Put a spell on your players! Broken Peach offers a prime example of how to do this and bring your game to life with the incorporation of atmospherics: music and costumes, in this case. Engage in a little hocus pocus to add a trick or treat to your adventures!

Despite being a certified Evil GM™, I’ve never really been a fan of traps. I throw them in occasionally, but just mundane ones designed to keep people out, not the subtle ones that people have concocted over the years.

Grimtooth’s Traps is the grandfather of all trap books, and in it and its many sequels, it brings the art of trap making to new heights. They are not just examples of how the traps look to players, but show the implementation of them and what it would take to create  (and possibly defeat) them. Traps like these are designed to be encounters on their own, with significant resources put into their creation and with a goal of not just deferring intruders, but often ending them.

Still, they have just never been something I wanted to put into my dungeons–which makes it all the more surprising for my players when I do.

Today, I’m going to be talking a few of my standard traps, and the innovations I’ve used to make them more interesting.

Glyphs

These are probably my favorite. A magical symbol which, if passed without a keyword, triggers and blows up whoever is wandering by. Sometimes the glyphs are invisible, sometimes they are hidden by arcane markings, and sometimes they are just there for the party’s viewing pleasure. In general, the more obvious they are, the more dangerous I make them.

On their own, they are a big ol’ “Keep out, this is not for you” message. They’re designed to damage and slow the party but are mostly nuisance locks. If the party is big enough to have glyphs thrown up against them, they are big enough to take them out, through the efforts of a talented rogue or magic-cancellation spell.

However, I have a few ways that I use them that make them a lot more fun (for me).

First, I love to use unexpected glyphs that do things other than what’s described in the book. A glyph of gaseous form, which until fixed causes the player to just float around unable to effect anything. (This can be terrible for security, but really funny.) A glyph of polymorph, resulting in the mighty party and it’s noble…gerbil. Or, to mix things up a bit, I just hit them with a glyph of stun, then send a hoard of hungry ghouls to eat whoever missed their save.

My best innovation with a glyph, though, was SO simple that I’m still impressed by it. I put the glyph on the other side of the door. The party saw a trap or something, disabled it with no problem opened the door, walked through and *BAM*.

We have a soft rule in my game that if someone finds an exploit, they only use it once. That includes the GM, so I never used this after the first time. But it was really funny, and I got kudos from the players for thinking of it.

Pits

Pits are a lovely way to keep people from going places that they shouldn’t. A big obvious pit is nice for slowing people down and hinting that going somewhere else is a better idea. A concealed pit is a fun way to make overconfident characters take more notice of their surroundings. Depending on how deep the pits are and what game you’re playing, pits can go from “meh” to truly lethal. (1d6/10′ is meh. 1d6 additive per 10 feet is lethal (1d6 at 10′, 3d6 at 20′, 6d6 at 30′, etc.)

Pits can have spikes, glyphs, and the ever popular gelatinous cubes to make them more lethal, but in general, they aren’t that interesting–they do a little damage or a lot. For extra bonuses, you can spring a cage lid on them which can be interesting once in a while.

One fun way to surprise players with a pit is to have the people in front step on a trigger plate that opens a pit behind them. The “wiggly fingers” in the middle fall into the pit, while the vanguard warriors and the rear guard end up untouched.

My best innovation, though was the “fake pit” trap. The party was going down the hall, and they found a 10′ pit in front of them. They got a running jump…successfully vaulted over the illusionary pit, and land in a real pit covered by a floor illusion. Contrived? Yes, but it was really funny.

Arrow Traps

If I’m going to put in traps, it’s generally going to be some sort of arrow trap. If you stand in the spot, or go past the point, or trip the wire, you get shot by some crossbow bolts. They can be poisoned, spelled or flaming for added effect.

However, I don’t usually make these overly deadly. In fact, I tend to use them as humility traps. The image of a character, standing there annoyed with an arrow sticking out of them, saying “I didn’t check for traps, did I?” is reward enough for me.

Hobbit Traps

I’m not sure where this name came from, unless it’s “fool of a Took”, and I’ve heard them called Kender traps as well, from the Dragonlance world. In effect, though, they are just clearly marked hazards that the characters can’t resist because they want to know what will happen.

The classic example is a big, dangerous-looking object with a Big Red Button(tm) that says “Do not push” on  it. It is inevitable that somebody is going to push the button.

They doesn’t have to be this obvious, but sometimes it’s fun to put obviously dangerous things in the game, and see if the players will screw around with them, out of boredom, curiosity or just because it doesn’t occur to them that the big red button shouldn’t be pushed.

In my first major Trinity campaign, there were three metal vats with big glyphed lids on them. The bored rogue wandered up to one and said “I open it up” to the cries of despair of the party. What came out was nasty, hard to defeat and came closer to a TPK than the party ever got.

Of course, the rogue learned his lesson and never again…hahaha, no actually, not long after, the party came across a dead lich, with a sword through it’s body. The sword was called FIVE, named for Five of Eleven (see my essay on The Eleven from earlier this month.) The party immediately announced that they were grappling the rogue, before he had a chance to say that he wanted to get the sword and check it out. What was funny was that he DID say it, and then realized they had already preempted him, and sulked mightily because he didn’t feel trusted.)

Summary

I love small details, mysteries, puzzles and combat. Any dungeon I create is going to have plenty of these things. I usually limit my use of traps to either a one-off or as an indicator that the party is going the right direction because there are traps that keep you from going that way. That said, traps can be  an enjoyable diversion, and especially if I can figure out a way to make them innovative, the group usually gets some fun out of them.

About the Company

I have to give a callout to Flying Buffalo, which has been the master of tongue-in-cheek gaming since as long as I’ve been playing. Creators of the Tunnels and Trolls RPG, the Nuclear War board game, and of course the Grimtooth’s Traps series, I’ve been stopping by their booth at GenCon every year since I started going if only to relish the nostalgia, and say hello.

Sadly, their founder passed in 2019, but I just saw that the license for the company has been acquired, and maybe the new company will keep their traditions going. In any case, with a prompt word of “trap” there was no other header art I could have chosen.

This article was cross-posted on Greg’s RPG blog, Dice Deliberations.

This Friday, Dungeons & Toast was honored to host Epidiah Ravachol, author of the horror-themed tabletop RPG, Dread. He shared his personal journey into the horror genre, describing seeing Nightmare on Elm Street 1 and 2 for the first time. He spoke about being the sole person in the room with an abiding interest in horror and the stigma sometimes associated with such an attraction.

Many members and guests embraced the theme of the evening, donning their frightful — sometimes delightful — best. Here spotlighted are the costumes of the night:

Congratulations to the winners of tonight’s announced costume contest! Greg S. won Funniest Costume with his “FABulous Bard” garb, while I was thrilled to win both Scariest and Most Outrageous with my “Lady in the Mirror.” Thank you to “This Little Piggy” for the amazing Haunted House ASMR video that helped inspire my getup!

Last night Dungeons & Toast welcomed Club Growth Director for District 100, Curtis Johnson, who was kind enough to conduct an installation for those officers able to be present. Thank you to all in attendance last night!

Last night was the first of two Question & Answer sessions (Visionary Communication, Level 4 Elective) given to introduce users to the WordPress CMS, including information about hosting and setup. Thank you to all who attended, and — for those of you unable to do so — here are recordings of both nights.

You may have already seen the delightful web series, Epic NPC Man, but did you know that Baelin, the series’ cheerful, ever-angling huckster recently starred in a feature film more than 30 minutes in length? Can non-player characters experience significant personal growth? Find out in the epic adventure, Baelin’s Route:

You can support the makers of Epic NPC Man, Viva La Dirt League, on Patreon or by purchasing some epic merch featuring Baelin himself. Or meet the creators by signing up to join their Discord server.

Beneath the Waters of Our World

Water is an amazing and often underutilized element for Role Playing Games. In the real world, we have  thousands of marine biologists, oceanographers, educational, corporate and private diving expeditions. Snorkeling and scuba diving are an hugely popular pastime for vacationers. And yet, we honestly know almost nothing about what is in the ocean.

We can make maps of the bottom of the ocean, and have little idea what’s actually going on there. We can send probes and even people to the crushing depths of the bottom, but know that just a few feet out of our field of vision might be something unique and spectacular. And sometimes, a fish that has been extinct for millions of years just comes wandering by to say hello.

In fact, the reason that “Nessie” in Loch Ness is such a fun mystery is because that lake is absurdly complex. It’s so large, deep and hard to understand that we can’t be certain that we didn’t just miss the hundred-foot prehistoric creature floating around in it.

The Waters of a Fantasy World

In a recent essay, I talked about a river god, and some of the mysteries of that river.  In a fantasy realm, you have SO many more options to make water interesting.

For creatures, there are aquatic elves, which take normal land-side creatures and give them an aquatic element. There are a number of sentient aquatic sentient species, kuo-toa, merfolk and cecaelias, to name a few, with societies and cultures of their own. There are an untold number of threatening aquatic creatures–jellyfish, squid and octopus variants, and any of the snakes and dragons that make water a very dangerous place. Plus there are the creatures, like elementals, water djinn, and so on which aren’t even native to the plane (usually) but can be found there.

For sites, there are shipwrecks which carried who-knows-what to a destination that was never reached. They may be cursed, guarded or just inaccessible. They may make the explorer rich with treasures or magic; they may be as empty as a crime boss’ vault opened on national tv. Or they may contain secrets that point to riches, profoundly affect the world in some way, or are better left at the bottom of the sea.

There are sea caves available for exploration, or hidden by silt, rock slides or even magical barriers. Caves are almost never empty.

There can also be lost habitats…cities claimed by the sea. Usually, these would be wreckages of stone or other materials, eaten away by the years. Even relatively recent floods would do away with most material quickly. Any secrets hidden there could be lost forever, unless one knows where to look. But there may also be habitats that have endured, showing little sign of deterioration. Good materials, such as dwarven construction might aid this preservation. Or it could be that the buildings were well defended magically, and they continue to work long after the original casters are gone and the spells have lost their purpose.

And of course, where you have sentients, there are usually habitats. In my world, one of the great elvish cities is below water, and was able to resist the scourge of the shadow folk by simply not being accessible. The thing I try to consider when I create such worlds is that the sea is three dimensional, and so entrances, paths and building decorations may not have a traditional up-down orientation.

Mysteries of the Sea

What I love about the sea, even if I don’t use it often, is the idea of the character-facing mysteries available to explore. I mentioned in the first section of this that we don’t know much about the sea. Those who live there will of course know much more, and they may be encouraged to share what they know, or they may be inclined to protect secrets that even casual observation might unveil.

Inherently, the sea is inaccessible to those of the world above, so those who live in the sea will either have no connection to the land dwellers, or they will have limited exposure to ships or coastal inhabitants. This means that they likely have no knowledge or interest in how things work above, and their societies may be alien, and their motivations different.

This means that mysteries that are important to the land, may be uninteresting to those of the sea, and vice versa. It means that they may also assign a strange price for any support in learning a mystery, or may be completely unwilling to help with what seems like a straightforward request.

A shipwreck may be considered “littering” and the cost for removing the valuables is to remove the wood and other litter that the ship brought with it. The secret map of the Lost MacGuffin may point to a merchild playground now, and be off limits to adventurers. The merchildren may even be using the MacGuffin as a toy.

It’s also possible that the guardian of the treasure of the cave is considered scary by the land dwellers, and really scary by those nearby who have an idea of what it is. 

The options are endless, here, because you not only have the normal mysteries, but the inaccessibility of the environment which makes it harder to learn what’s going on, the change in environment itself that offers up a whole new set of mysteries, and the paradigms of different cultures who view things completely differently.

Accessiblity

I’m only going to touch on this, because it’s one of the reasons I don’t run these adventures often. Not only are the worlds under the sea three dimensional and weird, they are also quite dangerous. Without magical means, a fantasy character can expect to live about 5 minutes before they die. A good swimming score and high constitution might double that. That said, the difference between “5-20 minutes” and “several days” is clearly one that will not allow natural solutions, especially in a party where one failed save means one less party member.

There are helms, spells, potions and similar that will allow extended time underwater. Hopefully those same items will allow some incremental mobility, since the fastest swimmers in the world are slower than the slowest fish.

If people go into the water frequently, there may be easy access to means of getting around. If there is a small group, then maybe the party needs to get in with that group to learn their secrets, or at least obtain their support. Or the entire expedition may hinge on first finding lost secrets above ground to allow safe and timely exploration below the sea.

About The Art

Today’s header art is The Old World, by Alyn Spiller. Alyn is a professional digital artist out of the UK, and his work is impressive enough that I’ve pre-asked for permission to use other of his pieces in an unspecified future article, because I’m sure I’ll want to. You can see his work at his website alynSpiller.com.

I chose this because even my own thinking had stopped at “floods cover the things you know.” This work went beyond; it gave a glimpse at what unknowns may be hidden beneath the depths. What I especially like is that this isn’t a “lost city of Atlantis” image where the unfathomable depths of the ocean hides a secret. This is within visual distance of someone in a small craft.

I can imagine someone looking down on a day when conditions are just right, and catching a glimpse of some massive hidden secret that the waters have covered for who knows how long. The red glow and the alien creatures makes it not just mysterious, but ominous. If I were in that boat, I’d be heading for shore with all due speed.

For the last three years, I’ve put header art on all of my essays. I do this because it adds an interesting graphical element to my text-only essays. But very quickly, I realized that the art actually inspires some essays or brings in detail that add more depth to the articles.

This is one of those. I had decided that “flood ” was a great launching point for one type of essay, but on seeing this piece by Alyn Spiller, I realized I had to write a completely different essay to do it justice.

This article was cross-posted on Greg’s RPG blog, Dice Deliberations.