Friday, March 23, 2018

How To Stop Trap Detection Dice Rolling

In the last blog, I talked a lot about trap and secret door detection. But, I didn't really say how to put it into practice, other than "be descriptive." Let's break that down a little bit. Here's a couple of descriptions of places where traps may be located.

"As you approach the door at the end of the hallway, you notice the keystone in the door's archway is carved like a skull. The door itself is a eight planks, held together by two brass bindings. The door does not have a latch, only a pull-ring. The damp of the dungeon has caused the wood to swell, making a tight seal between the door and the stone."

"The massive oak and iron door has the signs of water damage down it. The handle, a turning knob, is made of brass, and has a light patina. A keyhole, about a centimeter tall sits directly underneath the knob. As you approach, you see that the door opens toward you, and scratch marks gouge the floor where the door has been opened. What do you do?"

"The iron-bound chest squats on the pedestal before you. A brass lock holds the chest closed. From here, you can see that someone once tried to force the lock, causing damage to the keyhole. There is a 5' circle of dust surrounding the pedestal, that is not present in the rest of the room. What do you want to do?"

When training the players on when to search, and when not to, there are some methods that can help.
1. Keywords: When players look for traps and secret doors, its best to spoon feed them for a bit, to get them used to the new play style. Use words like damage, blood, gouges, skulls, and others that make them feel uneasy. As they grow more accustomed to the play style you can start using more subtle descriptions.
2. Blatancy: Murder holes, floors and walls stained with blood, nozzles, spikes, big red buttons all are immediate clues that point to a trap.
3. Notate things that are out of the ordinary: A different colored flagstone, a shelf with a metal lip, or the cladding of a chest that appears loose. These are clues that will make players immediately think trap.

That's the easy part. The harder part is to get them to stop searching everything, and everywhere. Several things can help.
1. Have a discussion before the session begins. Explain to them that you are changing how the detect/remove rules work. Tell them that you will use key words in your descriptions (but not what they are), and they need to be players and characters.
2. Make sure they understand the consequences of taking too much time. As I mentioned previously, Gary built in a clock to keep the players moving. But, in today's story driven game, there are more effective methods. The princess will be sacrificed at midnight is a great way to get people moving, and less cautious about where they step. Adding a time element to the story makes it feel less like rules and more like expediency.
3. Have a whole session, or even several, where no traps are found. At all. Eventually, they will let their guard down. At least enough to not deal with dice in every room and corridor.
4. Make them describe everything they are doing to search for traps. Everything. Not just "I search the floor." How do they search the floor? What do they use? Make them understand (and waste valuable play time) what it entails. When they get nothing accomplished other than searching a 30' corridor in a whole play session, they will rethink how they approach searching.

These are a few ways to help mitigate the dice rolling trap.

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