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What's your favorite trap?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6222487" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>On what I think should be the larger discussion, "How do you make good traps", these are the elements of what I think makes a good trap:</p><p></p><p>a) It's logical. If you can suspend disbelief enough that you have a universe were complex mechanical traps can be made and persist in working order (or something like it) for centuries, then that framework the trap has to be something you'd believe people would pay to make and would in fact persist in the described state awaiting victims. If a trap isn't logical, then there is no real expectation that it should be avoided. </p><p></p><p>b) It's predictable. As follows from 'a' above, traps should occur only where they make sense. You could as a DM place a 100' spiked pit trap on the well-travelled main thoroughfare of the town near the dungeon, and no one would check for traps there! "Gotcha, you forgot to check for traps!" But that's not being clever, or fair, or reasonable. Who would pay for and live with a death trap in a well travelled living area? Who would put up with a death trap on a door they have to pass through all the time? If the trap builder ever planned on passing through an area with a trap, certainly he's going to leave some sort of easy (if not necessarily obvious) way to bypass the trap from himself. If a trap isn't predictable, the danger you have is that the player's are reduced to having to check for traps every 5' and before every action. That reduces what should be an exercise in caution and skill and creativity and resourcefulness, into an exercise in tedium and ritual. The best traps pass what I call the Indiana Jones test. Right at the beginning of Raiders, Indy is going through the iconic trap filled tomb, and at each point he recognizes where the trap is. He knows not to go rushing blindly into the room with the idol because he knows this a good place to put a trap and it looks like somewhere a trap should be. Good traps are telegraphed in the description and by the environment so that the players know whether this is an environment with traps somewhere, and there are clues that will help the players place where the trap is. </p><p></p><p>c) The DM is not disappointed if the party isn't caught in the trap. This is an issue of DM attitude toward traps. One of the biggest flaws a DM can have is becoming emotionally invested in particular scenes playing out the way he wants them to. In the case of traps, this means DM should never be trying to win or be emotionally invested in the trap impressing the players. Winning is trivial for a DM. You have infinite power and resources AND you are the referee with infinite power to pass judgment. There is no way for a DM to lose if he's trying to win. It's not a contest. If the PC's bypass your trap or never even know it was there, it's all good. Be sure to give the party every reasonable benefit of the doubt when judging a trap.</p><p></p><p>d) The trap doesn't use reverse logic. This is the result of combining 'b' and 'c' above. You can tell things have really gone to heck, if the DM is reduced to using reverse logic or reverse-reverse logic in the trap design. This is the DM meta-gaming against the players, taking into account how he knows they will behave after having become - at his instigation - paranoid players that engage in rituals to avoid traps, and then designing a trap to avoid the rituals and entrap players that attempt to evade the effects of the traps. Using reverse logic does only one of two things. Either it provokes an arms race, with the players inventing ever more elaborate rituals, or else it provokes resignation and ennui where the players no longer bother to avoid traps and ultimately lose interest in stroking the DM's ego by going into dungeons solely to let the DM validate to himself how clever he is. If you are going to use reverse logic, be careful about it, and try to be consistent about it. Once you've established that the trap builder employs reverse logic, almost all his traps should use reverse logic, and the climax of using reverse-reverse logic is therefore predictable at one level also. </p><p></p><p>e) It's memorable, meaningful, and suitable. The trap builder went to all this effort. The payoff better be reasonable for the cost not just to the trap builder, but to the game. Your game is being slowed down by the need for the players to be super cautious. The payoff for that cost you are imposing on the game better be good. If the trap is meaningless, then it's better that it not exist. While you shouldn't be frustrated by player's cleverly avoiding your traps, there is a lot of value in actually provoking respect for your traps when the player fall into them. </p><p></p><p>f) Your traps should promote meaningful interaction and intraparty cooperation and problem solving. Note however that respect doesn't necessarily come from lethality. Your traps should be designed to consume player resources, and this could include killing players by depletion of hit points, but outright killing the player should not be the actual goal. For one thing, out right death traps tend to be rather binary. You are either dead or you aren't. Really good traps impose conditions on the victim and force either the victim or the non-victims to come up with ways of extricating themselves. A trap that pours burning oil on the floor that does 1d8 damage for 4 rounds is a far better design than a trap that does 4d8 all at once. In fact, you can actually use this fact to make traps more theoretically lethal - maybe the oil burns for 8 rounds (8d8 damage in the worst case) - on the expectation that the resourceful party is going to figure out how to remove the oil, remove themselves from it, or put out the fire sometime before the 8 rounds is up. Really good traps let the party react to the problem. Remember, the ideal situation is not to win. The idea situation is to get the players to tell stories for years about how they narrowly escaped that devious trap. A simple fireball trap isn't going to do that, even if the fireball trap ultimately does the same amount of (or less!) damage than some other prolonged trap. In short, don't let your traps be or become ho hum.</p><p></p><p>g) Less is more. You are better off with a few well designed traps than lots and lots of minor ones. Use traps sparingly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6222487, member: 4937"] On what I think should be the larger discussion, "How do you make good traps", these are the elements of what I think makes a good trap: a) It's logical. If you can suspend disbelief enough that you have a universe were complex mechanical traps can be made and persist in working order (or something like it) for centuries, then that framework the trap has to be something you'd believe people would pay to make and would in fact persist in the described state awaiting victims. If a trap isn't logical, then there is no real expectation that it should be avoided. b) It's predictable. As follows from 'a' above, traps should occur only where they make sense. You could as a DM place a 100' spiked pit trap on the well-travelled main thoroughfare of the town near the dungeon, and no one would check for traps there! "Gotcha, you forgot to check for traps!" But that's not being clever, or fair, or reasonable. Who would pay for and live with a death trap in a well travelled living area? Who would put up with a death trap on a door they have to pass through all the time? If the trap builder ever planned on passing through an area with a trap, certainly he's going to leave some sort of easy (if not necessarily obvious) way to bypass the trap from himself. If a trap isn't predictable, the danger you have is that the player's are reduced to having to check for traps every 5' and before every action. That reduces what should be an exercise in caution and skill and creativity and resourcefulness, into an exercise in tedium and ritual. The best traps pass what I call the Indiana Jones test. Right at the beginning of Raiders, Indy is going through the iconic trap filled tomb, and at each point he recognizes where the trap is. He knows not to go rushing blindly into the room with the idol because he knows this a good place to put a trap and it looks like somewhere a trap should be. Good traps are telegraphed in the description and by the environment so that the players know whether this is an environment with traps somewhere, and there are clues that will help the players place where the trap is. c) The DM is not disappointed if the party isn't caught in the trap. This is an issue of DM attitude toward traps. One of the biggest flaws a DM can have is becoming emotionally invested in particular scenes playing out the way he wants them to. In the case of traps, this means DM should never be trying to win or be emotionally invested in the trap impressing the players. Winning is trivial for a DM. You have infinite power and resources AND you are the referee with infinite power to pass judgment. There is no way for a DM to lose if he's trying to win. It's not a contest. If the PC's bypass your trap or never even know it was there, it's all good. Be sure to give the party every reasonable benefit of the doubt when judging a trap. d) The trap doesn't use reverse logic. This is the result of combining 'b' and 'c' above. You can tell things have really gone to heck, if the DM is reduced to using reverse logic or reverse-reverse logic in the trap design. This is the DM meta-gaming against the players, taking into account how he knows they will behave after having become - at his instigation - paranoid players that engage in rituals to avoid traps, and then designing a trap to avoid the rituals and entrap players that attempt to evade the effects of the traps. Using reverse logic does only one of two things. Either it provokes an arms race, with the players inventing ever more elaborate rituals, or else it provokes resignation and ennui where the players no longer bother to avoid traps and ultimately lose interest in stroking the DM's ego by going into dungeons solely to let the DM validate to himself how clever he is. If you are going to use reverse logic, be careful about it, and try to be consistent about it. Once you've established that the trap builder employs reverse logic, almost all his traps should use reverse logic, and the climax of using reverse-reverse logic is therefore predictable at one level also. e) It's memorable, meaningful, and suitable. The trap builder went to all this effort. The payoff better be reasonable for the cost not just to the trap builder, but to the game. Your game is being slowed down by the need for the players to be super cautious. The payoff for that cost you are imposing on the game better be good. If the trap is meaningless, then it's better that it not exist. While you shouldn't be frustrated by player's cleverly avoiding your traps, there is a lot of value in actually provoking respect for your traps when the player fall into them. f) Your traps should promote meaningful interaction and intraparty cooperation and problem solving. Note however that respect doesn't necessarily come from lethality. Your traps should be designed to consume player resources, and this could include killing players by depletion of hit points, but outright killing the player should not be the actual goal. For one thing, out right death traps tend to be rather binary. You are either dead or you aren't. Really good traps impose conditions on the victim and force either the victim or the non-victims to come up with ways of extricating themselves. A trap that pours burning oil on the floor that does 1d8 damage for 4 rounds is a far better design than a trap that does 4d8 all at once. In fact, you can actually use this fact to make traps more theoretically lethal - maybe the oil burns for 8 rounds (8d8 damage in the worst case) - on the expectation that the resourceful party is going to figure out how to remove the oil, remove themselves from it, or put out the fire sometime before the 8 rounds is up. Really good traps let the party react to the problem. Remember, the ideal situation is not to win. The idea situation is to get the players to tell stories for years about how they narrowly escaped that devious trap. A simple fireball trap isn't going to do that, even if the fireball trap ultimately does the same amount of (or less!) damage than some other prolonged trap. In short, don't let your traps be or become ho hum. g) Less is more. You are better off with a few well designed traps than lots and lots of minor ones. Use traps sparingly. [/QUOTE]
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