# Two Dozen Nasty DM Tricks



## Reynard (Feb 22, 2009)

Two Dozen Nasty DM Tricks

Are your players too comfortable? Do they run pell mell into battle, wander confidently through dungeon corridors or loot with abandon? Do they leave town without a 10' pole or iron spikes? Are they certain that whatever they might encounter will be little more than a minor diversion along their path to Epic levels, never truly fearing for their characters lives?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it's time to face facts: you're a soft DM, a push over behind the screen. Buit don't despair! It's not too late for you to flex your DMing muscles and remind them that it isn't paranoia if you really are out to get them.  To help you find your inner RBDM, I've compiled the following list of Nasty DM Tricks you can -- and should! -- spring on them. And when you've worked through this list, start your own and share it with other DMs, so that they too can free themselves from the shackles of wussification.

1. Vials clearly marked as potions of healing filled instead with one of the following: poison, acid or "cause wounds" (this last one is particularly nasty, as a detect magic spell will not reveal the trick).

2. A magical scabbard filled with a powder extracted from rust monsters.

3. A room filled with corpses and covered by an anti-magic zone. When the door on the other side is opened (revealing a wall) a block falls in front of the entrance and the anti-magic zone is removed, reanimating the zombies.

4. Smear contact poison on the mechanism by which a trap would be disarmed.  To add insult to injury, make the trap itself harmless.

5. Two words: bridge mimic.

6. The PCs find a bag of holding; unbeknownst to them, there are already 2 rust monsters placed in the bag.

7. A chromatic dragon uses "alter self" to appear as a metallic dragon with the same breath type.

8. An orc witch doctor uses "reduce" on two hill giants, making them appear as orcs, and ends the spell after the PCs have engaged the apparently minor adversaries.

9. A necklace of strangulation is placed by the dungeon inhabitants on a corpse found near a known or obvious trap.

10. Zombies stuffed full of scorpions or spiders so that once they are cleaved open, the swarms attack.

11. A trap covers the PCs in combustible liquid, then looses a cold based creature.

12. A stuck door that is made of balsam wood or an equally weak material, with a pit trap directly behind it.

13. Electrified portcullis.

14. A peep hole into a monster's lair, a treasure vault or similarly inviting location. A basilisk has been secured on the other side.

15. A trap wounds the target, causing bleeding, and then dumps to character into a shark infested pool, tank or pit.

16. In a room where spiked walls start to close in on the PCs there is a trapdoor in the ceiling. The trapdoor is fitted with a scythe blade trap, beheading those who pass through.

17. One trigger casts "transmute rock to mud" on the ceiling, burying the characters. Another trigger one more step into the room casts "transmute mud to rock".

18. Kobolds, goblins or other small nasty humanoids build the access tunnel to their lair/hoard so bigger folk have to crawl through, then add a second tunnel directly above with spear holes.

19. Four mimics in the shape of pillars hold up the ceiling; if they are killed the ceiling collapses.

20. A roper is located behind a spike grate, able to target the characters and drag them into the spikes but not accessible to melee.

21. Illusions create images of menacing, huge webs on the ceiling and obscure a pit trap in the floor.

22. Things to pit in pit traps: spikes, rust monsters, cockatrices, black pudding, water, diseased rats.

23. Handholds or a ladder in a deep pit trap designed to break/release just out of reach from the top.

24. Kobolds or goblins pour injury vector poison on the ground and then let loose a swarm of rats at the party.  Running through the poison coats the rats' claws with venom without poisoning the rats.


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## El Mahdi (Feb 22, 2009)

Man, I seriously dig #'s 3&10.  Awesome thread idea. Definitely worth some XP.  Thanks.


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## Celebrim (Feb 22, 2009)

Have actually done #10, #13, #18, and most of the list in #22 (never done cockatrices in a pit, have done black pudding, have survived as PC gelatinous cube in pit).  Never done either #3 or #21 explicitly, but false doors and some variation on that sort of misdirection is a staple.  For example, room contains a puzzle to solve.  Solving the puzzle leads to a deadend room with a deadly trap.  Actual exit from puzzle room is the secret door puzzle solvers don't bother to look for because they make assumptions about rooms intention.  Typically, my version of #3 is the reverse.  Room passes normal inspection, but triggered magical effect renders some normal feature of it lethal - breaks enchantment on polymorphed monster, disintegrate trap targets floor, stone to flesh unpetrifies monster, animate dead animates bones in room, etc.


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## Loonook (Feb 22, 2009)

Okay... two from The Expedition to the Black Mirror (Modern module I run now and again, a sort of dungeon crawl in a Wolfram and Hart style corporation's abandoned offices):

1.) Beggar's Tomb/Miser's Tomb:  Pretty simple, classic puzzle I don't see a lot in games (and which fools players for a bit:  An individual lies with his hands on the ill-gotten gains of a previous room (a suit of armor, gold pieces, whatever metal items would be fitting and noticed missing).  The room makes all metallic items weigh ten times as much as they would in normal gravity (magic, special magnets, etc.)  A warning is written above the door of "Tempus Fugit" or simiilar cliche 'move your backside' but the item... so intriguing...

The next room is at opposite polarization.  If the party spends more than 10 rounds searching or attempting to grasp the heavy item, each most make a Reflex or similar check; any whose (metal item weight * 10) exceeds their own weight, or who fails the check, are thrown upwards into the spiked pit trap.

2.) A Beautiful Rug:  A beautifully patterned rug sits in the room, below a chandelier of elegantly curved glass.  A search check notes that the rug is covered in dust.  Disturbing the dust causes the symbol in the dust to activate, summoning the creature bound in the chandelier (in this case, an electric elemental beastie).


Now, for other clever traps from other games I've played in/heard about.

Tick, Tock, Tick:  As the party enters a room, an hourglass or other time piece dangles and begins to fill.  The doors slam shut, obviously something is about to occur. If the party attempts to exit out of the sealed doorway to the inner corridors of the dungeon, they find themselves suffocating; the room is a casting mechanism for a spell which makes the air hospitable, one giant decompression chamber for the whole dungeon.

Beggar's Variation: Inspired by Beggar's Tomb, a Tare trap.  The room's floor shifts, gears grind... the party looks askance on the rogue for damning them to their current state.  If the party passes through the room and has gained any weight (either a new member, or booty) the trap activates.

---

This one I've been thinking about, as it was inspired by a passage in World War Z.  An Iron Golem stands in the middle of the room... dilapidated but functioning.  Piles of rotting corpses fill the air with a stench... if the Golem is struck by a metal weapon the room ignites .  Alchemy or similar check will tell of the issue with the trap.

Not my favorites, but what comes to mind.

Slainte,

-Loonook.


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## MortalPlague (Feb 22, 2009)

I am definitely going to use #10...


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## cjais (Feb 22, 2009)

Do people really find these "tricks" exciting? I find most of these so metagamey and reliant on circumstantial knowledge of the player characters (and their spells), it becomes far more about the DM screwing the players over, than about the enemy trying to foil their attempts.


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## Breezly (Feb 22, 2009)

MortalPlague said:


> I am definitely going to use #10...




I have heard, or read I think, of a similar situation, but the zombie is infected with yellow mold, so every time you hit it, well...you get the idea.  Down right evil...

--Breezly


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## Breezly (Feb 22, 2009)

cjais said:


> Do people really find these "tricks" exciting? I find most of these so metagamey and reliant on circumstantial knowledge of the player characters (and their spells), it becomes far more about the DM screwing the players over, than about the enemy trying to foil their attempts.




Most of them I find just mean and I wouldn't use against players because I don't think the message would be received well if I did them.  It would become too much of a me vs them and that is not the goal of my game.  a few of them I can see being used to break up the standard notion of how things work to keep them on their toes and not get comfortable in the way they feel things work.

It's a fun read though.

--Breezly


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## Pbartender (Feb 22, 2009)

25. White Plume Mountain

26. Tomb of Horrors


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## Reynard (Feb 22, 2009)

cjais said:


> Do people really find these "tricks" exciting? I find most of these so metagamey and reliant on circumstantial knowledge of the player characters (and their spells), it becomes far more about the DM screwing the players over, than about the enemy trying to foil their attempts.




Tricks like these certainly appeal to a specific playstyle, and if that's not your bag or your players' bag they can indeed be viewed as adversarial or a "screw job" (yes, I've been reading KotDT again).  But for a particular playstyle preference, these kinds of tricks make the game more fun, challenging the players as much as their characters.  Is it metagamey -- sure, but the metagame is the game.  Every time you look at your character sheet or examine the mat and minis, you're metagaming. IMO, it doesn't reduce the integrity of the game to expect the players to do so in other kinds of situations, too.

Besides, tricks like these are the fonts from which "tales from the table" flow for years to come.


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## Rechan (Feb 22, 2009)

> 4. Smear contact poison on the mechanism by which a trap would be disarmed. To add insult to injury, make the trap itself harmless.



Two words: solvent glue.



> 10. Zombies stuffed full of scorpions or spiders so that once they are cleaved open, the swarms attack.



I like to use poisonous gas inside a sealed zombie.



> 23. Handholds or a ladder in a deep pit trap designed to break/release just out of reach from the top.



Or: A trigger on the ladder causes a stone block in the ceiling to fall into the pit trap.

27) In one of the low tunnels kobolds or goblins are using, they have dug a groove in the ceiling. The groove is covered with oil-soaked canvas, and above the canvas is flammable liquid. When someone passes beneath the canvas with a torch, the torch sets the canvas on fire, which dumps the liquid ontop of the target.

28) A pit trap in a narrow hallway, with the trigger being several feet in front of it. The trap will snag someone in the back of a marching order.

29) Any door based trap added to a door with a wall behind it.

30) This trap does three things. It casts Darkness in the room. It causes an auditory illusion of a door opening and movement to suggest that there is something in the room with the PCs. It also sets an alarm off somewhere in the dungeon, alerting the inhabitants of intruders. While the players are busy fighting nothing, guards are on their way. 

31) In a room is a raised platform only two feet in diameter. In the ceiling is a hole of the same size, aligned with the platform. The trap causes the ceiling to drop. It's obvious that standing on the upraised portion allows one to escape the crushing ceiling. When someone steps on it, the second part of the trap goes off - a bolt of lightning from inside the hole hits the target on the platform, and the ceiling stops descending. 

32) The ceiling drops down to only two feet high, forcing the PCs to crawl around. Then, secret doors along the floor release monsters built to move around in the small confined space.


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## merelycompetent (Feb 22, 2009)

cjais said:


> Do people really find these "tricks" exciting?




Yes.



> I find most of these so metagamey and reliant on circumstantial knowledge of the player characters (and their spells), it becomes far more about the DM screwing the players over,...



No. None of the traps in here are immediately deadly. Many can easily be defeated with a little bit of checking. Look in the bag of holding before you put anything valuable in it and you can easily see the rust monster(s), for example. Others allow saving throws. All of them are usable, in some form or fashion, by the PCs against their enemies. Many of them are detectable by thief/rogue classes (or equivalents) under all editions of the game. Even the poison on the rats' claws trick is far less deadly as presented in 4E.



> than about the enemy trying to foil their attempts.



There are some styles of play where the enemy exercises intricate strategy and tactics to use against the PCs, where the DM and players enjoy the intellectual, strategic, or tactical challenges, ambushes, and trickery possible within the rules. Your style appears to be different. And that's good! A variety of styles, interpretations, and understanding of the game *adds* to the hobby.

We could go into a long discussion about what constitutes meta-gamey, DM vs. player, what play styles are valid, and so forth. That's not the point. The point is to use these devious, clever, and dastardly traps as *inspiration*, to make *your* game more fun! Even if the traps in this thread are examples of what you don't want to do in your game, they still benefit you: Now you have a set of examples of what you definitely don't want to use in your play style. Or you can tone them down - maybe change the two rust monsters into puppies - who are actually the polymorphed kidnapped prince and princess. Or better still, the BBEG's misbehaving children. Plot hooks galore.

Just a few thoughts.


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## Reynard (Feb 22, 2009)

merelycompetent said:


> Or better still, the BBEG's misbehaving children.




Ha!


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## Rechan (Feb 22, 2009)

A few of these aren't vicious, just aspects of traps (like the breakable ladder, or the weak door in front of a pit trap). I've seen a few of these in the _Traps and Treachery_ book. Others merely make an interesting encounter (The zombies filled with scorpions, the disguised giants); those aren't meant to screw the players, but to spice up an otherwise boring encounter.

I actually like the "Illusionary ceiling webs/pit trap floor". 

On the other hand, I'm not the DM to be vicious like these traps suggest. However, I've ran a group that expected me to (They spent five minutes real time worrying about a _bag of tricks_, thinking it was going to attack them. They looked in every crate and barrel, thinking there was a "Gotcha" somewhere.) It got very frustrating for me.


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## jdrakeh (Feb 22, 2009)

cjais said:


> Do people really find these "tricks" exciting? I find most of these so metagamey and reliant on circumstantial knowledge of the player characters (and their spells), it becomes far more about the DM screwing the players over, than about the enemy trying to foil their attempts.




It's worth pointing out that some people run D&D specifically to screw over players. For these folks, D&D is all about 'versus' play. I won't go so far as to say that this is an invalid or wrong playstyle — after all, at least one person is having fun — it's just not for me


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## Rechan (Feb 22, 2009)

Reynard said:


> Besides, tricks like these are the fonts from which "tales from the table" flow for years to come.



Cough cough head of vecna cough.


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## Reynard (Feb 22, 2009)

Some Door Traps:

Contact poison on the handle.

A mechanical or magic "noisemaker" on the opposite side of the door and a thrusting spike trap set to go off when the thief/rogue puts his ear to the door for a listen.

A puzzle trap that appears to open a secret door when solved, but instead forms explosive runes or a glyph of warding when completed.

A stone door with an acid filled space above and the door serving as the seal.  When the door is opened the acid pours down onto the opener.

For big doors or gates, a hollow space and secret door built into the back side.  Once the PCs pass through, assassins or monsters slip out behind the party.

A door enchanted to feel hot to the touch that activates a cold trap when opened (or vice versa).

A door that acts as a seal for a small room filled with poison gas under pressure.  When opened the gas pours out. Also possible: combustible gas for parties that use torches.


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## merelycompetent (Feb 22, 2009)

Rechan said:


> Cough cough head of vecna cough.




I wish it was a rule that no one is allowed to mention this classic of gaming without also providing a link to the full story:

Head of Vecna

:>


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## Reynard (Feb 22, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> It's worth pointing out that some people run D&D specifically to screw over players. For these folks, D&D is all about 'versus' play. I won't go so far as to say that this is an invalid or wrong playstyle — after all, *at least one person is having fun* — it's just not for me




I think we call the above bolded phrase "kindling".


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## merelycompetent (Feb 22, 2009)

Here's one I've used:

PC's have probably accumulated a number of enemies. So one of them (either a spellcaster himself or hires one) casts a permanent illusion over a giant, or other big-sized monster, to look like a halfling. Then sends the party a challenge...

The look on the players' faces when the halfling knocked over 5' thick oak trees with a wave of his hand - from ten feet away - was priceless!

Another:
Two pits in a narrow hallway. The nearest one is uncovered, has spikes in the bottom, and is coated with some sort of noxious slime. The second one (on the other side of the first) is covered with a pivot panel. PCs can lay a ladder, plank, or other bridge across the first pit and get over with no problem. But as soon as they step on the cover of the second pit (or jump over the first one)...


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## Humanaut (Feb 22, 2009)

I almost fell for #9 once, the DM BBwizard had made a simulacrum of himself and sent it after us, when we killed it, it turned to snow and we knew we were duped... but ahh... something glows magic!  I try on the necklace w/o thinking... ah!  Not quite dead with party help.

I'll have to think awhile for RBDM traps i've used.


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## cjais (Feb 22, 2009)

Sorry if my initial post came across as thread-crapping. I'm aware that some people find this style of play exciting.

What I prefer is more mundane, "realistic" traps. Traps that can be circumvented by the actual inhabitants of the dungeon, and traps meant to actually impede, kill or trap invaders, in contrast to being designed to annoy or mess with the player's expectations. 

If the inhabitants can make whole rooms that reverse gravity, or go to the lengths of poisoning the mechanism for disarming a trap, I don't see why they just don't make traps that are much more lethal to begin with. I don't like when traps hinder the inhabitant's movement and escape options.

Most of all, I dislike traps that rely overly on magic. I don't see the fun or excitement in running over characters with illusions and petrifying basilisks. However, some of these suggestions are quite good. I like the more mundane tricks with pit traps and movable walls/ceilings etc.


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## Gunton The Terrible (Feb 22, 2009)

*Ambush room*

I designed  a room to ambush my PCs.  When they were adventuring through a dungeon and came to an obvious liar there were two ways to go.  A "Y" intersection with an obvious lair one way and a typical tunnel the other.  

The entrance of the lair resembled a two story castle gate so it was well fortified with archers on the second floor.  Not very inviting.  

The second tunnel ran some 70 feet to the ambush room.  The humanoid tribe behind the gate watches the party go by and alerts the welcoming party at the end of the other tunnel.

The room at the end of the tunnel was 5 by 10 squares.  The party enters through an open archway in the NW corner.  A bare dusty 2 story room (maybe a few dried blood stains on the floor) with a single door in the SE corner.  The trap consists of mechanical trap designed to give the ambushers a sever advantage.  The ambushers are positioned behind arrow slits on the N and S wall on the second floor.  The arrow slits are covered.

The mechanical trap springs when the false door in the SE corner is pulled.  Three things are set off.  
1) A 10 foot spiked pit opens in front of the false door.
2) A stone slab the size one square falls from the ceiling from the last hallway square at the entrance.  Those making their reflex save had the choice of rolling into the room or the hallway.
3) The covers on the arrow slits fall away.  Eight archers and two spell casters get the surprise round.

Roll for initiative!!

I threw this at the party with the idea that at least one PC should die.  It was a simple non-magic way for the humanoids to remove unwanted pests trying to invade their home.

The PCs did surprise me.  Not one died.  Of course they were wetting themselves which was reward enough.   

The pit offered some cover for those willing to dive in and at their level the damage was just a nuisance at best.  The PC that fell in decided to buff up before coming out.  Good for him, but the rest of the party was running around the room screaming for him to come out.  Through obscuring mists, force walls, and shape rock ( or rock to mud, I forget which) the party managed to escape through the second floor area and found them selves a back way into the lair.

They still talk about that battle some two years+ later.


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## Aberzanzorax (Feb 22, 2009)

*You gave me an idea!*

The "triple portcullis" (assumption is 3rd ed, but could be adapted for 4e)

Trigger: a magic fountain in the middle of the room (it has an alarm spell triggering the trap). Who can resist a magic fountain?

Portcullis the first: the entry door.

Portcullis the second: the exit door.

Portcullis the third (the pain in the butt one): this is a horizontal grate with 3 by 3 inch holes. It falls on the players, including extra weight. Falling a mere 10 feet, it does 1d6 damage. 

In 3e allow a str check with "aid another" from everyone in the room to hold it up. In 4e, I'd assume a skill challenge might be warranted here.

So the players now are left holding up a heavy metal portcullis, or, having failed the check, are stuck with a mere 2 feet of clearance...i.e. they are prone.


Then, kobold rogues, goblin rogues or somesuch belay down from the ceiling and start stabbing the players through the grates. Their extra weight warrants a new strength check with a +2 to the difficulty. Players have a -4 to hit if prone (or if not prone, they are busy holding up the grate, lose their dex bonus, and must make str checks every time they are injured).

The attackers have a +4 to hit.

On top of this, both sides benefit from a +4 to AC from cover...yielding a totaly of no penalty to hit from the attackers, but a total of -8 to hit for the prone pcs.

EDIT: forgot to remember the +1 for "higher ground" of the guys on top.

To make it more deadly:
1. Add spikes (poisoned or not) to the falling portcullis.
2. Add alchemist fire or some other grenade attack that isn't affected by cover.
3. Add a creature that can attack in such a small space: a swarm of rats for example.
4. Add a creature that can move back and forth: Kobold vampires or ghosts. Ghosts wouldn't have to worry about the cover, while vampires could gaseous form through the grate.
5. Instead of just one grate, make two, with the top one having much larger holes. Then give the attackers reach weapons. Players can't fight back unless they have crossbows or reach weapons.


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## merelycompetent (Feb 22, 2009)

Aberzanzorax said:


> The "triple portcullis" (assumption is 3rd ed, but could be adapted for 4e)...




I like!

Other options to consider:
* Add a lightning para-elemental (or substitute another electric shock generating critter) dropping into the room once the annoying portcullis falls. That should generate some penalties to saves vs. electrical damage.
* Make the room 2' deep in water. That should make the "clearance" mentioned a bit more exciting. (Look up the rules for holding your breath ahead of time...)
* The portcullis falling unleashes a swarm of vermin. Gotta hate it when you're prone, pinned, and just kicked over a fire ant nest.
* The portcullis is actually a killer mimic.
* The portcullis has Magic Mouth (pre-4E spell; 4E ritual) cast on it. As soon as it falls, it starts screaming, "I've Got Him! I've Got Him!!" in Orcish.
* Insult + injury: Portcullis falls on you, followed by part of the weakened and crumbling ceiling.


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## Aberzanzorax (Feb 22, 2009)

Ha! Nice!!!

My favorite was the room 2' deep in water. It's both a clue and a hazard...the best combo, so players have to contend with it, but don't feel cheated with its' existence.


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## Wik (Feb 22, 2009)

I really like the scorpion zombie idea, but I know in 4e, that could really just be a variation on an existing monster, and not really "RBDM".  However, the contact poison on a harmless trap is pretty much PERFECT.  I'll need to steal that one, eventually.

Great thread.


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## El Mahdi (Feb 23, 2009)

(Only a friendly post - I'm not picking a fight - just as I didn't think you were either.  And not trying to convince you of anything, just making an observation.)




cjais said:


> What I prefer is more mundane, "realistic" traps. Traps that can be circumvented by the actual inhabitants of the dungeon, and *traps meant to actually impede, kill or trap invaders*, in contrast to being designed to annoy or mess with the player's expectations. ...




But wouldn't a bad guy designing a trap based on how typical adventurers think, thereby leading themselves into trouble, be doing just that? Exploiting the tendancies of their adversaries (sic. _Adventurers_) is exactly what smart bad guys/monsters do.

Seems like most of these "dirty tricks" do just that. Most of those tricks leave nobody to really be blamed except the adventureres themselves for walking right into them (because of greed, curiosity, etc. typical character motivations). Doesn't seem overly mean to me. Almost all of those traps/tricks are easily circumvented by the inhabitants/bad guy simply because: _they know they are there_.

Most of those traps and tricks *are* _"designed to impede, kill or trap invaders"_. It's just that the players ruin the bad guys well laid plans and escape death despite them. For me, that's the entire spirit of D&D right there (along with killing things and taking their stuff).

As a DM I love stuff like this. However, they aren't something I use all of the time. Traps and tricks like these are something I might only use once a session, or even every other session. And, I won't allow them to turn into a TPK, or even, usually, a character death. But, I guarantee the players will remember it for a very long time. They do become legendary stories of the players to be talked about for a very long time. That to me is a definite win-win, for players and DM alike.


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## ehren37 (Feb 23, 2009)

cjais said:


> Do people really find these "tricks" exciting? I find most of these so metagamey and reliant on circumstantial knowledge of the player characters (and their spells), it becomes far more about the DM screwing the players over, than about the enemy trying to foil their attempts.




I find a number of them a step removed from "Rocks fall, everyone dies" myself. Its the typical grognard "guess what I'm thinking" style of adversarial DM'sing that I detest. "Oh, you use a 10 foot pole to probe for random pit traps? It now sets off a pit trap 10 feet from the pressure point." "You search for traps? You set off the explosive runes" "You cast detect magic? You cause the invisible explosive runes to glow, reading them...."

Good job fatbeard. You abused your god powers. *golf clap*.


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## Orius (Feb 23, 2009)

cjais said:


> Do people really find these "tricks" exciting? I find most of these so metagamey and reliant on circumstantial knowledge of the player characters (and their spells), it becomes far more about the DM screwing the players over, than about the enemy trying to foil their attempts.




Yup.  You have to be a DM to really appreciate them.


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## Kzach (Feb 23, 2009)

Best. Thread. Evar.

I need to become more evil so I can contribute meaningfully to this thread


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## op1983 (Feb 23, 2009)

Oh man! This stuff is awesome keep it coming!


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## Kraydak (Feb 23, 2009)

This really has the feel of PCs fail by DM fiat.



Reynard said:


> Two Dozen Nasty DM Tricks
> 
> Are your players too comfortable? Do they run pell mell into battle, wander confidently through dungeon corridors or loot with abandon? Do they leave town without a 10' pole or iron spikes? Are they certain that whatever they might encounter will be little more than a minor diversion along their path to Epic levels, never truly fearing for their characters lives?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it's time to face facts: you're a soft DM, a push over behind the screen. Buit don't despair! It's not too late for you to flex your DMing muscles and remind them that it isn't paranoia if you really are out to get them.  To help you find your inner RBDM, I've compiled the following list of Nasty DM Tricks you can -- and should! -- spring on them. And when you've worked through this list, start your own and share it with other DMs, so that they too can free themselves from the shackles of wussification.
> 
> 1. Vials clearly marked as potions of healing filled instead with one of the following: poison, acid or "cause wounds" (this last one is particularly nasty, as a detect magic spell will not reveal the trick).




Anyone who doesn't ID their potions (by whatever means the edition they play demands) gets what they deserve.  IDing potions under 3e/4e is pretty darn trivial.



> 2. A magical scabbard filled with a powder extracted from rust monsters.




ID your items.  Any powder that can rust weapons on contact is magical.



> 3. A room filled with corpses and covered by an anti-magic zone. When the door on the other side is opened (revealing a wall) a block falls in front of the entrance and the anti-magic zone is removed, reanimating the zombies.




Zombies aren't affected by anti-magic zones...  There are ways you can make this work, but note that entering anti-magic zones is usually *really freaking obvious* to people who are strong enough to have enemies willing to make *permanent anti-magic zones*.



> 4. Smear contact poison on the mechanism by which a trap would be disarmed.  To add insult to injury, make the trap itself harmless.




So the Find Traps roll finds the poison.  Unless the DM rules by fiat that this "extraordinarily clever" trap somehow bypasses all the normal "find traps" mechanisms.



> 6. The PCs find a bag of holding; unbeknownst to them, there are already 2 rust monsters placed in the bag.




Quite some bags of holding you have there... how are the rust monsters surviving?



> 12. A stuck door that is made of balsam wood or an equally weak material, with a pit trap directly behind it.




Find Traps.  Low DC... recognizing absurdly weak construction materials is pretty easy.



> 19. Four mimics in the shape of pillars hold up the ceiling; if they are killed the ceiling collapses.




Mimics can look like stone pillars.  That doesn't give them stone pillar-esque load-bearing capabilities.


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## Reynard (Feb 23, 2009)

I won't get into an argument over whether this sort of play is fun or is "fair" or anything else.  However, i do find it interesting that many folks seem to have pretty damn strong feelings about it.


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## Pbartender (Feb 23, 2009)

Reynard said:


> I won't get into an argument over whether this sort of play is fun or is "fair" or anything else.  However, i do find it interesting that many folks seem to have pretty damn strong feelings about it.




That's because there's a very fine line between being an RBDM and an AHDM.

Something that's starts out as a unique and interesting challenge or a cunning turn of plot or twist of fate can quickly and easily be turned into a thinly veiled excuse to unavoidably screw your players, if you're not careful about it.


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## Reynard (Feb 23, 2009)

Pbartender said:


> AHDM




A-Hole DM?


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## Reynard (Feb 23, 2009)

Pbartender said:


> Something that's starts out as a unique and interesting challenge or a cunning turn of plot or twist of fate can quickly and easily be turned into a thinly veiled excuse to unavoidably screw your players, if you're not careful about it.




Or the perception of such. If players fall for one of these tricks and start crying foul, it doesn't mean the DM made the "screwing" unavoidable -- just that the players didn't avoid it.


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## Kraydak (Feb 23, 2009)

Reynard said:


> I won't get into an argument over whether this sort of play is fun or is "fair" or anything else.  However, i do find it interesting that many folks seem to have pretty damn strong feelings about it.




The DM comes up with "cool" idea and ends up, consciously or unconsciously, twisting rules to make sure the idea plays out as he envisaged it is a depressingly common scenario, in large part due to human nature.

It is also something that can poison (or at least make queasy) DM-player relations.

Traps that somehow avoid all the trap-finding mechanics in the game (and that thereby punish you for using said trap-finding mechanics) are pretty much "Exhibit A" of this phenomenon.


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## Reynard (Feb 23, 2009)

Kraydak said:


> Traps that somehow avoid all the trap-finding mechanics in the game (and that thereby punish you for using said trap-finding mechanics) are pretty much "Exhibit A" of this phenomenon.




This depends on whether "trap finding mechanics" are the sole determiner of whether a trap is found. I am of the school of thought that you'd no sooner allow a player to declare "I search for traps in the room" and make a roll than you would allow a player to say "I convince the duke to give us men-at-arms and a charter" and make a roll. Both of these situations require more imput from the players to get an effective output from the DM. Of course, YMMV.


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## shilsen (Feb 23, 2009)

Orius said:


> Yup.  You have to be a DM to really appreciate them.




Depends on the DM. I'm a DM, and my players regularly call me a rat-bastard, but I'd never use 90% of the stuff listed thus far in the thread.



			
				Pbartender said:
			
		

> That's because there's a very fine line between being an RBDM and an AHDM.
> 
> Something that's starts out as a unique and interesting challenge or a cunning turn of plot or twist of fate can quickly and easily be turned into a thinly veiled excuse to unavoidably screw your players, if you're not careful about it.




What he said.



			
				Reynard said:
			
		

> This depends on whether "trap finding mechanics" are the sole determiner of whether a trap is found. I am of the school of thought that you'd no sooner allow a player to declare "I search for traps in the room" and make a roll than you would allow a player to say "I convince the duke to give us men-at-arms and a charter" and make a roll. Both of these situations require more imput from the players to get an effective output from the DM. Of course, YMMV.




Good point. Whether the stuff in this thread fits your tastes (as a DM or as a player) depends on, well, your tastes. For example, I'm personally absolutely fine as a DM with a player searching for traps with just a roll. In the case of persuading the duke, it would likely take a roll and some roleplaying, but that's as much because my players love to roleplay out things like that (and have no desire to roleplay out the trap-searching) as anything else. Different strokes and all that jazz.


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## Silverblade The Ench (Feb 23, 2009)

Haha those are bloody good 

some of my faves:

Zombies filled with vials of smokepower and nails. Not only do they go BANG!, they often set off surrounding zombies, too...think DOOM with exploding barrels and shrapnel 
Imagine a doorway, beyond the doorway, it turns hard right for 10' to another door.
Take a hydra, put it behind a wall beyond the 1st door, in a cage made f
from big iron bars with large spaces. 
Now, put a "window" in the wall between it and the door, and cast a special Wall of FOrce in the gap...the wall of force is not affected by the hydra, or visa-versa.  The wall of force acts as a one way mirror.
The party comes along, and sees what looks like a huge mirror...out of which the hydra's heads can suddenly poke through and eat the party!
DId I mention this was a learnean hydra? 
Since the party has to fight by to get into the room where the hydra is,and have to deal with the other (locked) doro and maybe traps, and then the hdyra's protected by it's cage which it's heads can reach through.....
Yes, that is a very bad hair day for the heroes, muhaha!


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## OchreJelly (Feb 23, 2009)

I agree that many of the OPs list is clever and fun.  I have used my fair share of exploding zombies.  However, I'll pass on the 'screw-job' style.  Even when the 'screw-job' tricks are detectable (the non-detectable ones are the worst offenders IMO) they tend to slow the game to a halt.  

It may seem fun at first, but when the PCs become paranoid enough that they are touching every floor tile with a ten foot pole or throwing food at every chest for fear of killer mimics, i don't feel it's a good use of our often limited time together.  The true recipe for frustration is when the PCs are playing like this and they still get hit with a 'screw-job' trick.  Very old-school feel for sure.  If I want this style of game a one-shot of CoC is often the best fix.  Just my opinion of course.


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## ExploderWizard (Feb 23, 2009)

A lot of these tricks only become screw jobs if the DM suddenly changes up running style in an established game. If the campaign has been going for 6 levels with the default of searching with a skill roll and all of sudden situations start popping up that require detailed instructions from the player in order for the roll to have meaning, then the DM is being a jerk.

If, on the other hand, detailed instructions from the player is the norm for the campaign, then a careless or forgetful player can expect these things to happen. In this type of game, if these tricks are not used sparingly, the game will move very slowly and the DM should simply accept this as a consequence of this style of play.


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## Remathilis (Feb 23, 2009)

Reynard said:


> A-Hole DM?




@$$-h4t DM.


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## jdrakeh (Feb 23, 2009)

cjais said:


> What I prefer is more mundane, "realistic" traps. _Traps that can be circumvented by the actual inhabitants of the dungeon_. . .




Emphasis mine. I'd like to see more of these, as well, though it's my experience that few (if any) traps in published adventures take this into consideration. It seems that most traps in adventure modules exist only to challenge players, with little (if any) regard paid to the logic of their existence and/or implementation.

The long history of dungeon traps in D&D reminds me much of the puzzles in video games like Resident Evil — you know, those puzzles where you have to run all over the place to collects keys to open otherwise normal doors. Getting to their desks at Umbrella must have been a complete pain in the ass for day to day employees.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that games with puzzles and traps like that were directly inspired by older editions of D&D with regard to challenging the player at the expense of consistent world building. I prefer traps and puzzles that challenge the player _and_ the character, while also making sense in terms of the setting. 

I recently designed a TWERPS 5-room dungeon for the first issue of Outre Realms (see .sig) and logical traps were a big part of that. Of course, another big part of it was making logical traps look perfectly absurd at first blush. There are hints of why the place was designed as it was, though I refrained from spelling out the specifics (allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions).


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## Celebrim (Feb 23, 2009)

OchreJelly said:


> I agree that many of the OPs list is clever and fun.  I have used my fair share of exploding zombies.  However, I'll pass on the 'screw-job' style.  Even when the 'screw-job' tricks are detectable (the non-detectable ones are the worst offenders IMO) they tend to slow the game to a halt.
> 
> It may seem fun at first, but when the PCs become paranoid enough that they are touching every floor tile with a ten foot pole or throwing food at every chest for fear of killer mimics, i don't feel it's a good use of our often limited time together.  The true recipe for frustration is when the PCs are playing like this and they still get hit with a 'screw-job' trick.  Very old-school feel for sure.  If I want this style of game a one-shot of CoC is often the best fix.  Just my opinion of course.




The trick to introducing these sort of things is to very clearly demarcate from the context where the tricks begin, and where they end.

The trick must believably exist in the campaign world.  If the players are walking around in a human town, and suddenly the road opens up and they fall into a 30' deep pit with spikes at the bottom, they are probably going to be outraged and my opinion will have good reasons for being outraged.  Afterall, plenty of people presumably walk along this road, there are businesses and homes along the road, and so forth.  Why did they put a trap here and how do they manage to live with it?  If there are death traps randomly scattered about the city, this would seem to greatly impact how the city operates - they would probably have at the least been warned not to wander about without a guide and there would probably be contextual clues that this particular section of street was lethally trapped.

The same in my opinion must be true of a goblin city.  A bad example of the first edition play style that I've run into on several occassions is death traps in well travelled corridors of a dungeon, lethal traps in the BBEG's living quarters, fatal contact poison smeared on the doorknob between inhabited sections of a dungeon, and so forth.  This is in some ways worse than finding a collosal red dragon at the bottom of a dungeon where the only access or egress is through a 3' wide 8' high door.  Lethal traps represent a great expense to create and are dangerous to live with.  A trap building society might have them on unused 'entrances' they never use, on dead-end corridors no one ever goes down', or possibly in rooms that are entered only on very rare occassions and only with great ceremony, but they won't just be randomly scattered about.  The society will be adapted to live with the traps and the tools to bypass them when necessary will be handily nearby.

But on the other hand, if the PC's open a tomb which has never been entered since it was sealed up a thousand years ago, then I expect them to immediately shift to 'Tomb of Horrors'/'Indiana Jones' mode because the presence of cunning death traps is a given.

If the PC's are exploring some ruined dwarven city now inhabited by goblins, and they find themselves leaving the goblins living and working areas and entering the reliquery of a Dwarven temple that the goblins never dare to tread in, then contextually, the amount of caution they are expected to use changes as well.  Similarly, if within the city, they raid the treasury of some powerful wizard, again, the amount of caution required changes contextually.

If the PC's encountered an ornately fashioned iron door deep within the crypt of an evil temple that is covered with various signs and devices of warning, and on the lentil of the door is written, "Death awaits any who dare tresspass", if they are outraged because opening the door sets off a lethal trap and reveals a horrible monster, then they've really no business playing D&D in my opinion.


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## Silverblade The Ench (Feb 23, 2009)

jdrakeh,
oh I agree totlaly that traps *must make sense*!
I alway shave it so the inhabitants can bypass it somehow.

simple:
hobgoblins lair, cavenr entrance.
it has a huge spiked pit trap the width of the cavern.
A bridge partially crosses this...but Continual Darkness globes block out what the bridge leads to...
So, if the pit is say 40' across, the bridge only goes in about 10', then a series of small islands and bridges lead off...some are trapped. 
The hobgoblins know the route across in the darkness.

Alarms will sound from traps, and hobgolins will fire ballistae across the darkness hoping to "sweep" any intruders.

another:
necromancer's tower. Inside is a vast open area with many archers, skeletal fire giant lava hurlers, traps etc. he bypass it all by merely levitating UP through the illusionary floor/ceiling 50' above his head! Simple, logical, but devastatingly effective. 
Muhaha!

too many DM's forget that no perosn in their right mind is gonna booby trap a thing they use frequently with a DEADLY trap, as the risks of them setting it off accidentaly are too damn high! 
Would you put a claymore mine in your bedroom door?!

Exception would be magical traps, but even then, you are best using deadly traps in "false paths", like a route the inhabitants know not to use.Or traps that require them to be activated by someone as a safety.


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## Raven Crowking (Feb 23, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> If the PC's encountered an ornately fashioned iron door deep within the crypt of an evil temple that is covered with various signs and devices of warning, and on the lentil of the door is written, "Death awaits any who dare tresspass", if they are outraged because opening the door sets off a lethal trap and reveals a horrible monster, then they've really no business playing D&D in my opinion.




"You must spread some XP around before giving it to Celebrim again."


RC


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## maddman75 (Feb 23, 2009)

Put me down for anti-tomb of horrors.  I can think of nasty tricks, but stuff like that takes me out of the game.  Why would there be magical rust monster powder in a scabbard, apart from 'to screw the PCs over and destroy their items!'  I can't think of any reasonable explaination that this should come up.  Same with most of these.

I'm reminded of an old game where right at the start of the game there was a chest with a magical trap on it.  We tried to disarm the trap, but it was too much for the thief, and dropped a fireball on us.  We healed up and tried again, this time bypassing the trap.  Well now a poisoned needle hits us!  We try to disassemble the chest, and its protected by magical forcefields.  We spend a couple of hours of game time messing with this box.  When we finally get it open, its empty.

I'm exasperated, and wondering why someone would spend tens of thousands of gold pieces setting up this complex, multilayered magical trap and not have it actually protecting anything.  The GM says 'its just there to screw with you!' like that is perfectly rational.

I hate traps, and generally only include them in game as part of a larger scene.

To contribute, I tend toward plot-based nasty tricks.  One of my favorites is the Evil Mentor trick.  The local lord is secretly plotting to rebel against the realm, and doesn't want any adventurers around mucking up his plans.  So he sends them on riskier and riskier missions, often with bad information, hoping they'll go off and get themselves killed.  The moment when they realize this has been going on is just priceless.


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## Kid Charlemagne (Feb 23, 2009)

Any list of traps is going to have a lot of things that won't appeal to one person or another.  I find that I cast aside at least 50% of what I got out of the Grimtooth's books, but that doesn't mean they weren't golden.  Same applies to this thread.  Pbartender does make a good point that its a fine line between challenging and screwing the players.  My goal is to have the players either go, "We're awesome!  We caught that!" or "Oh, crap!  We should have seen that coming!"  Certainly not "the DM is out to get me!"


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## OchreJelly (Feb 23, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> The trick to introducing these sort of things is to very clearly demarcate from the context where the tricks begin, and where they end.
> 
> The trick must believably exist in the campaign world.  <snip>



.

Oh you'll get no argument from me here.  I agree that trap filled tombs are definitely classic, appealing adventure locales.  Likewise I think context is key.  I think a key part of treading the line between 'screw job' and challenging encounter is context.  The players need to have some way of getting a warning about bad things, even if the DM has to back it with 'you failed 5 search rolls'.

If the player has no reason to believe that there is rust monster essence in the cool new magic scabbard he found, i think that's just mean spirited.  But given context, I suppose it could be workable if it was found in the lair of "Ferrous", the evil rust monster keeper.  IME I tend to think any item-destroyers or level-drainers are by their nature 'screw job' territory.  I know players who prefer their PCs were killed over losing a favorite item.

But my overall point was overuse of 'evil DM tricks' could train the players into slowing down the game by searching everything.  If they are in the evil trap-filled tomb that might be ok occasionally.  I would just recommend hand-waving searching every square and just saying as a DM "I get it, you're taking 20 on everything and moving thru this place at a snail's pace".


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## ehren37 (Feb 23, 2009)

Reynard said:


> This depends on whether "trap finding mechanics" are the sole determiner of whether a trap is found. I am of the school of thought that you'd no sooner allow a player to declare "I search for traps in the room" and make a roll than you would allow a player to say "I convince the duke to give us men-at-arms and a charter" and make a roll. Both of these situations require more imput from the players to get an effective output from the DM. Of course, YMMV.





Further proof you just expect your players to be telepathic. "Guess what I'm thinking" stopped being a fun gaming style back in junior high. Do you also require your players to tell you how exactly they summon forth mystical energies from some bat poo to cast fireball?

You may as well just point at your players and assign some damage or equipment loss. You still get to deal your petty damage, but at least it saves game time from trying to guess whether or not someone should turn a door knob a half turn or a full turn, or whether or not looking under a rug will trigger a glyph of warding, or whether or not the lever was smeared with a special ontact poison that immediately travels up ropes. 

The Grimtooth books always struck me as designed for DM's who didnt have enough wit to figure out that A) it wasnt particularly hard to make the players "lose" and B) that's not really the point of being the DM. 

In my opinion, if a trap isnt sprung, it may as well have never existed. Random squares of dungeon shouldn't have pit traps in them. Chests shouldn't have a permanent "sticks to snakes" so anyone prodding them open ends up holding a cobra. Doors shouldn't have the world's tiniest banshee imprisoned in them, so anyone listening would get an earful of "save or die". 

I greatly prefer the rube goldberg style machine traps, encounter traps, etc. Players should want to trigger them for the fun of getting out. Zinger traps are just lame.

I find it amusing that the old guard so often pisses and monas about a loss of wonder, while at the same time guiding a style of play that rewards an anal retentive standard operating procedure for opening doors and where no one would dream of putting on a magic belt in the middle of a dungeon without first slugging down a wine, owl feathers and pearl-tini, lest their junk fall off.


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## Pbartender (Feb 23, 2009)

Reynard said:


> Or the perception of such.




Absolutely.  Perception is the big thing, here.

To be honest, all of my best RBDM moments -- the ones the players still talk about -- were situations in which the PCs were in little more danger than normal, but had the perception that something unusual and dangeerous was going on.

The suggestion you gave for a dragon using alter self is a great example...  I've used that one before, except in my situation I had a red dragon who used Disguise Self to make herself look like a white dragon, and let the PCs see her coming from a long way away so that they had time to prepare.

It didn't take long for the players to figure it out (the cone of fire breath weapon gave it away, once the dragon used it), and it didn't cost them more than a couple of useless spells and a bunch of hit points...  In the long run, there was no real danger, and they still won in the end.  But the looks on their faces when that first fireball didn't deal any damage and the way they scrambled to rethink their tactics for the next few rounds told me the trick worked as intended.

Like KC said, for me much of Rat Bastardry is getting the players to do that horrified double-take when they realize what's going on, and then giving them the chance to succeed (even if it means a lesser or more costly victory) despite the set back.  I like my RBDM moments to give players that wonderful sense of doom that always precedes a spectacular come from behind victory in the movies.


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## Celebrim (Feb 23, 2009)

ehren37 said:


> Further proof you just expect your players to be telepathic.




I don't see how.



> "Guess what I'm thinking" stopped being a fun gaming style back in junior high. Do you also require your players to tell you how exactly they summon forth mystical energies from some bat poo to cast fireball?




Chip on your shoulder?  Clearly, someone burned you pretty bad.  I'm guessing though that it wasn't one of the people in this thread, so don't transfer your angst over some bad DM to a bunch of people you don't know.



> You may as well just point at your players and assign some damage or equipment loss. You still get to deal your petty damage, but at least it saves game time from trying to guess whether or not someone should turn a door knob a half turn or a full turn, or whether or not looking under a rug will trigger a glyph of warding, or whether or not the lever was smeared with a special ontact poison that immediately travels up ropes.




Ok.... 



> The Grimtooth books always struck me as designed for DM's who didnt have enough wit to figure out that A) it wasnt particularly hard to make the players "lose" and B) that's not really the point of being the DM.




Look, I don't like the Grimtooth books either.  I don't like the culture that they represent or create.  I don't like how the traps are inexplicable except as out of game constructs.  But some players believe it or not dig that stuff.  It's not just DM's screwing with people.  It's players that derive satisfaction from taking the best the DM can throw at them and work a way out of it.

It is a very long way from saying that the game improves, is more engrossing, and easier to adjudicate if the PC's offer more concrete propositions than, "I take 20 and search the room.", to endorsing one of the Grimtooth dungeons as an ideal example of dungeon design.

If I say, "In the abandoned room, you see alot of moldy straw scattered across the floor, a water damaged tapestry, a large stone urn filled to the brim with some black liquid.  Against the north wall, there is a thick layer of tree roots.  A broken down roll top desk suffering rot and termites is against the west wall. There is a sour coppery smell in the air, but you can't identify the source."

And the PC responds, "I take 20 to search the room.", he's asking potentially for a world of pain depending on what is in the room.  So what am I supposed to do with that proposition?  Whether he realizes it or not, he's said to me, "I want to find everything in the room and I'm willing to do anything I can think of do it."  The thing is, everything in the room might not be the sort of thing you want to find.  If I was a player, my threat detector would go into the red hearing that sort of description.  Clearly, there is alot of junk that requires caution in this room.  It's not bloody time to take my hands off the wheel and give the DM some entirely abstract propostion.  There could be small nasty monsters in any number of locations in that room.  There could be slime, mold, vermin, and disease hazards.  What could be hiding in or under the straw?  What's with the roots?  What kind of fluid is in the urn?  What's with the smell?  What might the tapestry be hiding?  

I for one think I'll keep my sense of mystery and wonder even if it means 'slowing things down' to offer a little more concrete propositions.



> In my opinion, if a trap isnt sprung, it may as well have never existed.




The same could be said of any other game feature that the players don't see.  Does that men strict railroads are the ideal game design?



> Random squares of dungeon shouldn't have pit traps in them. Chests shouldn't have a permanent "sticks to snakes" so anyone prodding them open ends up holding a cobra.




I can't say anything about whether or not that is true until I know the context.  Context is everything.  I can imagine dungeons where random pits should exist, and I can imagine dungeons where snake trapped chests are not only appropriate but there absence would be inappropriate.


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## Raven Crowking (Feb 23, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> And the PC responds, "I take 20 to search the room.", he's asking potentially for a world of pain depending on what is in the room.  So what am I supposed to do with that proposition?  Whether he realizes it or not, he's said to me, "I want to find everything in the room and I'm willing to do anything I can think of do it."  The thing is, everything in the room might not be the sort of thing you want to find.  If I was a player, my threat detector would go into the red hearing that sort of description.




Indeed.

Which is why, in 3e, you can search through a pile of junk without, apparently, touching anything.  



> I for one think I'll keep my sense of mystery and wonder even if it means 'slowing things down' to offer a little more concrete propositions.




Moreover, if one uses a faster combat engine, there is enough time to allow for satisfactory mental workouts as well.



> The same could be said of any other game feature that the players don't see.  Does that men strict railroads are the ideal game design?




Not only that, but this implies that players will gain no satisfaction from circumventing the trap without setting it off.  Not true, IMHO.


RC


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## Reynard (Feb 23, 2009)

ehren37 said:


> Further proof you just expect your players to be telepathic.




Exactly the opposite, in fact. I expect them to ask questions, listen to the answers, digest the information, ask more questions, etc... and then come to a meaningful decision about the course of action they wish to take. Sometimes that asking of questions is "in character" and sometimes it is "metagamey". It's not a distinction I care much about, so long as the players are engaged and having fun.

Of course, to some in this thread, "fun" in this case is infantile, stupid and petty.


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## Pbartender (Feb 23, 2009)

Reynard said:


> Exactly the opposite, in fact. I expect them to ask questions, listen to the answers, digest the information, ask more questions, etc... and then come to a meaningful decision about the course of action they wish to take. Sometimes that asking of questions is "in character" and sometimes it is "metagamey". It's not a distinction I care much about, so long as the players are engaged and having fun.




I know we're waaaaay off topic now, but there's some intersting topics being discussed, here.

Anyway...  I've found a nice middle ground for players who insist on rolling search checks for an entire room: Vague (skill based) searches get vague results.  Specific (skill based) searches get specific results.

So when a player says, "I search the room," I can give him a few hints on where to focus his attention for a second, more specific Perception check.


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## jdrakeh (Feb 23, 2009)

ehren37 said:


> I find it amusing that the old guard so often pisses and monas about a loss of wonder, while at the same time guiding a style of play that rewards an anal retentive standard operating procedure for opening doors and where no one would dream of putting on a magic belt in the middle of a dungeon without first slugging down a wine, owl feathers and pearl-tini, lest their junk fall off.




I'm 100% certain that the paranoid insistance of many players to tap every tile in a dungeon floor with a 10' pole or hold every door open with a spike is fostered by previous bad experiences with screw job DMs.


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## Pbartender (Feb 23, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> I'm 100% certain that the paranoid insistance of many players to tap every tile in a dungeon floor with a 10' pole or hold every door open with a spike is fostered by previous bad experiences with screw job DMs.




I remember a time way back in high school, during which we were using unseen servants with 10' poles to tap every tile in a dungeon floor, wall or ceiling...  Just in case.

Don't forget, those sort of paranoid actions were suggested and encouraged in some of the earlier editions' rulebooks.


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## Celebrim (Feb 23, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> I'm 100% certain that the paranoid insistance of many players to tap every tile in a dungeon floor with a 10' pole or hold every door open with a spike is fostered by previous bad experiences with screw job DMs.




Again, this is entirely contextual.

If I'm forced to tap every tile in a dungeon floor with a 10' pole and hold every door open with an iron spike while adventuring in the mines and city that a tribe of Gnolls have carved into the side of a volcano, then perhaps I'm going to eventually start wondering at the maturity of the DM's design skills.

If I'm not forced to tap every tile in a dungeon floor with a 10' pole and hold open every door with an iron spike while plundering the infamous tomb of the sinister Yuan-Ti Necromancer King of its reputedly legendary treasure, then I'm going to eventually start wondering at the maturity of the DM's design skills.

To a certain extent, the trope tells the tale.  I can know from context whether I'm in a trap filled dungeon designed to test my dungeoneering skills, or whether I'm going to mostly be facing a series of tactical challenges as the party manuevers between a large number of skirmishes against an inferior foe with the advantage of home ground.  Neither scenario is necessarily for everyone, and in either scenario I'm going to eventually balk and try to run off the railroad if I'm fed a steady diet of the same thing week after week.

But I would consider both part of a balanced adventuring diet.

Even if you look at something like 'Tomb of Horrors' which is I think we'll agree pretty extreme in one direction, the whole scenario involves only about 2 dozen encounter areas and represents at most 2-3 sessions worth of gaming.  It certainly shouldn't represent THE standard of dungeon design, but it is certainly a very well realized example of dungeon design, that can profitably inform a DM's overall style.  In particular, one of the important things a novice DM should note about Tome of Horrors is that Acerak 'plays fair'.  He gives clues.  There is a logic behind the design of the tomb, and Acerak/Gygax sticks to it pretty consistantly.  

If every once in a while, the player's can't handle 8-12 rooms filled with well designed puzzles and fiendishly cunning death traps, then I wonder if you've got a party with just as much of a problem as a DM.  I don't have alot of sympathy for players that want a consistant diet of 'straight up fight that earns us easily fungible wealth'.  I have a little more sympathy for players that don't like dungeons at all and would rather spend their time method acting, improv theater, character building, and so forth, but as a DM, every once in a while I just want to design an old school dungeon regardless of who I'm DMing.


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## jdrakeh (Feb 23, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> Again, this is entirely contextual.
> 
> If I'm forced to tap every tile in a dungeon floor with a 10' pole and hold every door open with an iron spike while adventuring in the mines and city that a tribe of Gnolls have carved into the side of a volcano, then perhaps I'm going to eventually start wondering at the maturity of the DM's design skills.
> 
> If I'm not forced to tap every tile in a dungeon floor with a 10' pole and hold open every door with an iron spike while plundering the infamous tomb of the sinister Yuan-Ti Necromancer King of its reputedly legendary treasure, then I'm going to eventually start wondering at the maturity of the DM's design skills.




I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this. Not even the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt trapped every square inch of their tombs. Any dungeon so thick with traps as to _require_ that every indivdiual tile be prodded by the PCs in order to avoid injury is not only boring for me as a player but, also, as a DM. 

I think that this is what the poster I was responding to meant when he suggested that this style of play is about as far from wondrous as one can get — it's simple-minded repetition that requires little forethought or effort while suspending any sense of adventure to be had otherwise. 

I suppose that prodding stones with sticks for hours on end must be fun for some people but it's not fun for _me_. As somebody else mentioned, that does not seem to be the best use of the limited amount of time that I can dedicate to RPGs.


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## Reynard (Feb 23, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this. Not even the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt trapped every square inch of their tombs. Trap overkill is trap overkill and illogical traps are illogical traps, AFAIAC. If a DM can't be bothered to design traps that make sense, then I can't be bothered to play in his games.




This has more to do with overall milieu and adherence to "realism" than anything else, though.  If you take the "D&D world" out of core rules and assume an "adventurer culture" as described for PCs in the core books, nasty tricks and traps do make sense and are logical.

I recently purchased The Gazeteer of the Known Realms from Goodman Games (DCC #35) and was impressed with the 0 level adventure in it as an example of "old school" adventure design. There are quite a few fiendish traps and tricks within, all of which are given context in the adventure and are placed in such a way as not to be constantly be set off by the inhabitants (kobolds in this case). In some instances, the traps are subtly marked so that the kobolds avoid them (and PCs have a chance of noticing the marks) and some are in areas where the kobolds don't venture specifically because the traps are there.

The existence of traps and tricks doesn't mean much of anything about the "maturity" or "realism" of an adventure location's design. All it suggests is the truism that some people do in fact enjoy these things in their games -- and not just "one person" at the table.


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## jdrakeh (Feb 23, 2009)

Reynard said:


> If you take the "D&D world" out of core rules and assume an "adventurer culture" as described for PCs in the core books, nasty tricks and traps do make sense and are logical.




Well, the pharoahs, for example, _did_ assume an endless stream of thieves attempting to infiltrate their resting places and plunder their vast riches — but they _still_ didn't trap every square inch of their tombs or resort to traps _they_ could not foil (assuming that they were returned to life as planned). I edited my post to better relflect my meaning, though I wasn't quick enough  

I suppose that it ultimately boils down to a matter of personal taste. I guess, for me, traps that frequently use meta-game knowledge specifically to bork PCs just don't seem logical (even when I assume a culture of professional adventurers). For me, the DM who makes frequent use of such traps is like the comic book artist who frequently breaks the fourth wall. 

Similarly, dungeons so thick with traps that hours on end are spent prodding stones with sticks don't seem to be very much fun, for me. I can simply think of more exciting things to do in a role-playing game. I mean, if somebody said to me, "Hey! Let's play Sticks & Stones!" I'd _never_ sign up for that


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## Celebrim (Feb 23, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this. Not even the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt trapped every square inch of their tombs.




I guess so, since we are already departing ways that early. 

So far as I know, no ancient culture anywhere in the world ever built trap filled tombs, and even if they did I'd be really surprised if the trap was still functional 10 years latter much less hundreds or thousands of years latter.  

The minute we start talking about complex mechanical traps of any sort, we've departed deep into the realm of magic and fantasy. 



> Any dungeon so thick with traps as to _require_ that every indivdiual tile be prodded by the PCs in order to avoid injury is not only boring for me as a player but, also, as a DM.




Any dungeon that has even one significant trap that isn't in a portal or protecting an obvious mcguffin is thick enough with traps to warrant either searching every space for traps or prodding ahead with a 10' pole or both.  It's not that there is one in every space; it's that you don't know if there is one in every space.

How that is repititious, I'm not sure.  It would be a very tedious DM indeed that forced the players to go through the rite of touch every tile, rather than simply saying, "My rogue is in the lead, checking for traps down the length of the corridor.  After checking for traps, I'll back up and firmly press a 10' pole in the area I just check to make sure I didn't miss anything, and we'll continue this until we get to the end of the corridor.", or "I'll continue as before down this second corridor."  But then, I've never encountered this particular tedious character.

At least, I don't ever remember prodding stones with sticks for hours on end, but I'm sure someone must have done it our you wouldn't mention it.  Anyone?  Anyone?


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## Pbartender (Feb 23, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> At least, I don't ever remember prodding stones with sticks for hours on end, but I'm sure someone must have done it our you wouldn't mention it.  Anyone?  Anyone?




Way, way back when I was in Junior High School, and was playing 1E adventure modules...   Yes, we came awfully close to it.

It was more along the lines of you suggested -- "My rogue is in the lead, checking for traps down the length of the corridor. After checking for traps, I'll back up and firmly press a 10' pole in the area I just check to make sure I didn't miss anything, and we'll continue this until we get to the end of the corridor." -- but yes, there were times we poked everything with a 10' pole.


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## Goblyn (Feb 23, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> At least, I don't ever remember prodding stones with sticks for hours on end, but I'm sure someone must have done it our you wouldn't mention it.  Anyone?  Anyone?




Me. And many I've played with. It gets old REAL fast. Traps that make sense are fine, but those illogical and/or overly complex traps yank everyone out of the game. This happens because when these things are brought out, the characters are no longer exploring a world and fighting the bad guys. The players are trying to protect their characters from being killed by the DM.

The exploding zombies trick looks pretty good though. Also the falling apart ladder, <nitpick>but that would just be a hazard </nitpick>


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## merelycompetent (Feb 24, 2009)

It always amazes me that, from certain perspectives, our hobby is based on 10-15 years of badwrongfun. Indeed, it was a time where players were all dreadfully miserable, DMs were all devolved masochists, and the creativity gene was clubbed to death before it could infect the chromosome. Ah, yes, 10-15 years of gaming history that friends and acquaintances from the clubs and conventions still reminisce, laugh, and retell stories about. Stories of how we (DMs and players) had such a great time with our badwrongfun while working our characters from 1st level up to 9th or beyond. How we bought reams of paper because our characters were whimsically slaughtered by the scores. How we made that last-minute, fight-winning, party-saving die roll while never even once getting a search check, saving throw, or coin flip to spare our pen-and-paper lives... Unless the players all ganged up and beat the DM into submission with his own rulebooks. (Since geeks and nerds were vastly more muscular back then, this was a common occurrence.) It is amazing that we are still playing in this hobby, much less recruiting new victims, I mean "players", what with the mountain of misery every player must overcome before even looking up from his or her lonesome dice. Or maybe it's just sour grapes, 'cause the vast majority of stories I hear traded around about "old school" gaming at the club or cons are full of laughter and fun. Except online, where some people's version of the generalized historical record includes a sizable scratch.

Speaking of sour grapes, that leads me to think of wine and wine presses. That reminds me of a very clever trick pulled by a player in a game I ran - and something more on-topic with this thread. You can use it directly or easily modify it with other spells and implements. I have some traps and tricks inspired by it at the end (typing this from memory - my notes are at home):

The PCs had stumbled upon a very old, very powerful 1E lich's library. Not realizing that they were in way over their heads, and ignoring even the blunt clues from the DM that Great Disaster Is Imminent (or maybe overcome by greed at a huge library chock full of magical tomes, scrolls, tablets, and other choice bits of loot), they entered the library and were confronted by the bemused lich. Bemused as in, "Oh, look. Some mice made it in past my defenses. How'd they do that?" (Arrogance was one of his weak points, and could be used to manipulate him. Said so right in his description. In pencil.) Negotiations quickly broke down into a fight. Individual initiative was rolled, powers were unleashed, part of the very dusty library was set on fire, the PC's main damage-dealers succumbed to a Symbol of Stunning, and then it was the Druid's turn.

"The lich is at the other end of the library, using one of the bookcases as cover, right?"

"Right," I said, and pointed at the layout on the dry erase board.

"I cast Turn Wood from my ring of spell storing."

Play. Stopped.

"W-w-what?!?!" I stammered.

"I cast Turn Wood. It should cause all the wood in this library - including paper and books with wooden covers, especially the shelves - to move in *that* direction. How much wood is in this library?" The other players quietly offered one- and two-word expressions of amazement.

Thinking quickly, I said, "Well, it's not going to do any damage to him. You need magical weapons to hurt a lich."

"Most of the books are magical, aren't they? If they were thrown at him, wouldn't they count as magical weapons?"

I glibly replied, "Errrr..."

I tried to give my poor lich, a campaign-level BBEG, a saving throw for half damage. He made it, but the damage from so many projectiles was too high. I checked over his Contingency - no luck, it wouldn't kick in. Stoneskin (remember - 1E Unearthed Arcana): No good. I read the list of his various pacts, deals, Wishes - anything that might get him out of this mess. It was no use. He was crunched.

One of the most powerful BBEGs in the game was crushed to bony splinters by his own library, sent back to his phylactery, and his magical library was looted with relative impunity. Yes, they beat him up with his own treasure and then robbed him. "Throwing the book at him" took on a whole new meaning for us. I endured months of references to NPC villains who had serious and weighty matters pressing on them and comments about having to hit the books.

-----
The above session inspired the following in later adventures:
* The classic: Books animate and attack; the books are the treasure. If the PCs manage to subdue the books without significantly damaging them, they get to keep the treasure.

* PCs enter an armory, where all of the racks, cases, and displays are only on ONE side of the room. Stepping onto the clean side of the room upsets the carefully balanced pivot point, causes the room to flip, dumps the PCs onto the clean wall, followed by all the armor and racks of weapons. If your PCs like to split up into search teams (like mine did), you may have a barbarian riding a weapons case down onto the wizard - it had special meaning back in the days of 1E Unearthed Arcana. Alternatively, replace all the weapons with stacked bricks or (my personal favorite) sand. The stacked bricks were nice when the PCs came across an "unfinished" part of the dungeon, pun intended.

* PCs enter a circle-shaped room with a door on the opposite side and a single, large, round stone (or metal) sphere in the exact middled (7' or 8' in diameter - it's BIG). Stepping on one of several pressure plates in the room causes the doors to slam shut and lock. The room is actually balanced on a pivot point in the exact center, so that it will tilt in the direction of the weight once the pressure plate is tripped. The PC's weight is sufficient to start a chain reaction, where the room tilts in the PC's direction, sending the large stone sphere rolling after him or her (and triggering a Reflex save, Dex check, or other appropriate test for the PC to remain on his/her feet or be sent sliding into a wall followed by rolling doom). The room is set so that it will only ever create a 20-degree slope - probably not enough for the rolling doom to wedge itself against the wall. Quick PCs can probably keep ahead of rolling doom until their companions open the door and rescue them. Skilled PCs can probably pull themselves up the grade, towards the center, out of harm's way (but probably blocking off the exits with the room's tilt. There are also various magical ways of overcoming the harm. (In actual play, this resulted in one hapless PC running around the edge of the room, chased by a giant rolling ball. The rest of the party pried open the door and watched him run by a few times while they pondered what to do - i.e., fell out of their chairs laughing. They rescued him successfully, but the doorway was left blocked by the up-tilted room floor - the ball ended up not quite directly on the opposite side from them when it stopped rolling. One stoneshape spell later and the door was permanently unblocked.)

 P.S. If the sphere is metal, you now have a use for those two rust monsters you found in the bag of holding earlier, or the trapped rust dust scabbard from the preceeding room.

* Movable cover. (I'm pretty sure this one has been mentioned before in another thread.) The orcs, bugbears, hobgoblins are hiding behind cover that has wheels on it in your standard 10' wide corridor. After their initial archery barrage, they tilt up their cover and charge the PCs, pushing their cover ahead of them. If you really feel vicious, have the front of their cover soaked with oil - so the bad guys can set it on fire before smashing into the heroes.

* Searching the library. PCs enter a library with heavy floor-to-ceiling bookcases, laden with scrolls, tomes, books, parchments, papers, and various bookends (IIRC, three of them were Figurines of Wondrous Power - the goats). The bookcases are on spring-loaded tracks in the floor and ceiling. Stepping on a pressure plate causes an entire row to slam together. (In actual play, the PCs sent summoned monsters running through the library, sprang the trap, and looted the place easily. I should have known better - it was the same group, but with different characters.)


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## Celebrim (Feb 24, 2009)

merelycompetent said:


> P.S. If the sphere is metal, you now have a use for those two rust monsters you found in the bag of holding earlier, or the trapped rust dust scabbard from the preceeding room.




Now that is old school.


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## jdrakeh (Feb 24, 2009)

Goblyn said:


> The exploding zombies trick looks pretty good though.




Yeah, FWIW, I liked that, too (I'm a big fan of the exploding zombies in the old Myth strategy games _and_ there are several ways to logically explain exploding zombies). 



			
				Celebrim said:
			
		

> At least, I don't ever remember prodding stones with sticks for hours on end, but I'm sure someone must have done it our you wouldn't mention it. Anyone? Anyone?




Well, you _did_ posit a situation where poking every single tile in a dungeon with a 10' pole was the proper approach to traps. _Please_ don't make me quote your own example. As for the prodding of stones with sticks bit — yes, it happens, as others have attested to. Finally, FWIW, OchreJelly actually mentioned the phenomena of tapping every tile with a 10' pole before I did. So, to recap: 


_You_ actually cited an example where behavior that you're now suggesting doesn't exist is your preferred approach to certain types of dungeons. 


You dared people to weigh in and bear witness to the phenomena of tapping every tile with a 10' pole, after which they chimed in to do just that. 


This behavior that you tried to suggest I had invented was first mentioned by _somebody else_ in this very thread.

Obviously, I was just making the whole thing up.


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## Celebrim (Feb 24, 2009)

jdrakeh said:


> Well, you _did_ posit a situation where poking every single tile in a dungeon with a 10' pole was the proper approach to traps. _Please_ don't make me quote your own example.




No, please do.  Because if I'm the primary example from which you are drawing your observation, then it forces you to concede my authority on this subject.



> _You_ actually cited an example where behavior that you're now suggesting doesn't exist is your preferred approach to certain types of dungeons.






Yes.  But you declared that there existed some example of the play in question which was redudant, mindless, tedious, and boring.  If I'm the example of play from which the behavior 'poking every tile with a stick' is drawn, then you have no examples where the play style is redundant, mindless, tedious, and boring.  For as I said, I've never found a DM that required me to tediously say, "I poke the one on the right.  Now the other one on the right.  Then the other one.... Ok now the one on the left..."  Declaring that I intended to poke the floor with a 10' pole while advancing is no more tedious than declaring that I intend to take 20 on a search check.  What it is, that taking 20 with a search check isn't, is concrete.



> [*]You dared people to weigh in and bear witness to the phenomena of tapping every tile with a 10' pole, after which they chimed in to do just that.




Indeed, I did.  Because I wanted to find out if some one had indeed played 'for hours on end' where they poked stones with sticks.  Because, I wasn't one of them.  If I am your example of 'poking stones with sticks' for hours on end, then you are confused about something.  So far, the jury is still out.  I'm sure that some few people were forced to repeatedly describe over and over again the same action, but I wasn't one of them.

Perhaps the confusion here is the difference between 'game time' and 'play time'.  Certainly there have been times where my characters have poked around stone tiles for hours on end, but in terms of play time it only took a few seconds.  It might have been tedious for the character to poke around stone tiles for hours on end, just as it might have been tedious for other characters of mine to pour through newspaper clippings for hours on end, or go read books in the library for hours on end; however, for me as the player only a few seconds passed and I certainly didn't have time to get bored.  Heck, as long as we are discussing 'Tomb of Horrors', it took the character hours of tedious time poking around to even uncover the entrance of the cavern, and literally days of tedious travel time to get there, but all that game time took only a few minutes at most of play time.

I'm entirely sure that poking stone tiles with 10' poles is tedious to my character, but it was his life on the line so maybe that added some spice. But, since it never took up a significant portion of my precious time, I don't see how you can claim it was boring to me - particularly since I got to relish some of the character's fear and anxiety.

So, let me be perfectly clear, I've never spent hours of play time 'poking stones with sticks'.  I don't know what you imagine such a play session to be like, but it certainly was never, "Now, I move my pole 1' to the left and press there.... now 1' more to the left... and"

And, as for poking stones with sticks not being the stuff of adventures, I think I can find an appropriate counter example: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbmfv_Y9WIc]YouTube - Greatest Movie Scenes - Raiders of the Lost Ark- Golden Idol[/ame]


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## Rechan (Feb 24, 2009)

> Movable cover. (I'm pretty sure this one has been mentioned before in another thread.) The orcs, bugbears, hobgoblins are hiding behind cover that has wheels on it in your standard 10' wide corridor. After their initial archery barrage, they tilt up their cover and charge the PCs, pushing their cover ahead of them. If you really feel vicious, have the front of their cover soaked with oil - so the bad guys can set it on fire before smashing into the heroes.




Reminds me of a tale someone else told. You have a pit trap in front of a narrow hallway. The PCs enter the hall. AT the other end is a large, spiked barracade on wheels that fills the hall. The kobolds behind the barracade push, backing the PCs towards the pit. 

Love the "unfinished" dungeon/tilting brick trap.


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## Reynard (Feb 24, 2009)

Goblyn said:


> Me. And many I've played with. It gets old REAL fast. Traps that make sense are fine, but those illogical and/or overly complex traps yank everyone out of the game. This happens because when these things are brought out, the characters are no longer exploring a world and fighting the bad guys. The players are trying to protect their characters from being killed by the DM.




I fail to see how such a  situation draws players "out of the game" any more than having to direct their attention at a grid or hex map with small figures or tokens or pennies or M&Ms or whatever and suddenly shift in mindset from "what would Wulfgar do?" to "what spells/feats/actions do I have available to me?" In fact, IMO, the "overly complex trap" is less damaging to suspension of disbelief.  While there are often dice rolls involved, there's a lot more DM/player negotiation going on that is till immersed "in character" and more particularly "in setting".



> The exploding zombies trick looks pretty good though. Also the falling apart ladder, <nitpick>but that would just be a hazard </nitpick>




Only if you cotton to certain definitions of those terms.


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## Iron Sky (Feb 24, 2009)

A couple of my favorite traps:

An iron door that opens easily, but a giant magical fist punches whoever opened it and then pulls the door shut again.  The solution is to knock, in which case the magical hand opens the door for them.

In the same wizard's tower, there was the following item:

A solid gold Necklace.  Upon examination, it boosts the wearer's defenses.  The party identifies it and someone puts it on.  Upon leaving the tower, or the wizard casting dispel magic on it, the _Enlarge _spell cast on the Ring of Protection ends, strangling whoever was wearing it and thought it was a necklace.

A pit trap about 10-15 feet wide - just enough that players will try to jump it.  The last 5 feet of it has a pressure plate that drops a door closed on the other side of the pit flush with the other edge of the pit.  The players leap, their last step triggering the door, then slam into the door on the other side and fall into the pit.


In my last 4e game I had a creature in mind that I never ended up using.  The game featured some scarab beetle constructs (think the Mummy) that could tunnel into corpses and animate them (very creepily).  After a fight with a big pile of minions, a special kind of those "scarab zombies" was going to show up with a breath weapon of scarabs that not only covered the PCs with flesh-burrowing scarabs, but rose all the minions just killed with more scarab zombies.

I'm sure there are more, but can't think of them atm...


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## Pbartender (Feb 24, 2009)

merelycompetent said:


> It always amazes me that, from certain perspectives, our hobby is based on 10-15 years of badwrongfun. Indeed, it was a time where players were all dreadfully miserable, DMs were all devolved masochists, and the creativity gene was clubbed to death before it could infect the chromosome.




No need to be hyperbolic.  

Nobody's saying it was badwrongfun...   But as has been said time and time agains, not everyone has the same tastes.  And even for those of us who did enjoy that style, tastes do change.

I played just like you talk about back when I was in Junior High and High School.  It was a blast.  Even now, I get the nostalgia bug, and I like to play an adventure or two in the Old School Style, and we have laughs about it.

But I definitely would not want to play that way long term anymore.  I'd get awfully tired of it awfully fast.  Plus, not all of my players go back that far, so what's fun nostalgia for me can be nerve-wracking, hair-pulling, tooth-grinding drudgery for them, if we aren't careful.


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## Reynard (Feb 24, 2009)

Rechan said:


> Reminds me of a tale someone else told. You have a pit trap in front of a narrow hallway. The PCs enter the hall. AT the other end is a large, spiked barracade on wheels that fills the hall. The kobolds behind the barracade push, backing the PCs towards the pit.




I used a variation of this once where there was a heavy log with blade sticking out of it and notches cut into the ends. The walls of a sloped hallway had grooves, allowing the log to "roll" down the hallway without breaking the blades off but only leaving a few inches of clearance. In this case, goblin sentries loosed the log when they saw the PCs star up the hall and pull a lever that opened the pit (filled with both spikes and offal) behind the party.

For added fun, light the log on fire and fill the pit with pitch or greek fire.


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## Rechan (Feb 24, 2009)

An unrelated idea I have. I am trying to run KotS for an online group. I've made some changes to the adventure, for instance instead of guard drakes, the goblins/hobgoblins use giant bugs. 

After the PCs have cleaned out most of the first level (or possibly the whole keep), they'll come back to that first room with the pit. A vengence-seeking kobold commando squad will have taken up shop here, waiting for them. They've taken a barrel of grease or oil and smeared it across the floor from the front of the pit, to just inside one of the hallways the PCs are coming from.

In the pit, they'd put another barrel or two of the grease or oil, and place two fire beetles the goblins keep in cages. 

The plan: they wait for the PCs to come back down the hall. The PCs see the kobolds, someone charges - hits the oil slick, goes into the pit, and the fire beetles do their thing, blowing up the barrels and inadvertently setting fire to the grease slick above. The flames and the smoke provide a nice buffer for the kobolds.


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## Pbartender (Feb 24, 2009)

So, here's one of my favorite tricks.  It's not real fancy, but it has a history of stumping PCs (at least briefly).

The "Airlock" Room...  A small room with two doors.  It's best to make the doors and walls of the room out of some practically impervious material that can't easily be reshaped by magic.  At it's simplest, one door cannot be opened without the other being closed.

Most adventurers open a door and enter a room, never bothering to close the door behind them.  It a gotcha puzzle, and it'll really get the player thinking about how to get past that second door.

To make it interesting...  When both doors are closed, have something else happen after both doors are closed, but before the second can be opened.  Perhaps it is an airlock, and the rooms slowly floods with water before the second door opens to an underwater area.  Perhaps the room is an elevator and moves between levels in the dungeon before opening the second door.  Or maybe it's a decontamination room, and breifly fills with a mildly poisonous gas, or sterilizing flames.

What ever happens, be sure to give it a slow onset, so that the PCs have a few rounds to initiate appropriate counter-measures, if they happen to have them available.  Plus, it really ratchets up the tension when you describe the faint wisps of greenish gas leaking from tiny holes in the ceiling and very quietly make hissing noises for the next three minutes while the players try to decide what to do.


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## merelycompetent (Feb 24, 2009)

Rechan said:


> Love the "unfinished" dungeon/tilting brick trap.




Thank you 

Brings up another one out of my senility:

Party is confronted with a difficult climb 30' up to a ledge. Most groups would send the thief up first, covered by archers and spellcasters at the bottom, carrying a rope and other climbing gear. The trap is actually up past the 20' mark. Unless the lever (disguised as a depression in the rock) is thrown, a 10' diameter section of the cliff face detaches - with the thief still clinging to it - and falls on the rest of the party.

Please note the damage values involved: 1d6 per 10' fallen. I treated the falling rocks as regular falling damage. The thief would take 2d6, and anyone at the bottom would also take 2d6 (save for half). Not much damage for a 6th level or higher party (1E or 2E). But it did serve to slow down intruders, make lots of noise for alarm purposes, and drain off a few healing potions/spells.

They found out later that the evil cleric who kept his surplus undead horde here used boots of levitation to bypass this trap and a few others. Kind of ironic that they finished him off with a dispel magic targeting his boots: He was floating down the side of a much higher cliff - laughing maniacally as he escaped. "MuahahahahaaaAAAAAAAAHHHH*SPLAT*!!!"

@ Iron Sky: I really like the idea for the scarabs. Consider it yoinked!


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## small pumpkin man (Feb 24, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> YouTube - Greatest Movie Scenes - Raiders of the Lost Ark- Golden Idol




The difference, I find, between good traps and bad traps only partly whether or not they give you a save, or how deadly they are, I find the larger part is whether or not it involves pixel-bitching.

A while ago my old DM ran us through an old style dungeon full of horrors which had been sealed off, because obviously you can't just destroy them style dungeon, full of absurd traps and things you're really not supposed to touch. It may or may not have been called the Bane Warrens.

When the Rogue decided to steal the Evil Axe, and was mind-controlled, went on a killing spree before being killed by the city watch it was cool. When I decided to pull a lever just to see what it did and it flooded the room and released several giant octopus it was funny (well, I though it was). When the Fighter was almost killed because he tried putting on some cloaks without IDing them everyone except him found it amusing. When I fireballed some large clay pots and it released a bunch of demonic wasps it was amusing. When the same Fighter was turning into a vampire because he walked into the sickly green mist which came out of a small obviously Evil Jar he complained but everyone else kinda saw it coming (well, not the vampire part, that was weird, but something bad, sure). I'm pretty sure there were a bunch of traps on doors to, and some sort of giant magma ooze exploding out of a chest when it was opened, I'm sure there was a mimic and a bunch of different coloured tiles where some were traps and some were good and which were which was based on the fibinachi sequence there somewhere, and if there wasn't there should have been, but the point is I was okay with all of that, all of them involved either conscious choices, or genre blindness.

When the _next_ rogue had his favourite awesome greatsword taken out of his hands by some sort of magic trap halfway down an unmarked corridor with no means of retrieving it, (even though he saw it slowly floating away help by an invisible force hand) that was not cool, and the player, citing other reasons, did not come back the next week, or until we started a new game. I do not blame him. I would consider things like "You didn't check your new bag of holding to see if it had rust monsters in it because you didn't say you did" to be somewhat similar.


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## Rechan (Feb 24, 2009)

There's always the "Player response" to this kind of DM tactics.

Make a character named Kenny. Don't get upset when things happen to Kenny, because he just walks into every room and open the door, or walk into the trap, and die. And then, play a new character, named Kenny, who...


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## Raven Crowking (Feb 24, 2009)

small pumpkin man said:


> When the _next_ rogue had his favourite awesome greatsword taken out of his hands by some sort of magic trap halfway down an unmarked corridor with no means of retrieving it, (even though he saw it slowly floating away help by an invisible force hand) that was not cool, and the player, citing other reasons, did not come back the next week, or until we started a new game. I do not blame him.




I'm not overly familiar with the module.  Are you _*sure*_ that there was no means of retrieving it?



> I would consider things like "You didn't check your new bag of holding to see if it had rust monsters in it because you didn't say you did" to be somewhat similar.




It boggles my mind.  I have a hard time imagining a player, anywhere, ever, finding a bag and not first asking "Is there anything in it?"  


RC


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## merelycompetent (Feb 24, 2009)

small pumpkin man said:


> I would consider things like "You didn't check your new bag of holding to see if it had rust monsters in it because you didn't say you did" to be somewhat similar.




But... if you don't find the rust monsters, how are you going to get the 50,000gp diamond out of the metal ball in the circular tilting rolling doom room?

More seriously, I agree. If the trap/trick relies on the DM playing nit-picky word games, then it won't be much fun. A general, "I check the item over, inside and out. Do I find anything unusual?" should reveal the rust monster(s). After the first experience with contact poison, the search should change to: "I put on my thick leather gloves and have a Neutralize Poison scroll/potion/spellcaster handy. I carefully check the item over inside and out. Do I find anything unusual? Is there any strange residue on my gloves?" A cooperative DM may even prompt with a, "Do you want to put some gloves on first to protect your hands?", for new players.

I must get some sleep now. Good gaming!


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## Celebrim (Feb 24, 2009)

merelycompetent said:


> After the first experience with contact poison, the search should change to: "I put on my thick leather gloves and have a Neutralize Poison scroll/potion/spellcaster handy. I carefully check the item over inside and out. Do I find anything unusual? Is there any strange residue on my gloves?"




"So you are saying that this poison is in fact colorless, odorless, non-drying, non-evaporating, and doesn't loose potency with age....Great, this stuff could come in handy!  I carefully collect as much of the stuff as possible and store it in this empty potion vial."


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## Reynard (Feb 24, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> "So you are saying that this poison is in fact colorless, odorless, non-drying, non-evaporating, and doesn't loose potency with age....Great, this stuff could come in handy!  I carefully collect as much of the stuff as possible and store it in this empty potion vial."




Well, that's the other side of this style of play that's so much fun and rewarding, but fails to get mentioned between all the evil-hand-rubbing and my-DM-hurt-me whining: players start to pull tricks on the DM. They write out their door opening SOPs. They use tricks and traps against the enemies and NPCs. They turn everything into treasure. This is fun. It immersed everyoine in the game if not the world and although it can be frustrating, it's a good kind of frustration, like trying really hard to get through that one level of Mario.

The thing about RBDMing is that the whole point is not to smash down the players, but to up the ante, to raise the stakes to where even a simple cash grab dungeon crawl is tense and exciting and *fun*.


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## OchreJelly (Feb 24, 2009)

I think if there's any common ground in this thread, it's that we all like exploding zombies  

But seriously no discussion on evil DM tricks is complete without without the screw-job interpretation of the Wish spell.  

True old-school gamer story (not my own but I'm passing it along): Players were fighting a bunch of flying skulls, sort of like lesser demi-liches.  Things were going badly so one player decides to use a Wish:  "I wish there were no skulls in this room." 

You can probably see where this is going...


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## grickherder (Feb 24, 2009)

OchreJelly said:


> I think if there's any common ground in this thread, it's that we all like exploding zombies




Even though this thread is about pulling nasty surprises on players, I think exploding zombies is best done by giving some clues first.

"As the zombies shamble towards you, their flesh swells, pulsates and shakes, like there's internal pressure pushing from the inside out."

The players know something just isn't right and won't exactly be surprised when they explode, but it's fun to have to figure out how to deal with something extra.


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## Reynard (Feb 24, 2009)

OchreJelly said:


> I think if there's any common ground in this thread, it's that we all like exploding zombies
> 
> But seriously no discussion on evil DM tricks is complete without without the screw-job interpretation of the Wish spell.
> 
> ...




This may seem odd, but I am not a fan of the "twisted wish".  Oh, I've used it on occassion, but only when a trickster type was the one offering up the wish, so the players knew that it was going to get twisted. As much as I love challenging the players' perceptions and assumptions, I do not like meanly screwing them, which is what wish-twisting is, IMO.


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## OchreJelly (Feb 24, 2009)

I'm not a fan of the twisted wish either.  I was passing along a story told by another player that always amused me, but if anything can be considered an evil DM trick it's the heavy-handed Wish interpretation. 

The funny thing is I _have_ used the twisted Wish because I thought that's how it _was supposed to be_ played.  The players also _assumed _their Wish was going to be twisted.  It's really a testament of the gaming culture of the 80's and how young I was at the time.


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## Rechan (Feb 24, 2009)

Reynard said:


> but only when a trickster type was the one offering up the wish



Aye. If an ifrit is offering you a wish, or any other entity, look out. But if you're getting your wish from the Wish Spell, or from a Ring of Three wishes, you shouldn't be getting screwed.


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## roguerouge (Feb 24, 2009)

Reynard said:


> This depends on whether "trap finding mechanics" are the sole determiner of whether a trap is found. I am of the school of thought that you'd no sooner allow a player to declare "I search for traps in the room" and make a roll than you would allow a player to say "I convince the duke to give us men-at-arms and a charter" and make a roll. Both of these situations require more imput from the players to get an effective output from the DM. Of course, YMMV.




My mileage does. Respectfully, here's why: when I played in a 2e campaign, I was the party's rogue. And my DM has a skill that I just don't have: the ability to visualize objects and environments in three dimensions and examine them. I'd find a trap. He'd describe it and ask how I was going to disarm it before I could make the roll. He might as well have required me to speak a sentence in Polish for all that I could do that. I didn't resent him for the requirement. I understood what he was doing. So, my basic schtick was to find the trap then announce to the party that a trap was there and have my PC walk to the back ranks of the group for protection. It was their job to figure out how to disarm it. That was good for our particular group as it fostered group problem-solving. 

But you can see how close it gets to being frustrating and disastrous, can't you? 

Now imagine that you have a player who is not good at human interactions for various reasons. Perhaps English is his second language. Perhaps he's got a documented emotional disability. Perhaps he stutters. Perhaps he's simply not charismatic. (These are all real examples from my DMing kids and adults.) Are you seriously going to tell that player that he can't succeed in game because he can't do certain things as a person? 

I won't. I bet that you wouldn't. 

Are you going to tell him that he can't pretend to be a charismatic hero in your game? You better, because if he wants to play that you're setting him up for humiliating failure. 

I'll let him play it. I bet that you would. 

That's why in my games you role play out the social skill checks to the best of your ability, in first person or in third person, as you choose. Then, based on your performance, you get a _small_ bonus or penalty to the roll, based on those decisions. But you can pretend to be whomever you want and your character succeeds or fails based on how you build him and what decisions you make for him. It's not based on whether you stutter or whether you have superior visualization capabilities.


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## ehren37 (Feb 24, 2009)

Reynard said:


> They write out their door opening SOPs.




Part of the point of the thread is how you resent player "comfort". If they're using SOP's, you metagame "tricks" to thwart it. Its laughably petty for someone in the control seat to do.

There are plenty of good traps. As much as I dislike parts of the Tomb of Horros, the bleeding wall trap is an excellent encounter trap  - same goes for the crying eye trap in Mud Sorcerer's Tomb. The challenge of champions series are excellent puzzle solving exercises that dont devolve into requiring telepathy on the part of the players to avoid the "gotcha" nonsense that ultimately slows down the game.

But then again, I found Indiana Jones racing the boulder more fun and exciting than if he'd spent hours prodding each 5x5 square and sending in summoned animals...


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## Pbartender (Feb 24, 2009)

ehren37 said:


> But then again, I found Indiana Jones racing the boulder more fun and exciting than if he'd spent hours prodding each 5x5 square and sending in summoned animals...




This actually brings up an interesting point...

In my experiences with D&D, you usually don't get that sort of action with a trap.  Nine times out of ten, the trap either gets discovered and disabled, or it doesn't get disabled and a simple deleterious effect happens and its over.  *SNORE!*  Boring.

I'd love to see more the kind of traps we saw in Indiana Jones...  The traps are extensive and dangerous.  Generally, he doesn't disable them he has to find a way to get by the trap without setting it off, or to avoid the effects of the trap after he sets them off (purposefully or accidentally).  4E traps seem to have taken a few steps that way, but I'd love to see more.

Last session, I had a swinging blades trap get set off, and having the PCs try to get past the trap or disable it while the blades were swinging past their noses was the most fun we'd had with a trap in a long time.


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## ehren37 (Feb 24, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> Yes.  But you declared that there existed some example of the play in question which was redudant, mindless, tedious, and boring.  If I'm the example of play from which the behavior 'poking every tile with a stick' is drawn, then you have no examples where the play style is redundant, mindless, tedious, and boring.  For as I said, I've never found a DM that required me to tediously say, "I poke the one on the right.  Now the other one on the right.  Then the other one.... Ok now the one on the left..."  Declaring that I intended to poke the floor with a 10' pole while advancing is no more tedious than declaring that I intend to take 20 on a search check.  What it is, that taking 20 with a search check isn't, is concrete.




The thing is, you either dick around with searching every square, or you just have to suck up the damage. If you do, the Asshat DM gets frustrated you're not taking enough damage for his liking, and starts having prodding with a 10 foot pole set off a trap 10 feet away (or take your choice from other examples herein designed to thwart SOP). Then the game slows down further to avoid more "gotchas".

If we're talking "realism", any high level mega dungeon would be so incredibly complex, you WOULD find specific doorknobs that required you to turn them a particular amount of a turn would open them, require verbal passwords to avoid invisible glyphs of warding etc. So much so that it would waste an inordinate amount of time as players try and avoid needless damage through simple movement.


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## El Mahdi (Feb 24, 2009)

Reynard said:


> The thing about RBDMing is that the whole point is not to smash down the players, but to up the ante, to raise the stakes to where even a simple cash grab dungeon crawl is tense and exciting and *fun*.




This is it, right here.  100% absolutely perfectly stated.

This is where experience comes in also.  It's a very fine line between smashing down the players and raising the tension level.  The point is to do the latter without doing the former.  Easier said than done sometimes, but that's the motivation.  Not saying that there aren't DM's whose style is that "they are out to get the players".  But I'd say that most probably don't play this way.  As with most things, it comes down to intention and motivation.  When I use tricks like in the OP, I'm using them to "raise the stakes", not because I'm out to get the players.  I'm out to entertain and thrill the players.  Dead characters can't be terrorized anymore so where's the fun in that?!


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## Celebrim (Feb 24, 2009)

ehren37 said:


> The thing is, you either dick around with searching every square, or you just have to suck up the damage. If you do, the Asshat DM gets frustrated you're not taking enough damage for his liking...




I could write a really long response to this, but it would be a waste.

Once you assert the existance of a bad DM, it's possible to demonstrate any style of play is badwrongfun.  The DM is so important to play, that there is nothing that is bad DM proof.

My personal opinion is that once the party demonstrates that they have the means and will to defeat traps of a particular type, there is no need to play out every instance of it.  If the method beats the trap, it beats the next 12 traps of that type as well and all I have to note is that you find them.

This has been my play experience as a player as well.  The sort of play you assert is going on out there all the time because of 'Asshat DM's may happen for all I know, but as I far as I can tell it would be tedious and boring to force repitition like that for most DMs as well so I really doubt it's that common.

But who knows, maybe you've just had the bad luck to have a succession of really bad DM's.


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## Celebrim (Feb 24, 2009)

Pbartender said:


> I'd love to see more the kind of traps we saw in Indiana Jones...  The traps are extensive and dangerous.  Generally, he doesn't disable them he has to find a way to get by the trap without setting it off, or to avoid the effects of the trap after he sets them off (purposefully or accidentally).




Faced with the tomb Indiana Jones is raiding, most players would probably adopt very traditional find and disable methods for the traps.  For example, no players I've ever had when faced with a room filled with dart traps would merely try to avoid them.  Avoidance is something you do when you don't know what the trap does.  

In Indy's case, he's already triggered one trap deliberately, using a variation of 'poke the trigger with a 10' pole' and has deduced that all the traps in the room are of the same type.  Most PC's would then procede to disarm all the other traps in the room by the same method.  They'd simply keep poking the stone triggers until they'd cleared a path across the room.  The result of this is that when the PC's triggered the scenario trap at the end, evacuating the room would be easy and undramatic.

Likewise, most players would have found the rolling ball trap on the way in to the dungeon, and - unable to find the trigger for the trap - would still have taken similar steps to disable it - probably by pounding a series of iron spikes so as to wedge the deadfall in place.   Again, when the scenario trap was triggered, evacuating the dungeon would be less dramatic.

Most PC's would also have taken steps to bridge the pit, for similar reasons, and some of them might have by being thurough even found the falling stone block trap and taken steps to disable the trap similar to the ones that they might try to disable the rolling block.  In short, when the scenario trap was triggered, a typically skilled PC party would be able to evacuate the area without much drama because unlike Indiana Jones they would have taken great care to ensure that they had a get away plan.

The thing about dealing with traps is that in my experience, it has as often as not not meant risking a 'disable trap' roll whenever you can avoid it.  Disable trap is very powerful, since it deals with almost anything, but since it involves recourse to the dice, it's also very risky.  You use it only when you have no other choice.

Typically, when I search for traps it lets me find at the very least the trap's trigger.  Often this is a trip wire, a trip snare, or some mechanism that goes off when weight is placed on it.  In the case of a typical flagstone trigger mechanism, typically I won't bother trying to disable it at all.  I'll simply (in character) take a peice of chalk out of my pocket and draw an outline around the dangerous tile in question, turn back to the party and say, "No one step in the square, ok?"  Similar things apply to snares and trip wires.  You don't disarm them, you simply avoid them.

Sometimes you can figure out what sort of trap you are dealing with.  In the case of swinging or scything traps, disarming them is usually completely unnecessary.  Generally you can just back off, set off the trap, and after observing the trajectory of the trap simply bypass it by crawling off to the side, ducking, jumping, or whatever is required.  Only if evasion seems risky do you worry about trying to disable the trap, which you typically try to do in a posture such that even if you set the trap off you'll evade the effects.

In the case of pit traps, if you can, you bridge them or fill them in.  Disabling the cover is usually a good idea so at the least you'll remember where it is.  Often shallow ones can be traversed simply by going down to the bottom and climbing up the other side.

In summary, Indiana Jones evading traps and deliberately setting them off very much reminds me of how I as a player and the players I've had as DM deal with traps, with the exception that Jones is not nearly as methodical about it as most players (to his cost).  

But perhaps Jones was under time pressure (racing to get there before the rival NPC).

Which brings up my last point, which is that Jones's DM is a total RBDM in that he completely screws Jones after Jones gets the McGuffin, not just once with the scenario trap, but at least twice (three times if you count the betrayal by his henchmen).  I wonder how many players would be outraged if they grabbed the McGuffin and then after 'winning' faced the sort of obstacles that Jones faced.


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## Reynard (Feb 24, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> But perhaps Jones was under time pressure (racing to get there before the rival NPC).




Another important element of traps and tricks: they rarely occur without some form of context. A party certainly could spend hours or days moving at a snail's pace through a dungeon, searching every inch for traps and treasure, disarming each of the former and collecting all of the latter. But the realities of logistics (how much food do we have), danger (wandering monsters) and motivation (the virgin will be sacrificed by the light of the full moon -- tonight!) requires that the party not be hyper efficient. Sometimes, the players are going to have to play it quick and dirty and hope for the best.

In other instances, they let their guards down and that's how they get hit.  that's why it is important to "season" adventures/dungeons with tricks and traps. If you overdo it, not only do you run the risk of creating players that do waste valuable table time "pixelbitching", you also undermine your own "gotcha" efforts.

As to ehren37's overall tone and content of his posts: we get it; you don't like this kind of play; moreover you think people that play like this are adolescent, petty and stupid. Thanks for your input.


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## merelycompetent (Feb 25, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> "So you are saying that this poison is in fact colorless, odorless, non-drying, non-evaporating, and doesn't loose potency with age....Great, this stuff could come in handy! I carefully collect as much of the stuff as possible and store it in this empty potion vial."




Heh! I had to learn the hard way just how resourceful players can be. Not only did some of them collect poisons for use against their opponents, they quickly suggested adapted rules for alchemy and potion-making so that they could produce their own antidotes and more of the poison! It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Getting all the components for some of the poisons turned into neat side-adventures and helped break up the adventure-of-the-week syndrome.

Here's a note to other DMs about these tricks and traps: Be prepared for your players to use components of them for themselves - like collecting the poison, storing the molds/slimes/jellies/oozes/puddings in empty glass jars for use as projectile weapons, dominating the exploding zombies and marching them back into a different BBEG's castle, or raising the BBEG's misbehaving children-puppies as guard dogs.

Turnabout is fair fun play.


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## nonamazing (Feb 25, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> In summary, Indiana Jones evading traps and deliberately setting them off very much reminds me of how I as a player and the players I've had as DM deal with traps, with the exception that Jones is not nearly as methodical about it as most players (to his cost).
> 
> But perhaps Jones was under time pressure (racing to get there before the rival NPC).




Hey! This has given me a great idea!

Jones is an archeologist, right?  So while he wants the big golden macguffin (for various reasons) he also wants to keep the place as intact as possible, the better for other archeologists to examine later on.  He doesn't disarm _all_ the traps in the room because it could be valuable to examine a trap that is still active and armed after hundreds of years--how did they do it?

So here's the idea: what if the adventurers have to try and leave the dungeon as undisturbed as possible?  Perhaps they are archeologists themselves, and want to leave things preserved for future study.  Or perhaps a persnickety NPC follows the party around, keeping a careful accounting of the 'damage' they do and making deductions from their reward accordingly.  The challenge then becomes avoiding and dealing with traps rather than simply breaking or smashing them.


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## robertliguori (Feb 25, 2009)

nonamazing said:


> Hey! This has given me a great idea!
> 
> Jones is an archeologist, right?  So while he wants the big golden macguffin (for various reasons) he also wants to keep the place as intact as possible, the better for other archeologists to examine later on.  He doesn't disarm _all_ the traps in the room because it could be valuable to examine a trap that is still active and armed after hundreds of years--how did they do it?
> 
> So here's the idea: what if the adventurers have to try and leave the dungeon as undisturbed as possible?  Perhaps they are archeologists themselves, and want to leave things preserved for future study.  Or perhaps a persnickety NPC follows the party around, keeping a careful accounting of the 'damage' they do and making deductions from their reward accordingly.  The challenge then becomes avoiding and dealing with traps rather than simply breaking or smashing them.




"Yeah, we heard how the persnickety guy has gone missing.  Possibly he encountered a hazard while cataloging damage done to traps and caught a +3 Soul-Eater greataxe to the face, then ended up falling down a bottomless pit."

"...That sounds like an awfully specific happenstance."

"Yeah, well, dungeons are dangerous places.  There are a lot of hazards in them that try to stop us from getting our loot.  None have succeeded so far."

"...Huh."

"So, about our payment..."


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## Beginning of the End (Feb 26, 2009)

Reynard said:


> Well, that's the other side of this style of play that's so much fun and rewarding, but fails to get mentioned between all the evil-hand-rubbing and my-DM-hurt-me whining: players start to pull tricks on the DM. They write out their door opening SOPs. They use tricks and traps against the enemies and NPCs. They turn everything into treasure. This is fun. It immersed everyoine in the game if not the world and although it can be frustrating, it's a good kind of frustration, like trying really hard to get through that one level of Mario.




I have a player right now cutting down slabs from the marble walls of the dungeon, hauling them back to town, and selling them. This is not without danger, but he's invested well in the effort.

I think he's going to buy a noble title with his profits.


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## Hellzon (Feb 26, 2009)

Beginning of the End said:


> I have a player right now cutting down slabs from the marble walls of the dungeon, hauling them back to town, and selling them. This is not without danger, but he's invested well in the effort.
> 
> I think he's going to buy a noble title with his profits.



Was it Tomb of Horrors that had adamantine doors? Valuable anyway.


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## Rechan (Feb 26, 2009)

Beginning of the End said:


> I have a player right now cutting down slabs from the marble walls of the dungeon, hauling them back to town, and selling them. This is not without danger, but he's invested well in the effort.
> 
> I think he's going to buy a noble title with his profits.



I imagine you're not mean enough to point out that, after a certain point, the town just can't get rid of the marble. There's only so many people who can afford it, and such.


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## Calico_Jack73 (Feb 26, 2009)

Looks like someone has been reading the various Grimtooth's Traps books. 

One of my faves is where the delvers come upon what looks like a spike pit with a walkway around the sides.  In reality there is an illusion upon the space.  There is no pit and the walkways are actually boards with powerful springs under them which launch the delver into the ceiling which IS lined with spikes.


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## Calico_Jack73 (Feb 26, 2009)

Oh yeah... another old favorite.  The PCs find a magical sword that is incredibly heavy... so heavy that they need Gauntlets of Ogre Power AND a Belt of Giant Strength to wield it properly.  The sword glows and slices through most materials like butter though it does not detect as magic.  After a while the PCs notice that they start getting weaker and weaker, their hair is falling out, and they are losing their teeth.  If they ever have the runes on the sword deciphered it reads "Property of 3-Mile Island Nuclear Authority".


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## Orius (Feb 27, 2009)

Celebrim said:


> And, as for poking stones with sticks not being the stuff of adventures, I think I can find an appropriate counter example: YouTube - Greatest Movie Scenes - Raiders of the Lost Ark- Golden Idol




So....are you saying that Lucas is a RBDM then?  Or maybe Spielberg?  

Actually, I'd say it's a matter of Raiders and D&D drawing from similar sources here, the old pulps which had old tombs and ruins filled with nasty deadly traps, just because.

I think in D&D it ended up at the level of "prod every freakin' square inch of the dungeon", because that's how Gary and his group played in the early days and it shaped the early game.  



OchreJelly said:


> But seriously no discussion on evil DM tricks is complete without without the screw-job interpretation of the Wish spell.
> 
> True old-school gamer story (not my own but I'm passing it along): Players were fighting a bunch of flying skulls, sort of like lesser demi-liches.  Things were going badly so one player decides to use a Wish:  "I wish there were no skulls in this room."
> 
> You can probably see where this is going...




In that case, the player got what he deserved.  The player left that one wide open for the DM.  I'm a fan of _wish_ perversion myself.  It's ok if you make a wish that falls in the normal guidelines of the spell, stuff like spell duplication or other very specific effects.  But when you get creative, that's when the perversions come in, and it really should be proportional to how careless or greedy the wish is.  _Wish_ has the power to alter reality itself, so it shouldn't be used lightly.  Besides, being careful what you wish for is an moral used in so much classic mythology and the like anyway, so _wish_ should be a potentially dangerous spell to use.

I also feel like presenting to the thread the Ultimate Rat Bastard DM Nonsense Bull Room.  I didn't come up with the original conception, but I'm (over)embellishing it.  Also, I have no idea how recently some of the components were updated in the rules.  Newest official version I have of everything is 2e (I know two of them were in the 3e MM).

There is a 20' x 20' room.  But it's not acutally a room.  The ceiling is a lurker above.  The floor is a trapper.  The walls are eight stunjellies.  In the room there is a coatrack with two cloaks which is actually a mimic and two cloakers, a weapon rack with three sword which is actually another mimic and three xavers, and finally there is a chest which you guessed it, is a third mimic. Or better yet, it's an ordinary chest which self-destructs if it takes a single point of damage, rendering the very valuable treasure with worthless, but leaving enough intact so the players can tell what it was from the remains.   Also, the door to the room is a mimic as well.


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## Pbartender (Feb 27, 2009)

Orius said:


> There is a 20' x 20' room.  But it's not acutally a room.  The ceiling is a lurker above.  The floor is a trapper.  The walls are eight stunjellies.  In the room there is a coatrack with two cloaks which is actually a mimic and two cloakers, a weapon rack with three sword which is actually another mimic and three xavers, and finally there is a chest which you guessed it, is a third mimic. Or better yet, it's an ordinary chest which self-destructs if it takes a single point of damage, rendering the very valuable treasure with worthless, but leaving enough intact so the players can tell what it was from the remains.   Also, the door to the room is a mimic as well.




The door is locked.  There is a miniature Sphere of Annihilation suspended in the keyhole.


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## Zustiur (Feb 27, 2009)

There are several themes running throughout this thread. They appear to be:
1) Ensure that the trap exists in logical circumstances. The inhabitants (if any) must be able to avoid them in their day to day existence. The exception being hastily constructed traps, put in place because the inhabitants know there are intruders.
2) Give the players a precedent. The presence of traps needs to be foreshadowed in some manner.

Once those criteria are satisfied, practically anything is fair game. 

So with that in mind, please continue with the examples. I have a blank document just waiting to be filled up with trick and trap ideas for my forthcoming campaign.

Is there a net-book of traps somewhere?


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## Celebrim (Feb 27, 2009)

Zustiur said:


> There are several themes running throughout this thread. They appear to be:
> 1) Ensure that the trap exists in logical circumstances. The inhabitants (if any) must be able to avoid them in their day to day existence. The exception being hastily constructed traps, put in place because the inhabitants know there are intruders.
> 2) Give the players a precedent. The presence of traps needs to be foreshadowed in some manner.
> 
> Once those criteria are satisfied, practically anything is fair game.




I think that's a fair summary.

This might fall into #2, but I think you can add a third point.

3) Regardless of how dastardly, cunning, or tricky, the villain always has a sense of fairplay.  

That is to say, the villain believes in giving his victims a fair chance to bypass his tricks.   The villain has some set of simple rules by which all traps are constructed.  In Acerak's case, in constructing the 'Tomb of Horrors' one of his rules is, "The hero should always act like a hero.  Unheroic (greedy) acts will always be punished.  Heroic (brave, sacrificial) acts, will be rewarded."  Another one of his rules is that devil's heads have a consistant meaning.   Even though arguably the goal of the villain should be to frustrate the player's by leaving false clues, by randomly making some situations true to their appearances and others not, by creating traps for which there is no true solution (darned if you do, damned if you don't), and so forth this should never actually happen, _because its not the goal of the DM to frustrate or defeat the players_.  The goal of the DM is to present the player's with a challenging but solvable puzzle, so that when the player's do begin to succeed they obtain a great satisfaction in doing so (because its not easy and takes some skill, insight, and planning), and conversely that when they fail they feel that they should have seen it coming.

So for example, someone mentioned a grimtooth trap where the pit was false and the apparant area of safety was a trap.  I would only consider that a fair and interesting trap if it it set a theme for the entire dungeon of "fair is foul, and foul is fair".  That is, the players should eventually grasp that the rule of this dungeon is that everything is backwards - that warning signs mean safety and signs of safety mean death; that evil portents mean security, but beautiful trappings mean a horrible fate await.   And, that armed with this insight, the players should be able to consistantly beat the puzzles presented by the dungeon.

If you are going to deviate from the rules, then you can only do so in a climatic fashion.  In the case of the 'fair is foul and foul is fair' dungeon, the very last room where the villain slumbers in his sarcophagus can the twist that fair really is fair and foul really is foul, but no dramatically speaking it can't occur anywhere else (and should have foreshadowing to boot).  Remember, a dungeon is a story, the rooms are episode and the path through the dungeon represents the different ways the episodes can be arranged.  Your map is your plot.  In the 'fair is foul and foul is fair' dungeon we are building on the stories theme, and the twist - the epiphany - can only occur at the climatic point.  

Think about the 'Harry Potter' series.  In each of the first 5 books, there is a twist.  And, to a very large extent, it is the same twist in every book.  In the 6th book, at the climax the twist is - there is no twist.  That only works in a dramatic fashion if we've very carefully built up our theme in the previous episodes of the story.


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## Celebrim (Feb 27, 2009)

*More Nasty DM Tricks*

1) A Troll cleric uses his spells to grant himself resistance to fire and acid attacks.

2) Secret door covered by tapestry which is infested with yellow mold.

3) Otherwise easily detectable trap on floor hidden by straw, thick mist, or standing water.  Players that find means of removing concealment before progressing much more likely to avoid trap.

4) Variation on above.  Deep pit trap in middle of room with large amount of standing water.  When trap is triggered (lever is pulled?) water drains into pit, sucking anyone without secure footing into pit.  Variant on this is lever opens door out of room, but sends flood down into lower level sweeping the players with it.   Variant on this is players are on lower level, and opening door sends flood down to this level.   Another variant is a 'funnel trap', where floor of room tilts toward pit.  This is most interesting when a flying creature simultaneously enters room, provoking fight on wet, sloped, slippery surface leading to pit.

5) Players are investigating kobold/goblin lair in living cave passage.  Further into cave, kobolds/goblins have built a dam to provide power to trip hammers for their forges (possibly heard as repeated clanging sound when entering lair).  When goblins are alerted to intrusion (gaurds live to reach main settlement or sound warning trumpet), clanging sound stops because goblins have diverted water from retaining pond down passage the PC's are in.  PC's must find side passage above oncoming flood to make further progress, and risk either being swept over waterfall at lair entrance or trapped in corridor filled with water.

6) Frame job.  Decietful evil cult creates easily found but false hideout and temple to other evil god, and drops hints in PC's path to help them find it.  When PC's raid temple, some patsies are killed, a few figures try to escape through carefully arranged escape routes, and evidence linking prominent evil temple in community to recent nefarious plots and murders is found.  Other evil temple is innocent (at least of this) and PC's charging headfirst into their headquarters will quickly find themselves over their heads.  Figuring out that they've been duped, and providing evidence of this may lead PC's to having very strange allies for a time.

7) Trap door in ceiling dumps green slime on unwary below.

8) Room contains a few large stone pillars, a porticlus (electrified), and a circlular stone table.  Investigating table finds four square recesses in it, and a cursory search of room finds 4 wooden poles that fit recesses in table.  Placing poles in table allow it to be used as simple capstan to lift porticlus.  This is sufficient puzzle for very novice parties.  For advanced parties, porticlus leads to dead end room containing nasty death trap.  Actual exit from room is trap door in floor revealed by pushing one of the stone pillars to side, which can be found only by a most careful search.  The later is what I actually used in dungeon.

9) Players encounter circular room with mosiac floor and carved walls.  Stepping more than two steps into room causes a person to be attacked by magic missile/scorching ray/lightning bolt, and normal progress is thwarted at similar intervals.  The room is a ballroom, and floor must be danced across using a particularly famous dance step (requiring a perform check or multiple perform checks, armor check penalties apply) to traverse successfully.  Some clues to nature of puzzle might be found by examining room and making appropriate Knowledge check (geography to recall pattern on floor resembles folk dance native to area, heraldry to note significance of room, for example).

10) Variation on the 'Beggar's Puzzle' mentioned earlier.  Players pass through a corridor with two sets of quite strong doors into a central region containing coffers of gold and other wealth.  Although the wealth seems to have no catch, the whole area is haunted by the spirit of a greedy miser who has the power to animate all the doors leading from the chamber, and exit from the area proves impossible (or at least, beyond the likely means of the characters at their current level) until not only do they replace the treasure, but 'donate' some of their own.  Only then will the 'Beggar with No Hands' allow them to pass on to a new area.  To add insult to injury, because the central nature of the 'Beggar' area, the party may have to traverse it multiple times (hopefully developing a real hatred for the 'Beggar' before obtaining the means to revenge themselves).


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## Orius (Feb 28, 2009)

Pbartender said:


> The door is locked.  There is a miniature Sphere of Annihilation suspended in the keyhole.




A little tricky when the door itself is a mimic.  I'm not even sure if a mimic can take the form of a lock.  

But _sphere of annihilation_ in the keyhole is very fun.  Especially if the door doesn't even go anywhere at all and is a red herring.


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## Lord Ipplepop (Mar 9, 2009)

Raynard, my brother, if I ever start to irritate you... just, please, let me know and I will crawl away quietly... you are much too devious to mess with.

This is a great list that will have my characters cursing the day you ever learned to write.


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## haakon1 (Mar 9, 2009)

The ones below make sense to me.  Make sense = something I can see the bad guys thinking up and doing, so something I might someday use.  The last one, I already have used.



Reynard said:


> 1. Vials clearly marked as potions of healing filled instead with one of the following: poison, acid or "cause wounds" (this last one is particularly nasty, as a detect magic spell will not reveal the trick).
> 
> 5. Two words: bridge mimic.
> 
> ...


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