Early in the days of d20, AEG started producing those little half-page sized mini-adventure booster things. Soon after, Fantasy Flight started doing them too. Later. AEG put out one of the first d20 rulebooks, Dungeons. Now, Fantasy Flight puts out Traps & Treachery. It's as though there's nothing AEG does that Fantasy Flight won't also try. There's just one difference.

The Fantasy Flight stuff is actually good. Now, their mini-module adventures weren't fabulous, but they were considerably better than the hastily thrown together AEG products. But their first major release, Traps & Treachery is a proud addition to my gaming shelf. You should go and buy this book.

What do you get for your 25 bucks (American)? Chapter One is all about rogues. It's got some material on creating guilds, and some lackluster prestige classes and feats. But that's not why you're buying this book. You're buying it for Chapters Two through Five.

The whole rest of the book is like a monster manual for traps. I describe it that way because that's exactly how I described this idea to the folks at Wizards of the Coast when I pitched the idea for this very book. They thought it was a poor idea. I have the urge to take this book and show them the great, meaty traps section with its cool illustrations and say, "See, this is what I meant. This is really cool." But enough about that. Back to Traps & Treachery.

There are about 60 fully described traps in this book. If you remember the old "Grimtooth's Traps" products, you'll get a feeling of nostalgia as you page through this section (which takes up most of the book). The big difference is, here the traps are all lovingly statted out according to the d20 rules, along with damage, Search DCs, Disable Device DCs, CRs, construction time and cost -- everything you need (and theCRs are much more accurate than the old Grimtooth skull ratings). Some of the traps are kinda silly, but even if you use only half -- or a quarter -- of the traps in this book, you'll still be happy. Plus, after the traps (which are divided into mechanical and magical sections) comes a section on puzzles: riddles, device-based puzzles, word puzzles, math puzzles and (of course) chess-based puzzles. This is fun reading, and most of it would add a lot to a game session if you incorporated it.

So, if this book is so great, why not give it five stars? Well, it's not perfect. Like I mentioned earlier, the prestige classes are neither innovative nor well-constructed. The new NPC class, the thug, is really just a poor rogue, and there's really not much need for that (and it reinstates that old term "backstab" into the game, which also wasn't needed). Many of the feats are fine, but none of them will knock your socks off except for the ones that are probably too good, like Improved Range Sneak Attack and Improved Sneak Attack (the former breaks the 3rd Edition idea that fine precision is impossible at a distance, and the latter doesn't have prerequisites to justify its benefits). And the real shame of this material is that it takes up pages that could have been filled with more traps and puzzles.

But these are minor, minor points. Traps & Treachery is a good book. Buy it.

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