Traps 103 with Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.

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Welcome back, class! I know it's been a while since our last two sessions, so I hope you took good notes.

Today I'll be talking about how a GM can make detecting and disarming traps more interesting in-game.  I won't be using so many examples from the Indiana Jones movies this time around, because I can only think of one time Indy makes a Disable Device check.  When he is approaching the Breath of God trap in Last Crusade, he ducks, grabs a rope, and hooks it onto a spinning wheel, causing the trap to grind to a halt.

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Last time around, I closed by talking about making complex death traps that seem more like puzzles in how the players interact with them.  So why don't we expand that principle to all traps?

I've noticed that in my games, both as a player and as a GM, traps are not always well integrated into the play experience.  A typical trap encounter might go something like this:

Rogue: I open the chest!  Wait, first I should check for traps.

GM: Roll for it. 

Rogue: *rolling* 13... so that's a... 27 all together. 

GM: Alright, you're pretty sure that if you open the chest it will stick you with a poisoned needle. 

Rogue: *rolling* I got a... 31 to disarm. 

GM: Wow.  Okay, you stick your thieves' tools in there and disarm it.  

That's a pretty boring interaction.  Most of it is just calling out numbers, which is not something the in-game character would even be aware of.  This is a failing on my (the GM's) part.  When I include a trap encounter, I need to set it up through description.  To do that, we'll need to delve deeper:


Show, Don't Tell

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Instead of saying "You detect a trap," work it into the description of the situation.  Assume, for instance, that your party has stumbled onto a treasure chamber.  You say, "The room opens up before you.  A thousand stone faces stare back at you from the walls.  Ahead, across the moss-covered floor, a single beam of light illuminates a golden idol resting on a plinth rising out of a raised dais."

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"Let us hurry.  There is nothing to fear here," says the fighter.

"That's what scares me," replies the rogue.  "I check for traps.  *rolling* I got a 34"

Now, as the GM, you could say, "34 is good!  There's a dart trap."  But that would be boring, and it would just encourage the player to be boring in return.  Instead, let's try this:

"There's something unsettling about the stone faces on the walls, but the first thing you notice is that the moss on the floor seems to be growing in an unnatural pattern."

This prompts the rogue to investigate further, rather than just rolling to disarm.

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The rogue might pull back the moss to check for pressure plates.  He might use a bit of wood to press down on the moss and see what happens.  In any case, it's more interesting than just rolling a dice and hoping for a high number.

Ask for Actions, Not Rolls
Once your players have figured out the situation, don't ask them for a Disable Device roll.  Ask them what their characters want to do.  When a rogue approaches a swinging axe trap, he doesn't think, "Okay, time to use Disable Device."  He thinks, "Maybe I can jam something in the wheel to keep the axe from swinging out," or "Maybe I can sever the cords that connect the pressure plate to the counterbalance," or "Eh, I bet I can dodge it."  Well, the last option will require a Reflex save, but the first two are proper uses of the Disable Device skill.  Now the rogue is rolling not to abstractly 'disable the device', but to accomplish a specific action that the player thought of.  The player used ingenuity to come up with a solution, then rolled to see if he was successful, rather than just skipping right to the rolling.  This involves the player more in the game, and turns a trap into an actual encounter.  It might seem like just a little adjustment, but it goes a long way toward making your game more engaging.

As a side effect, it might make the players come up with solutions to the trap that don't involve Disable Device rolls.  In the previous example from the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy doesn't pull out his thieves' tools and start disabling all the pressure plates.  Instead, he tries to walk around the diamonds, requiring a few Acrobatics checks (especially once he gets closer to the dais and the diamonds are much closer together).  An adventuring party in the same situation might decide to give the rogue two tower shields, which he holds on either side of him as he walks across the room, using them as cover against the darts.

Know How Your Trap Works
In order for your players to solve a trap, you are going to have to know how the trap works in the first place.  I'm not asking you to draft any engineering drawings, just to have a rough idea.  Enough to know how the trap is triggered and what can be done to disarm or bypass it.  Is there a rope that can be cut?  A set of cogs that can be jammed?  Magic runes that need to be scratched off in a certain order?  A reservoir of oil that can be clamped shut?  This will help you describe the trap to your players so they can figure out a creative solution to it.

Let's say, for example, that you have a spinning blade trap.

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You decide there are two blades, one coming out of the wall and one coming out of the floor, so the players can't avoid it just by crawling under it.  How is it powered?  Eh, maybe there's some sort of hidden water wheel thing that turns some cogs and makes it go.  Now that you know those things, you can describe it to your players.

GM: As you pass the decapitated corpse, you see the dusty cobwebs part before you, as if from the subtle breath of some mighty deity.

Rogue: I try to identify the source of the breath.

GM: Roll Perception.

Rogue: Uh, I got a 26.

GM: You notice two thin, straight slits in the rock face one in the floor and one on the wall, about neck level.  Coming from around the corner, you also hear what sounds like wooden wheels turning against each other.

Rogue:  Hmm, I guess I have to get past the trap to disarm it.  Okay, I duck and roll, and I try to time it right so that I duck below the wall blade and roll past the floor blade, okay?

GM: Right, then make me an Acrobatics check.

Rogue:  Haha, a 25!

GM: You duck and roll, feeling the wind from the spinning blades as they just barely miss you.  Now you can see the source of the wooden grinding sound: two wheels sticking out of the wall and floor, turning each other.

Rogue:  Okay, I look around for something to jam the wheels.

GM: Well, there's a length of old rope and a...

Rogue: Perfect.  I try to wrap the rope around one of the wheels and bring it to a stop.

GM: Okay, roll me a Disable Device check to see if you can get the rope in the right place.

Some Traps Aren't Made to Be Disarmed
In the course of deciding how your traps work, you might realize that there is no feasible way that the players could disarm the trap, at least not without tearing down all the walls of the dungeon.  That's fine.  Most of the traps in the Indiana Jones movies had no obvious means of disarming them, and those movies had some of the most iconic traps ever!  The players can still use their wits to test how the trap works and come up with a way to bypass it.  Something not right about the floor?  Maybe they pour some water on it and see that it seeps into some telltale cracks, revealing the location of a trap door.  If it's too long to jump over, maybe they'll lay a long plank across it.

Speaking of bypasses, when you are thinking of how your traps work, try to think about how the people that made them got around them.  In the case of my first example - the needle trap on the locked chest - the owner of the chest must have had a way of opening the chest without getting poisoned.  Maybe the lock has a false tumbler that the owner's key bypasses, but if an uncanny rogue tries to pick it, it triggers the needle.  Or maybe that lock is a false one meant to lure thieves to their deaths, and the real lock is hidden behind a secret panel that can be discovered through further investigation.  Or, to take another example from Indiana Jones, maybe the evil temple's spiky room of crushing death has a hidden 'disable' switch to prevent workplace accidents.

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Believe it or not, the cockroach swarm is acceptable under OSHA regulations.

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Well, that wraps up Traps 103.  Remember, don't use numbers when you can use descriptions.  Use dice rolls to test a creative solution, not in place of a creative solution.  Above all, keep your players engaged with the world and their characters, and use traps to enhance that engagement.

-your disarming d20 despot