Ahhh, Grimtooth’s Traps. The ultimate screw-your-players book. If you see this on a DM’s shelf, it should make your blood run cold. You should probably run.

A generic fantasy RPG supplement from 1981, it is presented as the work of a particularly devious troll guiding you through some of his favorite and most devious traps. Which is a bit of an understatement. These traps are almost universally deadly and worse, undetectable. Which is to say: totally unfair in a game context.

Which is the point. Grimtooth’s Traps is trolling (bonus points for trolling with an actual troll 15 years before the internet) hardcore tournament-style dungeon crawls that encouraged an adversarial relationship between the DM and the players, and it does so beautifully. Look at these traps! They are equal parts vicious and ridiculous – elaborate Rube Goldberg machines of death you couldn’t possibly prepare for as a player. I don’t know if I would be able to describe most of them in a game context. They are so outrageous that using even one in a game would risk players walking out.

Steven Crompton’s art is a real selling point for me. He has a real talent for depicting hapless adventurers, even when they’re essentially stick figures.