4 Responses to “Quick GM Tip: Published Adventures are Booby Trapped!”

1. Ivywu says:

   Cool!

   May 21st, 2025 - 7:56 am
2. Mary Kuhner says:

   I’ll never forget the 3rd Edition module which said, “The villain has a very special reason for trying to capture the PCs which will be revealed in Chapter 5.”

   There were only 4 chapters, and no reveal in any of them.

   May 29th, 2025 - 11:34 pm
3. Justin Alexander says:

   There were a bunch of D20 that promised to reveal the “shocking truths” that would explain what the heck was happening in “the next volume”… except, they never published the next volume.

   Along similar lines, there’s also the infamous Sandman: Map of Halaal from Pacesetter Games, which offered a $10,000 prize to the first person to guess the identity of the bad guy before the third installment of the trilogy was published.

   June 1st, 2025 - 3:52 am
4. Highbrowbarian says:

   My all-time favorite example of this is The Cackler, from Deadlands.

   Introduced in 2000 as the terrible mastermind behind a conspiracy. That supplement (The Black Circle) talked a lot about the different parts of the conspiracy, but outright told the GM to not use The Cackler himself in their campaign yet. He was coming, they said. Just wait until we tell you more.

   And tell us more they did. EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER.

   To the credit of the writer, Shane Hensley, two decades had given him the perspective to realize that the correct format for an unstoppable god-NPC is a graphic novel, not an RPG adventure. But still, a hilarious cautionary tale for anyone willing to wait for the writer to eventually give them the tools to actually use a game.

   June 2nd, 2025 - 11:34 am

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