Running A Trap Challenge
I was thinking about this yesterday.
The skill system I’m working on — how does it jive with the rest of the changes I’m making? Traps dealing automatic damage, for example. First of all, you might be wondering about this “automatic trap damage” thing, which I’ll explain.
There are a few things that are inevitable in an RPG — one of those things is falling damage. Another is fatigue, whether sleep ever occurs — and if it doesn’t it’s because your character is exceptional, like a Warforged or something.
I thought that traps should be one of those “inevitable” things. When a trap is sprung, anyone targeted by the trap takes damage no matter what. It’s just that some special characters might be able to avoid or resist trap damage.
Trap damage is otherwise considered a “fact of life.”
Of course this philosophical tact has made me wonder what the point of searching for traps is, and for that I want to briefly touch on the skill system — skills aren’t “named” and “used” anymore, so much as they are a collection of effects.
Break. Speed. Sneak. Charm. Detect. Logic.
Then, there’s the idea that skills are honed and shared by the group, so everyone can benefit from, and contribute to, a skill challenge. And because gear is shared by the party, determines the size of the die for skill checks, and “erodes” with poor rolls — well, that’s a lot to try and process at once, so I’ll break it down.
If your group wants to look for a trap, you’re probably going to be making Detect checks. Let’s say there are five of you, and one trap. A trap by itself is going to be a type of encounter, like a skirmish with some monsters — unless of course the trap is actually included with a monster skirmish.
So the encounter is “find the trap.”
You have a “search” element, and maybe an “avoid” element, and maybe a “disarm” element to this challenge. You can use several skills to achieve the desired effect — you might use Speed, Detect, and Lore to look for the trap.
Once you wear down the search element, there’s avoiding it — which might involve the use of Speed, Sneak, and Escape. Finally, you disarm the trap — possibly through the use of Break, but also with Logic, Lore, and/or Discern.
Each element has “hit points” like a monster, and the whole thing is set up like a fight. Except that unlike how skirmishes are run, a trap encounter generally goes until the trap is disabled or evaded, or the party dies — or flees.
Throughout the trap encounter, PCs are presumably taking damage from the trap — this will generally be untyped damage, reflecting a combination of physical and mental stress, and a few rounds of the trap getting off attacks before the party works out how to find and stop it.
Some traps might still have typed damage, like poison or fire — and some might have multiple types to reflect a combination of multiple traps.
Like monsters, the trap “always goes first.” There’s no way to “surprise” a trap except to already know it’s there. Even then, it isn’t a proper challenge encounter until the damage starts piling up. Unlike a monster encounter, a trap encounter is like playing chicken with an opponent you can’t see.
Now it’s all well and good to say, “this is how a trap encounter will work,” but that’s like describing the combat system without providing any sample monsters. I’ll come back to this again soon, hopefully once I’ve had time to design a few simple traps.
As a DM, I find that while I can deal with trapped objects, such as doors and chests, I hate trapped areas. Unless you’re playing the whole dungeon out on a board, it’s nearly impossible to know who triggers the area trap and when, unless the trap is obvious to begin with. A lot of older and OSR modules LOVE pit traps just out in the middle of the room. But how do you know that someone walked over one unless you track the entire party’s milling about in any given spot.
Part of the idea is to turn traps into encounters like fights — it should make them easier to run (using the same basic system as combat), more modular, and more versatile.
The pit trap example that you gave there might be broken down into a few different parts like avoidance — in essence, a fight with one “monster.” If instead the pit trap is hidden, then you have an encounter with detection & avoidance — a fight with two monsters.
One of my problems is that a lot of traps is the timing on when to spring them. I’m like “Do I describe the room or spring the trap? The trap is supposed to go off when they enter the room, but don’t they see the room right before they go inside? But if I describe the room, they’ll think that they’re in the room already. AaaAAh! The abstract and concrete are wrestling over priority of occurrence!”
Have you ever played with a group that had “door procedures?”
One of the problems I’ve had over the years is players deciding where they were when something was happening. Usually I see this as a GM, except several weeks ago I was on the player side when a really tedious non-combat encounter was retconned so the PCs who had done the heavy-lifting were suddenly never there. It was a HUGE waste of time.
I don’t know if this approach to skills and traps will be the “end” of what I’m trying to accomplish, but I have a feeling it will at the very least be a step forward. If challenges have to go through an awkward “roll initiative” phase before coming into their own as a game device, that’s okay. The goal is to build a better game overall.
With all the magic that’s prevalent in D&D worlds, I find many the traps that appear most often to be really boring — almost busywork. Pit traps for example — unless they’re hidden, all I usually see happen is:
“There’s a pit in front of you.”
– “I walk around it.”
“You can’t walk around it.”
– “I jump across.”
“It’s too far.”
…and so forth.
Instead of being a (dynamic?) encounter, it’s like a game of 20 questions. Even the scarier and more complex traps that involve a mystery, or a MacGuffin, or a special sequence of lever pulls tend to be mildly-more-engaging games of 20 questions. (Once more, but with spikes!)
Maybe once traps and challenges have a more consistent procedure, a more effective means will emerge on its own. I just don’t see the current systems and procedures doing anything but reusing old ideas.
Pit traps are only really interesting if they lead to another level of the dungeon instead of poison spikes. Otherwise, it’s an exercise in reminding players that the 10-foot pole exists for a reason. And that reason is to trick characters who aren’t playing as elves or women into stepping on pressure-activated traps when they thought they were safe D:<
In a lot of ways, those traps are annoying trappings (snarf-snarf…) of the period during which D&D was a boardless game still trying to use boardgame rules.
I think my “pooled gear” mechanic is going to make a lot of hardass GMs grunt and snarl. I would like for pit traps to be relevant and interesting. I mean, since I read that article about geometric fall damage, it’s got me wanting to use cliffs and moats and high walls and stuff.
Maybe it’s kind of stupid… maybe. But I kind of like the idea of the “world itself” being dangerous to the PCs for a while. Not in an “everything trying to kill you” kind of way, but “try not to be too much of an idiot, and you’ll be just fine.”
Maze of Nuromen has an interesting, if brutal, pit trap for the ultimate treasure trove of the module. First off, the door to the treasure room has poison gas (deadly; I’ll probably make it damage). Second, the room itself has a 10 foot deep trench that has slime-tipped iron spikes at the bottom; on the other side is the treasure trove. The 10′ trench and spikes are an illusion, the pit is really 20′ deep and where the treasure is hidden. If they jump over the pit, the treasure on the other side is an illusion covering up crossbow trap rigged to fire three bolts in the direction of the door.
Ew. I mean — it sounds like it would be interesting to set up and run, but I wouldn’t want to necessarily be a player in that encounter. Lol. I suppose it depends on the overall tone of the game.
If I knew something like that might come along, cool. If not… well, there was this one encounter with a “lock-box with 16 locks” that became infamous as one of the worst traps we ever handled.
It had all the hallmarks of a bad encounter — the GM didn’t provide us with enough information, the damned thing kept resetting itself, it had Rod of Wonder-like effects when lockpicking attempts failed, and one asshole (the GM’s friend) showed up late to the session and bypassed all of our hard work with a lucky skill check… for an ultimately shitty treasure.
Argh. I got pissed off just writing that.