Should traps have tells?

[Edgar Ironpelt]

What do you mean by "tells"?

They might be signs that "everyone sees automatically, the GM shouldn't require a roll."

They might be signs that "characters with good perception scores may spot, even if not actively looking."

They might be signs that "only characters who actively look for them have a chance of spotting."

I'm inclined to the second version. Traps might sometimes have the first version of tells, but I wouldn't make that the default. And I want to avoid the third version because that produces the "Progress at the rate of an arthritic snail, as the party engages its Total Paranoia Mode" effect.

Worst of all are no "tells" at all, which is just a variant on the rightly-maligned 'random damage table.'

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Overall, I use traps very sparingly. They're a hassle for NPCs & monsters to set up, so they won't without believing they have a good reason to, and they're a hassle for me as a GM, so I won't go looking for reasons why the NPCs & monsters might set them up.

Also, my NPCs and monsters mostly prepare for and expect to face opponents that are much less skilled and powerful than the PCs. So any traps that they do set will be suitable for keeping out the riff-raff, but no more than speed bumps for a PC party.

 

[Bill Zebub]

What do you mean by "tells"?

They might be signs that "everyone sees automatically, the GM shouldn't require a roll."

They might be signs that "characters with good perception scores may spot, even if not actively looking."

They might be signs that "only characters who actively look for them have a chance of spotting."

I'm inclined to the second version. Traps might sometimes have the first version of tells, but I wouldn't make that the default. And I want to avoid the third version because that produces the "Progress at the rate of an arthritic snail, as the party engages its Total Paranoia Mode" effect.

Worst of all are no "tells" at all, which is just a variant on the rightly-maligned 'random damage table.'

How do tells that "characters with good perception scores may spot, even if not actively looking" work at the table?

I'm imagining something like (please do correct me if I have this wrong): "In the room you see blah blah blah blah. And, Derek, your character notices X."

At that point, the whole table knows that the thing Derek has noticed is important (because otherwise it would have been in the general description), at which point you may as well have simply let Derek spot the trap itself. Not only has nobody has experienced the pleasure of actually figuring something out, but the players are being trained to not even try to figure out tells, because they know that if there is a tell it and if a character has high enough Perception, it will be handed to the player for free. At most they will learn to say "I search..." in every conceivable place, hoping that they will be rewarded with a tell.

In my opinion, one of the "blahs" used to describe the area to everybody should be the tell, if the players are paying close enough attention to realize it. You can't possibly simulate the experience of paying close sensory attention to notice clues, so the closest approximation is to put the clues into the narration.

 

[Bill Zebub]

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.

By the way, this is an excellent counterpoint to the verisimilitude argument offered upthread (that is, that all traps having tells isn't realistic).

I could see a scenario where the heroes have raided a dungeon that has been occupied by cowardly but crafty humanoids (kobolds are the obvious candidate...) but the party has gone back to town to rest. When they return, the denizens have built tons of booby traps, which the players either guess at or soon discover.

The general "tell" in this situation is that the entire place is filled with traps, and the theme of the dungeon becomes "make every move extremely carefully and assume that everything is trapped". Or at least until they break through the defenses.* That could be fun for a session or two, and the players are not being taught that everywhere they go in any dungeon for as long as they play the game they have to search every 5' square, because this is a specific situation.

*If the kobolds have finite time to prepare traps for the invaders, why would they waste that time leaving booby traps where they plan to make their last stand? By definition, they've already lost if any intruders reach those traps.

 

[The Firebird]

By the way, this is an excellent counterpoint to the verisimilitude argument offered upthread (that is, that all traps having tells isn't realistic).

This is a good point and it depends a lot on the specifics of the dungeon. Personally, I'd prefer for a designer to think through why each trap is there, why it hasn't been sprung and so on.

You know what I see little of? Traps that failed or are deactivated due to age.