I've been excitedly awaiting the arrival of my copy of Grimtooth's Traps from the Goodman Games Kickstarter, and yesterday, it was waiting for me on the porch! Sadly, the condition of the shipping box did not bode well...
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| This looks Grim...Get it? :-) |
I could see the contents through the hole in the box, and there looked to be at least some damage to the contents. My excitement quickly turned to dread. Thankfully, I had ordered the slipcover edition and upon opening the box discovered that the damage was limited to one corner of the slipcover case.
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| Not too badly damaged after all. |
Not too bad really, but still a bit disappointing. Of course it's not Goodman Games' fault that the postal service dropped the box out of a tree or something. :-) They've shipped me dozens of things of the years that showed up without issue, so I suppose I was overdue for something like this. The damage is only cosmetic, and probably not worse than what would have happened over years of use. I do hope though that my leather-bound edition of DCC 4th edition comes wrapped in bubblewrap or something. :-)
The good news is that the book itself is in great shape and the binding feels fantastic. I was a bit concerned about such a large book (620 pages), but the binding is solid, it opens nicely, and it lays surprisingly flat for its size. The pages are heavy and will probably stand up to a lot of flipping, which you will no doubt be doing in order to find the perfect death trap. Plain and simple, it's a quality book.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Grimtooth, the book is a book of traps. Mainly death traps. Nasty, tricky traps, the kind that make you late for dinner...forever. The book compiles all five of the original Grimtooth's Traps books as well as new material. If you need a trap for your dungeon, this is a great place to look.
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| Honestly, this might be the thing that I'm most excited about... |
The accompanying Module Grimtooth's Museum of Death,(a module done specifically for Dungeon Crawl Classics) looks to be a fun little romp through the notorious Grimtooth's base of operations. The module is for first level characters but the introduction amusingly states that:
"This adventure is designed for 20 to 30 Twenty-seventh level characters accompanied by a host of 50 seasoned mercenaries, 200 hirelings, 3 ox-drawn carts loaded with chickens, wooden poles cut to varying lengths, and several siege weapons"
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| It's quite a beefy book! |
Good stuff. I'd like to run my gaming group through this as a one-off, and if I do, I'll post about how it goes. Overall, shipping issues aside, I'm very happy that it has arrived in my hands. It is a lovely book that compiles all of the previous editions and then some into a single giant tome. If there is a drawback to it, it might be that it is so large that I would probably get a hernia trying to take it to gaming sessions. Of course it's really a design tool to be kept hidden from the prying eyes of players lest the surprise be lost, so that's really not a problem. If you love traps, I would highly recommend picking up a copy when it becomes available for regular sale.
