A valuable item (adjust the price in gold pieces to whatever appropriately entices your players) is trapped in a block of magical ice.
The ice melts as normal if heated, but the loss of weight triggers the release of a suspended pendulum (a sickle) made of magical ice. This swings down at any...
I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian series. Along with the Tarzan series, I used to read Conan stories while visiting my grandparents, because my grandfather had a vast collection of dime novels stashed away in his workshop.
Today, I think many people associate Conan, or ind...
Upon triggering, the floor in the affected area collapses into a chasm, except for a very narrow balance beam in the center. Characters may roll Dex, Saving Throws, or use some sort of acrobatic skill to grab hold of the beam before falling (GM's choice). After this, walking across the beam will re...
I stumbled across a little one-issue zine called A Quick Primer for Old-School Gaming today. It's maybe 12 pages long, and it is an *excellent* book on [tabletop] RPG gaming. If you're a fan of OSR, or if you're just curious about the history of RPG and how it influences games and gamers today,...
If you're in the mood for some classic RPG adventuring, look no further!
Brent P. Newhall is an astonishingly prolific creator of games, game materials, blogs, and more, who has, among many other clever things, produced a charming little high fantasy role-playing game called Dungeon Raid...
A pressure plate causes itself as well as every second tile in the room (in the pattern of a chessboard) to quickly elevate, lifting anyone standing on one 20 feet into the air.
This presents the players with at least 3 options:
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If a creature on the pressure plate jumps down, taking fal...
A player falls into a pit that is a chute into an automated mummy-wrapping machine. Player takes no falling damage, because player falls into wrapping material, but for the same reason feather fall has no effect on the result of this trap: the player is bound from head to toe in cloth wrappings a...
Unwholesome Blades come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from that of dagger size, up to (rarely) that of a two-handed sword. These foul weapons will inflict the usual amount of damage to enemies for their weapon type, but also have two other characteristics in common: they are +1 to Hit and Damag...
The owner of this talisman gains +10 temporary HP.
Once the temporary HP is depleted, the player immediately suffers -2 CON. This effect is permanent until removed by remove curse, limited wish, wish, or similar.
The talisman's curse is single-use. Once the -2 CON has been bestowed...
Upon triggering, variously colored beams of powerful magical energy flash on from hidden locations in the walls and ceiling. Each beam has a different effect. Characters may attempt to evade (AC, Dex, or Saving throw, GM's choice). Anyone hit rolls 1d6:
1 -- Petrification Ray Turned to sto...
It's fun to use magick in a game like D&D, and it's arguably even more fun to use it in a techno-centric cyberpunk world like Starfinder or Shadowrun, but in the real world anything that looks like magick can be pretty frustrating. That's because magick is something no one can ever hope to understa...
These horns always come in identical pairs, one of which is quite useful, while the other is cursed. Known properly as Anchored Signal Horns, these items radiate powerful magic if tested for, but no amount of testing will reveal a cursed from a non-cursed one. They can be plain, or ornately worke...
Open the door labeled OBSCURA, and players are met with a bright flash of lights. Players with 15 ft of the door (or 1d4 players, if you're not tracking player position on a grid) are blinded for 1d20 minutes.
Furthermore, the room is a camera obscura and creates a magical duplicate of the p...
A Romance of Two Worlds by Maria Corelli provides you with so much to think about, your mind will be racing for the duration of each chapter. The obvious thing you'll be thinking about is the story as presented: a musician goes abroad in an attempt to rest and recover from depression and illness....
Upon triggering, a perfectly spherical boulder of enormous size either falls off a pedestal, or comes out from a hidden panel, and rolls towards the characters. They may attempt to get out of the way, using Dex, AC, or Saving throws (GM's choice), or they may try to outrun it (50-50% chance of succ...
This appears as a well-made long sword that radiates strong magic if checked for. Early tests will show that it endows the wielder with +2 to both Hit and Damage.
When first used in actual combat, the wielder must roll a Saving Throw vs. Magic, or else see their opponent(s) as their party-membe...