Two Dozen Nasty DM Tricks

[Beginning of the End]

Well, that's the other side of this style of play that's so much fun and rewarding, but fails to get mentioned between all the evil-hand-rubbing and my-DM-hurt-me whining: players start to pull tricks on the DM. They write out their door opening SOPs. They use tricks and traps against the enemies and NPCs. They turn everything into treasure. This is fun. It immersed everyoine in the game if not the world and although it can be frustrating, it's a good kind of frustration, like trying really hard to get through that one level of Mario.

I have a player right now cutting down slabs from the marble walls of the dungeon, hauling them back to town, and selling them. This is not without danger, but he's invested well in the effort.

I think he's going to buy a noble title with his profits.

 

[Hellzon]

I have a player right now cutting down slabs from the marble walls of the dungeon, hauling them back to town, and selling them. This is not without danger, but he's invested well in the effort.

I think he's going to buy a noble title with his profits.

Was it Tomb of Horrors that had adamantine doors? Valuable anyway.

 

[Rechan]

I have a player right now cutting down slabs from the marble walls of the dungeon, hauling them back to town, and selling them. This is not without danger, but he's invested well in the effort.

I think he's going to buy a noble title with his profits.

I imagine you're not mean enough to point out that, after a certain point, the town just can't get rid of the marble. There's only so many people who can afford it, and such.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Looks like someone has been reading the various Grimtooth's Traps books.

One of my faves is where the delvers come upon what looks like a spike pit with a walkway around the sides. In reality there is an illusion upon the space. There is no pit and the walkways are actually boards with powerful springs under them which launch the delver into the ceiling which IS lined with spikes.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Oh yeah... another old favorite. The PCs find a magical sword that is incredibly heavy... so heavy that they need Gauntlets of Ogre Power AND a Belt of Giant Strength to wield it properly. The sword glows and slices through most materials like butter though it does not detect as magic. After a while the PCs notice that they start getting weaker and weaker, their hair is falling out, and they are losing their teeth. If they ever have the runes on the sword deciphered it reads "Property of 3-Mile Island Nuclear Authority".

 

[Orius]

And, as for poking stones with sticks not being the stuff of adventures, I think I can find an appropriate counter example: YouTube - Greatest Movie Scenes - Raiders of the Lost Ark- Golden Idol

So....are you saying that Lucas is a RBDM then? Or maybe Spielberg?

Actually, I'd say it's a matter of Raiders and D&D drawing from similar sources here, the old pulps which had old tombs and ruins filled with nasty deadly traps, just because.

I think in D&D it ended up at the level of "prod every freakin' square inch of the dungeon", because that's how Gary and his group played in the early days and it shaped the early game.

But seriously no discussion on evil DM tricks is complete without without the screw-job interpretation of the Wish spell.

True old-school gamer story (not my own but I'm passing it along): Players were fighting a bunch of flying skulls, sort of like lesser demi-liches. Things were going badly so one player decides to use a Wish: "I wish there were no skulls in this room."

You can probably see where this is going...

In that case, the player got what he deserved. The player left that one wide open for the DM. I'm a fan of wish perversion myself. It's ok if you make a wish that falls in the normal guidelines of the spell, stuff like spell duplication or other very specific effects. But when you get creative, that's when the perversions come in, and it really should be proportional to how careless or greedy the wish is. Wish has the power to alter reality itself, so it shouldn't be used lightly. Besides, being careful what you wish for is an moral used in so much classic mythology and the like anyway, so wish should be a potentially dangerous spell to use.

I also feel like presenting to the thread the Ultimate Rat Bastard DM Nonsense Bull Room. I didn't come up with the original conception, but I'm (over)embellishing it. Also, I have no idea how recently some of the components were updated in the rules. Newest official version I have of everything is 2e (I know two of them were in the 3e MM).

There is a 20' x 20' room. But it's not acutally a room. The ceiling is a lurker above. The floor is a trapper. The walls are eight stunjellies. In the room there is a coatrack with two cloaks which is actually a mimic and two cloakers, a weapon rack with three sword which is actually another mimic and three xavers, and finally there is a chest which you guessed it, is a third mimic. Or better yet, it's an ordinary chest which self-destructs if it takes a single point of damage, rendering the very valuable treasure with worthless, but leaving enough intact so the players can tell what it was from the remains. Also, the door to the room is a mimic as well.

 

[Pbartender]

There is a 20' x 20' room. But it's not acutally a room. The ceiling is a lurker above. The floor is a trapper. The walls are eight stunjellies. In the room there is a coatrack with two cloaks which is actually a mimic and two cloakers, a weapon rack with three sword which is actually another mimic and three xavers, and finally there is a chest which you guessed it, is a third mimic. Or better yet, it's an ordinary chest which self-destructs if it takes a single point of damage, rendering the very valuable treasure with worthless, but leaving enough intact so the players can tell what it was from the remains. Also, the door to the room is a mimic as well.

The door is locked. There is a miniature Sphere of Annihilation suspended in the keyhole.

 

[Zustiur]

There are several themes running throughout this thread. They appear to be:
1) Ensure that the trap exists in logical circumstances. The inhabitants (if any) must be able to avoid them in their day to day existence. The exception being hastily constructed traps, put in place because the inhabitants know there are intruders.
2) Give the players a precedent. The presence of traps needs to be foreshadowed in some manner.

Once those criteria are satisfied, practically anything is fair game.

So with that in mind, please continue with the examples. I have a blank document just waiting to be filled up with trick and trap ideas for my forthcoming campaign.

Is there a net-book of traps somewhere?

 

[Celebrim]

There are several themes running throughout this thread. They appear to be:
1) Ensure that the trap exists in logical circumstances. The inhabitants (if any) must be able to avoid them in their day to day existence. The exception being hastily constructed traps, put in place because the inhabitants know there are intruders.
2) Give the players a precedent. The presence of traps needs to be foreshadowed in some manner.

Once those criteria are satisfied, practically anything is fair game.

I think that's a fair summary.

This might fall into #2, but I think you can add a third point.

3) Regardless of how dastardly, cunning, or tricky, the villain always has a sense of fairplay.

That is to say, the villain believes in giving his victims a fair chance to bypass his tricks. The villain has some set of simple rules by which all traps are constructed. In Acerak's case, in constructing the 'Tomb of Horrors' one of his rules is, "The hero should always act like a hero. Unheroic (greedy) acts will always be punished. Heroic (brave, sacrificial) acts, will be rewarded." Another one of his rules is that devil's heads have a consistant meaning. Even though arguably the goal of the villain should be to frustrate the player's by leaving false clues, by randomly making some situations true to their appearances and others not, by creating traps for which there is no true solution (darned if you do, damned if you don't), and so forth this should never actually happen, because its not the goal of the DM to frustrate or defeat the players. The goal of the DM is to present the player's with a challenging but solvable puzzle, so that when the player's do begin to succeed they obtain a great satisfaction in doing so (because its not easy and takes some skill, insight, and planning), and conversely that when they fail they feel that they should have seen it coming.

So for example, someone mentioned a grimtooth trap where the pit was false and the apparant area of safety was a trap. I would only consider that a fair and interesting trap if it it set a theme for the entire dungeon of "fair is foul, and foul is fair". That is, the players should eventually grasp that the rule of this dungeon is that everything is backwards - that warning signs mean safety and signs of safety mean death; that evil portents mean security, but beautiful trappings mean a horrible fate await. And, that armed with this insight, the players should be able to consistantly beat the puzzles presented by the dungeon.

If you are going to deviate from the rules, then you can only do so in a climatic fashion. In the case of the 'fair is foul and foul is fair' dungeon, the very last room where the villain slumbers in his sarcophagus can the twist that fair really is fair and foul really is foul, but no dramatically speaking it can't occur anywhere else (and should have foreshadowing to boot). Remember, a dungeon is a story, the rooms are episode and the path through the dungeon represents the different ways the episodes can be arranged. Your map is your plot. In the 'fair is foul and foul is fair' dungeon we are building on the stories theme, and the twist - the epiphany - can only occur at the climatic point.

Think about the 'Harry Potter' series. In each of the first 5 books, there is a twist. And, to a very large extent, it is the same twist in every book. In the 6th book, at the climax the twist is - there is no twist. That only works in a dramatic fashion if we've very carefully built up our theme in the previous episodes of the story.

 

[Celebrim]

More Nasty DM Tricks

1) A Troll cleric uses his spells to grant himself resistance to fire and acid attacks.

2) Secret door covered by tapestry which is infested with yellow mold.

3) Otherwise easily detectable trap on floor hidden by straw, thick mist, or standing water. Players that find means of removing concealment before progressing much more likely to avoid trap.

4) Variation on above. Deep pit trap in middle of room with large amount of standing water. When trap is triggered (lever is pulled?) water drains into pit, sucking anyone without secure footing into pit. Variant on this is lever opens door out of room, but sends flood down into lower level sweeping the players with it. Variant on this is players are on lower level, and opening door sends flood down to this level. Another variant is a 'funnel trap', where floor of room tilts toward pit. This is most interesting when a flying creature simultaneously enters room, provoking fight on wet, sloped, slippery surface leading to pit.

5) Players are investigating kobold/goblin lair in living cave passage. Further into cave, kobolds/goblins have built a dam to provide power to trip hammers for their forges (possibly heard as repeated clanging sound when entering lair). When goblins are alerted to intrusion (gaurds live to reach main settlement or sound warning trumpet), clanging sound stops because goblins have diverted water from retaining pond down passage the PC's are in. PC's must find side passage above oncoming flood to make further progress, and risk either being swept over waterfall at lair entrance or trapped in corridor filled with water.

6) Frame job. Decietful evil cult creates easily found but false hideout and temple to other evil god, and drops hints in PC's path to help them find it. When PC's raid temple, some patsies are killed, a few figures try to escape through carefully arranged escape routes, and evidence linking prominent evil temple in community to recent nefarious plots and murders is found. Other evil temple is innocent (at least of this) and PC's charging headfirst into their headquarters will quickly find themselves over their heads. Figuring out that they've been duped, and providing evidence of this may lead PC's to having very strange allies for a time.

7) Trap door in ceiling dumps green slime on unwary below.

8) Room contains a few large stone pillars, a porticlus (electrified), and a circlular stone table. Investigating table finds four square recesses in it, and a cursory search of room finds 4 wooden poles that fit recesses in table. Placing poles in table allow it to be used as simple capstan to lift porticlus. This is sufficient puzzle for very novice parties. For advanced parties, porticlus leads to dead end room containing nasty death trap. Actual exit from room is trap door in floor revealed by pushing one of the stone pillars to side, which can be found only by a most careful search. The later is what I actually used in dungeon.

9) Players encounter circular room with mosiac floor and carved walls. Stepping more than two steps into room causes a person to be attacked by magic missile/scorching ray/lightning bolt, and normal progress is thwarted at similar intervals. The room is a ballroom, and floor must be danced across using a particularly famous dance step (requiring a perform check or multiple perform checks, armor check penalties apply) to traverse successfully. Some clues to nature of puzzle might be found by examining room and making appropriate Knowledge check (geography to recall pattern on floor resembles folk dance native to area, heraldry to note significance of room, for example).

10) Variation on the 'Beggar's Puzzle' mentioned earlier. Players pass through a corridor with two sets of quite strong doors into a central region containing coffers of gold and other wealth. Although the wealth seems to have no catch, the whole area is haunted by the spirit of a greedy miser who has the power to animate all the doors leading from the chamber, and exit from the area proves impossible (or at least, beyond the likely means of the characters at their current level) until not only do they replace the treasure, but 'donate' some of their own. Only then will the 'Beggar with No Hands' allow them to pass on to a new area. To add insult to injury, because the central nature of the 'Beggar' area, the party may have to traverse it multiple times (hopefully developing a real hatred for the 'Beggar' before obtaining the means to revenge themselves).