These Are A Few of My Favorite Traps

Inspired by Josh over at Rise Up Comus, I thought I'd write up some of my favorite traps that I've used while running a game.

Dungeon Delving: a Serious House on Serious Oerth

I was usually the DM for my high school gaming group, where my specialty was inventing enormously detailed campaign worlds and then ignoring all of them while I ran my friends through a single funhouse dungeon that I'd largely thrown together at the last minute. It was based on what I could remember of my church's floorplan with a basement level copied directly out of the 3rd edition Dungeon Master's Guide. That basement level has a lot of oddly shaped rooms that I tried to fill with weird and interesting things, and most of my best traps came from there:

1) The Swinging Door

The main entrance to the dungeon had a set of big wooden doors. One door was smashed off of its hinges, and the other was conspicuously missing. When you stepped through, the pack of kobolds lying in wait threw a lever and the missing door swung down like a battering ram, with several more kobolds riding on it. The door knocked one of my friends' characters unconscious immediately and they beat a hasty retreat, hunkering down in the woods for the night to heal up because they didn't want anyone back in town to know what had happened.

I probably wouldn't run this trap now honestly, but it certainly set a memorable tone for the rest of the dungeon. The dungeon was dangerous, but I'd try to at least make the traps funny. Just as importantly (although I wasn't thinking of it at the time) the swinging door let my players know that heroism wouldn't come automatically - if you weren't careful the dungeon could kill you in an extremely uncool way.

2) The Water Door

A giant corroded bronze door (described as looking like the bulkhead of a submarine) decorated with images of sea creatures, the Water Door wasn't actually locked. It did however have multiple latches (which let out a hiss of briny steam when thrown) and a huge squeaky wheel to crank, to give the players time to think about whether they wanted to open it. Inside was a big room entirely filled with saltwater and stinging jellyfish. The gush of water knocked players over and partially flooded the nearby hallway and section of the dungeon, so the players and the monsters had to wade around in knee-to-hip deep water full of jellyfish. At the time I thought this was really funny.

If I were running this trap now I would have included some treasure in the room, as well as making the dungeon more reactive to the flooding. Maybe the room contains lots of small gemstones that also get washed away and can be found scattered around other parts of the dungeon, but the flooding damages the valuable books in the library nearby.

Early 3rd Edition really had a great aesthetic

3) The Gargoyle Chandelier

A talking ivory gargoyle with laser eyes that shot at anyone who tried to cross its room without giving the password. Because the room was a key shortcut to the deeper and more treasure-rich section of the map and the gargoyle (while rude) gave fair warning before attacking and wasn't a particularly good shot, my players developed a routine of covering their heads and dashing through this room on every expedition. They never bothered to look for the password and I can't remember now what it was. The room itself was a sort of wizard's workroom with a prominent summoning circle, but they decided it wasn't worth risking the lasers to try and explore.

If I were running this trap now I'd include some mirrors in the adjoining room for players to use as shields, as well as some way of making the password more interactive - either harder to miss, or taking the form of some kind of riddle. Some loudly telegraphed method of lowering the chandelier chain to bring that gargoyle into melee range wouldn't hurt either.

4) The Garbage Disposal

A circular chamber with a magic circle inscribed on the floor, described as noticeably clean compared to the filthy kobold common room it adjoined. My friends deduced pretty quickly that this was a teleporter that the dungeon denizens used as a garbage disposal but decided to give it a try anyway. The teleporter deposited you about 10 feet in the air above a cistern full of water, with an ooze monster lurking in the bottom that would investigate the sounds of someone splashing about. A rusty ladder led out of the cistern, where you'd find yourself in a deeper and more dangerous part of the dungeon.

My friends' heavily armored paladin stepped through first (he made it out, but lost his armor).

5) The Fireball Sword

A golden sword with a big ruby on the pommel, thrust into the center of the floor. Scorch marks and blackened skeletons surround the sword, and the ruby on the sword flickered with a fiery glow ("the marks extend to a radius of about 30 feet, also known as the radius of the common fireball spell," as someone jauntily remarked).

Basically a variant of Josh's electrified treasure chest in the linked post, the fireball sword is obvious to a genre-savvy group of players, is easily avoided (the trap only goes off if the sword is touched), and a gold and jewel-encrusted sword is a tempting treasure. In 3rd edition D&D though, it's really just an HP tax. The reason it'll always have a place in my heart though is that in play I got to watch as my good friend Alex B asked every pertinent question possible to suss out the trap, our other friends' eyes lit up with twinkling comprehension as they got it, and then Alex walked up to the sword and tried to pull it out anyway, to much hooting and hollering from the other players.

6) The Marble Pool

Most funhouse dungeons have a pool or fountain with a big table of magical effects to roll on if you drink from it. Mine (which I believe was called something unbearable like "The Pool of Elfwinter") had 19 neutral-to-positive effects and a 1-in-20 chance of turning you into a marble statue. In my defense, this was telegraphed by a marble man at the edge of the pool clearly transformed/sculpted in the act of drinking from it with cupped hands.

Nowadays I don't think I would put that mix of effects into the same pool, because the level of variance is too much. When you see your friends take a drink and learn to breathe a cone of frost or have their teeth and nails turn to pearl, you're going to want to take a drink too, and instant petrification feels bad. My friends certainly thought so, and we quickly negotiated a ruling that if they tipped him into the pool he could roll again on the table of effects. He rolled another 1 and was cured, to much relieved laughter.

Bonus: Flaming Pit Trap (non-operational)

This one is actually in B3: Palace of the Silver Princess. A trap door drops you into a pit full of oil, and a torch drops in from a chute in the side. Because the castle is in ruins and hasn't been maintained, the torch is unlit. You get a scare and then your friends can haul you out with a rope. On a read-through I'd thought that this was a little too cute, but when playing B/X D&D with 1st level characters, everything in the dungeon is so dangerous, and 2nd level so far away, that it was a welcome relief. And (proving that he is actually a wise and canny adventurer and that the whole thing with the fireball sword could've happened to anybody), in this game Alex B used it to escape from a near total-party-kill when he lured a gang of skeletons into it and dropped his own lit torch down after them. It sounds pretty basic, but that kind of simple cause-and-effect can make for some very satisfying gameplay when the dungeon is appropriately risky.

Oopsie-poopsie!