Fun with traps! Part 1

After treasure and monsters, traps have to be the next iconic thing in dungeons across all the settings, systems and editions. Good traps are memorable, occasionally lethal, and when done well add equal parts excitement and tension to a game. When done poorly, they frustrate and make things tedious.

So I want to help you dear reader to understand them a bit more. For the Referee, this series will help you logically place them and hopefully, understand how to scale a trap to the party's level, strengths, and weaknesses.

For the player, this will hopefully aide you in thinking creatively when adventuring, to help you think of new ways to circumvent them or at least, increase your likely hood of survival. Of course, please temper this meta knowledge with your character's knowledge and experiences. I mean, "Tim the farmhand" is not likely to know about pressure plates and sensors, whereas "Lan, the likely, daring cutpurse and scourge of the city guard" may know about traps and their mechanisms.

Is it a trap, or a hazard? If it was placed deliberately by vaguely intelligent design, it is a trap. If it is a static, or naturally occurring danger, it is a hazard.
EX: 1.A sabotaged walkway leading across a bog is a trap, the bog itself is a hazard. 2. A barricade once interacted with that unleashes an avalanche is a trap. A randomly occurring, caused by natural events avalanche is a hazard.


Beyond the Dungeon Master's Guide,  traps can be separated into 4 simple groups.
1. Primitive
2. Engineered
3. Magical
4. Complex, or compound

This post will focus on the first type:
1. Primitive, or simple: These are your pit traps, dart traps, snares, prepared cave-ins, swinging blades, buckets over cracked doors and the like.Many of these are modified from the purpose of hunting game. This category does not require advanced engineering, or a good understanding of magic or science to create. Many of these are what savage humanoids, bandits, and peasants place. Some of them can be seen in ancient temples, ruins and underground as well. These are the devices that many a level 1 has cut their teeth upon and these can and will kill them with ease. 
This category is seldom lethal for mid to high level parties and serve to slow down, hamper, and annoy them. Think about placing these for high level when a party has begun to rely on magic too heavily.

Ex: The humble pit trap:
Dc 10 for pc to spot, once stepped on, pc gets applicable save or fall 20' to a packed dirt bottom.
This trap is deadly for thieves and magic users, and dangerous for warriors and priests at 1st level. It is deadly for thieves and magic users at level 2, and a hindrance to level 2 warriors and priests.
Damage: generally, 1d6 per 10' fallen is the norm. Dungeon Crawl Classics adds the insult of broken bones to falling damage.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Wolfsgrube.JPG/1200px-Wolfsgrube.JPG

 Pit traps are usually disguised as being ordinary ground outside. A net, or screen is placed over the pit, and dirt and then grass are placed over that. Once a heavy load, usually 20 lbs or over steps on it, the victim falls in and (hopefully) can not get out. Things get more creative in the dungeon and pressure plates can activate and reveal them, this makes them fall into the engineered category. The simple version might have a brittle wood painted to match the floor, or  have thin slate sheets dragged over the opening.

Here is a list of some ideas to spice up this humble trap:
Roll 1d10:
1. Spikes (+3 to hit, usually 1d4 damage. Add poison appropriate to your game for more fun!)
2.Broken Glass (1d3 damage, acts as caltrops)
3. Deep water (Drowning)
4. Acid
5. Lava
6. Undead
7. pressure plate summons a monster
8. monsters come out of hiding and toss/ shoot weapons inside
9. every 1d3 turns, motorized blades sever any cords dropped down.
10. A column equal in width to the pit descends from the ceiling. Pc has so many turns to escape before pancake time. (If you are generous, conceal a secret passage down there for them to hopefully find in time.)

Player advice: When you encounter one of these bad boys, rest assured, there are probably more! Here are some tips:
*Tie rope to everyone in the party, around the waist. that way everyone else can act as an anchor.
*Carry a 10' pole or quarter staff to prod suspicious floors.
*Everyone should carry a length or rope. At least one person, a hammer and pitons.
*Torches don't shatter when dropped, they just go out.
* You can totally push opponents into revealed traps. Cast grease on the perimeter for more excitement.
*Pay attention to surroundings, note anything suspicous or out of place regarding the ground or floor.
*Pits can be constructed in the road to trap wagons and horses, don't get too comfy!

Hopefully this post has given you some tips on placing, constructing and utilizing pits! I'll continue this series at another time with a focus on mechanical traps!

New GM Advice

I have been gaming off and on now for 16 years. That's a little over half my life and the entirety of my adult life thus far. I have played a lot of different table games over that time and if I tried to list them, I know I would fail and miss some of the games I have thrown dice and had some kind of stake or share in. One of the first questions new or perspective players ask is: "How do I join a game"? the next, "How do I Gm and how do I get better at it, no how to be  the be the best at it"?

This post is going to focus on a part of that second question. Everybody who has ran a session or two has their bits to add to the  soup pot. Here's mine:

Wait, before I tell you, sit down. Relax, still your thoughts and prepare yourself for some paradigm shattering. I do not care what kind of  Referee, or Judge you are, or aim to be. This information is good, it is universal, and the most useful I can possibly give you. In order to give this advice well and make it stick. I am going to use some vulgar, family unfriendly language and metaphors. It might make me consider making my whole blog nsfw. But this is important and I want you, dear readers to take it to heart. It is a bitter pill to swallow, possibly horse sized too. If you've heard this advice before, good. If not, I really need you to focus and prepare: your heart, mind, and body. This one's gonna hurt:

"Your players are gonna do their best to bend your carefully orchestrated adventure/campaign over a table and have their way with it  and you are going to watch it happen". Your best friends, or random folks you roll dice with will do it to you. It doesn't matter if it hasn't happened yet, it will, and it is coming.
 What can I do to so that I don't hate everything when it happens? (This involves Homework)

1. You can not prevent this from happening. What you can do is this: Adapt your style and recognize this fact about the hobby: The storytelling in these games is collaborative. You, the Referee and they, the players react to one another and your (the group's) actions and reactions are what ultimately tell the story.

2. Do not  be "That DM". Never force your players, or their characters into doing anything, ever. Never take things away from them. Never punish them for good rolls, finding good treasure, or for them taking your plot off the rails. By doing these things, you are robbing your players and your game of "Agency". It stops being a living breathing world and becomes an office where the management punish the staff for a sloppy break room and for stealing pens. Visit https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/ for more examples of things to never, ever do and if you have done those things, you should apologize to the people you play with. I have, it was cathartic.

3. This one is the friendly writing advice section. This is not a mandatory thing, it is merely some adventure and storytelling advice that I hope make it harder or more flexible when players make crap hit the fan. These steps assume some things:  That you have a campaign area, story goals, npcs, and monsters chosen, or are using a pre-written/professionally produced adventure.

1. Make a list of events that happen and give them dates in game. Time passes independently of player choices. If they decide to dick around the bar for a week, the big bad cult in the mountains could have summoned their big bad god in the same amount of time. Every action should have consequence (not a punishment), and yes, choosing to not do anything is in fact a choice.
2. Prepare. Read everything once when you get it, again when you intend to run it, again the night before, and possibly right before everyone else shows up. Literally be the "Master" of your campaign and know the ins and outs of the plot so you are able to be flexible. Your players don't always choose the  main road through the mountains, even if they have for the last 20 years.
3. Learn about improvisation and how to do it better. Be spontaneous, but in a controlled way.
4. Know your players. What they want from your game, from you (the dm) and find out how you can meet these needs. Then know their characters, anticipate their actions, or at least attempt to predict them.
5. Read the works listed in a "recommended reading" section for the system you are running. This hobby was founded on the ideas of doing what Conan, Jirel, John Carter, and others could do in the pulps. If you haven't yet, familiarize yourself with "Appendix N". Then move on to the more modern stuff. It's okay to not like stuff much and to have your preferences. If you are playing a system that is heavily lit based, like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Call of Cthulhu, or Lamentations of the Flame Princess, make sure to do this part. Further advice: find out who or what influenced those authors and read that. I mean it! Here's an example: Read Lovecraft? Great! Now read: Blackwood, Chambers, Dunsany, Machen, and Poe! You'll find little things that Lovecraft picked up on and was influenced by. In "the gods of Pegana" Dunsany makes his own pantheon of strange gods. Chambers makes up a book and a group of stories connected by its presence within them.
You get the picture. It's happened for eons, one artist inspiring others. Homer inspired Virgil who then inspired Dante.

That's what advice I can give you at the moment, I could probably write a better organized book about this subject, instead of a blog post, but others have done a better job of it already. Here are two such examples and where to get them:

The "be a better game master" series by absolute table top: https://absolutetabletop.com/be-a-better-game-master 
It is a bit pricey for everything and a bit of a time investment, but it is worth it and given to you in an easy to digest interactive workbook format.

"Lamentations of the Flame Princess Referee book, Grindhouse Edition:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/148012/LotFP-Referee-Book-old-Grindhouse-Edition
This bad boy costs 0 dollars and was one of the best books on the subject I have read. It also has a free, short adventure for the system that is well worth running!
 

Obligatory first post

Hi there folks! I am the Retro_Mummy. Here is my sepulcher! Here within this demesne, I will post stuff to inform you about goings on. I will post reviews about products to help inform you regarding various RPG products. I will also occasionally review classic, now "retro" media. Look for the "nonostalgia" tag for things I did not encounter when they were new, when I was the target audience, or when I was a small, impressionable child.
Stay a while once I post more things, I will also put up modules I have written for various systems and tag them appropriately for your ease. The games I take part in are: Dungeon Crawl Classics, D&D 5e, Lamentations of the Flame Princess (lotfp) and Pathfinder. If you are interested in me converting one of my written adventures to a different system than listed, please feel free to let me know in the comments!