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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 8909929" data-attributes="member: 6796661">A few times since I've gotten back into D&D, I've gotten lost in on-line rabbit holes researching real life locks, traps, and secret doors from ancient to medieval times to mine ideas for my games. A lot of D&D trap tropes really can only be explained by magic or anachronisms.  I'm fine with both in my games. D&D is not real history and it is a magic world. Even with simple things like false floors and false walls, who is maintaining them?  Amenhotep III's tomb's false floor pit trap depended on people living nearby, "paid in perpetuity", to replace the false floor when activated by looters. One thing that has inspired me in my games from the real world is that instead of elaborate mechanical traps, poison gas etc., just coat loot in poison as some ancient cultures, like the Maya and Inca did (Cinnabar/mercury, for example, though likely more for decoration than as a "trap").  I'm not sure how long a neurotoxin will remain deadly, but I can hand-wave that, but then archaeologists are warned to take special precautions when encountering red pigments.  Or just poison the entire area with something like mercury, as was done in some ancient Chinese tombs. Qin Shi Huang's most famously, but also those of the Duke of Qi Huan and King Helu of Wu.  I'm not sure that the use of cinnabar and mercury was really meant to deter looters, than as decoration or the belief in its preservation effects. In a sense, the way contact poison is used in D&D, at least in terms of various poison traps in ancient tombs and such have to be explained away as magic or some special fantasy poison that can retain its potency for great periods of time. Mechanical traps, such as the crossbow traps recorded to have been placed in Qin Shi Huang's tomb are extremely unlikely to remain operation for long periods of time, even if plated in chromate. Falling rock traps, like the Spanish death traps set to protect gold mines in the Americas could certainly be used in D&D as non-magical traps. Typically, they are just boulders propped up precariously. Sometimes complex wooden mechanisms were used to move boulders around. One could image complex mechanisms with more durable material like metal and stone being used in a D&D world.  We don't have to be limited to what exists in the real world to think about what could have existed if anyone wanted to bother with more Indiana Jones style traps. But Rube Goldberg style traps are a quintessential part of D&D and are fun. I like to look at what was done, or could have been done, in real-world historical periods as inspiration, but D&D traps fall apart under any scrutiny without magic.</blockquote>

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