Quote Originally Posted by Cuddly View Post
Heh, map related story:
In an old 2ed game, the party map maker suddenly keeled over dead, without warning, in a dungeon crawl. One minute he was busily scratching away at the map, and the next he was as cold and stiff as the flagstones he collapsed on.

Course, the party's like "wtf?" and goes to get his map. Then that character falls down dead. More than half the party died looking at that map before one character gets the idea to hold the map up to the light and look through it, backwards. It was a death rune.

Turns out the whole dungeon had been in the shape of a death rune, and by slowly tracing the steps of the dungeon and muttering the cryptic phrases found etched on walls, the cartographer had inadvertently scribed one.
Best story EVER!

I second the advice that what they're doing is perfectly normal. What did you expect?

I vote against the "screw your players more" advice that has been given. Just make sure several letters in a row don't blow up on an NPC(or whoever). Unless you have been doing other untoward things to them, they will probably eventually decide to start reading themselves again eventually. At which point you should not immediately lace another note with explosive runes. Why is there so much DM-player antagonism?

I thought this might be about water. Are your players afraid of water?