Wow. Where to start? You know I have this torrid love affair with Traps. I just espoused my uber-fondness in my last post. As for one singular favorite trap or puzzle... That really is a tough question.
There are traps and puzzles I love then there are some I've always wanted to use. The barrier I run into runs along the lines of...
In all the games I've ever run, my players have NEVER tried to solve any riddles or puzzles. They either whine and drag their feet or just turn around walk away and pout.* But this isn't about my failures of players failures. Back on target...
Where I have professed my love of traps. If you think about it, puzzles and riddles are a form of trap. Word traps. I have written scads of riddles (or word puzzles for the semantically inclined) My early work is fairly primitive.
Guarding the gate,
to the Temple of the Dragon.
An ivory statue,
with a Golden flagon.
A lock of balance
a lock of change.
A lock of common
a lock of strange.
Come find the temple
beneath the hill.
And never leave
from winters chill.
A key of freeman,
key of slave.
A key of Kings,
a key of Knaves.
The keys and locks
fit as one,
then one word
and locks undone.
I wrote that somewhere in the distant past. Very distant past, practically the prehistoric past. I'm really surprised I still have the paper I wrote it on. I suppose I really shouldn't be. Hello... World's second biggest packrat. For something a bit more recent, I wrote what follows more recently for an adventure I was writing. The idea eventually fizzled out, but I held onto this because I might eventually find a use for it.
Thyrmian Key
Five great realms in darkness deep
Five stone vaults under mountains steep
Four lost halls of olde
Four wicked cities the Spiders hold
Three black pits of endless thunder
Three Labyrinths of earthly plunder
Two Kingdoms of undeath foul
Two Sanctuaries of the Ebon cowl
One prison under watchful eyes
One secret unearthed to the sky.
As you've guessed, I'm not a professional writer. I aspire to write things like...
This thing of all things devours,
birds, beasts, trees, flowers.
Gnaws iron, bites steel.
Grinds hard stones to meal.
Slays king, ruins town
and beats high mountain down.
Now that's a riddle! Written by a writer whom I consider is a master wordsmith. One day I may stumble across something brilliant, but for now I'll keep cranking out my mediocre stuff. The preceding is my favorite riddle by the way. And the answer is time, in case you've been living under a rock.
Now a little (I promise) bit about traps. I have a favorite trap. It's called "The Heart Room". It's a 50' x 50' x 20' room, coated floor to ceiling in a harmless red slime. The PCs don't know it's harmless however, and I encourage you to not reveal that it's harmless. Now, here's the kicker. Every 30 seconds the floor and ceiling meet, crushing anything caught between them. It took several tries to get the damage just right. Once I had a dwarf fighter actually survive it. I corrected that little oversight though. I happen to be a big believer in traps that kill characters outright. None of this namby pamby be kind to your PCs crap. Kill them swiftly and brutally, that's the only way to be sure. I might consider telling you how we solved the problem, but I don't believe in feeding the baby birds. Figure it out for yourself. :-)
Players don't like traps. Bee Oh Oh, Aitch Oh Oh. Suck it up and develop those coping skills guys. I will always include traps in adventures I write. If for no other reason, than for the comic relief of watching the players try and talk their way around it.
So there you have it. Yet another post about traps. Hopefully I haven't bored you into not reading anymore. If you want truly devious traps, read the Grimtooth's books. The guys that designed those traps are rock stars as far as I'm concerned. If you haven't, you should really peruse them. As for the riddles I posted, maybe they'll spark and idea. I now bid you....
Happy Gaming!
*Yet another in the ever growing list of reasons I will never run a game again. This game would be a lot more fun if the players would actually play along once in a while. Being a stick in the mud, wrench throwing monkey, in a game, is NOT something to be proud of.
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