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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 6867553" data-attributes="member: 16814">You also have agency when you take action, but agency means that your choices have a real impact that isn't arbitrary -  ie, that the world responds rationally to the choices you make.  Your choices in character creations -- what you choose to focus on, what you choose spend your limited build resources on -- are also part of agency.  If I make a choice between taking proficiency in perception because I want to be a good finder of things and the DM then arbitrarily negates that choice, I've lost agency.  My choice has been negated.  Yes, this trap, because it's quite boring otherwise.  It's a slightly gimmicked up pit trap, the most boring and mundane of all traps.  Further, it is still part of the exploration pillar.  There's nothing that says the exploration pillar only occurs when the players have plenty of time to fiddle without pressure.  All of the pillars can occur simultaneously or independently.  Just because there's a fight going on (combat pillar) doesn't mean a character can't take time to negotiate with an enemy or third party (social pillar) or explore a trap or other terrain feature (exploration pillar).  I, personally, tend to find that encounters of any pillar are often enhanced when you bring in the other pillars. I also use traps on their own, just usually not pit traps.  For example, the next 'trap' my players go into is the whole encounter area - the location uses non-euclidean geometry, meaning that moving between locations in the area does not make normal sense.  You can leave a room via a hallway, arrive in the next room, immediately turn around and go down the same hallway, but end up in a completely different place from the first room.  The 'trap' here is that the entrance is very hard to get back to (although you can do it by luck -- the place isn't random, just not laid out in understandable 3D space) and there are clues/markings form previous explorers to decipher that will help make the right choices to get back.  Also, some locations are more contained 'traps' of varying degree, some of which will only 'open' if poked in specific ways meaning you can walk through it without triggering it or even being aware of it's existence.  Other areas have combats encounters.  Other areas have social encounters, some of which will devolve into combat encounters.  Pretty sure there's one encounter that will automatically start as a combat encounter (due to the players absolutely hating the group encountered) but my end up as a social encounter.  All of these take place in the larger trap area.  So, yeah, you can easily mix and match pillars.  No one pillar excludes the others.</blockquote>

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