My ORWA players recently invaded the sanctum of a villain known for their love of elaborate traps. I figured I’d share a transcription of their interactions with those traps. Hopefully it will be a useful tool for folks who aren’t clear on how this sort of play is done.
Trap #1: Acid Bucket
“You enter the building through the hole you blew in the wall. You’re in a T-shaped hallway with an elevator to your right, and a number of doors straight ahead. The blast is obviously going to draw attention, but there is no one in sight for the moment.”
“We make a beeline for the closest door. What does it look like?”
“Solid wood, lever-style knob, opens into the hallway.”
“I stand to the side of the door, and push down on knob with the Inanimate Carbon Rod.”
“It turns downwards, as you would expect a normal knob to do.”
“I pull the door open just slightly. Only enough so I can peek through the gap with one eye.”
“You see a cord crossing the gap. It’s attached to the door, and goes up somewhere ought of sight.”
“Can I tell what part of the door it is attached to.”
“It seems to be attached just above the knob.”
“You said the door opens out into the hallway, right? So the hinges are on this side?”
“Yes.”
“I remove the hinges.”
“Easily done, though at this point your examinations and tinkering has taken some time. Roll an encounter check.”
“Got a five”
“It seems that, despite the explosion, no one is rushing to see what happened. At least, no one you’ve detected. So, you’ve got the hinges off the door, what do you do now?”
“I’d like to open the door just slightly on the hinge side. Enough to stick my spear through the gap and cut the string.”
“The string is cut. Now what?”
“I’ll open the door enough for us to walk through.”
“Alright–“
“But I’m standing off to the side!!!”
“Hah, okay. You get the door open. Nothing happens.”
“Let’s get everybody out of the open first. C’mon guys, through the door! Can I see what the string was attached to?”
“There’s a steel bucket mounted on a pivot above the door. The string was attached to a latch holding the bucket upright.”
[Later, the players would use this acid bucket to defeat the first wave of enemies who came after them.]
[The bucket had an extendable sluice grate on it, which ensured maximum acid coverage on anyone standing near the door.]
Trap #2: Don’t Touch My Documents
“The room is full of office-style filing cabinets, 5 drawers tall, each standing a few feet apart from the others.”
“I open one to see what sort of documents are kept here.”
“When you pull on the handle, instead of opening the drawer, it simply slides out like a pull switch. You, the cabinet, and a 3′ by 3′ section of floor all drop down six feet, and bars snap into place above your head. Additionally, you hear five clicking sounds as each of the filing cabinet’s drawers lock.”
“Oh…it’s that kinda dungeon.”
[To get the drawers open, the handle would first need to be turned so it was vertical. In fairness, the players were warned that this dude was almost fetishistic about trapping everything.]
[The player later escaped when another character literally sold their soul for a wish to get them out. Kinda drastic I think, but I like the moxie.]
Trap #3: Missing the Heavy Key
“You’ve reached the area where the slaves you want to rescue are being held. They’re divided between two rooms behind barred doors.”
“Barred how?”
“The doors themselves are like others you’ve seen: wooden, lever handle, open out into the hallway. On either side of these doors, though, are metal hooks built into the wall. There’s a metal beam resting on the hooks, blocking the door from being opened.”
“I ask the guard we took prisoner how they got into these rooms.”
“He says that whenever he was sent into one of these rooms, he was given two heavy metal blocks, and instructed to slid them in place as he removed the bar from across the door. He was told that it was very important the hooks always have a consistent amount of weight on them.”
“What happens if they don’t?”
“He doesn’t know. Remember, he’s only been working here 2 months. They only told him what he needed to do his job.”
“Ugh, fine. Ya know what? We don’t have time for this. I cast Cone of Cold on the door. Would that freeze the mechanism?”
“Assuming the trap works mechanically, yes. The mechanism would be frozen.”
“I remove the bar.”
“How are you going to do that? It’s stuck to the hooks by the same ice that’s freezing the mechanism.”
“Can I yank it off?”
“You probably could, though doing so would also have a chance to activate the mechanism you were trying to freeze.”
“Uhm…oh, ya know what? I still have my old blowtorch with me. I’ll use the heat from that to melt the ice on the beam, then remove it.”
“Alright, you do that. The beam is removed, the door is unblocked, and no trap is activated. This won’t last forever, though. The ice in the gears is already starting to melt with the heat from your blowtorch, so I’ll be rolling every so often to see if the trap activates.”
“Okay, I open the door. Is the baby Lamataur in here?”
“No, but the 12 other slaves in here are super happy about being rescued.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever. Now we need to get the other door open, it’s the same, right?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have another Cone of Cold, though, so we can’t do that again. Ummm…what sort of building is this?”
“It seems like it was probably an office building before the apocalypse.”
“What are the walls made of?”
“Sheetrock, covered with torn wallpaper.”
“Oh, sweet, I take my knife and hack open the wall next to the hooks on that second door.”
“Okay, but that’s going to take a little while unless you have a better tool than a knife. You okay with an encounter check?”
“Umm…yeah, okay. Gotta do it. I’ll roll the check….a 3.”
“Fortunately for you, that’s no longer an encounter after you defeated that previous group of guards. You manage to saw open the wall.”
“Can someone else do the same thing on the other side while I do this?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, so what do we see?”
“It’s hard to get a good look. The hook is definitely attached to a lever, which holds a wheel in place, which is attached to a chain that goes down further into the wall than you can see.”
“I’ll try to jam my knife in to keep the chain from moving, can I do that?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Okay, let’s do it on both sides, then pull the bar off the door and open it.”
“You hear some squeaking as the chains strain against your knives, but the jam holds. Nothing happens. Inside the room you immediately spot the baby Lamataur.”
“Sweet! Time to get out of here.”
[Incidentally, had they activated the trap, a small trap door would have opened in the floor, and a crystal ball would have been launched out by a spring. Everyone would have to make a saving throw versus Magic to avoid becoming mesmerized by the thing, which would issue a command to “go into the cell and sit quietly until someone comes to get you.”]
Love that last trap! Would be hilarious if half the party succeeded, and had to somehow deal with that particular compulsion.
[Admin note: Fuck this guy.]