooth series of traps (entire rooms, door traps, trapped items)
* a book of magical treasures and people who might have or want them
* seven books in the CityBook series, detailing locations and people in some generic city or location.
First, the obvious: these books show their age, notably both in style of play in the Grimtooth books (which comes straight from the Gygaxian, wargame-esque DM vs. the players style), and also in some of the depictions of characters (e.g., the Arab/Jew owner of the bazaar with his hooknose and penchant for backstabbing, all of the women who get some detail as to what sort of male adventurer they might flirt with or where they go skinnydipping). (There is also at least one example of the fantasy trope popular in the 80s of the person from our world.) (Also another marker of age: there's a hairstylist that feels like Warren Beatty from Shampoo (1975).)
Second, as generic books, these locations, people, and histories (in the CityBooks) here sometimes either go too generic (here's a few swords, each tied to an element, and here's a person who either has the sword or wants it for the PCs to get entangled with) or sometimes too specific (here's a history of the world involving titans and the stone that one eats). A lot of this is also due to the age of these books: maybe it's playing with tropes that don't feel tired out in RPGs because this was almost 40 years ago(!).
Third, much like the Over the Edge books that I recently reviewed, the authors of these CityBooks (and there are many since each location might be written by a different person) love to introduce new and strange things that may or may not fit in with the game that you're playing. The biggest offender here is the Sideshow citybook, which includes intelligent amoeba, gargoyle society, slug people (one of whom leads a revolutionary group called the Sliming Path, yech), raccoon people, dog people, cat people, etc. There's a lot of inventiveness here, but again, Scylla and Charybdis: some of the stuff in these books seems too generic to bother incorporating or too specific.
Still, most of this is clearly written, with a good breakdown in sections (like a "legends/what people know" section and a "what's really going on" section -- though I think they really could use a slugline when they introduce each person and place so that the GM could easily look through and find what they need).
Again, I'm really not sure why I bought this bundle except as a historical artifact and it does a really good job of being from its time.
This bundle includes:
* four books in the Grimtooth series of traps (entire rooms, door traps, trapped items)
* a book of magical treasures and people who might have or want them
* seven books in the CityBook series, detailing locations and people in some generic city or location.
First, the obvious: these books show their age, notably both in style of play in the Grimtooth books (which comes straight from the Gygaxian, wargame-esque DM vs. the players style), and also in some of the depictions of characters (e.g., the Arab/Jew owner of the bazaar with his hooknose and penchant for backstabbing, all of the women who get some detail as to what sort of male adventurer they might flirt with or where they go skinnydipping). (There is also at least one example of the fantasy trope popular in the 80s of the person from our world.) (Also another marker of age: there's a hairstylist that feels like Warren Beatty from Shampoo (1975).)
Second, as generic books, these locations, people, and histories (in the CityBooks) here sometimes either go too generic (here's a few swords, each tied to an element, and here's a person who either has the sword or wants it for the PCs to get entangled with) or sometimes too specific (here's a history of the world involving titans and the stone that one eats). A lot of this is also due to the age of these books: maybe it's playing with tropes that don't feel tired out in RPGs because this was almost 40 years ago(!).
Third, much like the Over the Edge books that I recently reviewed, the authors of these CityBooks (and there are many since each location might be written by a different person) love to introduce new and strange things that may or may not fit in with the game that you're playing. The biggest offender here is the Sideshow citybook, which includes intelligent amoeba, gargoyle society, slug people (one of whom leads a revolutionary group called the Sliming Path, yech), raccoon people, dog people, cat people, etc. There's a lot of inventiveness here, but again, Scylla and Charybdis: some of the stuff in these books seems too generic to bother incorporating or too specific.
Still, most of this is clearly written, with a good breakdown in sections (like a "legends/what people know" section and a "what's really going on" section -- though I think they really could use a slugline when they introduce each person and place so that the GM could easily look through and find what they need).
Again, I'm really not sure why I bought this bundle except as a historical artifact and it does a really good job of being from its time.
July 30, 2017
What is nice about this series of books is that they were not written to any specific rule system. While they were inspired by the original D&D structure they are very open ended. Oh and mostly very deadly.
November 27, 2025
A tool for game play.
March 8, 2008
two words.. "Lobster Trap"
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews