Flying Buffalo Citybooks, Grimtooth's Traps and Mercenaries Spies & Private Eyes

Voros · July 19, 2017, 03:03:57 AM

All up on Bundle of Holding. The Citybooks have some fine designers contributing include Jacquays, Stackpole and DiTillo. And Grimtooth's are nostalgia city.

RPGPundit · July 21, 2017, 02:50:11 AM

You know, I don't think I ever looked at any Flying Buffalo product other than Tunnels & Trolls (the main book).

I always assumed Grimtooth's traps would be ridiculous comedy-traps or ridiculously complex 'mousetrap!' style stuff for some reason. Probably because of how tongue-in-cheek T&T is.

Voros · July 21, 2017, 03:01:29 AM

As I recall they were mostly for laughs but I've heard of some DMs actually using them.

Larsdangly · July 21, 2017, 01:17:23 PM

No, Grimtooth's traps is a good resource. There are like a billion volumes of this series and it all got progressively more silly as time went on, but the early volumes are mostly good idea. They tend to be clever and interesting (you don't need a book to get an idea for a trap that is just a covered hole in the ground). But most of them are physically plausible, or at least cool (which is even more important).

ffilz · July 21, 2017, 01:21:34 PM

The City Books are great too. I haven't used them recently, but they have a prime spot on my bookshelf. I've debated whether I want to shell out $20 to get digital versions of all of them (with the bonus other stuff).

Frank

JeremyR · July 21, 2017, 06:55:25 PM

Using the Grimtooth stuff is a great way to end up having no players in your game. As essentially you are requiring your players (not their characters) to be fantasy trap experts, as opposed to just displaying common sense.

I like the city books though. Probably not too useful for a D&D world, but a good read.

Despite having T&T and playing it a few times, I could never really figure out MS&PE. It's simple rules, awfully written.

Skarg · July 21, 2017, 07:06:24 PM

I have one of the Grimtooth's Traps books (I think the second one, "Traps Too") and I was highly entertained when I was 15, as there are clever bits, but I soon realized that I would use pretty much nothing from it, as yeah it is mostly surreal evil DM tricks of the "the universe is out to kill you in ridiculous prank ways" variety. Also of course it has the pitfall of if your players read it, they'll probably recognize the source of any of the elaborate crazy tricks, and/or react with OOC knowledge during play. But if you want to see some creative crazy ideas for surreal dungeon trap/trick ideas, it's certainly got that.

RPGPundit · July 23, 2017, 10:30:39 PM

Ah, well, glad to see my intuition was correct then.

Toadmaster · July 24, 2017, 01:29:47 AM

Thanks, I've been meaning to pick up another copy of MSPI, I lost my original at some point. This is a perfect excuse to do so. Agree that Grimtooth's Traps were largely over the top, although amusing. I only had one of the city books but as I recall they were pretty decent and handy for filling in some of the more mundane details a GM could find a need for.

RPGPundit · July 26, 2017, 01:23:58 AM

What were the city books about?

Hermes Serpent · July 26, 2017, 03:41:55 AM

The books are basically loads of NPC's and shops with associated adventure hooks.
Book 1 was Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker with (quoting the cover) 25 establishments and 75 fully described NPC's.
Book 2 was Port O'Call with 22 seaside businesses and over 70 fully described NPC's.
Book 3 was Deadly Nightside with 18 nightside businesses and more than 60 fully described NPC's

you get the idea. Basically the same sort of thing as the Judge's Guild material in bite sized chunks. It was all system free so you could put the shops and NPC's into any system. That was a very popular at the time as was material with stats for various games (D&D, T&T, C&S and RQ).

RPGPundit · July 29, 2017, 01:17:30 AM

Ah OK, so they weren't actual fantasy cities but rather stuff you find in cities. Gotcha.