Dungeons and Dragons has the perfect formula to facilitate creation. It’s easy for supplemental books, appendixes, and guides to build upon what already exists, offering more and more options for adventures, characters, and encounters. This new supplement, Jarlaxe’s Guide to Traps, provides Dungeon Masters with help in one of the most difficult aspects of running a dungeon: creating a trap.
This 89-page supplement is edited by RP Davis and was compiled with writers Jeromy Schulz-Arnold, Ken Carcas, D.W. Dagon, Justin Handlin, Bryan Holmes, Hal Howard, and Noel Proulx. In addition to covering the basics of traps and a strategy for using them, it contains multiple types of traps ready for use in-game. This includes easy mechanical traps, “red herring” traps, lethal traps, and even ones to cripple players’ advantages during a dungeon delve. It also details ways to disarm, dispel, or circumvent the traps so that Dungeon Masters are prepared for their cleverest of players.
This sourcebook is particularly nice because it can be hard to continually create fresh traps for Dungeons and Dragons. The Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide help outline the basics with a few examples, but once players encounter their fifth dungeon, things run the risk of becoming predictable. Tripwires and secret levers are easy go-to’s, but players can come to expect these. More complex puzzles spice things up. It is also helpful to have a supplement written by other Dungeon Masters with play-tested traps that make sense for different levels.
Dungeons and Dragons players can purchase this guide on DM’s Guild. A PDF costs $9.95. There is also a softback edition for $17.95, with a current sale running of $15.95. If you want both the PDF and the softcover (because who doesn’t like to have a physical copy to flip through?), the price runs at $27.90. Although the current sale is for a reduced price of $17.95
