The Campaign Builder's Guild

I am a bit evil when it comes to traps. I like puzzles, I also like teaching arrogant players a lesson. I especially like making everyone sweat and then enjoy the smiles on their faces when they finally figure it out. So these facts tend to shape my traps. As an example here is one that I ran, I didn't create this particular one but I saw the idea and just couldn't pass it up.

The PCs enter a dark room through a narrow doorway, which as soon as they are past shuts closed. Lights flare up and they find themselves in a 20x20 room with 2 shut doors and a timer on the wall counting down from 10 with little flip cards. A button next to the timer says RESET. Pressing the button resets the timer at 10 upon which it starts counting down again. Once the timer reaches 0 the doors open and allow passage again.

Yea after that one I had to bribe my players with promises of pizza to stop them from killing me (it took them 45 minutes to give up and just let the button reach 0).

So then... what is your most vile traps you have ever run?

Well, it wasn't particularly vile, but a while back when I was running a game, my players were after an ogre in a stone tower... and there happened to be a ceiling blade trap that they didn't see (because the scout wasn't checking, it was DC 15 Search), and of course as they ascended the stairs they triggered it. The trap did damage equal to a Greataxe wielded by someone with... 20 strength? Well, anyway, it critted, and it happened to do enough base damage to get a total damage value of about 53 on one player... they were level three. The scout and bard ended up spending about an hour arguing which one of them was at the front of the line, and therefore took the damage (read: got sliced in half). Eventually I let them go, and proceeded to burn Tethyr to the ground as an unrelated consequence.

Generally speaking, Earthdawn has the sickest and most vile traps ever printed in an RPG book. They are just plain nasty...

Example 1:
The PCs travel in a Plague-crafted dungeon. Suddenly, under one character a trap door slides open, lets him fall through, and immediately closes again. Unable to help or even locate their comrade, the rest of the PCs must continue. Later, in a room the other PCs notice a transparent wall of unknown material, which is basically indestructable. After a few moments (long enough for the PCs to analyze and examine the wall) their captured comrade is dropped into the part of the room on the other side of the transparent wall. Then, slowly, the sealed off part of the room fills with water, making the PCs watch helplessly as their friend is drowned.

Example 2:
The PCs travel through a corridor with some garbage lying on the ground (some old ropes and blades). Just as the PCs pass a larger heap of garbage, the things spring to life. The ropes wrap around the wrists and ankles of the last PC in the party and pull him high into the air, spreading him like a mockery of a jumping jack. Then the blades animate and cut the tendons at his elbows and knees. The ropes become inanimate again and drop the PC back on the ground again, unable to walk or make use of his arms.

Those are beyond evil... yikes.

Personally I tend to avoid semi-railroaders like those since its no fun for anyone (well... maybe for the dm >:]). Here is another one. This one I did create and I absolutely loved when it got triggered.

The PCs notice a room filled with safes. In the middle sits a large table with the following items on it:

- 4 short wooden poles of various lengths and different colors
- A small rock pick
- A pointed rock (a knowledge check (DC 10) reveals it to be a tool for testing the hardness of an item via scratching)
- A flask of oil
- A tinderbox and some kindling

Searching the safes finds no traps, though a DC 25 reveals that while the safes are made out of extremely strong material, their locks are curiously simple to crack (DC 25). Should a PC ever crack the lock the hallway that they entered in from quickly retracts back and a rope device wenches up a large stone block. There is a thud and the room begins to sway.

The room is balanced on a small spire of rock sticking up hundreds of feet off the cavern floor below (the whole facility was underground). When a safe is opened in any way it unlocks the blocks holding the room secure and causes the connecting hallway to retract back and close up. With the room no longer held up by anything but the plinth of rock it begins to tilt based on the players position and how much they and their gear weighs. It is now up to the players to position themselves to keep the room from falling over and hurtling them to their death on the cavern floor below (which is basically a lake of lava). While doing so they need to find a way to get out of the room. The way is as follows:

- Use one of the poles to push the correct button in the room's ceiling (based off of a clue given in regards to the room designers heritage; it was his family crest). Pushing the wrong one off balances the room, forcing the PCs to reposition themselves or die. Three wrong pushes and the room is too unbalanced and plunges off the edge.
- This unlocks four plates in the four corners of the room. The plates however have a tiny lip and are very heavy though so the rock pick must be used to pry them open.
- Prying them open reveals a hole marked with a word (the word is a color backwards and corresponds to the colors of the four poles). Putting them in wrong will off balance the room and it will continue to tip until they are pulled out.
- Putting the poles in their matching slot secures the room in place with a loud thud and pushes up a tall cube with four squares on its top, one on each side. Each square has the phrase "smite the unmarkable" written upon it.
- Scratching the faces with the rock will leave large scratch marks (in fact scratching anything but the right thing will). The only thing that doesn't scratch is the pillar that the four plates are resting on.
- Smashing the pillar causes it to splinter apart and reveals a switch. The switch triggers a hidden gangplank to extend from the doorway and link up with the hallway.
- The hallway is held shut by a large and thick brick of smooth stone. It is being held in place by a thick rope (DC 15 spot check discovers that the rope appears to be made out of a flammable material).
- Soaking the rope in the oil and then lighting it with the tinderbox burns it away and lets the door drop free, allowing the PCs to escape.

Once the door is dropped free the PCs can safely crack the safes to find various items. If they touch the locks before the door drops though the poles are launched out and shift to a plain tan color and the holes flip about revealing new words (the words short, middle short, middle long, and long all reversed in spelling like the colors) the words now correspond to the pole lengths and the correct holes are now different. If this happens a second time the poles shatter and the room begins to over balance till it plunges to the bottom.

In my campaign the room was created by a powerful wizard who was researching the ability to make himself invincible. The room contained his most deadly treasures, which he felt would be better off cast into the lava below and destroyed then allowed to fall into the hands of his enemies. The safes contained notes on his weaknesses (so that he could research how to overcome them) as well as various other information regarding his self-research and on his fortress. This info made beating him in the end alot easier for the players and also allowed them to bypass a couple dangers further on.

The room was basically a death trap against those that might take anything from it. The wizard though, still wanted to be able to access his notes if necessary, so he created a way to safely reset the room (in fact the room has a command word to reset that will reset the room if it is spoken anywhere in that section of the fortress but inside the room).

The worst part here is that isn't even close to the most elaborate trap I have ever done.

man, i did a trap very similar to yours Nomadic, but just way less complex.it was just a hallway with a door at either end. when you got about 10 feet from the middle, you trigger a pressure plate that closes and locks the door (the far one remains open) and removes the supports holding the floor steady. it is pivoted like a giant teetertotter in the middle and the players have to spreead out on either side of the pivot to balance (there is a pool of acid below). the balance checks were easy to do, but the problem is you can oinly get half the party across, then half the remaining party, and so on, leaving one player stuck.

i was also a fan of a long set of stairs up that retracted into the walls to drop the players on a long salt chute underneath. this whole chute was actually a massive intelligent (but mute) salt golem that the players had to bargain with. they needed to realize it was intelligent, find a way to communicate and then barter with it. they eventually got the golem to let part of the party leave to go capture some of the dungeon's other denizens to bring back and exchange for the rest of their party.

also, Nomadic, that first trap with the reset button is amazing. i laughed so hard when i read it.

I've heard of the counter trap before.  Not a trap in the sense we often thing, but a more genuine kind of trap, because it keeps the players trapped in one spot for quite some time.
Elaborate traps are really evil, and I always want to use puzzles, but I'm afraid my players won't be able to figure them out.  Saying that, it sounds kind of conceited to think you could come up with a problem that no one could solve, but it's just that when you have a puzzle, it all comes down to the players, because it doesn't matter whether the characters could theoretically figure it out or not; if the players can't solve it, the characters can't solve it.

Indeed its important to tailor your puzzle traps to your players. The group I was playing with fortunately are puzzle lovers and really good at figuring things out. I did concede to them one hint (everything on the table must be used in order to get out). With that hint after a bit of thinking and working together they managed. Though that was nothing to the rubics cube of death I did.

The rubics cube of death was essentially a giant 50 level dungeon hanging in open space inside an absolutely massive underground chasm. It was created by Kobolds and thus absolutely filled with traps, most of which were puzzle traps. Like a rubics cube it randomly spun about so that two rooms that were next to one and other one time were now in an entirely different part of the cube. After moving down 20 levels of this you came to an expanse inside the cube that required various puzzles to be solved before moving on. then down another 20 levels the same thing again which brought you to the final 10 levels with the last room being the "boss room". After I ran that my players never again asked me to make a "nice, tough, trap dungeon". Though they still had a blast playing it.

Nomadic, at first they do appear like railroading. But with some background of the setting and the system's mechanics they are actually quite "fair".

The first trap occurs in a dungeon created by a Horror (sorry, not Plague... I always confuse these two -.-"). Horrors are basically demons who derive nourishment from pain, agony, fear, and terror. They view mortals as nothing more than cattle. Thus, the fact that a PC may fall for something as simple as a self-closing trapdoor is to blame entirely on the part of the PCs. If you were in such a situation, I'm sure you'd take all appropriate countermeasures to prevent getting seperated. Also, there are some spells and talents (magical abilities) that allow the party to save their comrade. In the story where this trap was used, the magician of the party used a spell similar to resilient sphere to encase the other character and allow him to survive the water. After some minutes the water drained away from the chamber and the wall slides into the floor.

The other trap seems quite nasty from its description, but mechanically speaking it's not worse than a crushing wall trap in DnD. In effect it deals just a massive load of damage with the corresponding amount of wounds, which seriously hinder any character. With the right amount of magical healing gear and a little time it's not as bad as it sounds.

;)

True but with that kind of setup they can no longer be considered railroaders. I was talking in regards to the traps as they were presented by themselves.