Should traps have tells?

Simple question.

Should traps have tells?
It's a trap!

I think this thread is trying to catch people from the "We Don't Need Thieves" thread contradicting themselves. So I'll just step on the panel . . .

Unlike some here, I'm fine if they move at a snail's pace searching every square inch for traps, as that's what cautious characters would do.
Bad idea. That's what the trap maker wants you to do.

The movies always have the person step on a land mine and hear the click. . . . I fell it make some situations better if the PC steps on a pressure plate and hears the click. Maybe by failing the Perception check by 5 or less.
How about failing within a margin of one's competence bonuses? Or hearing the click and not blowing up if you succeed on the follow-up reflex-defense? Sorry, I'm not a fan of typical margins of error.

I think we should lean into the gaminess of traps instead of trying to emulate how they apply to other media.
Aw! Then we miss out on hearing a SNAP! And turning around to see that Steve has a dart in the side of his neck. Classic.
 

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Specifically the tension of "oh crap don't move or you'll die" is not something I have ever seen work at a table outside of its gameplay implications. There is a degree of removal from the action, with the dice and character sheet etc... serving as a veil. Like I said, i don't think it is impossible. You could have immersion oriented players willing to throw themselves into the mindset. but it is exceedingly rare.

That doesn't mean don't do it, though. As I said before, lean into the gameplay aspects and it can still be fun and worthwhile.
I've used this exact example more than once and it's gone very well. The players reacted like you'd expect if you expected them to react using their intuitive iunderstanding of the 'cinematic' logic in play. LIke I said, the real difference here is that different groups with different backgrounds vis a vis system and game style can have very different play types.
 

Should traps have tells?

Yes, but also no.

An area with traps should have an early tell or else be the sort of place where you would expect to have a trap.

Once in a "trap filled area" it becomes no longer necessary to telegraph the trap heavily. You don't need a pile of bones around the locked chest in the evil lord's sepulcher to declare there is a trap likely to be here. That's implied by the context.

The real crux of the issue though is "Is the trap fun?" Traps are inherently unrealistic as presented. Elaborate booby traps do not normally persist because the nature of a trap is to be sensitive to being triggered and sensitive things don't endure for very long in a functional way. So if we have traps then in most cases we are stretching credulity anyway, and you might as well have the trap designer create traps that are interesting rather than as efficiently lethal as possible. In my experience, players don't really contemplate the difference anyway.

This isn't to say that a trap should completely forgo realism. A trap ought to be able to plausibly exist in the state it is found for an extended period of time and ought to give off any sensory clues like temperature or odor that we might expect to radiate from a trap. Pools of acid should give off noticeable fumes. Pools of lava should give off both fumes and heat. Gelatins and whipped creams are naturally going to dissolve into liquids over time or attract insects or spoil. A boat that is on the edge of falling apart is going to noticeably have problems long before you get it into deep water, and a cursed boat that falls apart when used should radiate magic and a curse. "Gotcha" is not a fun sort of trap.
 
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It depends.

In the general sense a trap made by someone with any level of intelligence and skill won't have a tell. A trap made by anyone else, might.

In general, a trap in an active place will be well maintained, and have no obvious tells. A trap in ruins or an abandoned place likely will.

In general I well designed trap won't have an obvious tell to the clueless adventurer, though in most cases a more intelligent adventurer might see a tell.

But I'm very against the Buddy DM that will stop and obviously tell the players that "something" is up without telling them. Or just outright telling the players "oh your character notices...."
 

Like many things in ttrpgs, I think the metric for "is x good" or "should I x" is does it create fun or interesting choices. A tell is one way of presenting an interesting choice with a trap: there might be some player skill in recognizing the tell (so, a choice to interact), choices on whether and how to try to disable etc. Of course, in isolation, the most basic "obvious tell -> roll to disable" setup is maybe not the most interesting without other factors, like real risk, time pressure etc. But the general situation of type of "here's this obvious trap, got to figure out how to disable, and if it is worth it to interact at all" is great.

There are others that work well with no tell though, like "this is a thing that somebody likely would trap" (like a wizard's chest or a defended chokepoint), or a tell-less trap puts players in an interesting situation (like a portcullis splitting the party). The biggest failure mode of tell-less traps being common is overly cautious play (where in the worst case, there are not really choices, just the party declaring that we check this room for traps for every room). But this can be helped if caution is a scare recourse to be applied judiciously, usually by time being a factor, meaning there are big costs to cautiously checking everything, so you have to be smart and choose the most likely things to be trapped.
 

I remember reading here a few years ago...can't remember the poster but I think somebody who isn't here anymore...who said that when a character springs a trap he says, "Click!" and the players have a heartbeat to say how they respond. "I dive forward!" "I duck!" "I cast protection from elements!" Whatever they want, but the action they choose affects the outcome.
Oh, the Click Rule! I forgot about that. Not sure who brought it up here, but I think it comes from Angry DM. I'll add a link since it's also pretty relevant to the discussion:
 

I don't put traps in for their own sake. They get put in scenarios by inhabitants who are trying to defend themselves, and how good they definitely depends on the resources available.

One of the simplest, but most effective was a large net, coated in pitch, and hanging from a ceiling. It was perfectly visible if you looked up, but those hobgoblins had positioned archers firing through a door into that room, so that adventurers would try to rush them. Then they pull the rope that brings the net down - they'd worked on getting that right, since they could drop the net without it costing them anything - and start throwing in the flaming oil, igniting the pitch on the net the characters were tangled in.

That persuaded a party to go somewhere else. That was most of what the hobgoblins wanted.
 

Oh, the Click Rule! I forgot about that. Not sure who brought it up here, but I think it comes from Angry DM. I'll add a link since it's also pretty relevant to the discussion:

Oh....yeah, maybe Angry DM is where I got it.
 

Angry has some great ideas, but he's also a bit, hmm, IDK, extreme about some things that don't seem worth being extreme about.
 

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