Before diving into this short compendium dedicated to the dangers that every adventurer may sooner or later have to face, especially if careless, I want to thank Menagerie Press for sending us a copy of Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards (D&D5e) so we can talk about it in this review.

If after this brief you are interested in purchasing it, you can find this manual on DrivethruRPG. The cost is approximately $27 for the physical version with the digital one added; if you are only interested in the digital version you can find it on the same site at around 12 dollars.

Mind the Step

Adventurers well know how easily they can come across unpleasant obstacles during the exploration of a dungeon or even just on a typical day looking for treasures. Whether it’s traps, curses or poisoning attempts, what matters is getting out alive so we can continue with our adventurous life.

To help us (or rather to help our Dungeon Master) we find Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards, Approximately 60 pages all dedicated to this topic. The authors Iam Pace, William Beers and William Murakami-Brundage offer each narrator ideas and suggestions to invent, propose and manage all those problems that serve to spice up our adventures.

The product is a practical compendium based on the Open Game License document of the 5th edition of the most famous role-playing game in the world.

A Valid Help for Every Narrator

When the characters run into a trap, the GM needs to know exactly how it works, and how the characters can spot it and possibly disarm or avoid it. The risk is that traps can make exploration boring if the characters analyze every single stone along their path. The authors of this compendium suggest how to make the most of every occasion to make these obstacles stimulating and a source of further play.

Moving from the type of approach to consider to the narrative tone to propose, the first chapter of this volume offers a vast range of suggestions for integrating traps into the plot. Dividing the text into paragraphs helps you immediately find what you are looking for. There are also a fair number of examples that are fundamental for putting what is proposed into practice.

The authors enjoy suggesting common methods for finding traps when exploring a dungeon. However, they also detail with a certain precision the possibility of including this type of impediment within a fight against the creatures of the dungeon itself.

The text is extensive enough to present a real panorama of events that can be achieved during an adventure and all the suggestions for best proposing them to your gaming group.

Mechanical Traps, Magic Traps and More Traps

The second and third chapters of this precious little volume are all dedicated to the different types of traps. In about twenty pages, the authors first analyze the mechanical traps and then the magical traps.

As we will see in this review, Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards explains step by step how to include a trap within our narrative. The fundamental first step is to consider a trap that is integrated with the environment in which it is located. In environments with specific climate characteristics, traps can even be part of the environment itself. For example, in the case of a winter dungeon, a floor that is a sheet of thin ice might hide a pit of frozen spikes or frozen water.

Another valid help, if the DM has a lack of imagination, is the list of tables to be able to randomly choose with a die the type of trap to trigger under the feet of our players.

The volume features 25 mechanical traps and 20 magical traps, listed in alphabetical order.

Each trap presented has a typology, difficulty level, a brief narrative description and a detailed explanation of how it works; starting from the trigger up to its effect, we also find suggestions for avoiding or defusing it.

The Hard Life of the Adventurer

However, the adventure is not made up of traps alone. Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards goes so far as to analyze in three chapters other obstacles that could arise on the characters’ path; we can find poisons, diseases, curses and more.

In twenty pages and four dedicated chapters, the authors present in a simple, clear and at the same time suggestive way how to include these elements in our adventures. The offer is broad, accompanied by practical tables and detailed descriptions of every type of danger or problem offered.

A classic canon in fantasy adventures is to come across a poison that cannot be cured traditionally. Although it may seem funny to have to attempt a search of this type in games where magic can resurrect the dead; the text suggests how the poison can have secondary effects on the memory of those victimized by it.

Diseases can be more subtle due to the incubation time. Unlike poisons, they may not have an immediate effect, so characters may not know where or when they were exposed to the contagion. Finding the start of a potential epidemic could be a valuable side quest for offering within a long campaign.

Likewise, our characters could instead encounter a curse; perhaps while exploring a dungeon, violating a temple or stealing a precious object from a place. Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards offers, in addition to a practical system for creating a curse that is well suited to our campaign, a list of 22 simple and major curses; in short, a nice list of troubles to throw at the most inconsiderate players.

Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards Aesthetics Review

Leafing through Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards you immediately realize how this manual has been designed for practical and immediate use. The index is concise and extremely precise, without frills and makes it immediately clear what the topics covered are and where to find them. The double-column printing and large, recognizable font help you quickly identify what you need, as well as being easy on the eyes. Tables are seamlessly integrated into the text and maintain the space of the text column. If I have to make a note on the choice of layout, it is the detail (which can be considered negligible) that the text is not justified.

The images, in colour in sandy tones and in black and white, never overwhelm the text. Instead, they emphasize the written part, providing visual suggestions to what is described on the pages. Generally speaking, we are not faced with a highly graphic manual. The images by Andrea Alemanno, Henriette Boldt, Luiz Prado, Dean Spencer and Nathanaël Roux add colour and particularity to a volume that would otherwise risk being too technical.

Conclusions of the Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards Review

To conclude this review I can say that Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards is a useful and easy-to-use book. The authors, in just over 60 pages, manage to provide material for many gaming sessions without ever falling into banality. Consultation is quick and functional; we find ourselves faced with a text that is not exclusively technical thanks to the narrative suggestions present in each proposed situation.

If you like placing small or large obstacles along the path of your adventurers and want to have fun exploiting the environment in which they find themselves, Careless Adventurer’s Guide to Hazards is definitely for you.

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