#30 Traps for Tombs by T.H. Gulliver is a role playing game supplement published by Rite Publishing for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a 19 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $3.96 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Open Game License and two pages are ads.
The supplement starts with a quote from Howard Carter, the well-known one when the tomb of Tutankhamen was opened. Next is an in-character couple of paragraphs about the enclosed traps. This is followed by the Designer’s Note, which explains that the supplement actually contains 55 traps spread over several tombs; the reason for the extra is that many of the traps work together.
Rafikabeer, the Exalted Necropolis, is a fluff piece on the former city of Rafikabeer. Formerly a tribal marketplace, the people of Tamar took possession of the city after the Days of Dark Rain drove them from their homeland. This rain also polluted the river, and the residents grew strange and died. This began the process of converting the city into a necropolis. The provided traps can be left in the necropolis, or moved to a dungeon.
The first traps are the two bridges into the necropolis. Both are trapped. Next one of the primary tombs is detailed, the Tower of the Tamar Kings. This has a number of interconnected traps and is also mapped. There is another mapped location, the Tomb of King Dhakir Tamar. Another trap is the standard “giant rolling ball of stone” made most famous by Indiana Jones. This has a side plan and there is also a variant – a giant rolling ball of water. Which dumps the characters near some shocker lizards. Electricity and water do not go well together. The final mapped trap is the necromancer’s chessboard, which is based around a – big – game that used to be played.
The remaining traps are grouped into types, so there are a variety of pit traps, scythe traps, magical traps and more. Including such as animating mithril cages, traps that appear to have broken – but haven’t – traps that are designed to separate the thief from the rest of the party and a rather nasty one that teleports characters into a sarcophagus, and then may turn them into a mummy.
#30 Traps for Tombs in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked, although not necessarily in page order. The two locations and mapped traps have their own links but the rest are linked by CR, rather than where they appear in the supplement. This is a combination of useful and annoying; it’s useful to have the traps indexed by CR but it would also have been useful to have them linked by page. Both may not have been possible.
The text maintains a two column colour format and the only errors noticed were referring to the supplement as “#30 Tricky Traps” in a couple of places. There are the maps plus a handful of, by the looks of it, appropriate public domain images. Presentation is decent.
Whether or not a GM wants to drop the entire necropolis into a setting is up to them. This could be done with a bit of tweaking to the back-story, although it will need a map. The two mapped tombs can, with a little more fleshing out, function nicely as minidungeons. The traps that are not tied to a specific location can be dropped in anywhere, although the fluff text associating them with the necropolis is nice. There are seeds here that could be developed into a potentially deadly city of the dead. #30 Traps for Tombs is a nice collection and it can be found by clicking here.
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