D&D General Want to use traps? Make them obvious

[Reynard]

EDIT: A question I see regularly on Discord from newer GMs is "Running a X-themed dungeon. What's a trap I can put in this room?" There's usually no context given. The specific problem there is that traps exist in context even more so than monsters or treasures. While those things exist in context, traps need context to give the players meaningful information/clues/foreshadowing. Kobolds ambush you? Ok, Stealth v Perception. Treasure is cursed? OK, there's a bit of lore you can get that hints at that. Walls smush you in this area? The burden for clue-giving is higher on the GM / adventure.

The other problem with this sort of question is that it is blind to the distinction between the trap types I outlined. Not all traps do the same thing, and because of that they are best handled in different ways with different objectives.

I wonder if they are leaning on OSR resources, which often have tables saying what is in this room: empty, trap, unguarded treasure, etc... That is fine, and definitely true to the old school, but they need to take it another step and find evocative, fun tables that help further define those elements. The Shadowdark book has a lot of good stuff, and of course there are tons of dedicated OSR books about traps and filling and dungeons and what not.

 

[bloodtide]

I find this one amusing because what actually makes sense is to not have traps. If you look at real world history, the tropes we see so much in D&D of trapped chests and trapped doors are just not a thing. It's too easy for the wrong person to trigger them, and they aren't actually great deterrents.

Traps have been used all throughout history. Nightingale Floors have been made as long as floors have been made (they make a lot of noise when you step on them). Spike traps have been used world wide.

Apparently if you want a deathtrap in your house you have to warn people about it!

For my state this also goes for dogs...it is why the "warning dog" signs exist....you need to warn trespassers "there is a dog here that will bite you"

The real problem with traps is they tend to grind the game to a halt. Either the players are poking every square foot with a 10' pole, or they are spending 30 minutes trying to figure out how to bypass the pit trap.

This is a game problem, not a trap problem. A lot of things can slow down a game, but it really up to the DM not to let that happen.

 

[overgeeked]

No, traps are not historically accurate for medieval Europe. Neither are 36-level dungeons filled with monsters and supernatural threats. So medieval historical accuracy is nothing but a red herring. There are historical precedents though. Pharaoh’s tombs were occasionally trapped, for example.

But traps are historically significant for when the game was published and to the wargamers who invented and eventually published it.

Original D&D was published in 1974. At the tail end of the Vietnam War.

Traps were very much on the minds of a bunch of wargamers in the late 60s and early 70s. To say nothing of the soldiers who would return home and eventually play the game. You see this with things like stories of Tucker’s Kobolds and phrases like “fantasy @&$?ing Vietnam” applied to early D&D.

Also, the thief needed something to do.

As mentioned up thread, some people want the fiction to make sense. For that to happen, traps (at least some of them) have to be hidden. Having some obvious traps to act as visible deterrents is fine. Having a sprung trap with an attached corpse is far more effective as a deterrent.

But it makes no sense whatever to have only clearly visible traps. If your goal is to capture, kill, demoralize, dissuade, deter, etc you need hidden traps.

I’m a huge advocate for player agency. I can’t stand railroading or even linear modules. The argument that traps limit player agency just doesn’t hold water. Being surprised by something does not remove agency. You know traps exist. You know they can be fairly common in dungeons. You choose to go in. You choose to not search for traps. Traps and player agency are not mutually exclusive.

 

[GMMichael]

Inside the rickety door there is a large, carved out chamber. The dirt floor glows orange from a lone torch left burning in the middle. The stone walls sit in shadow, and the shadows fidget occasionally, murmuring. You clearly hear one of the ambushers whisper, "do you think they'll notice?" Followed by a brief, audible "shh!" A thin rope can just barely be seen, coming from the right side of the room, and leading to the large net that is temporarily fixed to the ceiling.

What do you do?

 

[overgeeked]

Inside the rickety door there is a large, carved out chamber. The dirt floor glows orange from a lone torch left burning in the middle. The stone walls sit in shadow, and the shadows fidget occasionally, murmuring. You clearly hear one of the ambushers whisper, "do you think they'll notice?" Followed by a brief, audible "shh!" A thin rope can just barely be seen, coming from the right side of the room, and leading to the large net that is temporarily fixed to the ceiling.

What do you do?

Have the NPC monsters nonchalantly walk in and trigger the trap. This is clearly an incompetent PC party trying a “cunning plan” that’s obviously doomed to fail. But in order to keep their spirits up, I’d sacrifice some of my infinite NPCs to the cause.

 

[Quickleaf]

I wonder if they are leaning on OSR resources, which often have tables saying what is in this room: empty, trap, unguarded treasure, etc... That is fine, and definitely true to the old school, but they need to take it another step and find evocative, fun tables that help further define those elements. The Shadowdark book has a lot of good stuff, and of course there are tons of dedicated OSR books about traps and filling and dungeons and what not.

Definitely I do not see the kinds of trap questions from the OSR crowd! It's the 5e or modern D&D crowd that is asking those questions, at least on the Discord servers I belong to. And it's not an insignificant number, maybe 1-2 per week I will notice if I have the time to check regularly.

I play a few OSR games. Love them. Traps absolutely suck in them. I mean they suck so bad. But it's ok because the play style we have with OSR is more "comedy of errors." There's not a lot of deep character or narrative, and you kind of expect to die at least once. But if were doing a more "serious" or "long-term non-comedy of errors" OSR game, I would personally not run traps as they're presented in most OSE or Basic-clone adventures.

 

[Quickleaf]

Inside the rickety door there is a large, carved out chamber. The dirt floor glows orange from a lone torch left burning in the middle. The stone walls sit in shadow, and the shadows fidget occasionally, murmuring. You clearly hear one of the ambushers whisper, "do you think they'll notice?" Followed by a brief, audible "shh!" A thin rope can just barely be seen, coming from the right side of the room, and leading to the large net that is temporarily fixed to the ceiling.

What do you do?

I wonder how they fit such a large chamber inside such a rickety door. And then I proceed into the actual room. Could you describe what we see beyond the weird chamber-inside-a-door?

 

[Charlaquin]

I think exploration is hard because it is difficult to convey the things that make exploration interesting, challenging, frought and compelling in real life. So we resort to "did I find/encounter anything cool" in place of "this exploration is cool"

I'm not sure what the solution is, other than forcing everyone to explore some modern ruins or going on an unmarked trail hike to get them to understand the point of the thing.

My take is that rather than trying to faithfully represent the challenges and obstacles of navigating unknown territory, we should focus on creating the feeling of exploration. And in my evaluation, that feeling comes from the choice to go out of your way to look into something that caught your interest. When you have a clear goal or objective, and you notice something that piques your curiosity but is unrelated to your objective, and you make the conscious decision to put your objective on hold in order to satisfy that curiosity, that feels like you’re exploring.

This is why sandbox video games give you a quest marker on a compass or mini-map, and then litter that compass or mini-map with markers indicating points of interest that aren’t related to your active quest. To give you opportunities to decide to go investigate a point of interest instead of following your quest marker. When this is done really well, you can end up on digressions to your digressions, where you veer off the main quest to check something else out, and then veer off of doing that to go check something else out. And theoretically you could digress off of that, ad infinitum. The more nesting regressions you get, the deeper the exploration feels.

 

[Reynard]

One of my favorite traps meant purely to murder the party (it was that kind of a game) went like this:

The PCs had to get up to the top of the tower, and the only easy option was a hand cranked elevator -- basically a wood box attached to a chain attached to a wheel. It was of course just a ruse. When they turned the crank it caused the hidden behind the wood cage to close everywhere but the bottom, while simultaneously shattering the glass jar above holding the ooze. There was a 50 foot deep shaft below, with spikes, so even if the PCs survived the ooze it ate through the floor and they plummeted.

Of course they all survived, using a combination of magic and luck and good old fashioned player ingenuity, but there were some messed breeches and that's what I wanted more than actual dead PCs.

 

[overgeeked]

My take is that rather than trying to faithfully represent the challenges and obstacles of navigating unknown territory, we should focus on creating the feeling of exploration. And in my evaluation, that feeling comes from the choice to go out of your way to look into something that caught your interest. When you have a clear goal or objective, and you notice something that piques your curiosity but is unrelated to your objective, and you make the conscious decision to put your objective on hold in order to satisfy that curiosity, that feels like you’re exploring.

This is why sandbox video games give you a quest marker on a compass or mini-map, and then litter that compass or mini-map with markers indicating points of interest that aren’t related to your active quest. To give you opportunities to decide to go investigate a point of interest instead of following your quest marker. When this is done really well, you can end up on digressions to your digressions, where you ever off the main quest to check something else out, and then veer off of doing that to go check something else out. And theoretically you could digress off of that, ad infinitum. The more nesting regressions you get, the deeper the exploration feels.

One of the many things tabletop RPGs should learn from video games.