Best practices for easy-to-run modules [+]

[overgeeked]

Whether traps have tells is an unrelated tangent. Kindly take that elsewhere.

Thread 'Should traps have tells?'

Yesterday at 5:33 PM

Tangent from another thread.

Simple question.

Should traps have tells?

• overgeeked
• Replies: 32
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

• 

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, they should.

Now, it's ok if the 'tell' isn't right there in front of the door or trap. Maybe the players have to rely on clues found elsewhere. Maybe they just have to keep careful maps to realize there's a big blank in the middle of the dungeon. Whatever.

But relying on:

1. Players just happening to look in the right spot, or...
2. Players getting into the habit of looking in every spot, or...
3. The DM either asking for a roll, without any action declaration by the player, or...
4. The DM secretly rolling or relying on a "passive" skill...

...are all antiquated, board-gamey, bad RPG design philosophy.

Characters getting into the habit of looking in every spot isn't bad design philosophy in the slightest: if it's what the characters would do in reality then it's what they should be doing in the setting.

As for the other things, I don't subscribe to the "gotchas are bad" take that seems so prevalent here. Sometimes you're just gonna be "got", be it through bad luck, inattention to detail, or simply that the dungeon element beat you.

Success in combat, or with spellcasting, should be a combination of player (choices/tactics) and character (mechanics/rng).
Likewise, resolving secrets (opening a secret door, or disarming/avoiding a trap) can be a combination of player and character.

But discovering secrets should always be 100% player.

Attempting to discover secrets should be 100% player. Success in such discoveries shouldn't be nearly so guaranteed, though, and sometimes failing to discover a secret (or not even bothering to look for it) means the secret is going to reveal itself in a quite unpleasant manner.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The first one; it seems to preclude the idea that there are good traps.

Suppose the players got enough money to build a fort and added some traps to it. Would these be required to have tells? If so, that feels artificial. If not, then why can't anyone else build that way?


I suppose no different than the ones they'd take for traps with tells that they can't find. And making sure they have spells remaining to deal with hazards, have supplies and hps to spare.


The desire that the world is internally consistent and that all traps have a tell are in tension. Traps having a tell is a choice made for gameplay reasons. In-universe, people would want to build traps that don't have tells. So making there be a tell to give the players a puzzle can break internal consistency.

I think maybe you're interpreting "tell" to mean that the trap itself telegraphs it's own presence. Tells can also be things like the remains of previous victims, a sprung trap of the same type that is up ahead (or offing a henchman with the first of several traps), hints/clues/warnings encountered elsewhere that have to be remembered at the right time, etc. Literally anything that might cause a player to look for the right thing in the right place at the right time using their own deductive skills and not relying on RNG.

So, no, traps don't have to be built with tells. But by the time the adventurers get there the should have encountered tells anyway.

Is that any less verisimilitudinous than never finding dungeons completely cleaned out, with all traps sprung and all treasure taken? Isn't it strange that everywhere PCs go they just happen to find exciting adventures? Almost as if there's some all-powering being manipulating things just for their benefit.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Characters getting into the habit of looking in every spot isn't bad design philosophy in the slightest: if it's what the characters would do in reality then it's what they should be doing in the setting.

Worst design rationale ever.

 

[Lanefan]

Worst design rationale ever.

Not from the perspective of "It's what the characters would do", which is always my starting point. I first and foremost want the characters to be played like real people, and real people usually* have a fairly keen sense of self-preservation. Searching carefully for hidden hazards in what is probably a dangerous place plays right into this.

* - I say "usually" as a nod to some spectacular exceptions I've seen over the years both in the game and out...

 

[Bill Zebub]

As for the other things, I don't subscribe to the "gotchas are bad" take that seems so prevalent here. Sometimes you're just gonna be "got", be it through bad luck, inattention to detail, or simply that the dungeon element beat you.

I agree with "inattention to detail". Which to me is synonymous with "the dungeon element beat you".

"Bad luck", however, sounds suspiciously like "screwed by RNG", and that I don't agree with. The only reason I like dice rolling in combat is that the outcome is typically the result of a lot of dice rolls, so good and bad luck tend to balance out, and if the encounter is well-designed it's the player decisions that really matter.

But rolling a single d20 where N or greater means "you don't take any damage" and below N means "you take 1d8 damage"? That's just pointless, except maybe for the nostalgia value of playing the way we did in 1980.

Attempting to discover secrets should be 100% player. Success in such discoveries shouldn't be nearly so guaranteed, though, and sometimes failing to discover a secret (or not even bothering to look for it) means the secret is going to reveal itself in a quite unpleasant manner.

Yeah, hard disagree. If you look in the right place (or otherwise do the "right" thing, whatever that means and whatever the tells suggested) then in my game you find the trap. But searching takes time, and time is money, friend.

I also don't use dice rolls* when there's no consequence to failure, with stakes understood by the player. (And, no, failing to detect the trap is not a consequence of failure because you're still in the same state you were in before making the attempt.)

Confession: it's really hard to break decades of habit, so sometimes I still call for dice rolls for finding traps or knowing a fact or whatever. But I am constantly striving to get better at it.

 

[EpicureanDM]

All of this trap and tell discussion is a tangent or red herring kicked off by @Lanefan. @overgeeked -the person who started this thread to get advice - created a separate thread to discuss traps/tells and has asked people to use it.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree with "inattention to detail". Which to me is synonymous with "the dungeon element beat you".

"Bad luck", however, sounds suspiciously like "screwed by RNG", and that I don't agree with. The only reason I like dice rolling in combat is that the outcome is typically the result of a lot of dice rolls, so good and bad luck tend to balance out, and if the encounter is well-designed it's the player decisions that really matter.

But rolling a single d20 where N or greater means "you don't take any damage" and below N means "you take 1d8 damage"? That's just pointless, except maybe for the nostalgia value of playing the way we did in 1980.

To me there's always an element of luck in D&D, otherwise it wouldn't use dice. And if you're going to use enough dice rolls to in effect allow the bell curve to almost complately negate luck then why bother?

Yeah, hard disagree. If you look in the right place (or otherwise do the "right" thing, whatever that means and whatever the tells suggested) then in my game you find the trap. But searching takes time, and time is money, friend.

I also don't use dice rolls* when there's no consequence to failure, with stakes understood by the player. (And, no, failing to detect the trap is not a consequence of failure because you're still in the same state you were in before making the attempt.)

There's going to be times when there's no way the character can know the stakes, therefore IMO the player shouldn't either.

And here, even though you might be in the same state right now on failing to find the trap you won't be in a moment when bam! you set it off the hard way. In broader terms, sometimes there can be a very real consequence to failure only it arrives later, perhaps unexpectedly: this happened here because you blew the roll back there.

An example where these ideas would apply:

Party is sneaking into a palace intending to catch the Queen's Evil Vizier adviser asleep in his bed and knock him off. On their way in they pass a secret door hiding a passage that runs straight to the Vizier's chambers. Find it, and not only do they have a safe fast way in but they're also cutting off the Vizier's first-choice escape route. Miss it, and they have to get to the chambers the hard way through numerous guards and patrols, and also don't learn the Vizier has an escape route.

Neither the characters nor the players have any specific reason to search this particular spot for secret doors. They might search everywhere they go on the rationale "an old palace like this has to have secret passages", slowing their progress considerably, but this spot holds no special attraction.

Failing to find it (or not even looking) changes nothing now but potentially makes things much harder in the near-ish future.

How do you adjudicate that? Better yet, how do you adjudicate that without in any way hinting there might be more to this spot than meets the eye (i.e. without giving the players info the characters have no way of knowing)?

Confession: it's really hard to break decades of habit, so sometimes I still call for dice rolls for finding traps or knowing a fact or whatever. But I am constantly striving to get better at it.

Knowing a fact can be pretty random. There's a song I've known for 40 years or more but earlier today when I tried to remember which band had done it (which I've also known for 40+ years!) I drew a blank, to the point where I had to look it up. Any other day, odds are high to extreme I'd remember this without problem.

 

[Bill Zebub]

To me there's always an element of luck in D&D, otherwise it wouldn't use dice. And if you're going to use enough dice rolls to in effect allow the bell curve to almost complately negate luck then why bother?

Because within a combat the dice rolls are swingy, requiring players to make new decisions/trade-offs. The monsters get lucky for a couple turns, and suddenly you are burning spells/potions/scrolls that you weren't expecting to use.

To be honest, I would love to play a RPG in which combat involved no RNG. Maybe something that worked similar to Ace of Aces?

There's going to be times when there's no way the character can know the stakes, therefore IMO the player shouldn't either.

Yeah, I just don't ascribe to that philosophy of RPGs. I know it exists, and I know you do ascribe to it, but I don't.

And here, even though you might be in the same state right now on failing to find the trap you won't be in a moment when bam! you set it off the hard way. In broader terms, sometimes there can be a very real consequence to failure only it arrives later, perhaps unexpectedly: this happened here because you blew the roll back there.

An example where these ideas would apply:

Party is sneaking into a palace intending to catch the Queen's Evil Vizier adviser asleep in his bed and knock him off. On their way in they pass a secret door hiding a passage that runs straight to the Vizier's chambers. Find it, and not only do they have a safe fast way in but they're also cutting off the Vizier's first-choice escape route. Miss it, and they have to get to the chambers the hard way through numerous guards and patrols, and also don't learn the Vizier has an escape route.

Neither the characters nor the players have any specific reason to search this particular spot for secret doors. They might search everywhere they go on the rationale "an old palace like this has to have secret passages", slowing their progress considerably, but this spot holds no special attraction.

Failing to find it (or not even looking) changes nothing now but potentially makes things much harder in the near-ish future.

How do you adjudicate that? Better yet, how do you adjudicate that without in any way hinting there might be more to this spot than meets the eye (i.e. without giving the players info the characters have no way of knowing)?

So, I don't adjudicate that because I don't design adventures with that approach. Reduced to its essence, you are saying "If you flip a coin (maybe not a 50/50 coin) at this point and get heads, the adventure is easier for the players. If you get tails, the adventure is harder." That's what it amounts to. Not interested.

Put another way, let's say you do an adventure post-mortem where you tell the players everything they missed.
"...and there was a secret door right here that would have really helped."
"No way! What should we have done to have found it?"
"Um...you should have had a higher passive Perception. Or more thoroughly searched every 5' square. Gygax would have made mincemeat of you noobs."
"...."

Knowing a fact can be pretty random. There's a song I've known for 40 years or more but earlier today when I tried to remember which band had done it (which I've also known for 40+ years!) I drew a blank, to the point where I had to look it up. Any other day, odds are high to extreme I'd remember this without problem.

That's not random. Random has a definition and "I can't predict it" is not that definition.

Also, your example is remembering a fact, not knowing it. Whether or not a given person knows something is also not random, it's just unevenly distributed across people in a way that is probably impossible to model. 20% of the population knowing a fact is not the same thing as there being a random 20% chance for any person, even if the result of applying that rule results seems to produce a similar result.

Put it this way: if X% of the population drives an EV, rolling percentile dice for every car owner would result in the correct proportions, but it wouldn't be right X%.

 

[Lanefan]

So, I don't adjudicate that because I don't design adventures with that approach. Reduced to its essence, you are saying "If you flip a coin (maybe not a 50/50 coin) at this point and get heads, the adventure is easier for the players. If you get tails, the adventure is harder." That's what it amounts to. Not interested.

More I'm saying "If you're careful and spend the time it takes to search, you give yourself a not-guaranteed chance of making things easier on yourselves; if you don't, that chance disappears."

Put another way, let's say you do an adventure post-mortem where you tell the players everything they missed.
"...and there was a secret door right here that would have really helped."
"No way! What should we have done to have found it?"
"Um...you should have had a higher passive Perception. Or more thoroughly searched every 5' square. Gygax would have made mincemeat of you noobs."
"...."

This assumes they didn't find the other end of the passage while searching the chambers for the Vizier, who had by then used said passage to esacpe. That's the much-more-likely outcome here: they realize they missed it on the way in when they find it, in effect, on the way out.

That, and IME it's quite rare that a party finds everything in a site or dungeon: it's almost inevitable they're going to miss a passage or some treasure or something else relevant, either by choice (we've done the mission, let's get out fast) or by impatience or by sheer bad luck.

That's not random. Random has a definition and "I can't predict it" is not that definition.

Unpredictability is what random is.

Also, your example is remembering a fact, not knowing it.

In the here and now moment when the information is needed, not knowing something and not remembering something amount to exactly the same thing: you don't have the info in your mind when you need it.

Whether or not a given person knows something is also not random, it's just unevenly distributed across people in a way that is probably impossible to model. 20% of the population knowing a fact is not the same thing as there being a random 20% chance for any person, even if the result of applying that rule results seems to produce a similar result.

So, as this has not yet been determined otherwise, what we're rolling for is to determine whether you happen to be one of the 80% of the in-game population who don't know this bit of semi-obscure information or the 20% who do.