I'm dying ah Hello humans my name is Dael Kingsmill we're talking about D&D today, we're talking about traps I am a little bit sick so you're gonna have to forgive me if I suddenly, you know, collapse into a fit of coughing this'll work this is orange flavored that counts as vitamin C Alright, traps. Yeah as I go ahead into this let's remember that My whole thing here talking about D&D on YouTube is basically vague and evocative, that's the brand; so, I'm not going into like the anatomy step-by-step of how to design a trap. I'm sure other people have done that and I'm sure that they do it better than I could No, I'm here almost as always to talk to you about making traps feel right That's what I'm about in D&D, when I'm making something for D&D I want it to feel a very specific way And it becomes, it's like I'm playing a game of Jeopardy, I'm working backwards. But if jeopardy made sense because the whole premise Is that you're given the answer and you have to state the question but that's not how the game actually works. They just phrase the question as if it were an answer They just phrase the question as a sentence and the answer is a question, which is stupid That's my opinion of the day. But all I ever do is I work backwards I say how do I want this to make my players feel? What do I want the result to be? Great, now how do we achieve that result? Mechanically? Or narratively? As in the case of traps. So first I would like to talk to you briefly about Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Now I was under the fairly safe assumption that everyone knew Harry Potter but recently discovered that lots of people who watch my videos don't have any idea what I'm talking about so let me briefly explain that In the book you find out towards the end that there's a very powerful artifact that's been hidden under the school and it's there for safekeeping before it can be, I don't know transferred(?) it's been a while since I read it, because someone wants to steal it. That's the Philosopher's Stone. That's what they want to steal and so in order to protect it they get a group of like I like 10 teachers or something who are all very powerful witches and wizards (sort of) and each of them contributes like one layer of a lock basically That you have to get through in order to get to the philosopher's stone on the far side, so you see what I'm saying it's like all ten of them need to be present in order to get to the stone because every layer of it is something that only that one person can unlock So so no one of them can get through they can only get through their own layer You see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? It's a great premise, great idea. The first of these layers is also a great example there's a, there's a, Cerberus, a three-headed dog, a giant three-headed vicious dog named Fluffy who is guarding the the initial sort of gateway to get down towards the the philosopher's stone and in concept The way that it works is that Hagrid the owner of the dog should be the only person who knows that playing a specific song will put the dog to sleep. It's very obvious I love the idea Cornish Orpheus. Of course the bad guy does figure that out and gets past Fluffy but it's still a good, like, one layer of the lock. Later on however we have the layer put together by Severus Snape, the potions master. When our heroes, in pursuit of the bad guy, reach this room that Snape has set up there's a series of like nine potions on a table and flames erupt around the room I think there's like purple flames on one side that they're trying to go through and then behind them green flames, or something like that, and then on the table there's a little riddle, that kind of, it's one of those logic puzzles where it's like oh yes the potion that You seek is on the left of the potion that is, you know, the tallest and the tallest potion does the opposite of what the shortest potion does. One of those puzzles, right? Probably could have just gotten the book out of the living room and read it to you but I did not. But that's the basic setup the potions all do different things, some of them are deadly, one of them will lead you safely through the green flames but you would still be burnt by the purple flames and Only one of these potions will lead you through the purple flames on the other side of the door. It's a really neat little scene, neat little puzzle, fun to do when you're like 11 years old. I'm hoping you can see what the problem with this is already since the purpose of this room is to serve as a layer of a lock essentially and Snape is supposed to be the only person who can get through that room Why exactly would he leave a logic puzzle to lead you to the answer? Why would he do that? Because Snape should just know which potion they're supposed to be drinking if they want to get through the purple flames On the other side of the room. Right? Even better, why would Snape leave any potions there at all why wouldn't he just have a bunch of flames appear in the room and knowing that that was gonna be his lock he would bring the potion required to get through them with him, leaving absolutely, no clues for anybody who wasn't supposed to be there. This potion game was a fun puzzle but a terrible lock and a terrible trap So, let's get breaking it down. The purpose of a trap! Basically as far as I can tell when it comes to actual like traps as we call them in D&D, like a thing with a trigger that you set off that has a penalty There are three kinds: there's the lock and the key, passwords and things of the like also fall under this; there are traps proper, things designed to trap you but ultimately in function these are the same as something that is designed to kill you dead; and then there's the trial for the worthy So a lock and key or a password situation this is the kind of trap that you should either have the solution or you should not have the solution Either you know to play this song to Fluffy to put it to sleep or you don't know Either you know the password or you don't know the password. My apologies to Mr Tolkien but the more I thought about this the more I realized that riddle passwords on doors don't make any sense. If they're meant to be going through the door, they should know what the password is Traps proper I like to think of as being like rabbit snares, they're anything that functions in the sense of if you're in the know if you're one of the people who set the trap You know that you shouldn't be stepping there because you put a rabbit snare there If you're a rabbit, you don't know that so you might step on the rabbit snare (ugh, my nose is so blocked) The trial of the worthy is a very different kind of, a very different breed of, trap because it tends to be something... I think the easiest way to think about it is to think of something like the trials in the Last Crusade - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. You know, that idea of we don't know who but somebody at some point will prove themselves worthy by besting these trials that we put them through like freakin saws in the walls. Which brings us to a discussion of Team Us and Team Them basically the way I think about it is that a trap is inherently a game of Us and Them. By necessity that's what the system is, either you're on the side of the trap: you're in the know, you've been clued in, maybe you made the trap yourself. Or you're on Team Them which is everyone else. Because they're in the know Team Us is most always safe from the trap's effects. Team Them, who will in most cases be your player party, they have the task of convincing the trap that they're actually not Team Them they're Team Us; because a trap should be dumb, it can't actually actively tell the difference between Team Us and Team Them, except for within the specific parameters of the trigger. So, if you think of a really simple trapped lock, let's say it's a it's a lock that if you try to pick it and you fail the check then a little hammer trap comes down and breaks your pick. I love that design, I stole it from someone a million years ago. So Team Us They have the key the key turns the lock perfectly and so the trap believes "Oh hey this is Team Us" I can tell because the lock is turning. But Team Them... Team Them doesn't have the key, they've got to pick that lock. If they pick the lock well, then the tumbler in the lock is gonna turn just as much as it would if you had the key, right? So in that case the trap believes, "Oh Yes this is Team Us", because the lock is turning; that's the only clue I have as to whether this is Us or Them it's only when the player picks the lock badly that the trap actually goes "Wait, hey, hey! Wait a second" and smashes the pick. So when you're putting a trap into your game, narratively you need to have this element of Us and Them. Who is Team Us? Why did they make this trap? What is its purpose? speaking of a traps purpose, the penalty must fit the purpose. On a practical level that usually means that a trap should kill, keep out, or capture the person who is Team Them. Is the Team Us - Team Them thing working? I hope so because I don't know how else to explain it mm-hmm so some examples the easiest go to real world example that we all think of Egyptian tombs basically because there was so much rich stuff in tombs of Pharaohs and you know high priests and whatever in Egypt they knew while building the structures that People down the line we're going to try to rob these tombs so they thought to themselves how can we prevent that because we need all our rich stuff in the next life and we don't very much like robbers So most of the time what these traps consisted of were false entrances that would lead to sort of dummy tunnels that would go a short way into the tomb or the pyramid or what have you but then Haha Sucker! you took the wrong entrance So you fall into a pit trap or sometimes they'd have a bigger rock that would fall down behind The the robber and block them off, would leave them trapped inside the tomb forever. So what's the key between Us and Them in this case? Ah-hah! I'll tell you. If you were part of Team Us you wouldn't be digging around in that false tunnel would you? If you were Team Us, if you were Team Built The Pyramid and want to keep the robbers out, you know that the real entrance isn't this one over here is that one over There and you know not to go down that false tunnel so just by the virtue of being in the tunnel that you Vice? Trait. Just by the trait of being in the false tunnel you are automatically Team Them, you were automatically guilty, drop that boulder you're here forever son! Hunters - bear traps. I said this before with the rabbit snares these are traps proper, right? A hunter out in the woods places a bear trap, he knows not to step where that bear trap is. A bear don't know where that is, simply by the trait of stepping on the bear trap or by stepping on a pressure plate, that is a trigger for something, you are automatically Team Them because you didn't know to avoid it. Team Us knew to avoid it and so boom! penalty from the trap! mmm trial of the worthy. This is always a little bit different from other traps because the definition for the person making trap between Team Us and Team Them is a little bit more wibbly. They're not sitting there going yeah well you know we gave Tim the password; so Tim knows the password, anyone who doesn't know the password isn't Tim. No they're going hmm only someone worthy will be able to solve my riddle that has the password in it, I don't know who's worthy but the trap itself still does, it may be dumb but this is the one thing it knows. What's a good example from the Last Crusade? I think the leap of faith is neat, I think it would make a better trap or trial of the worthy if instead of being a full Peter-painted bridge, camouflaged so that you can't see it.. I don't know, has anyone not seen the Last Crusade? He has to go through a bunch of trials to get to the Holy Grail because dad's been shot. One of these is that there's a big chasm and he has to get across it and it looks like there's no way across, there's nothing, it's just like a dead end and then he realizes the clue for this section of the trial is that he Needs to take a leap of faith and so he leaps out and it turns out that there is a bridge there it's just so perfectly camouflaged from the point of the Entrance that you can't see it so you have to like Take a leap of faith. I think this would be a better trial of the worthy if the first like couple feet of the bridge we're missing because then anyone who's timid and is like tiptoeing around The edge of it won't feel the bridge there you have to literally leap in order to reach the camouflage bridge I think that would be a better trial of the worthy trap but hey there it is because the the the trigger is a little bit different in terms of like what makes you an Us versus a Them but it's still there it's just kind of more Aaaah [angelic choir] You know what I mean? It's just you're only an us if you're willing to like leap out over this gap What else have we got? I mentioned the purpose and the penalty, the idea of kill capture or keep out and I think it's significant to look at different kinds of tiers of that; so if we look at that lock example, the idea of just a simple little trap that comes down and breaks a pick, right, when someone's trying to break in, your magic users are just spamming mending. That's fine, that's one thing, and that's designed to keep people out, right, that's its purpose and its penalty It's like hey you're not, you don't have a key I'm gonna smack your pick so that you can't get in, cuz that's my purpose, is to keep you out. That's fine on the level of like a low tier look but if you're dealing with someone who's trying to protect against more powerful people or Protecting in a different circumstance maybe maybe there lock it gives you a puff of poison to the face. That's one way to keep sowing out, to kill them dead with poison. I do think you need to choose though between you know primarily keeping people out or primarily you know killing someone because when you get these things when you get like a poison lock, if that poison is no real threat then what was the point of it? Like someone setting up that trap in that lock why would they make it a low enough dose for someone to survive, right? So if you're gonna put a poison trap on a lock it better be some pretty hefty poison You know because otherwise it's like why would they leave the option for the person to survive To keep trying? They're that hell-bent on keeping the person out that they're gonna kill them to do it then why would it be on such an itsy-bitsy level right? We're gonna make our traps a little more hardcore I think, which is another thing - trial of the worthy, so I mean what's a good example in the Pathfinder Beginner box there's like a trap in that where there's a jewel on the other side of the room and there are these, if you get too Close to the jewel fire spurts out from the walls; this is actually a trial of the worthy, I think it shouldn't be a trial of the worthy, but it is one There's a little inscription that says something about you know kneeling in supplication and being safe if you're you know kneeling to the whatever I don't remember exactly, which is neat I like the idea that kneeling down, the flames shoot over your head so you're actually safe from the damage, that's a cool idea But because it's a trial of the worthy if someone proves unworthy why should they take so little damage that they could keep trying and trying again, you know? Arguments could be made for like Oh yeah, well they weren't expecting heroic adventurers but if it's trial of the worthy trap then they should be expecting heroic adventurers they shouldn't be enabling petty thieves to do stuff and if it's something that they're only expecting petty thieves then why would they Need to kill them to keep them out you know what I'm saying? Oh! The sunken tomb from Critical Role, this is a nice one, I think one of the best traps (other people would probably agree) in the entire run of the first campaign of Critical Role Spoiler Alert if you haven't like gotten up to it yet la la la fingers in your ears right now, because it's like dramatic They get to this tomb, they're looking for this armor, there's a super powerful artifact, they get to the coffin, one of the players Forgets to wait for trap checking and reaches straight in to pull out the armor and a magical glyph bursts and one of the players gets blasted and dies, just straight-up dies dead. It was sick and heartbreaking but the thing I really love about this trap is that it makes sense in in a practical and a narrative level this armor was buried here and wants to stay buried here. Whoever put it there put a damn thing that's like "No! if you're gonna try and rob it, you're gonna die" and it worked. They didn't want to leave any room, didn't want to pull any punches, they just kill whoever tries to steal the armor. So these all have practical purpose and penalty matches I think it's also Important to think about the narrative purpose of the trap. So what do you want to achieve by putting this trap in your party's way? Maybe you just want to frustrate your players or waste some of their time, that's where something like a lock the breaks all their picks can come in handy. You know, maybe you want to awe your players and Establish the high power level of the wizard that they're stealing from and so maybe you want a trap that does something like dramatic and magical and huge. What's a good way I can display a difference? Um, so goblins in my setting, one day when I do another stream we might end up talking about them because my goblins are quite different from The way most games run goblins. I don't know, I just, I want to be afraid of them and as part of that my goblins are kind of I guess subterranean scavengers who aren't just interested in Trapping people and eating them but also they derive a lot of their pleasure and entertainment from making people afraid So there's like an element of the you're being hunted and you know it if you're up against goblins right so one of my favorite traps in relation to These goblins is that while picking your way through the catacombs that they inhabit if you don't notice the tripwire in time the trap that you set off will be kind of a whole series of bells on strings and like rattling bones and shells and things like that that will travel and will alarm every Goblin in the area that you're there and at the same time alerting you to the fact that they know that you're there you know it kind of just pumps up the adrenaline a little bit and and it increases some panic Comparatively you might run a spy syndicate with a similar alarm trap, I think alarm traps are great and underutilized, but if you were to trip the same Kind of alarm trap in a spy syndicate area; so you don't notice while you're walking you you accidentally snap a tripwire, maybe you tell the player that they felt the wire break, they know they've set off something but then nothing happens They don't hear anything, nothing changes, no darts fly out from the walls, they just know they set off a trap and that instead Completely increases the paranoia, puts them on edge, puts them on high alert. So there's not just a practical purpose that needs to be considered in order for your trap to make sense, a la, why would Snape leave clues for someone who isn't him? But there's also the narrative purpose. What do you want your players to be feeling as a result of this trap? And hey! Maybe that feeling that you want them to feel is death There is one final thing that I think is worth saying about traps that I don't hear people say, well that maybe only applies to the way that I've been thinking about traps, but it's that beating a trap should tell the players something about Team Us, it should tell Them something about what Us was trying to achieve what they're like Someone who's just breaking the picks, I know I keep going back to this example but it's a good low level trap example, someone who's just set a trap that will break the picks of a robber, that is someone who is possibly law abiding, someone who isn't vicious, someone who just wants to protect something Versus a goblin alarm that sets off this whole display of "we know you're here" that tells you that Team Us want you to be aware that they're coming for you. So there it is, there's all my food for thought regarding traps I'm sorry it's not like a step-by-step guide that you can just apply but what I try to do here is instil maybe some, just some thinking; as always this is just the way that I like to think about D&D stuff. If you've got like a hella high fantasy game and you just want to have cool puzzle rooms and you know fun Logic puzzles with potions, do it! Cuz they're hella fun, it's a fun way to play! Puzzles are great, I just think that for me traps and puzzles shouldn't be the same thing. I think that's it, I'm done. Merry... Merry Holidays, traps very holiday themed Thematic whoo! Hopefully I'm not forgetting anything Email this to your grandma and I'll see you some other time And that's all I have to say all right this was a mistake all right
Her name is Dael Kingsmill? That's the most D&D name I've ever seen!
I bet Dael is loving this influx of video shares today. Been following her for a while now ever since she went over her DM Binder.
This is a great discussion on a topic that often gets overlooked. This talk is about traps, but the questions "why is this here?" and "what is its purpose?" should be applied to most parts of an adventure.
One soft counterpoint to her arguments is that even if a Trap should be INTENDED to be lethal or utterly discerning or without obvious clues, it's worth mentioning that some traps might have been INTENDED to be lethal, but the poison my have weakened over the years, or perhaps a previous explorer might have left a clue of some kind, or perhaps a trap is malfunctioning.
Don't be afraid to have traps that are far less than absolutely effective, or lethal. Just make sure it makes sense.
In an old dwarven mine, I made the party deal with the same trap over and over. Thing is, sometimes the trap did nothing, and it was fun to watch the party try to counteract the "obvious" trap only to find out it did nothing. I also did the opposite, with there being nonfunctional traps, and then one that worked. But I always had a reason that would reveal itself. Eventually they started to figure out hot to determine if a trap was functioning or not, rather than just trying to bypass it.
The goal wasn't to be a jerk, it was just to heighten the players awareness and undermine their expectations so that every time i described an interesting feature of the room, it FORCED them to insert into the scene and think about what they were seeing. It was probably one of that campaign's best sessions because of how engaged everyone was.
Kobolds might make a poison puff trap that they think is lethal to the adventurers, except their only frame of reference is themselves, so it's actually far too weak. Or perhaps the Kobolds couldn't make/find highly lethal poison, so they just put in poison that makes you sick, because that's all they have.
I also do think lethality should scale inordinately with level. As the players gain abilities to recover from harmful effects, you gotta step them up.
Don't be afraid to make a trap ABSOLUTELY BRUTAL, either. Maybe just not to a lv2 party.
The main body of this video was great, but the thing I really loved about it was the totally unnecessary drive-by attack on the premise of Jeopardy. I've just started watching some of it recently (since Netflix has a bunch of episodes), and it's a great quiz show — I love how simple and unpretentious it is, and how it just gets on with the business of asking questions with only a minimum of talking about the contestants. But by the gods if its pretence of "we're giving the answer and you ask the questions" isn't infuriating in how much it doesn't work.
The actual content about traps is really interesting. Personally I have rarely included them myself because it always feels so difficult to use them in way that both feels natural and doesn't feel like the players just have to constantly say "I search for traps" and if they don't find it then it's a simple "save or hurt" mechanism.
This video does an excellent job of dealing with the first issue, and a pretty good job of dealing with the second. I still have the problem of how "traps proper" as Kingsmill calls them can easily feel cheap if they aren't telegraphed adequately, but are too much of a pain if players just constantly (and unrealistically, frankly) say "I roll to search for traps". The popular "click" rule can help with that second issue, but has never sat well with me for some reason. I believe Angry GM has a decent article on how he thinks traps should be telegraphed, which I vaguely remember thinking was good, but obviously it didn't stick with me well enough to properly explain it...
But for that first problem, this is another fantastic Kingsmill video. Doesn't necessarily give you any easy answers, but it gets the cogs whirling in your mind for various ways in which you can go about doing things for yourself.
This was a really solid video for making traps meaningful but also sensical. Definitely going to rewatch next time I'm trying to protect something with traps.
As an aside, that is a lot of Theros fat packs.
My few thoughts:
She says riddle locks are invariably poor locks, which I disagree with. Ultimately whether a lock is poor or not depends on the lockmaker/owner's purpose for it. In Tolkien's case, the "riddle lock" in the Hobbit was a secret passage to be used only if everything went wrong. The door was presumably made before Smaug and not for any particular plight they expected - it was made so that if the worst came to pass someone could sneak back in and rediscover their glory. Yes Snape's "potion lock" is terrible if that was his intent - but maybe it was his intent to make it "hard but possible" so that if ol' Voldy killed him before they need to move the philosopher's stone, one of the other teachers could still bypass his trap. It's an insurance policy, a loophole. (In Snape's case it's still dumb because there are other ways to go about it - but it's not dumb if you don't know who might follow in your footsteps.) In this way, riddle locks can be more like trials of worthiness (which she also mentions), but it's more like "anyone who is smart come find this thing, so it isn't forgotten forever".
love her ideas on super-lethal traps. I think 5e has taken her suggestion and run with it too. There is something to be said for pulling your punches a bit on trap design simply because 5e tries to shy away from the "save or die" (and a trap that does way more damage than anyone could survive at your level, if you fail one save, is definitely that). 5e in its modules seems to split the difference - you can survive the traps, if they roll unlucky or you roll lucky, but they can also totally kill you, especially if you've had an encounter or two and not rested yet.
I also love her nonlethal traps. I've used the "noisemaker trap" and "paranoia trap" many times to heighten the mood. Hell every time I say "nothing happens" when my wild sorcerer Wild Surges it's basically that. :P
Another fun "nonlethal trap" I use is the "dilapidated/triggered trap".
A scything blade trap they trigger - that stops inches from their neck as it shudders to a stop due to centuries of rust.
A floor tile gets pushed in and needles shoot out of the walls - ow! That hurt a little. Looks like it has some oily substance on it...that turns out to be a poison so old it has denatured.
Ew it's a dead guy. He's been...skewered by some ceiling spikes? Uh oh.
These can serve all sorts of purposes, chief among them just letting your players know "here there be traps". It also helps them learn a bit about the area and the nature of its traps - if the trap is super old, maybe this ancient temple has lain untouched for aeons. If the trap involves a lot of poison, maybe it's yuan-ti. If the trap is made of bone and hide instead of metal, its makers might be primitive. And so on.
That was a great video! A few thoughts:
She kinda dances around this but most of the poor trap examples she criticizes are cases where the storyteller is using the trap narratively as a "trial of the worthy". What this means is that you don't have to exclude puzzle traps, just try to have some sort of story justification for them being a trial of the worthy.
Also, I think she puts a little too much emphasis on save or die traps. Yes they makes sense logically, but they are not really fun to play as a player unless you already have an established resurrection system (like in critical role). You can get around this either by making the kill shot powerful enough for lower level characters (but not enough to kill your players) or by weakening the trap due to circumstances ( trap has decayed over the years, or hits in a way that you know your players already have a way to mitigate)
Finally someone is brave enough to say it! Jeopardy is just a quiz show with weirdly phrased questions and its entire point makes no sense