Traps, dammit!!! I want more.

Traps were mentioned as something that helps with atmosphere.

I kind of agree. I haven't gone on a mod to defend my rogue from arrows, while sweat is dripping onto his lock picks, as he squirms, upside down and on fire, in like years.

WTF?

Of course, I fully realize that as one of the um...owners...I am partially to blame for this issue, but I'll be honest, I have no idea where to find durable, affordable, attractive and challenging trap reps. We've made them out of random crap in NH, but it takes forever. I'd love to not skip dinner on Saturday every event that I want to run a bitchin trap mod.

Help me.

And donate some to CT as well. I pc there and might actually buy legerdemain if traps were more common.
 
Are you referring to traps that are fun to disarm or traps that are unique but could be disarmed by simply cutting a string?

(I think I already know the answer - BOTH!)

Here's a quickie. A Motion Trap:

MotionTrap.jpg


The greater the bend and the longer the tube, the more it can be tilted before going off. The red wires lead to the positive terminal, the negative, blue wire is connected/wrapped around the copper tube. When the ball rolls and contacts the tack, it completes the circuit.
 
I miss weapon traps that actually had moving parts and would swing down and hit people. We used nerf crossbows as traps a long time ago. They were awesome.

When I run through dungeons in Skyrim, I think how cool a giant foam log swinging down and doing the undefined "massive" damage would be. Or swords or pendulums swinging down across the corridor.

Scott
 
We did a Spelling type of trap mod. NPCs around the edge of 2 large tarps sporting arrows, swords, hammers, etc.
Everyone is given a target range (arrows aim at point X, swords swing in 1 arc back & forth, etc).

Setting up the letters took a few hours because we did not pre-plan it. But remaining set up took about 10 minutes.
 
On the topic of traps, I've been thinking about this rules change to make them more useful. My suggestion is that traps should take as long as it physically does to set up, and as long as it physically does to successfully disarm. So if you can set a trap up in fifteen seconds, you're golden. I think with this we could see traps actually being set up during a big battle. It could be interesting, at least.
 
Vry_Young_Pup said:
On the topic of traps, I've been thinking about this rules change to make them more useful. My suggestion is that traps should take as long as it physically does to set up, and as long as it physically does to successfully disarm. So if you can set a trap up in fifteen seconds, you're golden. I think with this we could see traps actually being set up during a big battle. It could be interesting, at least.

While nice, there was something some time back about setting & moving traps. So doing so during big battles is difficult because you need to basically set up the trap & it doesn't go anywhere from that point.
I was working on a timer trap using a wooden noise maker, bungee cord, and a pull pin.
 
Sometimes it's just a matter of finding someone willing to make them. I know that if some player were to donate a bunch of traps (or be willing to trap all the boxes we have at our site) we'd use them more. I mean, if there is a box just sitting there, ready to go, why wouldn't we use it? But often we're running to set something up, limited with time and people, and traps end up being low on the list of priorities at that moment.

So players out there: If we get a bunch of traps ready at the start of an event, I'm sure we'd use them! :thumbsup:
 
I believe it should be up to the event director to make sure traps are available based on the write up and current plot arc. If the write up called for a specific type of trap, He/She could then go to the props committee and request that be made/procured. If that committee didn't have the resources, they could request it of their player base offering incentive like large gobbie amounts or something. There is no excuse for not including traps in an event unless they aren't called for by the story. If you want traps and you are not adding them to your game, I don't know what to tell you other than you need to re-examine how your event creation workflow is managed.

I do not like that concept of "someone donate them and we'll throw them in". That is terribly inefficient.
 
Robb Graves said:
I believe it should be up to the event director to make sure traps are available based on the write up and current plot arc. If the write up called for a specific type of trap, He/She could then go to the props committee and request that be made/procured. If that committee didn't have the resources, they could request it of their player base offering incentive like large gobbie amounts or something. There is no excuse for not including traps in an event unless they aren't called for by the story. If you want traps and you are not adding them to your game, I don't know what to tell you other than you need to re-examine how your event creation workflow is managed.

I do not like that concept of "someone donate them and we'll throw them in". That is terribly inefficient.

Well, what should get done and what actually does are often two separate things, unfortunately. I agree with you completely, but that's not often what happens.
 
Duke Frost said:
Or swords or pendulums swinging down across the corridor.

We had one of those in CT for one mod- a couple of tables were pushed together to make the "tunnel" you needed to crawl through, and an NPC was swinging a polearm back and forth at a regular interval. Cramped space and instant death, great combo. :) Then again, I'm also a fan of "the floor is lava, and these little pads are the only safe footing" physical tests too.

I was thinking of rigging up some mousetraps attached to tent stakes for use in outdoors environments - put the stake-and-trap in the ground, unwind the stake-and-tripwire to the right amount, then arm the trap. Still a little time consuming, but might speed things up a bit.

With the normal mousetrap-and-tripwire scenario, you're still looking at a couple of minutes per trap in a normal indoor mod scenario, and most traps can be disarmed in moments (or just set off with a sword-blow, and the effect repaired with a purify or heal). As much as I love being on the PC side of them, it's not a terribly efficient use of time. I like the reusable style (just disconnect the battery wire to disable) ones a bit better, since they're shorter on the setup, but the general usability on them is a little less.
 
Duke Frost said:
I miss weapon traps that actually had moving parts and would swing down and hit people. We used nerf crossbows as traps a long time ago. They were awesome.

When I run through dungeons in Skyrim, I think how cool a giant foam log swinging down and doing the undefined "massive" damage would be. Or swords or pendulums swinging down across the corridor.

Scott

I have an endless supply of various shaped open cell from my work and you have just given me an idea for it. Bwahahaha.

We ran a mod a while back that was trappish. The players had to move a key along a maze of string that had bells hung on it. If they rang a bell, undead spawned. Best part of the mod? The players telling the gypsy to stop moving.
 
Duke Frost said:
I miss weapon traps that actually had moving parts and would swing down and hit people. We used nerf crossbows as traps a long time ago. They were awesome.

When I run through dungeons in Skyrim, I think how cool a giant foam log swinging down and doing the undefined "massive" damage would be. Or swords or pendulums swinging down across the corridor.

Scott

I've built maybe a dozen of these, and a hundred or more traps for Alliance. Every time that a rules change goes through that cripples traps a little more, it makes it really hard to be motivated to continue building cool traps. Those Nerf Crossbow traps aren't legal anymore. Getting hit by a flying bolt doesn't do anything, and they're illegal weapons. All of my "Shoots things/fires things" traps no longer do anything because a moving weapon does nothing. You can get hit by a swinging weapon from a trap, and according to the current trap rules, nothing happens. If you set off a weapon trap, you automatically take the damage, regardless of who gets hit by any such 'flying/moving' parts. This seriously crippled 'home defense' traps, which is really the only place that traps had any hold left in the system. I've actually build 'ballista-themed' traps to shoot people coming into my unwarded building, but they're not legal any more, and any sort of 'siege weapon' that people load and fire based on weapon traps aren't legal for the same reason.

Traps aren't really something that the system encourages PCs to use. Every trap requires a Hold, and in a big combat (or even a small one), it's a serious pain to have to resolve a trap going off. This is why traps only go off on the setter if they're interrupted, why you can't 'hand grenade' traps anymore, why you can't move traps very far, etc. Those things are all there intentionally to prevent them from being used in combat. The fact that they've been made progressively harder to use as defensive measures makes me think that they're really not intended to be used by PCs at all. In fact, after submitting 5 or 6 ways to alter the trap system that got absolutely no traction, I started advocating the removal of traps as a PC creatable object, since that seemed to really be the intent. At the time, there was only about a half dozen people in the alliance that had the skill "Create Trap," and I'd bet that the number isn't significantly larger today. Traps need a serious overhaul one way or another, and while there are a lot of people that like them (I do), 95% of the time they're used in a fun, effective way is by the plot team to create an enjoyable encounter.

A good trap mod takes several hours to set up, and to really make the time, effort, resources, and people to set them up worthwhile a lot of story work has to go into making sure enough people get to experience it to justify all the input. That can be by making the module repeatable, making lots of people required to complete it, etc. Those things don't always work into the story, and since it's usually just a small group of people who will interact with a trap mod, it's hard to justify when that time could be spent entertaining more people with less time/money/effort/NPCs. I still like running trap mods, and I plan on making a number of "We will be using non-standard traps" announcements at our next event, but the system that we have doesn't really support them.
 
As one of those few with Create Trap, I have to agree with you entirely. They're just not that useful with the current rules. Even as a defense, you have to stack so many production points worth of them to get enough damage that most people can't just shrug it off that it's cheaper to pay a caster for a ward.
 
You bring up valid points and I think a lot of folks definitely support having a major traps overhaul. I know I do.

In the mean time. I think I just got an idea for a trap system that I could build, wooden boxes with multiple entry points, on a wooden stake with adjustable lengths, and loops for hanging as needed. If the boxes were identical, and we had several, each with a different safe entry point and five rigged entry points, you could use the same traps repeatedly, without it ever being known for certain which trap is which.

The trickiest part will be making sure the stun gun zaps from all the "no-no" holes.
 
I tend to build my traps to be very, very easy to disarm... and then put them in places where noticing them in the first place, much less getting to them to disarm them, is a pin in the rear. Complicated trigger systems tend to go off by accident, and that's a waste of a trap tag.
 
Considering how seldom it's used, the fact that it costs double for a scout than it does for a rogue does seem a little pricey. 6 build would be more reasonable.
 
You want a good idea for traps, do a google search for Grimtooth's traps. It's a series of books from the late 80's and early 90's that gives descriptions and details of hundreds of traps ranging from silly room traps (the Lobsters Revenge - a vat of boilinig butter hits you from above while the floor opens to drop you into a room filled with giants crustaceans who may or may not be wearing bibs with little people symbols on them) to evil coin traps (the pile of gold coins you just picked up are actually gold plated lead filled with acid. When jostled they break open and dissolve all metal they touch. Ow.)
 
Silverharp said:
You want a good idea for traps, do a google search for Grimtooth's traps. It's a series of books from the late 80's and early 90's that gives descriptions and details of hundreds of traps ranging from silly room traps (the Lobsters Revenge - a vat of boilinig butter hits you from above while the floor opens to drop you into a room filled with giants crustaceans who may or may not be wearing bibs with little people symbols on them) to evil coin traps (the pile of gold coins you just picked up are actually gold plated lead filled with acid. When jostled they break open and dissolve all metal they touch. Ow.)

They're neat ideas... but physrepping 'em isn't exactly practical.
 
I used to build, sell and extensively use all forms of traps between 2002-2005, I dropped the skill in the "magic change" for a few reasons.
1. there very hardly ever any trap mods
2. a vast majority of the people playing had no idea what the proper rules for traps were
3. I was constantly seeing them being used incorrectly

I might consider relearning the skill if I saw a solid set of rules, that were clear and specific, and those rules were dutifully enforced.

Just my 2 coppers,
Mike/Redcloud
 
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