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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9268373" data-attributes="member: 7006">Traps are there to change up the narrative within a dungeon.Dungeons are a storytelling device.  The story is these brave adventurers are risking their lives for gold and glory (or any number of other reasons) by entering this deadly area and surviving it through their wits, strength, and perception.To make this story interesting... the DM doesn't just have it be a series of tunnels with nothing in them.  Nor do they put the same thing in the tunnel over and over and over again.  Nor do they make it too short or way too long.  Instead, the DM varies up the various things the players (through their characters) will "encounter" while going through it to keep things fresh and interesting.The characters will encounter descriptive items that fill the chambers and corridors (pillars, pools, altars, fungi, strange lights, running water, bones, statues, etc. etc.) that the players will then narrate their characters' actions to explore them... the characters might come across other creatures that they might need to speak to or negotiate with... they could encounter deadly monsters that will attack them either for defense, food, their duty as a guard etc. etc. and the players will then have to play the D&D combat mini-game to survive... or perhaps the characters will encounter descriptive natural or man-made traps and hazards that the players will have to come with ideas on how to escape or get around through clever ideas, equipment, magic, or other things their characters can do and the players can invent.Now while a DM certainly could just "gamify" a trap for the players by stating "Okay, you've come upon a pit trap-- here are the mechanics you will need to accomplish to get past it" and then the players just go down the mechanical order of operations exactly like we do for a D&D combat encounter... most DMs do not choose to do that because it ruins the atmosphere and suspension of disbelief.  Instead, they describe what the characters see, and the players describe what their characters will do.  Which is exactly why I say these things are all narrative and story-- because our suspension of disbelief is us thinking and acting as though we are within this adventure story.  And our suspension is quite a bit less when we players are just reading and following rules and a rulebook rather than using our imaginations to come up with things we would do if we actually were in this situation.</blockquote>

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