Traps! Hazards! Environmental obstacles!

#1

A lot of systems seem to overwhelmingly discourage traps from active use by players in combat-oriented games, and both the popular systems I’m familiar with that manage traps as encounters (D&D 5e and Pathfinder) don’t ever go into great degree about how trap building actually functions as a component of a character. Pathfinder I’ve found you can treat traps essentially as “crafted items” which works okay, but player-owned trap construction (outside of the ranger trap system) is not really explored.

It makes sense that you don’t want players to control traps: it requires them to plant in one area and accept that the GM will make the enemies come. This is a very rare occurrence for players, as typically it’s about their characters being the ones that go off and stumble into danger.

I’ve wanted for ages to have a satisfying trap building system for players - and I’ve never seen it done legitimately well in a way that stands up to other existing mechanics in these games.

One of my favorite traps I’ve ever read is very simple: It’s a pit trap with a seemingly easy ladder escape, under which is actually a second pit trap - bonus points if the second pit trap has extra dangers at the bottom.

What’s your take on how to run with traps in general? What are your favorite traps? How do traps work in PBTA, and how do they stack up to 5e/PF traps in terms of fun for everyone?

Thanks to Ignotus for their thread on deeper mechanical discussion of traps in PBTA, I’m extremely into this but wanted a broader thread and didn’t want to derail theirs!

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#2

What is a trap for? What do the players want as an outcome from a trap? I think answering this will get you in a place where you can invent mechanisms for them that are satisfying.

Area denial. A military trap is set in place to deny the enemy access to an area. A player might want to set such a trap to reduce the avenues of attack available to an enemy while they are in a static position (sleeping, say). A trap like this that’s successful might thwart an attack, or divert it to a guarded direction. Whether it injures or kills someone would be entirely secondary since that’s not really its purpose. A mechanism for this might be to allow the trapmaker to set traps before sleep and have that reduce the numbers of a wandering monster party and/or reduce or remove the possibility of surprise. It might also be rigged to shed light in some manner, granting a further tactical advantage.

Slow progress. A trap or set of traps might be set in order to slow the progress of advancing enemies. In this case they are set such that they are risky to traverse and expensive to disarm. You might set a series of traps like this in order to make an escape or to delay an advance until reinforcements can arrive. The simplest of this might just be a bag of caltrops thrown from horseback as you flee. The trapmaker on success will either obviate the chase (you escape) or attrite the pursuers (some percentage are injured and cannot proceed). Being able to pre-set these kinds of traps in anticipation of pursuit would increase the effect, though maybe a crit fail has you walking into one of your own.

Tactical advantage. Similar to area denial, a set of traps might be emplaced to improve active defense by preparing locations that seem or are made to seem advantageous to the enemy in order to inflict casualties without direct contact with the enemy. Personally I think these might be best put in play during a fight – the trapmaker has had time and declared the battlefield prepared by them. During battle any friendly unit can use whatever the system’s advantage token is to instead spring a trap, doing damage or reducing enemy numbers as appropriate.

Hunting. Pitfalls and deadfalls are just another way to hunt.

Any trap might be accompanied by special effects. Smoke (especially good for masking a retreat), fire, bright flashes, loud noises, making a region slippery for the duration, and so on.

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#3

These are all great but the one thing that is consistently the issue with specific types of traps is that they require time to implement. If you have a character whose shtick is traps and they never have time to implement the traps, the character’s never given a chance to shine. On the flip side, ample opportunity could simply give them too much power.

One thing I’m thinking is: what if we flip this problem on its head and say that a character has the foresight that the player doesn’t? What if you had a trappist’s player say, “I’m going to use my character’s ability to designate that there was a trap in this area” when you’re in a situation of being a defendant in a situation? That’s what I’m contemplating right now.

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#4

I think that’s maybe the ONLY way to go, kind of like BitD does flashbacks to get around obstacles. “We already thought of that” might be the trap maker’s essential power. Maybe camp is ALWAYS safer with the trapmaker because we take it as read that they lay area denial traps. Maybe combat where there is any chance to prepare ALWAYS has tactical advantage traps. The mechanism can even be largely unchanged in combat – when they roll success a trap goes off rather than a sword landing home.

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#5

Thinking a little more, maybe when there’s no time to prepare, the trapmaker has TRICKS instead of TRAPS. TRICKS are things they can pull out without preparation – flash powder, caltrops, counterfeit money.

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#6

To be honest I’m not 100% sold that that’s the ONLY way - like what if for instance someone has the ability to fell a tree with a single swing, and uses that as difficult terrain?

Still, I feel like we’ve had a very productive conversation already! I’m looking forward to thinking about this more in the TTRPG I’m designing.

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