Traps!, Running The Game 

Speak for yourself, this is the most exciting video of my entire month! I've been looking forward to your insight on traps

Great to have more Matt Colville content these days!

Don’t be like that! Trap can be extremely exciting if your game has emphasis on positioning! This video will DEFINITELY help me out a lot, and I’m sure it’ll help others as well!

Its super solid. Going back to the Dealian (sp?) tomb is awesome.

I concur. My players are about to see a lot more, and spicier, traps! I had somewhat often skipped them if they were in a module because I found them boring. I see value in them now and how they can add atmosphere to a dungeon.

took me way to long to get it.

Nicely done. Clappingpicard.jpg

Well done.

I see what you did there

So did the mods

Underrated reply

Unless it is a dragon that has made an arrow that can kill it but traps it to just watch the horror of adventurers as their Trump card sabotages them.

Ancient traps lie in wait, unsprung and thirsting for blood

Cruel machinations spring to life with a singular purpose!

Ambushed by foul invention!

I'm putting this in my next session.

Happy birthday, fellow Leo!

Happy human day!

It's a Factory of Monarchs in the wild! I'll have to check-out your Greek myth stuff as I've been back-burner noodling with a Greco-Roman setting for years! I'm happily reading through Theros atm!

Happy Birthday Ms Monarch

Happy b-day (that was?), love your stuff, and have permanently implimented your thieve's cant idea into my DMing

I second this. Big time.

I third this, I wouldn't have been a DM if not for Matt, and I might even be a better person then if I hadn't come across running the game. It's also inspiring to see such a talented and passionate DM designer and writer make awesome stuff (refrencing S&F and the chain as well).

I’ll have to fourth this comment. My confidence as a DM comes from this series, and it always challenges me to not run the game by the book

My favourite kinds of traps will always be runes of reverse gravity. Especially in the middle of a fight. Suddenly, players are literally on different playing fields. Featherfall is a good spell to have in my games, FYI.

Those arent traps, then. They’re puzzles, riddles, or difficult RP scenarios

I forgot about that, thanks for the reminder!

+

Sometimes, not all the time but some of the time, it can seem like Matt hasn't read the newer books. I think he even admitted he hadn't read the DMG.

@@Akeche Yeah I figured that might the case, and I don't blame him. He seems like a very busy guy, and he's learned several editions of the game already. Just figured it would be helpful for others looking for trap resources. I'm definitely gonna check out the book of challenges.

Came to say the same, and also agree that Matt may have all the stuff he needs in is head, or existing references already. However the XgE is so good in many ways, Id recommend it fro all new players / DMs / at least a couple of copies in a play group :)

"What is the fastest way to end up with a million dollars in the RPG industry? Start with two million dollars." :P

@@dahlmanerik Yeah, but I love Matt's humility. Like he appears to think he's no big deal.

@@TheGoblinoid I realize. It's just a funny quote I heard from when I worked in the gaming industry. :)

@@dahlmanerik oh gotcha. Man, is it that rough?

@@TheGoblinoid Definitely can be. I was with a larger company and wasn't actually in the RPG department. But, said large company just let their entire RPG department go about 5-6 months ago.....

An Indiana Jones style mosaic tiled floor (randomly trapped) with appropriate treasure visible on the far side. Crumbling floor tiles that fall to great depths, vines for grabbing to save yourself. On a complete set of failures (DC 15 avoid trapped tile, DC8 grab a vine) they fall and automatically become entangled in vines 20 feet below hanging in the void for rescue, taking some fall damage (2d6). To add the right amount of tension, once a tile crumbles, or the first character makes it across, skeletal warriors start to rise up and attack from the treasure, but they are also prone to falling through the tiles, except they don't grab the vines. Made for great tension and some real hilarity as characters could reach out to grab adjacent falling friends or vines. I also had some of the random treasure tumble down the pile and roll out onto the dodgy tiles, or have the skeletal warrior pick up the obviously magic weapon to use. Disarming came into play and so did abseiling into the depths to retrieve the fallen treasure.

Whats the difference?

@@ollep0lle Containment rather than punishment.

Tbph i always just thought that sleight of hand was expanded to cover it. I always ask my players to describe what they are attempting to do though to make sure it would even work if they are successful

Its thieves tools in 5e. The describe hw to do it approach is more OSR

Collin I do that for lock related traps. But some traps can’t be disarmed by thief tools. Leaves covering a spiked pit for example.

Jordyn Young Yes me too because I was stuck with the mindset that one of these things had to be the disarm trap skill. It can be used sometimes depending on the trap I guess.

Thieves tools is the default but you have to take the trap into consideration. Leaves over a pit isn't a "disarmable" trap. You have to go around it or though it. There isn't triggering there. A trip wire, pressure plate, or something of the like is where thieves tools come in.

Bless you for DMing, I'm sure you'll do great

This one? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wXZXSYjlnGE.html

Serendipity.

Yeah, he's really honing his psychic skills recently!

He is a river to his people

www.twitch.tv/mcdm/ is another great place to get your Colville fix!

He's been busy with Kingdoms and Warfare, which I am stoked for!

I see this commentor didn’t use the company issued time machine. Unlucky ☹️

Crab? Crab! Hey man, how you doing?

All hail the crab king 🦀

I love that you comment on stuff.

All hail the crab king

What about a cave-in instead of a pit trap? A natural weakening of the floor in a catacombs built too close to an underground river or cistern -- the stones fall away, the characters fall into a sinkhole beneath. The noise attracts a bunch of undead. Same trap, but now it's more synchronous, makes more sense within the setting. Not to mention, the adventurers now have difficult terrain to negotiate when they are on their way back out of the catacombs, maybe while being chased by a large army of undead they disturbed deeper within. Hmm.

@@lfoster6759 Works just as well; the idea of a pit trap was more because a necromancer could just throw a couple of corpses into the pit, then cast animate dead on them (I forgot that it has a 10' range, but the necromancer could animate them and then order them to dig the pit - at that point, the control over the zombies will wear out, but the necromancer won't need that control because they're at the bottom of a pit.

Update: last night was session 1 with my new party, and it went so smoothly and everyone was laughing nearly the whole time. I took lots of advice from the RtG series and I think it really helped

It's also useful to consider what, in-universe, the trap is intended to do. Not "what are the mechanics of the trap", but it's function within the larger space it occupies. Traps take a great deal of time, effort, knowledge, and resources to build and maintain. The more complex the trap, the more of all of those you need. A trap built to last hundreds of years without maintenance even moreso. No one goes to those lengths without a good reason. Nor do they implement them within spaces they intend to occupy (even for a brief period) without good reason. Tombs tend to just want to discourage looters, so their traps will be designed to hurt or kill casual grave robbers (1d6 damage is often more than sufficient). If the trap is designed to slow intruders down, the traps will be more inconvenient than damaging (though a foot stepping into a spiked-filled hole that cripples it for life will certainly inconvenience and slow them). If the trap makers would rather capture intruders, the traps will be built to _literally_ trap them in a confined space, knock them out, or otherwise make locating them easier (instead of a spiked pit trap, it might just be a regular pit). Even "insane wizard dungeons" (Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain) have some esoteric purpose, even if known only to the insane wizard who built it. Etc, etc.

Eh, I don't think you should do that with using monster stats to determine. Part of having a trap is to break up the monotony of "Let me throw another monster at the party". Which means, unlike a random encounter, the trap's going to have some purpose or goal in mind of its creator. Some traps (like pit traps without spikes, net traps, snare traps, and those snapjaw traps (bear traps)) are all designed capture, immobilize, and/or restrain a target without killing the target. (Maiming, however, is still on the table.) These are used by group who do believe in taking prisoners or like to recruit more slaves. This is why they're found all around goblin lairs. And, since they're generally not lethal (and hopefully the home teams knows where they are), they won't typically have a disarm or kill switch. Then you have what I call "the corridor traps". These are usually built into structures, and their primary purposes are to slow down any attacking group, alert the defenders that an attack is on the way, and buy those defenders time to organize their defenses. Again, these aren't generally designed to be lethal, but at this point the defenders probably aren't too interested in taking captives. Since these people are living with these traps in a manner akin to "sleeping with a loaded gun under their pillow", these traps won't be "fully lethal" and will have some sort of deactivation mechanism or bypass so the locals don't generally fall in them. But in no terms should a party of adventurers take these traps on willy nilly. Finally, we come to what I call "treasure traps". These traps are there to guard something, someplace, or someone very important. These should be the traps that leave red stains on the walls and brown stains in armor. If the party fails to detect or disarm the trap, there should be a good chance someone dies. A trap could be something as small as a needle or as large as a 50 foot corridor. The outcome could be poison, magic, a rain of rocks and rubble, or just some good, old-fashion sharp blade of steel on a swingy stick. But these traps should be the hardest to detect and disarm. Again, for these traps, they'll have ways to disarm them, and I'm generally of the mindset that there should be some clue as to the danger and disarming. It could be as simple as the corpse of some unsuccessful thief, odd stains on the floor, or even watching some retreating kobold forget the trap was there in their panic and tripped it. Which brings me to the other thing: detecting the trap. You're not going to get that from CR rating of the local monsters. That's going to be a combination of many factors: Skill of the trapmaker, age of the trap, and how much your goofy party is paying attention to their surroundings. A goblin who has to tie up two dozen snare traps probably isn't going to be too bothered making a perfect slip not for the trap or completely covering it with leaf litter. Likewise, a pit trap dug ages ago isn't going to have the greenest of cover and recent rains might have started eroding the side. Then again, maybe those dwarven miners and sculptures were talented enough to make those pressure plates nearly indistinguishable from the flagstone around them. But, even the most poorly concealed snare trap can snag a party on the run from a band of bugbears because the party wasn't watching where they were going.

@@Bluecho4 I agree about thinking of their use in-universe. Personally, that's why I don't use most of the really Indiana-Jonesque traps, and prefer to play with simple, practical ones. There's a lot your local kobolds/goblins can do just with hidden pits, nets, tripwire-crossbows and some hidden bear traps. I think they add a lot of immersion to some creatures, meaning attacking them on their turf is a real pain. Like, Matt's example with orcs and their pit traps is excellent.

@@jackielinde7568 If one has monotony in the story then one has no story. If the players are not eager to reach a certain point like getting the princess before the dragon eats is then you have two choices. Simply close the book as the adventure is over or get more interesting fast.

No, he is a river.

Nathan Kelly - Brilliant idea to have the characters in the middle of two fighting factions and they actually see what is going on.

Hey ive just started stage 4 too. Must be an aussie

@@sjlemmon and both Victorians I'd wager.

That time seems so distant now.

What's the book of names focus on?

@@cynistar742 dont want to be that guy but .... names. lol its book of names form different cultures and mythos to help name npcs and such.

I actually like having a reference to other sources in general. It’s nice to make a wish list of all the things I would love to read through and have a play around with.

Tamazaaa Exactly! I love ordering PODs of old books on drivethrurpg. Just the other day I ordered the old Spelljammer book.

​@@cynistar742 It's quite literally a guide on how to name things for different cultures: Primarily characters, but also cities, rivers, etc,... It's quite thorough and would recommend it to anyone homebrewing!