The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Roll a Reflex and die in the best traps you have encountered
sinsoluble
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I am currently DM'ing a DnD 3rd edition game. We play twice a week, once being on Saturdays where we chew through main story line and once other day of the week when all or most of the players can show up.
Since not everyone is able to show up consistently on the second day we play I have been having the group do research for a wizard they met in the main mages society of the setting. This means that the majority of the players still get to play more then once a week while the ones who are absent don't miss any of the story.
The mage is interested in traps and trap design. He uses a trans-location orb to warp the players to a model dungeon he has on his desk. He then watches their progress through his traps in order to learn more about the psychology of trap disarming.
Heres the rub though. I am running out of ideas for traps. My party has done somewhere in the region of 150 traps already during these sessions. I am at an end to think up new and innovative ways to try and kill them.
I therefore turn to you the PA community to tell me the most fun and innovative traps you have encountered in your role playing.
And not to be a beggar I will post the first one:
The party enters a hallway with a pillar half way down. When they reach the pillar walls slam down on either side of the hallway and begin to move towards them in a classic crusher trap type manner. There is a button on the pillar with a inscription on it that says in common "reset". each time the button is pressed the walls move back to their original positions and begin to come at the party again. There is no way out.
Since not everyone is able to show up consistently on the second day we play I have been having the group do research for a wizard they met in the main mages society of the setting. This means that the majority of the players still get to play more then once a week while the ones who are absent don't miss any of the story.
The mage is interested in traps and trap design. He uses a trans-location orb to warp the players to a model dungeon he has on his desk. He then watches their progress through his traps in order to learn more about the psychology of trap disarming.
Heres the rub though. I am running out of ideas for traps. My party has done somewhere in the region of 150 traps already during these sessions. I am at an end to think up new and innovative ways to try and kill them.
I therefore turn to you the PA community to tell me the most fun and innovative traps you have encountered in your role playing.
And not to be a beggar I will post the first one:
The party enters a hallway with a pillar half way down. When they reach the pillar walls slam down on either side of the hallway and begin to move towards them in a classic crusher trap type manner. There is a button on the pillar with a inscription on it that says in common "reset". each time the button is pressed the walls move back to their original positions and begin to come at the party again. There is no way out.
The trick is that all the party needs to do is let the walls come to within 5-7 feet of each other and they will simply move back into the ceiling causing the party no harm at all. My party got stuck on this trap for almost an hour trying all sorts of crazy things to stop the walls from killing them. I had this trap placed just before a treasure room so that when they finally did get out they were so busy looting the treasure that they didn't kill me out of spite.
sinsoluble on
0
Posts
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
How exactly would this manifest in a game? Do your players always specify the way in which they are turning the handle?
Or is it just minor fluff you let them know for a cheap laugh once they overcome the trap challenge?
I have no idea. It's the very first trap/interaction of note in the starter adventure in the first edition of WFRP. If I remember back in the mists of time correctly after taking bad damage from the fall a party mates character then had his leg broken at the very first fight scene cutting the adventure short. The trap description reads that unless the players specifically states that they are turning the knob the 'wrong' way then the trap will trigger.
Ah, those were the days. A more innocent GM-vs-player times. My mind boggles that people ever thought that that was good adventure design. Even at the age of 13 we wanted a more sophisticated roleplaying experience than that. Except when we played Paranoia where I'd try an get a death or two in before the briefing room at least.
Of course, even the WFRP door trap doesn't come close the 'real time' death traps from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 'Adventures' supplement. Individual characters would enter one of seven rooms each with an instant death trap and an obscurely cryptic hint about how not to die. Each room was entered individually, so no team work, and was to be played out in real time 3 minutes if I remember correctly. To solve one of the rooms involved the character not moving for 3 minutes. Riveting roleplaying there.
The best trap I've ever heard of involved the players being dumped into a dark room and then a glowing skeleton advancing on them that was surrounded by some form of force field:
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
It's from 1987, and hella hard to find. I think there are seven books in total.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Illusions in general can give good traps, as long as there aren't any characters who can dispel them - for instance, a pit which looks like it can be jumped over with ease, but the far side is the real pit. The problem is, once your characters get wise to illusion traps, then out comes the ten-foot pole to poke everything.
Which is when you unleash the poke-activated traps, like a door which when pushed opens up a pit ten feet back down the corridor.
Room with a wooden door that only has a knob on it, no key hole, and is flush with the wall around it, so that you cant wedge anything between the door and wall to pry it open. On first glimpse, it appears to be unlocked, but when you try to open it, a giant conjured fist appears and punched the player who tried to open it, knocking the player back 10-15 feet. The only way to open the door is to knock, and it opens.
My DM did this to our party on a night I was gone, and heard they took forever to get that door opened. I also believe my DM had a pool of lava located not too far behind the door, to add extra danger.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
No reset button, but there was a gap in the wall, so that it'd look like one or two people could survive the walls smashing them. The *idea* was that the evil people the tomb was trying to keep out would bicker and fight each other to try to make it so that they wouldn't be crushed... and hopefully kill each other, either before the walls stop, or in retaliation to any tricks that the others would pull.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
i came up with a room that was 60 feet tall with reverse gravity spells on the floor and ceiling. hilarious to watch my players try and stop themselves from falling 60 feet hitting the ceiling and then falling another 60 feet and hitting the floor over and over.
they managed to catch each other in mid air and spin endlessly in the center of the room until the mage cast a floating disk under them. they then used rope and grappling hook to pull themselves across the room on the disk. If they had only noticed the room "reflected" in the ceiling was not a reflected in a mirror they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble.
SoogaGames Blog
Or if our DM just stole the sphere of annihilation trap from it.
Either way, we all thought by touching the sphere the character was getting teleported to another area of the dungeon.
After the entire party had touched the sphere and disappeared, one by one, the DM gives the reveal.
"You're all dead. That was a sphere of annihilation. Next DM's turn"
Suffice it to say we were all a bit ticked.
That is quite brilliant. And almost fair assuming your only line of inquiry was poking it.
Or just give them the Monty Hall problem and let them kill each other as a result of the ensuing argument.
Grimtooth's Traps had that! :P
Except it was a pit with a slightly delayed teleport spell at the bottom. Hit the floor, take damage, one second later it teleports you up to the top so you fall down again.
I liked the non-magical traps the best. There was one with a wooden floor. All the planks were on very sensitive springs, so when you stepped on them, they went down from the weight... and then you were standing on the razor blades between the planks instead.
That was a short story rather than a campaign, though, so I'm not sure if it's possible to cast Group deafness without people being aware of it, so they don't try and dispel the effect and ruin the surprise.
It was long enough ago, and my memory's bad enough that I honestly don't remember our level, or modes of inquiry.
We're all seasoned RPG players, however, and if we had any other means of inquiry, divinations or the like, we'd have used them.
So, either we were too low level to have those at our disposal, or they all failed/didn't reveal anything.
If you've ever read tomb of horrors...it's basically a slaughterfest with countless ways to die instantly hitched on nothing more than a roll of the dice, etc.
most players hate the heck out of it...chances of making it out alive are slim, chances of an entire party succeeding are zero.
The sphere wasn't like a normal sphere either, just hanging mid-air, perfectly round.
If I remember right, there was a sculpture of a head of some creature that took up almost an entire wall.
The Sphere was placed inside the creature's mouth...your eye was drawn to the complete lack of any light or shadow...true black in the mouth.
It's inset into a wall as if to be a doorway.
In the last story session of our adventure i placed a jukebox inside one of the areas that the party had to travel through. Of course the players being curious placed a coin in and selected a song. When said song started they all started to dance uncontrollably and guards hearing the commotion of 5 people dancing with a loud song playing came to investigate.
a long corridor with a spiked wall (at least 10x10)moving towards the players with a (fake) locked door on the far side. escape: the players can just climb and ride the wall till it bursts through the locked door.
not much of a trap, but it happened to me: went to a tavern called "The Burning Man". the place was pretty nice and in one corner there was a fiery cage just big enough to contain the continuously burning man inside. (it also had silent on it so there was no noise) thinking it was a pretty fancy illusion my character decided to touch it , taking huge amounts of fire and charisma damage. the party then proceeded to take several rounds to try to put the fire out over the objection of the other customers who were a bit slow (drunk) in reacting to all this. we put it out only to have the formerly on fire guy break the cage and run out into the city before we could stop him. turns out the place was built around the punishment site of a mass murder with troll blood. we never did catch him and had to pay a hefty sum to the bar owners.
lava or acid being held in a force container of some kind: "one of the exits is a glowing obviously magical door." [players do stuff] "it is magically sealed/ locked" [players dispel the door]
The players enter a room with a sunken floor, as soon as they all get in the entrance and exit slam shut and lamp oil pours out of spouts in the top of the room. Then a hatch opens up and a torch attached to a chain starts lowering down. No way out, and theres a torch coming towards a room full of lamp oil.
Jordan of Elienor, Human Shaman
Maybe have someone or something sneak up during the night and replace everybody's equipment with equipment that looks exactly the same, but will turn on them after a time or when given a signal.
I don't know whether there's a spell that could be set as a trap do this sort of thing.
The idea of having to be captured in order to reach a goal seems interesting as well.
Doorways became pretty fantastic challenges when the party can't tell if it's a door or if it really is a giant dragon waiting to eat them.
A couple of party members did need to get holes drilled in their heads after that session. Insanity Points are way too much fun.
Applicable, I think.