It always amazes me that, from certain perspectives, our hobby is based on 10-15 years of badwrongfun. Indeed, it was a time where players were all dreadfully miserable, DMs were all devolved masochists, and the creativity gene was clubbed to death before it could infect the chromosome. Ah, yes, 10-15 years of gaming history that friends and acquaintances from the clubs and conventions still reminisce, laugh, and retell stories about. Stories of how we (DMs and players) had such a great time with our badwrongfun while working our characters from 1st level up to 9th or beyond. How we bought reams of paper because our characters were whimsically slaughtered by the scores. How we made that last-minute, fight-winning, party-saving die roll while never even once getting a search check, saving throw, or coin flip to spare our pen-and-paper lives... Unless the players all ganged up and beat the DM into submission with his own rulebooks. (Since geeks and nerds were vastly more muscular back then, this was a common occurrence.) It is amazing that we are still playing in this hobby, much less recruiting new victims, I mean "players", what with the mountain of misery every player must overcome before even looking up from his or her lonesome dice. Or maybe it's just sour grapes, 'cause the vast majority of stories I hear traded around about "old school" gaming at the club or cons are full of laughter and fun. Except online, where some people's version of the generalized historical record includes a sizable scratch.
Speaking of sour grapes, that leads me to think of wine and wine presses. That reminds me of a very clever trick pulled by a player in a game I ran - and something more on-topic with this thread. You can use it directly or easily modify it with other spells and implements. I have some traps and tricks inspired by it at the end (typing this from memory - my notes are at home):
The PCs had stumbled upon a very old, very powerful 1E lich's library. Not realizing that they were in way over their heads, and ignoring even the blunt clues from the DM that Great Disaster Is Imminent (or maybe overcome by greed at a huge library chock full of magical tomes, scrolls, tablets, and other choice bits of loot), they entered the library and were confronted by the bemused lich. Bemused as in, "Oh, look. Some mice made it in past my defenses. How'd they do that?" (Arrogance was one of his weak points, and could be used to manipulate him. Said so right in his description. In pencil.) Negotiations quickly broke down into a fight. Individual initiative was rolled, powers were unleashed, part of the very dusty library was set on fire, the PC's main damage-dealers succumbed to a Symbol of Stunning, and then it was the Druid's turn.
"The lich is at the other end of the library, using one of the bookcases as cover, right?"
"Right," I said, and pointed at the layout on the dry erase board.
"I cast Turn Wood from my ring of spell storing."
Play. Stopped.
"W-w-what?!?!" I stammered.
"I cast Turn Wood. It should cause all the wood in this library - including paper and books with wooden covers, especially the shelves - to move in *that* direction. How much wood is in this library?" The other players quietly offered one- and two-word expressions of amazement.
Thinking quickly, I said, "Well, it's not going to do any damage to him. You need magical weapons to hurt a lich."
"Most of the books are magical, aren't they? If they were thrown at him, wouldn't they count as magical weapons?"
I glibly replied, "Errrr..."
I tried to give my poor lich, a campaign-level BBEG, a saving throw for half damage. He made it, but the damage from so many projectiles was too high. I checked over his Contingency - no luck, it wouldn't kick in. Stoneskin (remember - 1E Unearthed Arcana): No good. I read the list of his various pacts, deals, Wishes - anything that might get him out of this mess. It was no use. He was crunched.
One of the most powerful BBEGs in the game was crushed to bony splinters by his own library, sent back to his phylactery, and his magical library was looted with relative impunity. Yes, they beat him up with his own treasure and then robbed him. "Throwing the book at him" took on a whole new meaning for us. I endured months of references to NPC villains who had serious and weighty matters pressing on them and comments about having to hit the books.
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The above session inspired the following in later adventures:
* The classic: Books animate and attack; the books are the treasure. If the PCs manage to subdue the books without significantly damaging them, they get to keep the treasure.
* PCs enter an armory, where all of the racks, cases, and displays are only on ONE side of the room. Stepping onto the clean side of the room upsets the carefully balanced pivot point, causes the room to flip, dumps the PCs onto the clean wall, followed by all the armor and racks of weapons. If your PCs like to split up into search teams (like mine did), you may have a barbarian riding a weapons case down onto the wizard - it had special meaning back in the days of 1E Unearthed Arcana. Alternatively, replace all the weapons with stacked bricks or (my personal favorite) sand. The stacked bricks were nice when the PCs came across an "unfinished" part of the dungeon, pun intended.
* PCs enter a circle-shaped room with a door on the opposite side and a single, large, round stone (or metal) sphere in the exact middled (7' or 8' in diameter - it's BIG). Stepping on one of several pressure plates in the room causes the doors to slam shut and lock. The room is actually balanced on a pivot point in the exact center, so that it will tilt in the direction of the weight once the pressure plate is tripped. The PC's weight is sufficient to start a chain reaction, where the room tilts in the PC's direction, sending the large stone sphere rolling after him or her (and triggering a Reflex save, Dex check, or other appropriate test for the PC to remain on his/her feet or be sent sliding into a wall followed by rolling doom). The room is set so that it will only ever create a 20-degree slope - probably not enough for the rolling doom to wedge itself against the wall. Quick PCs can probably keep ahead of rolling doom until their companions open the door and rescue them. Skilled PCs can probably pull themselves up the grade, towards the center, out of harm's way (but probably blocking off the exits with the room's tilt. There are also various magical ways of overcoming the harm. (In actual play, this resulted in one hapless PC running around the edge of the room, chased by a giant rolling ball. The rest of the party pried open the door and watched him run by a few times while they pondered what to do - i.e., fell out of their chairs laughing. They rescued him successfully, but the doorway was left blocked by the up-tilted room floor - the ball ended up not quite directly on the opposite side from them when it stopped rolling. One stoneshape spell later and the door was permanently unblocked.)
P.S. If the sphere is metal, you now have a use for those two rust monsters you found in the bag of holding earlier, or the trapped rust dust scabbard from the preceeding room.
* Movable cover. (I'm pretty sure this one has been mentioned before in another thread.) The orcs, bugbears, hobgoblins are hiding behind cover that has wheels on it in your standard 10' wide corridor. After their initial archery barrage, they tilt up their cover and charge the PCs, pushing their cover ahead of them. If you really feel vicious, have the front of their cover soaked with oil - so the bad guys can set it on fire before smashing into the heroes.
* Searching the library. PCs enter a library with heavy floor-to-ceiling bookcases, laden with scrolls, tomes, books, parchments, papers, and various bookends (IIRC, three of them were Figurines of Wondrous Power - the goats). The bookcases are on spring-loaded tracks in the floor and ceiling. Stepping on a pressure plate causes an entire row to slam together. (In actual play, the PCs sent summoned monsters running through the library, sprang the trap, and looted the place easily. I should have known better - it was the same group, but with different characters.)
