Traps 102 with Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.

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Last week, in Traps 101, I used Raiders of the Lost Ark to demonstrate a few basic things that traps can do in a dungeon.  I mean, besides maiming and killing.  This week, I'm also bringing in examples from Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, the only other Indiana Jones movies I recognize as canon (not that Crystal Skulls had any traps in it anyways).

Indiana Jones is an adventurer's adventurer, so it really makes sense that the temples and ruins he navigates are dungeons any GM would be happy to have created.  They have a cinematic quality to them (naturally) that boils the elements of a good dungeon down to a few tightly-implemented set-pieces.  For that reason, the Indiana Jones movies ring true as great D&D-style adventures despite the fact that there are no fantastical monsters and Indy himself doesn't wear armour or wield a sword.

"You're strangely dressed for a knight..."                 Paramount Pictures

So what else can we learn about traps from the adventures of Professor Henry Jones, Jr.?

Traps can reward character knowledge (or punish the lack of it)

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This principle comes into play at the end of both Raiders and Last Crusade.  In both cases, both Indy and the main bad guy are dealing with a powerful artifact, but the bad guy makes a wrong move and ends up being killed by his own hubris, whereas Indy uses some bit of knowledge of the artifact to avoid such a terrible fate.

"He chose... poorly"        Paramount Pictures

The bad guys are obsessed with the power they could gain by controlling the artifact, but Indy respects the artifact itself.  Indy gave thought to the situation and used his knowledge of the historical or mythical context to solve the puzzle and come out ahead, whether it was by knowing to keep his eyes closed when the ark was opened, or knowing that Jesus was more of a carpenter than a king.

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This is also a key part of the three tests - the Breath of God, the Word of God, and the Path of God - that Indy faces on the way to the Holy Grail.  Indy uses the knowledge accumulated by his father in the grail diary, and his own knowledge, to overcome the traps using the clues available.

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Then, when Indy is solving the Word of God, he realizes he needs to walk only on the stones that spell 'Jehovah', but hilariously forgets that it's spelled 'Iehovah' in Latin.

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The moral of the story: try to work in some traps that the players could bypass with a well-placed Knowledge (history) or Knowledge (religion) skill check.  Or some traps that the players can apply previously gained character knowledge to thwart.  It's a lot more interesting and rewarding than the standard pattern of detect trap, disarm trap, repeat.

Traps can make the next fight more difficult

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I've talked already about how navigating a trapped floor in the middle of a battle is a fun challenge, but this is a little different.  Here's the typical turn of events in a dungeon: the party runs into a trap, takes the damage (or other negative effect) from it, heals up, and busts into the next room like nothing ever happened.  But in Raiders, Indy is on the run from the famous rolling boulder trap and jumps out of the temple just in time, only to be confronted by Belloq and a tribe of Hovitos.  Caught off guard and winded by the trap, Indy has no choice but to surrender the idol.

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Now these kinds of traps aren't exactly uncommon in professionally made dungeons, but I feel it's important to point them out here and encourage their use.  Falling into a pit trap is far less interesting than falling through a pit trap right into a room full of monsters on the next level of the dungeon.  Hitting a tripwire that triggers an arrow trap as you run into combat is less interesting than hitting a tripwire that just trips you as you run into combat.  Running into a room with a magnetized floor is less interesting than running into a room full of rust monsters with a magnetized floor.

Particularly deadly traps should have some sort of warning.

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Alright, now we're talking about real deathtraps.  I said last time that the goal of a trap should not be to kill the party.  But that doesn't mean I'm against deadly traps.  Deadly traps can be great fun.  But your goal as a GM in using a deadly trap should be to provide a dangerous, near-death experience for the party, not to wipe them out and claim victory.  One of the ways you can do this is to heavily foreshadow the deathtrap.

Take the Breath of God trap as an example.  First, Indy and company see a hapless 'volunteer' enter the corridor of the Breath of God, and only his head comes out again.  Then, as Indy goes into the corridor himself, he sees two headless bodies lying there.

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By now, it seems pretty obvious that this trap is going to be posing an imminent threat to Indy somewhere in the neck region.  Then, as he goes further, the cobwebs lift up, telegraphing the final blow.  This gives Indy at least a good round (6 seconds) to figure out what to do to avoid the trap.

By all means put deadly traps in your dungeons - the threat of death is an important part of enjoying the game for many people.  But don't spring it on people out of nowhere.  Opening Random Door #326 only to be greeted by a disintegrate spell is not a rewarding gameplay experience.

Complex death traps should be puzzles

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Last week I cited Grimtooth's Traps as an example of bad trap design.  Grimtooth's is full of complicated death traps that serve purely to make the GM laugh as all his players die in hilarious and inescapable ways.  They are generally designed so that one innocuous action (such as opening a door or setting up a campfire) sets off a chain of events which can only end in your death (being catapulted through a monofilament mesh, or simply exploding in your sleep), or so that every step you take to save yourself only makes things worse.

Deathtraps should be more like puzzles.  They present an obstacle, give you time to solve it, and present plenty of opportunities to make the situation better or worse.  A great example is the spike room from Temple of Doom, probably the best deathtrap in the Indy movies:

It starts with Short Round triggering a switch that closes all the doors, trapping them in the room.

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Right near the door is another stone switch which any given adventuring party might trigger while trying to find a way out.  Or maybe it will be triggered by a little Chinese boy just trying to stay out of the way.

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The switch, of course, causes the ceiling to start moving slowly downward and huge spikes to slide out of the ceiling and floor.

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This doesn't instantly kill Indy and Short Round (the ceiling moves very slowly), but it does give them a limited time to solve their problem, and in increasingly tight conditions.

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Another important thing to note about this part of the trap is that it wasn't inevitable.  Indy could have feasibly found a way out of the room without ever triggering the slow-moving-spike-wall-of-death.

Finally, they are rescued by Willy, the least capable character in Indiana Jones history, whom Indy guides to pull the release switch. The fact that the party is split by the first part of the trap (the closing stone doors) means that they need to use teamwork and communication to solve the puzzle.  And the otherwise harmless swarm of bugs (distraction DC 12) becomes an added obstacle to the disarming of the trap.

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As one last example of a deathtrap from my own campaigns, I once made a room in a dungeon that slowly flooded with water.  The doors shut on the players a few rounds after they entered, and a few rounds after that three other doors opened, revealing dwarven draugar.  A few round after that, the room began filling with water at a rate of 4 ft. per round.  This gave the party about seven combat rounds to finish off the draugar and disable the trap before they had to start holding their breaths.  In addition, each of the four water spouts would be turned off individually, decreasing the flow by 1 ft. per round.  The threat of death was definitely there, and the dynamics of the room made the combat and the puzzle solving difficult, but the chance of the entire party being killed by my actions was pretty low.  It would have even been possible for them to avoid the trap altogether by leaving before the doors closed or forcing them open again with a particularly good Strength check.  Admittedly, I didn't really include ways for the party to make their situation worse, but one of the players still managed to break her sword trying to stop an iron door from closing.

Deathtraps are more about the threat of death than they are about death itself.  It's easy to kill a party, but it's much more rewarding to put them in a situation where death is a distinct possibility, and give them all the tools they need to work their way out of it.

"Willie! Shut down all the garbage mashers on the Detention Level!"

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-your Hovitos-speaking d20 despot