Two Dozen Nasty DM Tricks

[Jefe Bergenstein]

They write out their door opening SOPs.

Part of the point of the thread is how you resent player "comfort". If they're using SOP's, you metagame "tricks" to thwart it. Its laughably petty for someone in the control seat to do.

There are plenty of good traps. As much as I dislike parts of the Tomb of Horros, the bleeding wall trap is an excellent encounter trap - same goes for the crying eye trap in Mud Sorcerer's Tomb. The challenge of champions series are excellent puzzle solving exercises that dont devolve into requiring telepathy on the part of the players to avoid the "gotcha" nonsense that ultimately slows down the game.

But then again, I found Indiana Jones racing the boulder more fun and exciting than if he'd spent hours prodding each 5x5 square and sending in summoned animals...

 

[Pbartender]

But then again, I found Indiana Jones racing the boulder more fun and exciting than if he'd spent hours prodding each 5x5 square and sending in summoned animals...

This actually brings up an interesting point...

In my experiences with D&D, you usually don't get that sort of action with a trap. Nine times out of ten, the trap either gets discovered and disabled, or it doesn't get disabled and a simple deleterious effect happens and its over. *SNORE!* Boring.

I'd love to see more the kind of traps we saw in Indiana Jones... The traps are extensive and dangerous. Generally, he doesn't disable them he has to find a way to get by the trap without setting it off, or to avoid the effects of the trap after he sets them off (purposefully or accidentally). 4E traps seem to have taken a few steps that way, but I'd love to see more.

Last session, I had a swinging blades trap get set off, and having the PCs try to get past the trap or disable it while the blades were swinging past their noses was the most fun we'd had with a trap in a long time.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yes. But you declared that there existed some example of the play in question which was redudant, mindless, tedious, and boring. If I'm the example of play from which the behavior 'poking every tile with a stick' is drawn, then you have no examples where the play style is redundant, mindless, tedious, and boring. For as I said, I've never found a DM that required me to tediously say, "I poke the one on the right. Now the other one on the right. Then the other one.... Ok now the one on the left..." Declaring that I intended to poke the floor with a 10' pole while advancing is no more tedious than declaring that I intend to take 20 on a search check. What it is, that taking 20 with a search check isn't, is concrete.

The thing is, you either dick around with searching every square, or you just have to suck up the damage. If you do, the Asshat DM gets frustrated you're not taking enough damage for his liking, and starts having prodding with a 10 foot pole set off a trap 10 feet away (or take your choice from other examples herein designed to thwart SOP). Then the game slows down further to avoid more "gotchas".

If we're talking "realism", any high level mega dungeon would be so incredibly complex, you WOULD find specific doorknobs that required you to turn them a particular amount of a turn would open them, require verbal passwords to avoid invisible glyphs of warding etc. So much so that it would waste an inordinate amount of time as players try and avoid needless damage through simple movement.

 

[El Mahdi]

The thing about RBDMing is that the whole point is not to smash down the players, but to up the ante, to raise the stakes to where even a simple cash grab dungeon crawl is tense and exciting and *fun*.

This is it, right here. 100% absolutely perfectly stated.

This is where experience comes in also. It's a very fine line between smashing down the players and raising the tension level. The point is to do the latter without doing the former. Easier said than done sometimes, but that's the motivation. Not saying that there aren't DM's whose style is that "they are out to get the players". But I'd say that most probably don't play this way. As with most things, it comes down to intention and motivation. When I use tricks like in the OP, I'm using them to "raise the stakes", not because I'm out to get the players. I'm out to entertain and thrill the players. Dead characters can't be terrorized anymore so where's the fun in that?!

 

[Celebrim]

The thing is, you either dick around with searching every square, or you just have to suck up the damage. If you do, the Asshat DM gets frustrated you're not taking enough damage for his liking...

I could write a really long response to this, but it would be a waste.

Once you assert the existance of a bad DM, it's possible to demonstrate any style of play is badwrongfun. The DM is so important to play, that there is nothing that is bad DM proof.

My personal opinion is that once the party demonstrates that they have the means and will to defeat traps of a particular type, there is no need to play out every instance of it. If the method beats the trap, it beats the next 12 traps of that type as well and all I have to note is that you find them.

This has been my play experience as a player as well. The sort of play you assert is going on out there all the time because of 'Asshat DM's may happen for all I know, but as I far as I can tell it would be tedious and boring to force repitition like that for most DMs as well so I really doubt it's that common.

But who knows, maybe you've just had the bad luck to have a succession of really bad DM's.

 

[Celebrim]

I'd love to see more the kind of traps we saw in Indiana Jones... The traps are extensive and dangerous. Generally, he doesn't disable them he has to find a way to get by the trap without setting it off, or to avoid the effects of the trap after he sets them off (purposefully or accidentally).

Faced with the tomb Indiana Jones is raiding, most players would probably adopt very traditional find and disable methods for the traps. For example, no players I've ever had when faced with a room filled with dart traps would merely try to avoid them. Avoidance is something you do when you don't know what the trap does.

In Indy's case, he's already triggered one trap deliberately, using a variation of 'poke the trigger with a 10' pole' and has deduced that all the traps in the room are of the same type. Most PC's would then procede to disarm all the other traps in the room by the same method. They'd simply keep poking the stone triggers until they'd cleared a path across the room. The result of this is that when the PC's triggered the scenario trap at the end, evacuating the room would be easy and undramatic.

Likewise, most players would have found the rolling ball trap on the way in to the dungeon, and - unable to find the trigger for the trap - would still have taken similar steps to disable it - probably by pounding a series of iron spikes so as to wedge the deadfall in place. Again, when the scenario trap was triggered, evacuating the dungeon would be less dramatic.

Most PC's would also have taken steps to bridge the pit, for similar reasons, and some of them might have by being thurough even found the falling stone block trap and taken steps to disable the trap similar to the ones that they might try to disable the rolling block. In short, when the scenario trap was triggered, a typically skilled PC party would be able to evacuate the area without much drama because unlike Indiana Jones they would have taken great care to ensure that they had a get away plan.

The thing about dealing with traps is that in my experience, it has as often as not not meant risking a 'disable trap' roll whenever you can avoid it. Disable trap is very powerful, since it deals with almost anything, but since it involves recourse to the dice, it's also very risky. You use it only when you have no other choice.

Typically, when I search for traps it lets me find at the very least the trap's trigger. Often this is a trip wire, a trip snare, or some mechanism that goes off when weight is placed on it. In the case of a typical flagstone trigger mechanism, typically I won't bother trying to disable it at all. I'll simply (in character) take a peice of chalk out of my pocket and draw an outline around the dangerous tile in question, turn back to the party and say, "No one step in the square, ok?" Similar things apply to snares and trip wires. You don't disarm them, you simply avoid them.

Sometimes you can figure out what sort of trap you are dealing with. In the case of swinging or scything traps, disarming them is usually completely unnecessary. Generally you can just back off, set off the trap, and after observing the trajectory of the trap simply bypass it by crawling off to the side, ducking, jumping, or whatever is required. Only if evasion seems risky do you worry about trying to disable the trap, which you typically try to do in a posture such that even if you set the trap off you'll evade the effects.

In the case of pit traps, if you can, you bridge them or fill them in. Disabling the cover is usually a good idea so at the least you'll remember where it is. Often shallow ones can be traversed simply by going down to the bottom and climbing up the other side.

In summary, Indiana Jones evading traps and deliberately setting them off very much reminds me of how I as a player and the players I've had as DM deal with traps, with the exception that Jones is not nearly as methodical about it as most players (to his cost).

But perhaps Jones was under time pressure (racing to get there before the rival NPC).

Which brings up my last point, which is that Jones's DM is a total RBDM in that he completely screws Jones after Jones gets the McGuffin, not just once with the scenario trap, but at least twice (three times if you count the betrayal by his henchmen). I wonder how many players would be outraged if they grabbed the McGuffin and then after 'winning' faced the sort of obstacles that Jones faced.

 

[Reynard]

But perhaps Jones was under time pressure (racing to get there before the rival NPC).

Another important element of traps and tricks: they rarely occur without some form of context. A party certainly could spend hours or days moving at a snail's pace through a dungeon, searching every inch for traps and treasure, disarming each of the former and collecting all of the latter. But the realities of logistics (how much food do we have), danger (wandering monsters) and motivation (the virgin will be sacrificed by the light of the full moon -- tonight!) requires that the party not be hyper efficient. Sometimes, the players are going to have to play it quick and dirty and hope for the best.

In other instances, they let their guards down and that's how they get hit. that's why it is important to "season" adventures/dungeons with tricks and traps. If you overdo it, not only do you run the risk of creating players that do waste valuable table time "pixelbitching", you also undermine your own "gotcha" efforts.

As to ehren37's overall tone and content of his posts: we get it; you don't like this kind of play; moreover you think people that play like this are adolescent, petty and stupid. Thanks for your input.

 

[merelycompetent]

"So you are saying that this poison is in fact colorless, odorless, non-drying, non-evaporating, and doesn't loose potency with age....Great, this stuff could come in handy! I carefully collect as much of the stuff as possible and store it in this empty potion vial."

Heh! I had to learn the hard way just how resourceful players can be. Not only did some of them collect poisons for use against their opponents, they quickly suggested adapted rules for alchemy and potion-making so that they could produce their own antidotes and more of the poison! It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Getting all the components for some of the poisons turned into neat side-adventures and helped break up the adventure-of-the-week syndrome.

Here's a note to other DMs about these tricks and traps: Be prepared for your players to use components of them for themselves - like collecting the poison, storing the molds/slimes/jellies/oozes/puddings in empty glass jars for use as projectile weapons, dominating the exploding zombies and marching them back into a different BBEG's castle, or raising the BBEG's misbehaving children-puppies as guard dogs.

Turnabout is fair fun play.

 

[nonamazing]

In summary, Indiana Jones evading traps and deliberately setting them off very much reminds me of how I as a player and the players I've had as DM deal with traps, with the exception that Jones is not nearly as methodical about it as most players (to his cost).

But perhaps Jones was under time pressure (racing to get there before the rival NPC).

Hey! This has given me a great idea!

Jones is an archeologist, right? So while he wants the big golden macguffin (for various reasons) he also wants to keep the place as intact as possible, the better for other archeologists to examine later on. He doesn't disarm all the traps in the room because it could be valuable to examine a trap that is still active and armed after hundreds of years--how did they do it?

So here's the idea: what if the adventurers have to try and leave the dungeon as undisturbed as possible? Perhaps they are archeologists themselves, and want to leave things preserved for future study. Or perhaps a persnickety NPC follows the party around, keeping a careful accounting of the 'damage' they do and making deductions from their reward accordingly. The challenge then becomes avoiding and dealing with traps rather than simply breaking or smashing them.

 

[robertliguori]

Hey! This has given me a great idea!

Jones is an archeologist, right? So while he wants the big golden macguffin (for various reasons) he also wants to keep the place as intact as possible, the better for other archeologists to examine later on. He doesn't disarm all the traps in the room because it could be valuable to examine a trap that is still active and armed after hundreds of years--how did they do it?

So here's the idea: what if the adventurers have to try and leave the dungeon as undisturbed as possible? Perhaps they are archeologists themselves, and want to leave things preserved for future study. Or perhaps a persnickety NPC follows the party around, keeping a careful accounting of the 'damage' they do and making deductions from their reward accordingly. The challenge then becomes avoiding and dealing with traps rather than simply breaking or smashing them.

"Yeah, we heard how the persnickety guy has gone missing. Possibly he encountered a hazard while cataloging damage done to traps and caught a +3 Soul-Eater greataxe to the face, then ended up falling down a bottomless pit."

"...That sounds like an awfully specific happenstance."

"Yeah, well, dungeons are dangerous places. There are a lot of hazards in them that try to stop us from getting our loot. None have succeeded so far."

"...Huh."

"So, about our payment..."