He's a great designer and has some wonderful advice, if you can wade through the verbiage. But yes, it does have a certain smell.
Should traps have tells?
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Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
His schtick amuses me. It's over the top, but it's just his schtick.
And, yeah, I pretty much always 100% agree with the points he's making.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I just re-read Traps Suck by The Angry DM. Pretty much every argument I made in this thread appears in that essay, including the "Click!" rule. (It makes me wonder if I got all of those ideas from him but forgot where I first heard them? Maybe.)
Anyway, yeah, he's completely right about traps.
Anyway, yeah, he's completely right about traps.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
If henches (and-or other NPCs) can die to traps then PCs can die to traps; never mind that after the first hench dies to a trap no other hench in that party will take point even if directly ordered to.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Not if the NPCs go first!
Not true. I've seen it in movies: the poor, dumb
All somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course. A light-hearted way of saying "I don't play RPGs like you do."
Celebrim
Legend
I hope you aren't too offended if I am not that impressed with The Angry DM. There are a lot of nuggets in his essay that are important, but the way he presents them makes it easy to take the wrong lessons and hides the important take aways amongst all the rest.
Aside from his "shtick" of being over the top and clickbait and designed to farm engagement, his opening essay describing the trap is pretty straight forward and accurate. What's really going on here though behind his walls of assuring you that "trap suck" over and over in monotonous assertion is that encounter design is hard. You could use the exact same argument to suggest combat sucks. Or really anything, if you strip it down to abstract mechanics that have no meaning and assume an abstract "simple" situation - a generic abstract trap, a generic abstract combat.
Personally, it's beneath me to try to make my argument in such a deceptive manner, and that it is deceptive is noted by this passage:
This is the really interesting part, it because undermines the whole thrust of his argument. RPGs aren't interesting because of the mechanics. Any RPG reduced to just mechanical processes of play can be and generally is boring. RPGs are interesting in so much as those mechanics are used to resolve the fiction, and its the fiction that is interesting. If the fiction is suitably interesting, the exact mechanics almost fade into the background. They might hinder the fiction a bit, but in this gritty level of interactions with a single proposition most RPGs do pretty well. Trying to make the mechanics interesting in and of themselves is a fool's errand and misses the point. So really, the point to be made is that trap design is like any encounter design somewhat difficult and needs some thought put into it to make it fun. Figuring out how to interact with the fiction is fun even if no mechanics get brought into play.
What he's saying boils down to "sucky traps suck" and that's a boring thing to say.
But what really tells me that he doesn't get it and it's not just his schtick trying to engagement farm is that he goes on about trap design in Dark Souls. And wow does he just not understand game design in that passage. He goes on and on about how Dark Souls gives sensory clues to the attentive player as if this is in some way relevant to a tabletop RPG. Sure, in a video game where I'm giving the player a visual sensory experience, then I don't have to rely on character skill as a vehicle for conveying information. There is a element of player skill in learning to observe the environment, and while yes, in some sense observing the environment is an important skill in RPGs, there is no direct parallel between receiving and observing visual cues and a game that takes place in the imagination. That and well, the traps he mentions in Dark Souls are hardly the best things about the game or even really that interesting once you've encountered them once.
Like his big thesis that comes out of this is: "But if you like traps – AND I DO – then the alternative is that you have to be really thoughtful about them. You can’t just throw them in. They have to be as deliberate as any other encounter in your game."
Well, duh. Imagine that. Good design is good design. Just say that obvious thing up front and get rid of the 3000 words of twaddle it took to get here. And now actually launch into a discussion of what is good design.
As far as it goes, his advice about telegraphing the traps and making the placement of the traps make some sense is good advice, but it's also a very limited "there is just one true way" sort of advice. It does if followed eliminate some of the worst sort of mistakes a typical 12-year-old DM might make, but it also makes traps too predictable and boring if you were to follow this sort of thing literally. Yes, telegraph your traps and yes make their placement make some sense, but not every single time is there going to be obvious visual clues beyond the aura of "this is the sort of place where there would be a trap".
Nor am I necessarily enamored with the idea of boring the players for checking for traps where there aren't traps. I'm not sure that boring the players is ever a good idea, but I also don't want to bore myself by punishing the players for looking for a trap (quiet innocently) where there isn't one.
Nor am I necessarily enamored with the idea that traps ought to be repetitive. This takes the virtue of giving clues to telegraph your traps and makes a vice out of it. One of the problems with cRPG traps (like Dark Souls or Skyrim) is that they do often just have a very limited number of traps that get reused a lot and the third or fourth time you encounter the same sort of trap it's just annoying rather than fun and interesting. Maybe this is just his love of video game design coming out, but I try to avoid having repetitive traps while still trying for the most part to telegraph the trap or allow for some way to interact with the fiction to predict, evade or disarm a trap.
And while traps should be used sparingly in combat, there is no hard and fast rule that they shouldn't be used in combat. Often a trap that either springs in combat or which when sprung leads to combat is a great way to turn two otherwise minor encounters into something tense and exciting.
Where we most agree (and you can verify this from 20+ years of my comments about trap design on EnWorld) is this passage:
"Some of the best traps, though, are not the ones that fire-and-forget. Arrow traps and lightning traps are fun, but the best traps are the ones that create or change the situation. The classic example is the collapsing ceiling or portcullis that splits the party. Or the collapsing floor that leaves a massive pit blocking the party’s known means of escape. And there are traps they seal the players into rooms and fill with water. And piranhas."
This almost gets to the point, and that point is that traps that just go off and deduct hit points while nothing else is happening do tend to suck. And in fact, I'd strongly advise against doing all the overhead he seems to think you should be doing to make those traps fun, because the work you are putting in there isn't going to be enough to make those sorts of traps fun. The fun stuff, the reason you have traps, and the way the majority of your traps should work is that they create a cooperative scenario that like combat requires the party to use their skills to work together to mitigate the danger and potential loss of resources represented by the encounter. A good trap creates an ongoing scenario, and his last example - a trap that seals the player into a room and starts to fill it with water and piranhas, is while maybe more ruthless than most traps should be, the first example he's offered in the whole essay of what I'd consider to be a "good trap". Except, I'd deduct a star or two from this trap design because it's a TPK if you don't figure out what to do or roll well or whatever is required to escape it. It wouldn't be the one example I'd give of a well designed trap if I was trying to illustrate the point to people who didn't get it.
After what must be 5000 words, he is actually finally getting back to the point: "And when you design those, you aren’t really designing a trap. You’re designing an encounter. And that means, you need to design a f$&%ing encounter. Dramatic question, sources of conflict, decision points, everything. You know how to do that already if you’ve been reading long enough." No, we are really designing a trap. A good trap, one that presents dilemmas and isn't all or nothing and involves multiple characters of the party doing their individual things with athletics, strength, magic, healing, and whatever. The point is that traps are encounters and they require good design just like good combats. Focus on teaching how to do that. All the rest of the words are wasted, and the irony is we are just now getting to the important point.
The Click Rule is OK I don't feel any pressure to adopt it. It seems to involve giving a minor bonus or penalty to the saving throw and I just don't see the point in it, especially if you were to follow his advice about all your traps being consistent, you'd might as well just crawl through the dungeon confident that the arrows will fly over your head after you encounter the first one. And for the most part I'd prefer to encourage proactive play rather than reactive play, as I think that the entire thing about the Saving Throw is that the character that makes the saving throw does do the right thing and that that's a character skill issue. I think that his critique of the player's likely reactions - "But if they instead roll forward or raise their shield, those are normal reactions. That’s already included in armor class, right? Dodging and using a shield are part of armor class." - instead is a pretty good critique of the problem with the whole idea. Still, I wouldn't be offended by a GM using the "Click Rule" in his game, I just don't think it is adding much to the game compared with all the good trap design advice and examples that he could have laid out more cleanly could have.
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Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Ha. Not at all. I know he rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But I'm entertained.
I started responding section by section, but instead I'll just summarize that:
- Yes, he could easily have made the most salient points in a lot fewer words. I think the reason he didn't is partly for the same reason that food bloggers drone on and on before getting to the recipe, but also because a lot of people don't want to believe that sucky traps suck. Even just in this thread I've been debating these exact same things with Lanefan, who does seem to think that sucky traps are fine just the way are.
- I get that you really, really, really don't like Angry GM, and it also seems to me that you are misunderstanding/misinterpreting some of his arguments. I can't help but wonder if those two things are related.
Celebrim
Legend
Things are bad if I think you are too wordy.
No, I really don't like his writing. I think he seems like he'd be an A+ GM, assuming he's not actually as pretentious as he comes off as in his schtick. I just hate his "I've Watched too Much of the Critical Drinker" writing style.
I don't think I misunderstand his arguments. I think in his effort to say THE MEANINGFUL THING, he's misstating his arguments.
And also dilly-dallying around and not making the key points as saliently as he could, which makes me wonder if he really gets the totality of what he's saying. Like when he says that you have to foreshadow and give tells to your traps, but then he admits later that if the trap is good enough to be enjoyable as an encounter on its own that well, those you wouldn't have to so cleverly foreshadow and provide tells to or make so predictable, it's like he doesn't really understand that maybe then you should be focusing on the traps that don't suck rather than trying to make the traps that do suck not suck quite so bad.
Celebrim
Legend
I went back and read Lanefan's contributions, and I think you are misreading him. Lanefan plays a game that is like mine bizarrely his own mechanically, but as far as his GMing recommendations go he and I seem to be in agreement on this topic (and in the exact area that I also agree with The Angry GM). He's not arguing that sucky traps don't suck. He's arguing that you shouldn't make sucky traps, and that if you do make traps that don't suck (in the same way The Angry GM defined a trap that doesn't suck) that you then aren't obligated to make the elaborate system of tells and telegraphing that The Angry GM also admits you don't need when the trap doesn't suck.
I don't think Lanefan and I entirely agree as to what constitutes a non-sucky trap, but I will note all the examples he's provided in the thread of a trap he likes meet The Angry Gm's definition of a non-sucky trap and that I did note that when The Angry GM did give an example of a non-sucky trap he eventually came up with one that I agree didn't suck.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
True, Lanefan definitely is on board with traps that lead to after-the-fact decision making. I think the three of us are all in agreement on that.
But they also seem to be a fan of un-telegraphed traps (and secret doors) that will only get spotted if somebody happens to search in the right place and rolls well. That's pretty much the suckiest kind of all.
