Five tricks and traps for your game

1. Mirror spear: A long mirror is placed on a false wall. Behind the mirror is a spring loaded spear trap, 3 spears (3ft in length), each arranged to hit the average human, dwarf or halfling in the face. A pressure plate at the door of the mirror releases the spring, send the three spears through the back of the mirror and into the viewer. Works best if you write a load of nonsense on the mirror so the victim has to closely inspect it.

2. Poison Statue: A false door is installed with a brick wall behind it. A statue is placed in the centre of the room, its eyes and mouth hollow. Inside the statue is a cannister of paralysing gas. A wire runs from the door, under the floor, up the statue and around a cork top on the cannister. When the door is opened, the cork pops out and gas spills into the room, paralysing all and sundry.

3. False lava: A cute play on the old checkerboard trap. A 50x50 checkerboard forms the floor. Many of the checks are red hot lava, while others appear to be cool stone you could jump on. Not so. As an illusion placed on the room by a crystal chandelier, the spaces that appear to be lava are actually safe, while those that look like stone are boiling lava. Smashing the chandelier breaks the illusion.

4. Magnetic inferno: A trophy is loaded onto a pedestal, with wires running around the room and through the trophy, creating a circuit. The ceiling is metal and electromagnetic. Attached to the ceiling are 100 small metal balls full of oil. Two burning torches on the walls are also magnetised. When the trophy is picked up, the circuit is broken and the balls fall, breaking and spilling oil everywhere. The torches also fall, igniting the oil and the floor of the room. Place two more trophies near the circuit trophy to add some extra peril.

5. Sponge walls: a short corridor has sponge walls. Behind each wall are a series of cauldrons on shelves. When a pressure plate in the corridor is pushed, the wooden legs holding the cauldrons up fall down and the water flows into the sponge walls, causing them to rapidly expand, smothering anyone in the corridor.