Crocodile Tears - Tomb Thoughts #2

Classic Axebeak illustration...

As previously mentioned, I'm getting the chance to play in a 5th Edition D&D campaign for the first time in a while. Thomas is being kind enough to run Tomb of Annihilation and I'm chronicling my thoughts here in "Tomb Thoughts".

We had our second session and I continued to strive towards being the over-achieving player that as a DM I want to see out in the world. Continuing from my player notes from last time, I also added an inventory spreadsheet for the group as I compiled my notes from our second session. Taking notes as a player reminds me that I really do need to set up my tablet and bluetooth keyboard and practice at typing on that as the most painful thing about taking notes has been transcribing them from a notebook to the google document.

Spoilers ahoy in the rest of my thoughts on the session, so if you don't want to take a chance of any Tomb of Annihilation spoilers, do not read past the break...

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You have been warned, spoilers follow...

Burnt Boots of the Trapfinder - Weird Magic Item #9

Inspired by the incredibly excellent Weird Magic Item generator over at Donjon.bin.sh, I've been coming up with a few of my own system agnostic weird magic items to put in the many games I run, be they 13th Age or Beyond the Wall...

Eventually I want to try and put them into a randomizer, but I need to generate a few first. I'm going to try and post one every other Wednesday. Please let me know if you end up using an item I've created in your own game. You can find the entire series here...

Antagonist Relations Weird Magic Item Generator Presents...

Burnt Boots of the Trapfinder

Haunted by the unusually greedy ghost of a particularly unlucky thief, these shiny black leather boots smell slightly of burnt leather and flesh, and cannot be worn. Instead, they can be set on the ground in a room, corridor or other discrete area and activated by paying the ghost's price. Once the price is paid, the boots traverse the corridor or room and trigger any traps that would be set off by a person walking, standing or entering a trigger area. The price begins at 10gp and doubles each subsequent time the party calls upon the boots. The price must be put into the empty boots and disappears to the ghost's ethereal hoard, but it can be paid in any form, be it coin, raw gems or items worth at least the price (though the boots never make change, even when grossly overpaid). The boots can never be destroyed, except by a sphere of annihilation or other potent disintegration, but they do show appropriate damage. For instance, if the boots are used to trigger a spray of acid, they would be visibly singed by the caustic spray. Any damage slowly disappears over a 24 hour period until the boots are once again a pair of shiny black leather boots. It is rumored that the same unlucky thief once had a pair of gloves, but no one has seen them (or at least admitted so).

Thought of the Day... #1 - Traps with consequences for Disarming

Here is a "Though of the Day" that's completely unrelated to any Death Trap Dungeons I'm currently designing (I swear), but wouldn't a clever/evil/spiteful creator of a dungeon make traps that have secondary traps that are only triggered when they're disarmed?

Like, if the flame nozzle trap is disarmed, part of disarming it releases Rust Monsters digestive juices ruining the specific thief's tools being used?

I really like this idea because it makes use of a couple good Dungeon World moves:

• Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities (The thief gets to find and disarm a trap, like a badass)
• Use up their resources (Even bypassing the trap has a consequence)
• Offer an opportunity, with or without cost (If the thief realizes that disarming the flame nozzles might mean not disarming a trap later in the dungeon, will the thief/party decide that they're going to try and figure out the timing and dash through instead of disarming the trap?)

Traps are one of the things I struggle most with in Dungeon World, so this realization, while it might not fit every trap, does give me an option for when PCs are deep in a dungeon designed by an insane and powerful spell-caster or his followers.