Better Traps

Dungeons have traps. It’s quintessential. But traps are not always fun. Certainly not as fun as monsters or weird stuff. 

I’ve been thinking about what works and what doesn’t in my dungeons. One thing that I noticed is that traps were a mixed bag, so I began to keep track of the features that work to make traps more fun. 

For  most of your dungeon traps, do not ask your players to have their characters search. The detection step is not very much fun.

Instead most traps “obvious” (that is, obvious to the kind of capable men who would undertake dungeoneering for fun and profit. Just say “you found a trap at location X” rather than demanding the players search everywhere. 

This turns a “trap” into a “hazard” 

For true traps (eg hidden inanimate dangers,) which should be paltry and wide-yonder, give lots of clues. Even specific clues. Make sure the players know there’s something fishy about. Perhaps blood on the walls l, blade marks in stone or skeletons with their heads lopped off. 

Better the first way than the second - just let the players know a trap is there because their characters are knowledgeable about these kinds of things. Or make it obvious. Instead of a hidden blade trap, have spinning blades extant throughout a certain length of dungeon hallway. 

Or instead of a pit with spikes, have the trap be a deep pit (20’) with smooth sides. 

Then the challenge isn’t “find it” but “beat it.”

The second part of this is that beating a trap should not be based entirely on an ability check or skill roll. There’s no real interaction there. Make traps and hazards more like a logic puzzle or party game. Then when the players are ready to put their characters to the test, they can decide to make the rolls. But have the players decide how their characters are going to beat the trap. 

To aid them, make the trap tactile or mathematical or linguistic whenever possible. Yes, this takes the players one step away from the “main” game, but they are still interacting with the world and with each other.