Award-Winning GMing Advice
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Last week, some friends were discussing adventure design for publication, but the conversation drifted towards a topic I hadn't really thought about in a long time. Traps.
Way Back When Way back in ancient days, in basic and early AD&D, traps were horrific. You fail your disable trap skill and you're only one save versus poison from a grim death. Bigger than that, though, were the super traps. ...
Looking to recharge creatively, I’ve been diving back into an old friend, my collection of pulp fiction. Specifically, this bit of inspiration came from the Robert E. Howard Conan tale, “The Servants of Bit-Yakin.”
The first part of the serialized novella is a cliffhanger, for Conan stumbles into a trap as he explores the jungle palace ruins. It reads:
He turned toward the arch — with appalling suddenness the seemingly ...
Trap: 2 a : something by which one is caught or stopped unawares; also : a position or situation from which it is difficult or impossible to escape One of my recent personal goals has been to focus on the types of Game Mastering that I don't normally do. To that end, I started thinking about what traps ...
In many of my experiences with old school gaming, traps have generally been seen as things to disable and get past, or as things that are meant to do damage to the party if they aren’t careful. This definition blurs a little as the genre changes from fantasy or dungeon crawl to something more modern or broad in play style, but often a trap remains something you ...
Do you include Spotlight encounters — those designed to challenge individual characters — in your adventures?
Giving your cleric or thief a chance to shine sounds easy enough, right? You throw undead at the cleric and traps with pointy things that spring out at your thieves. Likewise, wizards need magic to dispel and fighters require opportunities to perform feats of strength.
But, c’mon, that gets a little old after a ...
