How To Build a Better Trap

In most games, the design of traps can be sort of a weird idea and so you don't see them implemented as much as they should be. The problem is that players see them as a way for the referee to cheat and so they react negatively every time a referee uses one, usually in glares of death at the referee; this usually ruins part of the glee that the referee had in getting one over on the schmucks…er…players. However, a well-designed trap can help win back some favors, so a good referee should always be trying out some new things on his players. Here are some ideas on how traps work.

What A Good Trap Does

A good trap will usually set a person or party back, and there are different ways of doing that. While death is the ultimate setback, there are other options:

Inhibits: Some traps are designed to slow the party down. These can be those that capture the party, paralyze them, or damage much-needed equipment; after all, a party without jet packs isn't going to be flying up the cliff any time soon. While killing the party off is the surest way of slowing them down, sometimes the villain just needs to mess with their timing or slow them up in order to win and maybe recruit them afterward.

Confuses: Sometimes a trap will annoy the party by making forward progress almost impossible until they solve the problem. A group of silver mirrors, a fog cloud, or even a basic labyrinth can create a decent obstacle to the party that slows them down or even obscures the proper way forward. Better yet, abilities that allow a party to quickly change their position (such as teleportation) don't work when they don't know where they need to be. For that matter, teleporting the party, especially in a way that they don't suspect they have been teleported is another good way of confusing them.

Injures: Sometimes you just want to make a point, and a broken arm or sprained ankle makes that point. This is sort of a weird one, as it can be used to not only slow down a party, but also limit them in other ways, such as forcing them to use an off-hand in combat or disable their ability to pick locks. Temporary blindness can hurt them in a wide variety of ways, and a decent hallucinogen can make life all sorts of weird. If you're looking for a way to up the tension, a good injury-inducing trap works wonders.

Death: Some traps fend off intruders by eliminating the intruders. Death is the ultimate deterrent, making sure that the party does not follow or otherwise steal what the trap is protecting.

Ultimately, a trap is there to make sure that the party has to use more skills than combat in order to succeed at a quest. A well-designed trap will do that and provide inspiration to do better when the next trap is encountered.

How To Design a Good Trap

A well-designed trap has three hallmarks: It does what it is supposed to do, it's a challenge to overcome, and it fits the theme. This means that the first thing you need to do when deciding on a trap is to decide what you need it to do: Do you need it to inhibit the party, prevent a certain skill or set of skills from being used, merely confuse the party or hide something, or even up the stakes with a potential death? The purpose of the trap is the first thing that needs to be decided upon. Look at what the party needs as well as what the narrative needs and make your decision based on that.

The second thing is to fit into some sort of theme. Admittedly, this is looking at the trap as a narrative feature and that's not a bad way to do it. If your villain has some sort of theme, the traps can be used to emphasize that: A villain who is all about style will use traps that look fantastic while a hunter will use more pragmatic traps. A villain with a thing for animals will use animals in his traps, such as the dreaded piranha trap, while a mechanical villain will use the best and most current tech in his traps. You'll find that a villain who uses some sort of theme even in his traps is much more memorable than one whose traps obviously came out of a catalog.

Determining the challenge of the trap is just looking at its in-game statistics (how hard it is to find, what type of damage it does, how much damage it does). This is arguably the easiest part as you can define how much of a challenge you want it to represent and you can set the numbers based on how what you know about the party. Just try to set the challenge appropriately for the party or situation for the best possible results. Also, keep in mind that magical and ultra-high-tech versions of traps exist; you are only limited by the resources available in your world, and there's no reason you can't push that technology beyond what the characters can.

Some Examples

• Inhibiting Traps: Once a pressure plate is hit, a cage falls down on the target square. The party passes a sensor without having the appropriate passcard; a cloud of sleep gas is expelled. The party takes too many tries to input a password, locking all the doors to the room. The character is hit by a web spell, trapping them in place. A door opens below the character, trapping him in a deep pit as the door closes back up.
• Confusing Traps: The party hits a teleporter whose target is a room that appears the same as the room they just left; it's the first of many such rooms. The room fills with a fog cloud, hiding the exit as well as any security lockers. The lights in a maze are turned off and a bank of ultraviolet lights turn, messing with any night vision. The room's holographic projector coats the room in a projection, hiding anything that the scientist wants hidden. The house is hit by a spell that hides and creates doors, uses webs to hide optical sensors, and adds extra-dimensional hallways to mess with map-making.
• Injury Traps: The classic poison needle. The wrist of a potential thief is cuffed in a thick cast. The floor is covered in caltrops that result in a would-be thief's feet being injured. The person is exposed to a gas that causes temporary eye damage, resulting in blindness. A fireball trap goes off if the chest is opened roughly. A laser beam attacks the character.
• Death Traps: The chest is actually a deadly creature. The character is targeted by a disintegration beam. A ceiling falls on the characters. The character falls into a pit trap full of poisoned spikes. Whirling blades attack the character.

In short, traps can be used to emphasize any sort of narrative theme. By building a trap specific to the character, the situation, and the person building or commissioning the trap, you can even indulge in some character development. With that in mind, start sprinkling traps in your games, and ignore the eye-rolling of your players.