D&D 5E Why traps in D&D usually suck

[Li Shenron]

Great thread!

Personally I love traps and puzzles. Minor traps can be placed safely (!?) and just let them be handled with checks, but the most interesting traps are indeed those who are turned into a puzzle, so that they are an encouter of their own.

Actually I don't think the OP's orbs-searching puzzle was a bad idea at all. Probably what went wrong is that (1) the search itself was dependent on search checks instead of players' decisions, and (2) there was no way around the puzzle. These two combined, it means that the DM at some point has to give up and just let the PCs succeed, which raised the question why having the puzzle at all.

But what if instead the 'search' had included something like these:

- the red orb is already in the possession of the PCs (as a puzzle kick-off: they notice the similar shape and size with the lock -> they try to put the red orb in -> first lock element opens -> they get confirmation this is how they will open the whole thing)
- the white orb belongs to the village stingy ol' pawn broker, do you ask him to sell it to you, or do you try less gentle alternatives?
- the blue orb is hidden in a fairly obvious location, maybe there is a clearly visible set of vases in a room that are there for no apparent reason, the players just need to have the idea of checking them out (spice it up with some vases containing a venomous snake or a fake orb)
- the green orb was previously clearly seen embedded into the collar of a guarding/wandering beast: do you go killing the beast or find a more peaceful way to get it?

Each one of these could be a mini-quest or encounter on its own, with multiple possible solutions. In the worst case, if they can't solve the whole puzzle at least the mini-quests should be interesting on their own.

In general, I want to avoid showstoppers i.e. traps or puzzles that must be solved otherwise the whole adventure cannot proceed. If you do use them, then you just have to let the PCs win. It might not always be a bad thing! For instance, even if you guarantee that the PCs will complete all the orbs quests, it doesn't mean they won't be fun, and it doesn't mean you have to let them know that you will effectively let them win

Otherwise, use traps and puzzles only to block non-essential goodies. A puzzle that opens up a small stash of magic potions, or extra treasure, or another boon (e.g. a map of the current location), does not have to be solved at any costs. If they solve it, they get the goodie, otherwise they can just move on.

As a final remark about puzzles, sometimes I have really used some challenging ones that can take hours to solve. Obviously, don't give these puzzles in the middle (or at the beginning) of a gaming session. Try to give them out at the end, and tell the players that they have time until the next session to solve them It's a kind of homework, but if you have at least a player or two that love puzzles, they will solve it of course, and they will feel very satisfied when you tell them that it was the correct solution. Players who aren't interested, they won't bother and let the others do the job. Only if you really have nobody interested in this sort of thing, then it won't work, so in general you should at least know your own players a little bit

That's meta-gaming. In a role-playing game, the PLAYERS don't exist.

I don't mind very much...

Solving the story or an investigation case isn't that different from solving a puzzle or trap, and in those cases you don't expect such deep level of RP immersion that players would choose not to understand something about the story on the ground that their PCs shouldn't understand it.

It might be a possible gamestyle of its own, but it has a major drawback: a clever player can choose to play dumb to better portray her Barbarian PC, but a dumb player cannot choose to play clever to better portray her Wizard PC!

So for me it is acceptable (and should be encouraged) that all players play as smart as they can. If a player purposefully does something stupid "because my Int 3 Half-Orc Barbarian would do so", I accept it (and maybe even reward it with Inspiration).

But I also have to accept that it is incredibly horrible for a player to feel she has to shut up when she has a good idea about story/investigation/puzzles, just because her PC's Int is low. So if I put a puzzle/trap in my game, I expect everybody to contribute to its solution, just like they are allowed to discuss out-of-character about the story.

 

[iserith]

Here is my process for presenting traps:

1. When describing the environment, telegraph some element of the trap.

2. Ask the players, "What do you do?"

3. Narrate the results of their actions, sometimes calling for ability checks whenever they do something with an uncertain outcome.

4. Describe the environment again in light of any new information.

5. Go back to #2 and repeat until the challenge is won or lost.

At no point do I give even a single flumph about "metagaming." I'm boiling down what the players are saying to goals and approaches and determining whether or not there is uncertainty while describing and narrating in an evocative manner. Simple. Effective. And if a player wants to play dumb or reckless according to established personality traits, ideals, bonds, or flaws, I have the Inspiration mechanic to reward them. Otherwise, how things turn out with this trap is on their smarts as players with their character builds as back up when their approach to a goal falls short of certain success while avoiding certain failure.

 

[Bawylie]

You know why traps suck too often? Because they treat our players like the Wet Bandits from Home Alone.

That's entertaining to watch from the kid's perspective. It's hell if you're a bandit though.

These kinds of blunder-into-a-landmine style traps are realistic enough, I guess. But realistic isn't enough.

We have to think of these things as game elements. Like any monster or scenario. It isn't enough to simply have a pile of mechanics. There has to be a challenge, by which, the players' decisions can effect the outcome.

Rolling a spot check isn't a decision. That's how a decision to look for something is resolved. This is an important difference. "Dice in / results out" gets you the type of play seen in the OP.

So you've got to basically be asking yourself "why kind of challenge does this trap represent? How tough? What's it here to do? What will it do to the players if given the chance? What can they do to stop it? What clues to stopping it will they have?"

I mention clues because it's important. A hobgoblin wearing plate armor is different than one in leather. You'd use different tactics to fight them. Maybe aoe spells on the plate one and melee attacks on the lightly armored one. Their choice of weapon is a clue. An axe or a bow tells you how they're going to fight.

Likewise your traps will need some clue as to how they work. Obvious clues, not "gated behind a spot check" clues.

When you've got all these things designed together with purpose as a game element AND a trap in mind, you're probably good to go.

But you can't treat your players like the wet bandits. It just isn't fun.

(I'm not even touching the metagame poop here. As a DM, you need to concern yourself with the metagame when you design the game. At the very least, you need to consider the play experience and weigh your design against your desired experience. During play, whatever whatever. To each their own. But don't ignore good design bc "metagaming is cheating.")

 

[ExploderWizard]

That's meta-gaming. In a role-playing game, the PLAYERS don't exist.

If you think that traps and puzzles are boring, then you don't have to include them, but asking the PLAYER to do something rather than the CHARACTER is missing the whole point of a role-playing game.

Proficiencies exist for a reason. It is no more reasonable for a stupid barbarian to cleverly bypass a trap, in spite of low Intelligence and no training in thieves' tools, than it is reasonable for an ugly barbarian to negotiate passage from hostile guards in spite of low Charisma and non-proficiency in Persuasion. It shouldn't matter if the PLAYER is a mechanical engineer or a stand-up comedian, because the PLAYER isn't actually there!

Using player ability, which the character does not possess, is not very satisfying for that player or anyone else at the table. It is cheating, and any accomplishments achieved by doing so are rendered meaningless.

That's to say nothing of fairness or balance, where the knowledgeable player has significantly more agency and commands significantly more of the spotlight than anyone who lacks the ability to supersede the character sheet. Ability scores and proficiencies are supposed to mean something.

I think most sane persons would think you have this backwards. Players are the real live people you gather together with to play games and have fun. They are the only ones that really matter. A character is a fictional construct used in the playing of a game. As such it cannot have fun, feel satisfaction for accomplishing anything, or really do any thing without the player really. The player however, can do all of these things and much more without a character.

Playing the game the way that you describe results in the one thing that renders play meaningless - the people actually playing don't matter. Who cares if Bob doesn't show up. We have trained a monkey to roll dice and are good to go. A game is entertainment for people so people need to matter. A character won't feel marginalized if its contributions are meaningless because it it just some notes and numbers on a sheet of paper. A person can feel that.

In order to remain interesting, a game needs to mentally engage the player. The players are the ones who come up with ideas to solve problems, and make decisions. A character cannot do that. The game became popular because of the limitless application of human creativity and imagination.

How does this relate to puzzles and traps?

Puzzles and traps, like everything else, are challenges faced by the players in the game through the medium of their characters. Such challenges are meaningless to a character due to its inability to think. This is why puzzles and traps that are resolved by a die roll or two are so unsatisfying to to a player. The player has no input into the solution it is simply a binary pass/fail obstacle with odds determined by the skills of the character. The character, alas, cannot feel excited to have solved anything so the whole process becomes a rather hum drum affair with the player mentally checking out while going through the rote die roll motions to solve the challenge. Every challenge becomes the exact same. Play which is suppose to engage creativity and imagination is instead turned into a routine script or subroutine:

> Examine obstacle
>Determine identity of avatar with highest relevant solving skill
>Modify highest relevant skill via aid, guidance, etc.
>Employ modified skill to situation.
> Solve obstacle. Pass/Fail?
> If Pass run <High Five> protocol
> If Fail then check for repeat <Yes/No>
>If No<End Sub>
>If Yes repeat program.
>Replace line 2 with <Determine identity of avatar with next highest relevant solving skill>
>End sub

Whew! Pretty exciting stuff. Just thinking about that makes me want to start playing Candy Crush or even watch a lolcat video rather than pay attention to whats happening. Here we have character skill determining everything. The player meanwhile, can just run the program and find something else to occupy the craving for mental stimulation. Not exactly what I would call an engaging experience for the player.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So for me it is acceptable (and should be encouraged) that all players play as smart as they can. If a player purposefully does something stupid "because my Int 3 Half-Orc Barbarian would do so", I accept it (and maybe even reward it with Inspiration).

But I also have to accept that it is incredibly horrible for a player to feel she has to shut up when she has a good idea about story/investigation/puzzles, just because her PC's Int is low. So if I put a puzzle/trap in my game, I expect everybody to contribute to its solution, just like they are allowed to discuss out-of-character about the story.

Is it satisfying for anyone when the Wizard repeatedly fails to remember any clues in an investigation, and can't solve the simplest of puzzles, only for the Paladin or Barbarian to repeatedly save the day? Because in my book, that's bad role-playing; the dumb character shouldn't be shown to reliably out-think the smart character. Ability scores actually should mean something. And I know that I'm not alone in this, because they talk about it all the time over on Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, even calling out the (relatively common) method of making an Int check to decide whether a character is smart enough to come up with an idea that the player has.

I get that this isn't the way Gygax handled it, but he was very up-front about challenging the players rather than their characters. That was back before meta-gaming was even a thing. There was no concept of the character as a distinct entity, within the fiction, with its own knowledge-base. Characters didn't have personalities, or even really names. (Seriously, this was back when you could get away with the name of Melf for your Male Elf character.)

Ever since the late eighties, at least, it's become an expectation that Thou Shalt Not Meta-Game; the player is to approach all decisions from the perspective of the character, using the knowledge and personality of that character, and ignoring information that the player has which the character does not. That's what I mean when I say that the player doesn't exist, because as far as everyone at the table is concerned, for the purposes of how you play the character and what decisions he or she makes, nothing about the player matters at all. It doesn't matter whether you're a stand-up comedian in real life, or if you could personally design and build an automated crossbow turret, because your character only possesses the abilities listed on (or extrapolated from) the sheet.

 

[iserith]

Ever since the late eighties, at least, it's become an expectation that Thou Shalt Not Meta-Game

For my part, that expectation can stay in the late eighties along with Milli Vanilli and parachute pants.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Is it satisfying for anyone when the Wizard repeatedly fails to remember any clues in an investigation, and can't solve the simplest of puzzles, only for the Paladin or Barbarian to repeatedly save the day? Because in my book, that's bad role-playing; the dumb character shouldn't be shown to reliably out-think the smart character. Ability scores actually should mean something. And I know that I'm not alone in this, because they talk about it all the time over on Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, even calling out the (relatively common) method of making an Int check to decide whether a character is smart enough to come up with an idea that the player has.

Ability scores can be meaningful without having to force a player to check their own brain at the door. A wizard is going to know all kinds of obscure lore that a fighter just doesn't. There is more to playing the game than just referencing the character sheet. If that were the case, then in the original game a wizard couldn't play unless a spell was being cast, a fighter couldn't do anything when not fighting, etc.

Any idea a player has is valid. That doesn't mean it will work.

I get that this isn't the way Gygax handled it, but he was very up-front about challenging the players rather than their characters. That was back before meta-gaming was even a thing. There was no concept of the character as a distinct entity, within the fiction, with its own knowledge-base. Characters didn't have personalities, or even really names. (Seriously, this was back when you could get away with the name of Melf for your Male Elf character.)

Whats wrong with that? Heck in games I'm running right now we have a gnome named Snickersnak and in another game a gnome named Dumbledorf. D&D is a fun game. Not everyone treats it as serious business.

Ever since the late eighties, at least, it's become an expectation that Thou Shalt Not Meta-Game; the player is to approach all decisions from the perspective of the character, using the knowledge and personality of that character, and ignoring information that the player has which the character does not. That's what I mean when I say that the player doesn't exist, because as far as everyone at the table is concerned, for the purposes of how you play the character and what decisions he or she makes, nothing about the player matters at all. It doesn't matter whether you're a stand-up comedian in real life, or if you could personally design and build an automated crossbow turret, because your character only possesses the abilities listed on (or extrapolated from) the sheet.

Approaching the game world from an in-character perspective is fine and there are situations where meta-gaming can spoil the fun. For example, if character explores someplace alone and is affected by a curse, the other players shouldn't react to the character as if they know something is wrong unless they came by this knowledge in character. Thats the kind of meta-gaming I frown upon, not the player of a 10 INT fighter coming up with a clever plan to overcome something.

In the first case the other players would be using meta-knowledge to cheat. The fighter's player is simply contributing to the game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think most sane persons would think you have this backwards. Players are the real live people you gather together with to play games and have fun. They are the only ones that really matter. A character is a fictional construct used in the playing of a game. As such it cannot have fun, feel satisfaction for accomplishing anything, or really do any thing without the player really. The player however, can do all of these things and much more without a character.

As they say, an author must be greater than his or her characters, in the same way that an actor must contain a role to be portrayed. Maybe I'm throwing everyone off by referring to player and character as distinct and unrelated entities, when the reality would better be represented by saying that the character is a distinct way for the player to think. Each of us possesses the capability of representing multitudes of different characters, but when we're playing one of them, we're not playing any of the others, or playing ourselves.

When I'm operating under the sub-set of my knowledge and capabilities which represent my character, I don't have access to my mechanical engineering ability (or persuasive talent, supposing I had some). If I tried to access that, then I wouldn't be in-character anymore. Moreover, the other players at the table would probably notice if I was acting out-of-character, and it would start to pull them out of character, until the whole thing collapses in a feedback loop and none of us are in-character and we're all just sitting around a table rolling dice.

Personally, as a player, killing a dragon just isn't that exciting to me. I've killed hundreds of dragons. It is extremely exciting to my character, though, who has never fought a dragon before and whose actual life is on the line. When I'm in-character, my brain is undergoing processes similar to what the character's brain would be undergoing if the whole thing was actually happening; as far as the character is concerned - and as far as I am concerned, while I remain in-character - all of that actually is happening.

Which isn't to say that you can't have fun if you're just sitting around a table and talking about some sort of abstract fictional characters who slay a dragon. It's just saying that it's a lot more fun to imagine that you're actually there, as the character slaying the dragon. That is, as they say, the "magic" of role-playing.

 

[Li Shenron]

Is it satisfying for anyone when the Wizard repeatedly fails to remember any clues in an investigation, and can't solve the simplest of puzzles, only for the Paladin or Barbarian to repeatedly save the day? Because in my book, that's bad role-playing; the dumb character shouldn't be shown to reliably out-think the smart character. Ability scores actually should mean something.

But they do.

The character in my games gets to roll Knowledge checks (and in addition, I don't give non-proficient characters the same chances on Knowledge checks, tho this is beyond the thread's point). Every single time the party stumbles upon a monster, a strange symbol, an inscription on a door, an interesting locale, a famous person, a magical object, a spell in action etc... it is always the character who might know something about it, and the player just rolls the dice but is otherwise not capable of using metagaming information.

I can't physically stop players from metagaming if the party happens to meet a famous monster (e.g. a beholder or a vampire), but I always remind them "metagame at your own risk!". The beholder they read about in the MM might not be the same as what beholders are in the current world, even less so vampires aren't certainly what you've seen in your favourite B-movie or TV series.

Playing smart on the other hand has nothing at all to do with metagaming.

You might at most argue that playing dumb if your PC is indeed low-Int is better roleplay than playing it smart. But it is preposterous to pretend that someone has to do it, when the consequences (failing a puzzle) are detrimental to the whole group and when it is impossible for others to do the opposite i.e. roleplay a PC as more intelligent than the player is.

 

[Bleys Icefalcon]

This past halloween I dusted off my ancient copy of the Tomb of Horrors. There was much hand wringing after the very first false entrance. They were concerned that it was "too killer" and "too hard".

But they didn't investigate the clues:

"A thick matting of cobwebs obscure the ceiling" - no one used a pole, or burned away the cobwebs, that covered the extremely unstable ceiling.

"The large, ornate double doors apparently have no locking mechanism" - why no lock? Nothing to guard? Why would this be so inviting, so easy?

"A bar of solid gold runs across the top of the doorway. Jutting forth from it is the upper torso of a terrifying, leering horned demon, it's cruely clawed arms outreaching" - a freaking Demon is reaching out, towards you. It doesn't look nice, or friendly or comical. It's not there to welcome you and give you a hug. It wants to tear you to peices and devour your soul. And, weight wise? That's EASILY 6000 pieces of gold, just in weight - of gold. Just sitting there? Really?



And this room deosn't just SCREAM trap?