There are two famous old examples:
(spoilers, I can't find how to do spoiler tags...)
1. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess - Illusion of the Decapus - the (pretty mild) picture of the illusionary damsel being tortured got the module recalled!
2. Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits - Buxom caged damsels, actually shapechanged evil lycanthropes.
It was so common it was a cliche, and having an actual rescuable damsel almost counted as a trope inversion!
I have tended not to use damsels-in-distress (rescuable or trap) in my tabletop games much recently, it can make some players uncomfortable - same with child NPCs. If I'm running a Conanesque online game (chat or pbem) there will be plenty of damsels, though; eg I recently used a captive queen who needed rescuing from a dragon in two separate games, and a damsel being chased by a giant ape in a third!
I find there's a problem with D&D in that players tend to treat '0th level' type NPCs as cardboard cut-outs, so if a damsel NPC is going to stick around for any time at all I'll usually give her a class and levels. Eg a low-level Cleric who can heal the party as a reward for rescuing her (the Queens, above), the damsel chased by the ape was 'Stranger' class -
GROGNARDIA: Grognard's Grimoire: Stranger
A bland, uninteresting damsel is a waste of a good NPC opportunity.
(spoilers, I can't find how to do spoiler tags...)
1. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess - Illusion of the Decapus - the (pretty mild) picture of the illusionary damsel being tortured got the module recalled!
2. Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits - Buxom caged damsels, actually shapechanged evil lycanthropes.
It was so common it was a cliche, and having an actual rescuable damsel almost counted as a trope inversion!
I have tended not to use damsels-in-distress (rescuable or trap) in my tabletop games much recently, it can make some players uncomfortable - same with child NPCs. If I'm running a Conanesque online game (chat or pbem) there will be plenty of damsels, though; eg I recently used a captive queen who needed rescuing from a dragon in two separate games, and a damsel being chased by a giant ape in a third!
I find there's a problem with D&D in that players tend to treat '0th level' type NPCs as cardboard cut-outs, so if a damsel NPC is going to stick around for any time at all I'll usually give her a class and levels. Eg a low-level Cleric who can heal the party as a reward for rescuing her (the Queens, above), the damsel chased by the ape was 'Stranger' class -
GROGNARDIA: Grognard's Grimoire: Stranger
A bland, uninteresting damsel is a waste of a good NPC opportunity.