Category: Steal this Trap

This is an entry for a contest – tell us about one of your traps…!

Way back in the day, I decided to spring a trap that was, quite simply, a pun.  The PCs of my AD&D campaign were exploring a basic evil wizard’s tower, filled with all sorts of monsters and traps.  At one point, they entered a room that appeared to be a normal study.  There were heavily-laden bookshelves on the walls, overstuffed couches facing a coffee table and fireplace, lamps on end tables, and a very large, ornately carved mahogany desk.

They didn’t realize until they had their hands in its drawers that the desk was actually a Large-sized wooden golem, animated by the wizard to protect his books.

And that’s the story of how my players encountered a Wandering Monster Table.

This is an entry for a contest – tell us about one of your traps…!

Some players and GM’s may feel that this trap encounter is “dirty pool”.  I prefer to think of it as teaching the party a lesson in teamwork and dependence.  This works best when playing with miniatures so there can be no argument as to character’s locations.  The encounter itself goes something like this. . .

The party has just defeated a monstrous foe in the dungeon of doom.  They begin to scour the room for treasure and at the back of the room, sitting on the floor in the corner, there is a large chest.  The party’s thief/rogue/trap-and-lock expert moves to the forefront to look things over.  After a careful investigation of THE CHEST, they find that it’s an iron-bound wooden box 4 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 2 feet tall.  The chest is locked, but not trapped.  It is well-constructed.  PLEASE NOTE: If the thief successfully detects traps on THE ROOM and not THE CHEST, then they will figure out the trap BEFORE it springs

Now, one assumes that the thief goes to work on the chest.  The lock is a very complex mechanism that requires three rolls to defeat.  After the first successful roll tell the thief, “That took a little longer than you expected.  The mechanisms of the lock are so heavy-duty that you’re fearing that you might break your picks, so you took your time.”  Make a FAKE wandering monster roll and tell the party that they hear nothing.  Allow the players to react – note their stated actions and locations.

The thief goes back to work for the second roll.  Upon success tell the thief, “That really took a while, maybe half an hour, but you feel like you are really close to opening it now.”  Make another wandering monster check (maybe a real one this time) and ask the party to adjust their minis, as it is unlikely that they are all standing around the thief anymore.

As soon as the thief rolls the 3rd success, the floor in front of the chest, where the thief has been crouching/kneeling to work on the lock snaps silently open for 1.5 seconds and then snaps closed again.  It opens just long enough for the thief to fall through and then it closes again.  The true reason the lock was so difficult to pick was that it was not unlocking the chest, but instead the floor.  Party members that were within 10 feet of the chest will know what happened.  Unless someone else can pick the lock (or perform a knock spell on the trap door), then the thief will sit in the dungeon’s cesspool some 30′ lower than the party’s current location.  There is a silence 10′ radius cast at the water level below the trapdoor entrance to the cesspool making normal communication between the thief and the party impossible.  If no PC’s were near the thief, then NO ONE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM.

Personally, I like to torture the thief with all manner of splashes in the dark and creepy-crawlies while he is trapped in the cesspool away from the party, but you may do as you wish.

This is an entry for a contest – tell us about one of your traps…!

Once I was so bored that I invented the (I think) ultimate trap. My players entered a small valley secluded from the outside world. It was truly a heavenly, Eden-like place full of beautiful scenery, peaceful – but also not without it’s small problems – every few months local fauna suffered “berserk” syndrome and acted wild and violent – it was a time where the local population hid in a small stronghold and had to be protected.

Did I mention “local folk”? Nice people, intelligent, beautiful, very tolerant and open to various possibilities, eternally young, courtesy of strange fruits growing only in said valley.

…I think you get a picture. Yes, it was THE UTOPIA.

So, the PCs entered the place, spent some time there, began to feel like at home. After 5 or 6 sessions the players thought they were supposed to move, and that’s when the Trap sprung.

“I understand that you want to have new adventures guys, but why should your PCs bother? They are happy there, they act as protectors and guardians, they are practically worshiped, and their needs are all fulfilled. Face it, they have everything they really need – both place to call their own, appreciation, and a bit of danger enough to treat it seriously, but not enough to make them move out. They are at home.”

Realization. Shock. Long discussions. Dice rolling. A few separate sessions dedicated to beating “the trap”.

I’m proud of myself.

This is an entry for a contest – tell us about one of your traps…!

Deep in a littoral cave there is a pool. Even at night this pool shimmers with a faint radiance. Under torchlight, the water appears to be completely reflective, mirroring everything above and the observer can see nothing below. If it is exposed to bright light, for example sunlight (either directly, through mirrors, or through magic) the observer can see that the pool extends to extraordinary depths and the bottom cannot be seen. In sunlight (or the equivalent magical light) the observer also sees glittering, star-like objects in the depths.

An experienced diver or sailor would estimate their depth at about ten fathoms (60 ft.). If the observer’s vision is enhanced in some way, the observer can see the objects more clearly and observes that they seem to be large, perfectly formed, translucent crystals. If the observer stands still long enough to observe it, then he or she notices that these stars seem to slowly grow, change, and move as time passes. The water appears to be completely still.

This trap plays on the natural curiosity and avarice of the adventurer. A variety of hazards await the unwary. First, the water is neither a pool nor the ocean. Rather it is a gate to an extra-planar realm of water. The water, which appears to be still on this side of the gate, in fact has a tremendous, swirling, relentless current. Any diver who drops in unaided will be swept away by the current. A diver with a rope will be  mightily tested to hold fast. A tethered diver can dive somewhat safely. This current can be tested from the other side by dipping objects into the water (such an object would immediately be swept away).

A diver who manages to reach the depth of the crystals will discover that the crystals are alive, alert, and highly predatory. These crystals are not crystals at all but are in fact the demonic residents of this realm.

This is an entry for a contest – tell us about one of your traps…!

On first glance, this room seems to just be a room with a sandy floor. Digging down shows that there is packed sand down to about 12 feet (this takes about 2 turns). The door opposite has a tarnished brass pull handle with a lock. The door is unlocked.

Opening the opposite door using the handle, opens a valve that allows water to quickly seep into the sand. If the party exits fairly quickly, they probably don’t notice (Hard Perception check to notice). If they dawdle, anyone in the rear of the party will start to sink. After a few minutes, the room is basically quicksand. The party will have to deal with this on the way out or find an alternate exit.

Just pushing the door (when unlocked) or breaking it down will bypass the trap. When on alert, the cultists lock this door; any attempts to test the door sets off the trap.

This is an entry for a contest – tell us about one of your traps…!

In one of my Shadowrun campaigns, I had the PCs hired to demolish a manufacturing facility outside of the Pullyup barrens.  When they arrived, they discovered that several of the Johnsons that they had been working for had gotten together and agreed that now was a good time to tie up some loose ends.  Just guess what those “loose ends” were….

The player characters are in an especially old dungeon or dwelling when one of them steps on a pressure plate!  The plate depresses two inches, and then the players can hear a subtle “click-click-click…” behind the nearest wall.  They also hear the rattling of chains overhead… when they look above them they see huge boulders hanging by chains, and there are about 20 of them.  The boulders are as wide as the corridor, and spaced close together.

It’s obvious that the players have set off a trap and any moment the boulders will fall – and then two do fall.  They are at the end of the hall, blocking their way out.  Any sensible person would know that this trap is absolutely deadly, and with nowhere to go, the player characters must disable the trap before the rest of the boulders fall!

The ravages of time and water have affected the paneling on the walls and the pavers under their feet.  It’s very easy for the player characters to pin-point the clicking sound and pull away the paneling.  However, on the first try to disable the trap, the character fails automatically!

It doesn’t matter what they rolled, and they will fail no matter what!  At this point, the player characters are free to attempt anything before the boulders inevitably fall.  They may make another attempt to disarm, they may attack the trap, or they may try to squeak past the boulders that have already fallen.  However, nothing works!  It looks like the players are doomed!

The trap is so old or rotted that it no longer functions.  The player character sets it off, but now it’s just broken spinning gears and cogs in the wall.  It continues to turn and click for several more minutes until it breaks further and stops.  The players were never in any danger, and may continue on.

This is a classic Gygaxian trap, with a twist.  The party is in a featureless room.  The ceiling starts to slowly descend.  No amount of ten-foot-poles will brace it.  In the center of the room is a three-foot-high pedestal with a single button on it.  If the players push the button, the ceiling rises a few inches, but keeps inexorably descending.    At the same time, a chime sounds.  They can push the button as many times as they’d like, as quickly as they’d like; the roof won’t go higher than it started, though.  Essentially, this means that they can raise the roof back to its starting point, giving them as much time as necessary to solve the puzzle.  However, other than the pedestal, the room is completely featureless.  There are no levers or markings of any kind.  The puzzle is solved when they let the CEILING ITSELF push the button.  At that point, the ceiling will stop descending, and a door will open opposite the entry.  They have to crawl out, though, because a little indignity is always fun to throw at them.

What You See: A smallish room, under 20’x20′, and not entirely square. The walls are fitted with rickety shelves that run up to the ceiling and every one of the shelves is packed with all sorts of bric-a-brac and junk. Closer examination reveals that there may in fact be something magical or at least shiny up on one of the top shelves, next to a bottle of expensive-looking liquor.

What You Get: The bottom shelves sway slightly, but seem to support the weight of one person climbing them with no real difficulty. However, if anyone does attempt to climb the shelves, or knocks about the top f the shelves with a pole or some such, the entire edifice will collapse in a choking cloud of dust, junk and broken shelving causing 1d4 to everyone within the room and forming a jumbled mass of debris that will require 2d4 Turns to shift adequately in order to leave the room, during which time there will most assuredly be a Wandering Monster check…

This trap is system independent. It works best when stumbled on in a campaign where the players are visiting past events magically, or are time traveling regularly.

Setup: The party comes across a hallway with windows on either side that look out into duplicate hallways. One of which has duplicates of themselves laying dead in the center. As they enter the room, doors slams shut behind and in front of them and some theme-relevant damage over time (water rising, poison gas, magical lightning, so on) fills the room and starts killing the PCs.

When the party dies, which should take about 10 rounds of damage, the party walks into the hallway next to the now dead party and the cycle begins again.

Solution: The party cannot save themselves, they can only save themselves in the next iteration of the trap. There is a plate in the center of the hallway that dramatically increases the damage of the trap for each PC that stands on it. If all of the PCs lie dead on this plate, the next iteration of the trap will only slam the door behind them, letting them escape into the next section of the dungeon/building.