wowy319 said:
In the case of cutting them short, then they're still not attached to anything that could pull them.
How are they still usable, then? My general premise is that if a trap is disarmed, it should still be usable, and I'm not seeing that being met by cutting the strings short.
markusdark said:
Unless talking about just noisemaker traps, this trigger could be considered disarmed if it is not attached to the physical representation of the trap (not tied to the weapon, not attached to the 32 cubic inch rep, etc.)
Sounds messy. A trap is a body + a trigger + tag. If you detach the trigger from the body of the trap, it's no longer a trap at all. When you bring in a trap, you should be having a marshal looking at the whole thing. Having them be distinct object means having to tag two different things. You shouldn't bring in a tag for, say, a long sword, then bring in some foam and some pipe, keep them distinct, and expect people to understand that the two parts represent an "unusable long sword". You also don't remove the foam tube from a sword that has been shattered or destroyed. By the same token, as easy to do as it would be, I don't think disarming a trap should be as simple as "remove the tag".
And, in the case of poppers, a caveat could be put in that if the string is not bow tied to a longer trap line, it is considered disarmed.
Enh, for the sake of consistency, I'm not much a fan of the idea. It's inconsistent and just grates against grain for me.
In general, I think mousetraps are fairly cheap and easy to use. They're reusable, and substantially less prone to become more flotsam to pick up at the end of an event. I think they're a solid baseline to start from - they generally take at least 30 seconds to set up, are reusable, maintain their function when disarmed, and aren't particularly likely to be trashed. I don't know that mousetraps represent a barrier to wider trap use. Can you get
more creative? Absolutely, and I love to see more inventive variations on the theme, or other more technologically-enhanced devices (loud alarms, for example), but I'm not a big fan of poppers, for pretty much all the reasons I cited.