Traps

[grrraall]

First off, why traps?
That might seem a silly question, but take the Citybooks. They give you an intro that explains how to create a city and everything you need to know to use Citybooks in your game.
Now take any Grimtooth Traps book. No real intro, just some sadistic/comical mood, but no real hint as how to use those traps in the game. Are traps meant to be like monsters, i.e. obstacles to be overcome?

Traps can probably be much more than that. They can force the players to act as a team, can discourage certain behaviors or tactics, and encourage others, they can split up a group, they can slow down a group, they can be a means to make players use their brains, they can guard a secret passage or a treasure...

How do you use traps in your games?

[ProfGremlin]

OOoohhhh......

(Wandering Monsters) + Traps = Wandering Traps!

Wow, now there's a problem for your delvers - Every time the GM rolls for a wandering monster they keep track of the die result. Anytime they end up rolling doubles, i.e. the last roll and the current roll are the same die result, instead of a Wandering Monster appearing a Wandering Trap appears! It doesn't have to make sense, it just is. And here's the kicker - it could very well not be there when the party passes that spot again - which could descend into all sorts of hilarity if the players are proceeding with all prodigious caution and 13 foot poles...


Sorry, Grrraall, I really didn't mean to take your thread off tangent in the second post... The idea simply appeared fully formed in my mind as I read your post.

Now, to answer your original question - for the most part I have seen and used traps as a means of slowing the party down and/or just changing up the hack-&-slash experience. Sure, annihilating monsters can be fun but it's nice to have a puzzle every so often to give the wizard another justification for that high IQ score...



Ok, and just because I couldn't resist -

New Wandering Monster/Trap:

Animated Foot Traps
MR - 35
Armor Points - 4
Special - 3/ Entangle: the chain normally used to anchor the foot trap to the ground and prevent its prey from crawling off is used as a whip to ensnare the limb of one of the party. This character losses it's HPT contribution as they're to busy attempting to keep the Jaws of Doom at bay! L1SR on Strength to break away on the subsequent round.
Alternative Special - 3/ Poison: The trap is well used and, as such, the teeth are more than a little grimy with rust, blood, etc. A party member is randomly determined. A L1SR on Constitution is required or suffer the effects of poisoning - GM's choice as to effects and onset of symptoms.

[hrrrothgarrr]

Traps date back to early myth about Egyptian tombs. They were supposedly set to crush grave robbers. These and the Mioan Labyrinth formed the basis of dungeons. Delvers are tomb robbers. Traps exist to make life miserable for them.

In early T&T solos traps were pretty much of the save or die variety, with no real warning.

In my games traps tend to be used very selectively to guard special things when there simply is no other way to do it. One thing that has continually surprised me is that most traps seem to have no real mechanism provided to turn them off. Why trap a chest if you want to open it again, unless you can disconect the trap?

[vambrace]

In theory, traps are cool.

In reality, traps are so annoying.. my group is so paranoid of all traps that they spend 5 minutes at every door, chest, corridor, and bed chamber, poking at every 5ft square.

We're actually playing Pathfinder right now, though. The GM has the notion that there's no chance to detect a trap unless you have specifically said "I check for Traps" no matter how good your observational skills are.

To make things worse, apparently bad guys put traps everywhere..

There's a 10ft wide 30ft pit trap just inside the door of every laboratory or throne room, with no way to bypass it, even if you know it's there.

This room is a jail? Swinging blade trap down the hall.. really? The bars aren't enough?

Heavily-traveled tunnels where the whole tribe's family will be walking? Poison gas cloud..

Although, I did make a cave full of kobolds once.. there was an empty chest in the middle of the room, not even trapped. But the party just had to go check it out, giving the kobolds plenty of time to set up the kill room: vertical trip wires for flyers, some proximity traps, and not a single pit trap. Overly cautious Druid flew through 3 traps zigzagging to catch one kobold, ended up roasting his magic cloak in a flamethrower fountain..

[grrraall]

Apr 22, 2013 18:15:29 GMT -5 ProfGremlin said:

for the most part I have seen and used traps as a means of slowing the party down and/or just changing up the hack-&-slash experience. Sure, annihilating monsters can be fun but it's nice to have a puzzle every so often to give the wizard another justification for that high IQ score...

True, even if combat can involve some degree of clever tactics, traps are a different kind of challenge and can give players the opportunity to use their brains.

Wandering traps... Now that's a cool idea! I once thought about randomized traps (like calltrops appearing in the middle of a corridor), but wandering traps... like furry exploding monsters equipped with multiple leggs and chasing delvers down the corridors ;D

[grrraall]

Apr 22, 2013 18:17:26 GMT -5 hrrrothgarrr said:

In my games traps tend to be used very selectively to guard special things when there simply is no other way to do it. One thing that has continually surprised me is that most traps seem to have no real mechanism provided to turn them off. Why trap a chest if you want to open it again, unless you can disconect the trap?

Yes, using traps to guard a secret passage or a treasure room seems quite logical, although I kind of like the mad traps of Grimtooth that seem to be there just to wreak havoc on the delvers
As for disabling traps, there were stats for that in The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps, by Necromancer Games.

[grrraall]

Apr 23, 2013 2:47:06 GMT -5 vambrace said:

In theory, traps are cool.
In reality, traps are so annoying..

That is precisely what I would like to avoid. Using traps discerningly is not easy. My rule of thumb has been to limit traps to 2 or 3 by gaming session so far. Above all, I think that traps should be fun.

[vambrace]

I am always embellishing any traps we find:

simple pit trap becomes a springing floor trap that launches you into the spikes on the ceiling, or across the room into the pool of acid, then the lid closes.

I doodled on the whiteboard a trap with a springing floor, spikes, a flamethrower, a cannon, and a dragon's mouth open at the bottom of a pit, with a wall of force above the pit so you can't jump over. Rube Goldberg FTW!

[Toad-Killer-Dog]

Hmm, I tend to use smaller more practical traps most of the time.

The old foot-sized shallow pit with a few wooden spikes smeared with excrement or head height swinging blade traps ( with or without poison ) are pretty reasonable and I'm a big fan of hiding small poisoned blades in bags characters are likely to plunge their hands into.

I have more than once used the old "Hole in the wall trap" A couple of goblins ( or gremlins, or kobolds or sociopathic hobbits ) wait with a powerful crossbow in a well lighted room with a head sized hole in the wall and no visible door.

Sooner or later someone is going to stick their face in to see whats on the other side, then "TWANG"!

Also murder holes, basically just a hole in the ceiling with someone waiting above to drop rocks, oils, super-heated sand, tar, acid or if your feeling particularly unpleasant rabid wolverine mating pheromones ( soon to be followed by rabid wolverines! ) onto the characters heads.

Oh and tripwires, not usually connected to anything, but tripping the characters then having something vicious jump out on their backs and go to town with a knife is much more practical than having to ratchet a two-ton stone block back into the ceiling every time a rat runs down the hall. ;D

I've also left deadly poison around marked as healing potion, but that has less to do with traps and more to do with me being a grumpy SOB who dislikes healing potions.

Big "Killer Room" traps are pretty rare in my adventures and I don't think I've ever had a dungeon with more than one, usually at a choke point and usually I have to come up with some reasonable way the room could be maintained or I can't convince myself that anyone would actually build it.

Magic traps outside of wizards lairs are generally of the simple illusion hiding something nasty variety or alarm wards.

P.S. One of my favorite Grimtooth's traps was the gold coins filled with a mercury core so it poisoned anyone biting into it.

Unfortunately that amount of mercury is pretty unlikely to kill anyone so I prefer to replace it with a sliver of pure sodium in mineral oil.

"BANG", its dentist time! ;D

[grrraall]

Haha ;D

And I also remember your carnivorous fire-breathing death camels wreaking havoc on unsuspicious adventurers

[Toad-Killer-Dog]

Hmm, that would explain why some of my players had a tendency to brutally murder anyone who seemed funny or harmless. ;D

Not that I ever abused that as well.

[order99]

Well, since i'm now running a part-time Gangbusters campaign with a new group twice a month, I haven't had as much use for traps as I used to (and adding weird Pulpy traps to my Crime Drama is just asking for it all to end in Rayguns, Mystic Artifacts and Giant Apes-Nnnnnggghhh!! Must...remain...strong...) but I have had a bit of fun using the natural hazards in each scene to spice things up a little. Examples include:

-When the local Crime Squad caught the racketeers in the tenement pouring the accelerant and readying the fuse, the local goons decided this would be a GREAT place to resist arrest, all the while ignoring the rapidly spreading blaze...and while a fistfight is normally a rather lively affair, a fistfight in a blazing tenement brings in such lovely things as blindness, smoke inhalation and of course burny death. When one Goon tried to turn the brawl into a blazing gun battle the ammo in the gun cooked off in his hand-ugh...

-When the local Crime Squad ran the bank robbers to ground, it was at a deserted mansion on the edge of a local marsh. Deserted, decrepit old mansions tend to be full of unsafe staircases and rotting floors-and a flying tackle by one of the players knocked both lawman and crook through a fragile railing and into a two story freefall onto the ballroom floor...which tore like paper and dumped them both into the root cellar. Horrified at the plight of their brother, the robbers surrendered at once-and the rest of the adventure consisted of both lawmen and felons united in an attempt to alternately drive and push one bullet-ridden truck through mud , potholes and a thunderstorm to reach a hospital in time to save two lives...

-Finding the smuggler's underground storage facility and its bounty of illicit booze, far beneath the storm tunnels of Lakefront City, was a major coup for the Crime Squad. The elation lasted as long as the batteries in their flashlights...heh heh heh. Hours later, lost in the darkness, one of the lawmen began to hear an ominous rushing gurgling noise, and remembered that it had been raining for three days straight...

-Rookie lawman and newest Crime Squad member Daniel "Demon" Gould learned the hard way that bakeries are a dangerous place, and that loose flour, gas ovens and gunplay often end...badly. The burns on Gould's face and arms faded in time, but the screams of the dying in his head never did-and Danny turned to Opium to make them stop. The Wan Lun Tong had found a chink in Crime Squad's armor at last, and Danny's player got lots of bonus XP as the subplot began writing itself...

-Con man and disguise artist extraordinaire Felix 'The Fox" Gerhhardt lears the hard way why smoking in a grain silo is so, so wrong. Crime Squad recovered the cunningly-rendered printing plates and stopped the flood of counterfeit $5 bills-but at what cost?

-And, in a Very Special Episode of Crime Squad...the Tolino and O'Connor Mobs call for a truce with the Mayor's office, the Squad and each other in order to save Lakefront City from an oncoming Hurricane.

Who needs Traps when you have the environment? ;D

I just hope i'm not being too...intense with the new guys. Luckily they understand that my last group was a bit...more...eccentric than theirs...but so far I think we've kept a really even keel on the game-

-I WANT A METEOR TO STRIKE LAKEFRONT CITY AND IT'S PART OF A FIENDISH PLOT BY THE WARLORDS OF DIMENSION X TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD BUT WITH THE HELP OF NICOLA TESLA THE CRIME SQUAD FORMS THE GIANT TRANSFORMING DIESEL-POWERED COLOSSUS AND-

Um.....sorry. Pesky gamer flashbacks from...before. Sorry.

[order99]

You know, as long as i'm reminiscing about...


THEM

-I have to admit that some of the Traps my old group came up with were far more creative than anything I ever made myself.

Case in point-in a Warhammer FRPG I ran shortly before the Real World broke the old gang up my Players pretty much created their own adventures and plot twists while I just hung on for dear life and roleplayed the NPCS. This game however, was even...stranger...than usual. By the way, if your players take a Halfling Ratcatcher, a Halfling Smuggler, a Halfling Graverobber and a Halfling Hypnotist (all with Cooking as a Racial Skill) get together and open up a PIE SHOP-

-As the Players begin whistling the overture to Sweeny Todd-

Just Say NO. I failed to do so. The game lasted several months, and it all ended in tears-and fire-and screams. And those rotten little Halfling Vermin were never brought to justice. Oh Well. The Traps I am about to list are not mine BTW-they belong entirely to the twisted imaginations of the Gang, so direct your applause (or tomatoes, or burning torches) in their direction. And Without Further Ado I present:


THE RELAXATION CHAIR- a large, comfy overstuffed chair made of sturdy Oak and stuffed, stain-proof oilskin upholstry. The patron would relax from his or her labors, lulled by the smells of fresh pastry and meat and the pleasant singing of the cooks...if his or her head began to droop a helpful halfling chef would adjust the pilows....
And if the Patron was alone, then a simple lever activated the powerful springs which drove twin Poniards into each kidney. The same spring clamped the pillow across the face, smothering any noise and suffocating the prey if it still lived...any juicy goodness resulting was caught in the cushions and channeled into the base for soup stock. The CHAIR was on casters and parked next to the dumbwaiter-the body was gone from view in seconds...PIE TIME!

THE THERAPY BED- It was well known that one of the Halfling chefs was a Medical Apprentice (a carefully-forged document for the Halfling Hypnotist said so!) and so those who suffered pulled muscles, sprains would be invited to try the BED, a long, low table in the back room with boiled leather padding and spaces below for heated rocks from the ovens. The 'patient' would be gently restrained facedown with plenty of support, lovely oils and butters would be rubbed into the back and legs to ease the tension while the soothing voice of the Hypnotist made the pain go away amid the soothing warmth of the stones.The door would be locked for peaceful privacy...
Then the press of a button would send twin spikes deep into the victim's eyes and into the brain. On a busy day a cover would be lowered and hot stones would be cycled in every hour for some slow roasted goodness-on a quiet day the table would be tilted towards a handy barrel, and the juicy goodness would soon be joined by well-carved joints...SOUP'S ON!

THE ESCAPE TUNNEL Part A- Just in case of discovery, our Halfling entepreneurs made one of the service tunnels to the pantries into insurance. Our 'Heroes' could conduct business with no danger whatsoever, knowing that the spiderweb of sharp Cheese Wires was over a full foot above their heads. If chased however, Dwarves would get a nasty haircut and Humans/Elves would quite literally lose their Wits-at the neck.

THE ESCAPE TUNNEL Part B- Part of the Pantry had been redecorated in hardwood tiles. A cunning Halfling would skip across the Ash tiles to reach the security of the next room. Ignorant pursuers hover (likely on hands and knees after Part A) would probably hit the Maple tiles as well. THOSE tiles were sawed nearly in half, and the subfloor below had rusty bits of scrap metal pounded into them, leading to painful, tetanus-laden delays as hands, feet, knees and elbows were lacerated.

THE LAST RESORT- At the end of the pantry was a former Cloakroom. This room was full of whatever flour had gone 'off' during storage. A clever escapee gently crossed the five-foot room, churning flour dust into the air, then locking the door behind him...and lighting the fuse.

THE ESCAPE PODS- Five (one for each and a spare) human-sized oak barrels, lined with oilskin padding and sealed with extra tar. A lead plate ensured that the Pod would bob end down, the other end had holes drilled in for air and could be latched from the inside. Sewn into the padding of each pod was a carefully-hoarded pouch of Traveling Funds. Insert Halfling criminal, a push into the river and FREEEDOOOMMM!!!!!

My Players...drew up...BLUEPRINTS...for these things. They built friggen' 'How-To' guides complete with measurements, materials and tensile strengths. Thank God they channeled their, er, creativity into Role-playing, right?

I only hope that...wherever they are now...they all have a Game to keep them...occupied.

I'm just glad my new group is a bit more mature in their tastes. It's nice to know that not all gaming groups are a three-ring circus of...circus-

NEXT ON CRIME SQUAD THE CIRCUS OF EVIL TAKES OVER THE O'CONNOR MOB!! CRIME SQUAD IS FORCED TO TEAM UP WITH THE TOLINO MOB BUT WAIT SUDDENLY HELP ARRIVES FROM PARIS ISLAND IN THE FORM OF MEXICAN LUCHADORES AND THEY TEAM TO DESTROY THE HOLD OF THE GREAT DISEMBODIED BRAIN OF RASPUTIN UPON THE FORMERLY HARMLESS CARNIES AND Ssssggghxxrrch!!!

Must. Stay. Strong.

[grrraall]

May 1, 2013 20:20:13 GMT -5 order99 said:

Who needs Traps when you have the environment? ;D
[

Good point!
And have an exalt for your imagination!

[grrraall]

May 1, 2013 21:04:14 GMT -5 order99 said:

By the way, if your players take a Halfling Ratcatcher, a Halfling Smuggler, a Halfling Graverobber and a Halfling Hypnotist (all with Cooking as a Racial Skill) get together and open up a PIE SHOP-

;D I first thought that was a joke ;D
... and then I read the rest of your text...