The Game Master's Book of Traps, Puzzles and Dungeons: A punishing collection of bone-crunching contraptions, brain-teasing riddles and ... RPG adventures (The Game Master Series)

Jeff Ashworth and his team have done it again with this beautiful tome of traps and puzzles. While there are many gaming resources dedicated to monster stat blocks and literally infinite dungeon maps thanks to random generators, comparatively little attention has been paid to non-combat challenges parties might face. This book remedies that handily with hundreds of pages of traps and riddles DMs can draw inspiration from.There is a broad range of different resources here ranging from a list of riddles and instructions on how to encrypt a message to maps, rollable tables, scenarios, and even entire one-shots. As with Ashworth’s other resources, the book is best thought of as a jumping-off point and he rightly encourages reskinning the content to fit. I would suggest reading through and modifying favorites ahead of time rather than attempting to employ one of these on the fly given the risk of accidentally murdering your party, but a table is provided for picking a trap room at random if you’ve got a lot of confidence in your players (or at least in their Constitution and Intelligence modifiers).The book itself is well-designed with lovely illustrations and well-keyed maps. I also like the thoughtful touch that, as with previous volumes, “Traps, Dungeons, and Puzzles” is precisely the same dimensions as standard D&D books and sits handsomely next to them on a bookshelf.Not everything in here will be suitable for every party. I know, for instance, the cipher puzzles and codes would be a little too dense as written for the pacing at my table. But even these could be modified, simplified, and used in some creative way to break up the hacking and slashing.Highly recommend any DM looking to deepen and enrich their quests pick up this volume.

I have been a Dungeon Mistress for MANY years, and sometimes it is taxing to come up with new ideas for a campaign. This book was a lot of fun to use. It would work as well for a novice gamer as it would for a seasoned veteran. The maps are clear and a great time saver, and the traps were nicely interesting. I will definitely be putting this book to good use.

I have 5 of these "Game Master's Book of" books and they're great supplements for DMs/GMs. They're fun and great quality books.

I'm writing this review in the Traps/Puzzles book listing, but it's really for all three of Jeff's books: NPC's, Random, and this one, Traps/Puzzles.Easily the highest quality 3rd party books for D&D 5e! The hard covers, binding, page quality, printing... everything about these books screams high quality. They're hitting way above their class at this price. Very impressive and I'm quite satisfied...you will be too.These books are an amazing repository of useful information, for the DM who can play it on the fly, link adventures together. These 3, combined with Candlekeep, Yawning, and Saltmarsh will give you years and years of useful diversions, side quests, links to bigger main adventures (Strahd, Waterdeep, Mad Mage, Tomb, etc) for any DM running campaigns. Add in the upcoming Spelljammer and Radiant, and you'll have everything you need to flesh out, add in, sideline...everything to keep your adventurers involved, motivated, entertained, and most importantly, coming back!Get all three of Jeff's books: Traps/Puzzles, NPC's, and Random Encounters. They each have a nice set of One-Shots too, so add that to your Candlekeep/Yawning/Saltmarsh library and you're all set. Each book is literally stuffed with what is promised by the title, all easy to use and simple to modify to fit wherever you're using it.

Full of plenty good premade puzzles, makes working out new puzzles on the fly easier

Came very quick! Great job! Very cool book.

The absolute perfect guide for attentive dungeon crawlers, the traps carry a deviously unbelievable amount of simplicity while being simple in construction and easy to hide. Also makes all the classic pitfall esc traps work again on higher level parties.

I really like the art style and design of this book. Last night I gave my party the "Sphinx of Black Quartz" gateway puzzle. They loved it. Unfortunately, there was a printing error The answer in part is listed as "...must FIrst be..." However the runes read, "...must MUrst be..." It is in both the typed version and the image next to it. Mildly disappointed but not enough not to give it a 5 star.