Blogposts
On Traps April 20, 2025
Traps ........................................................................... 2 34 Good Traps by Chris McDowell..........................5
Some Traps .............................................................7
A Treatise on Traps by GFC..................................... 2
https://guccifuligincloak.blogspot.com/2021/11/a- style trap where removing an idol from a plinth
treatise-on-traps.html releases a boulder, or it could be a rickety bridge that
will collapse if a PC is over a certain level of
This post is available in video form on my YouTube encumbrance. False mechanisms could mean fake
channel: doors that fall and crush anyone attempting to open
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2MCEcPSAzQ. them, or chest mimics that chomp greedy treasure
Here is a simple 3d6 table to generate traps. Each hunters.
trap has three basic characteristics: the mechanism, Consequences are self-explanatory. Be creative in
the consequence, and the tell. how you approach them, a “crushing” trap might
Mechanism cause rocks to fall on PCs, or it might mean that their
hand is maimed if they reach into a cubby.
1. Tripwire Displacement traps can be stairs that turn into
2. Weight Differential chutes, portcullises that split parties from one
3. False Mechanism another, or even magical teleport traps.
4. Removal Or Placement
5. Push Or Pull The “tell” is how a PC can be expected to figure out
6. Sound Or Disturbance that something is trapped. For example, “too old or
too new” might be a row of canopic jars, which when
Consequence inspected will reveal that one of the jars is free of
any dust. The jar is actually a trap set to ward against
1. Displacement
tomb robbers that will release ghosts when opened.
2. Cutting Or Piercing
When the referee chooses to reveal the tell depends
3. Crushing Or Paralyzing
on the experience of the players and the
4. Poison Or Water
consequences of the trap (deadly traps should
5. Terrain Destruction
generally be more obvious, unless dealing with an
6. Fire Or Alarm
experienced group). For a first session, or for the first
Tell trap in a dungeon, the referee might immediately
warn players that, for example, there are holes in the
1. Too Old Or Too New walls of this hallway (indicating a dart or poison gas
2. Juts Or Recedes trap). For more experienced players, the referee
3. Violates A Pattern might simply note that vines grow up the walls in this
4. Previous Misfortune hallway, and leave it to players to carefully inspect
5. Strange Material Or Damage the vines and notice the holes hidden behind them.
6. Conspicuous
I approach hiding and revealing traps by taking
The mechanism is how the trap is activated. Referees inspiration from the old text-based computer
should interpret these results loosely; for example, adventure games like Zork, where I’ll describe very
“weight differential” could mean an Indiana Jones- simply the notable features of a room, which
appendix I in the AD&D DMG is invaluable for. If find a trap they didn’t know about. I usually signal by
players more carefully inspect and interact with following the old rule: if it’s too good to be true, it
these features, I will give them more clues. For a probably is. When my players find a golden statuette
particularly devious trap, I might obfuscate it under atop a plinth that’s surrounded by dried bloodstains,
multiple layers; for example, a player might wish to they know to carefully inspect every feature of the
inspect a conspicuously expensive tapestry. If they room.
peek behind it, it reveals an unworked stone wall,
and inspecting that unworked stone reveals that it Trapping too many mundane rooms can lead to a
has been knocked down and built back up many boring arms race between the referee and the
times, indicating perhaps a boulder or log trap player: last room we entered, a slime fell on us from
hidden behind the wall, confirmed by damage to the above, so now we note that we’re always checking
opposite wall and bits of stone scattered about the the ceiling when we enter. To thwart the players, the
room. The point is to force players to use context referee places a pit trap. Now we’re always checking
clues and lateral thinking to reveal the nature of the the ceiling AND prodding the ground with our ten
trap. There might also be multiple clues leading to foot pole. Then the referee places a crossbow trap in
the same trap, for example the stone scattered the next room that fires when the door is opened.
about the room in the previous example. Now we specify that we stand to the side of the door
when we open it AND we check the ceiling before
As for how players can thwart traps, I find it’s best to entering AND we prod the floor with our poles. Well,
simply leave it up to the players. More often than not now the referee electrifies a door handle. Now we
they will come up with an ingenious way to disarm or put a rag over the handle before we open it AND we
avoid the trap that you would never have thought of stand to the side AND check the ceiling AND prod the
yourself, and it saves on prep work for you. Having floor and and and… for sixty rooms. This is a waste of
one and only one way to avoid a trap can lead to a time! Even though traps are a negative experience
frustrating experience for the players as they try to for the characters, they should be a positive
divine your thought process. experience for the players! I cannot stress this
enough. My players have fun discovering, thwarting,
Placement of traps is also crucial. Traps can be fun and even sometimes getting caught by the traps I
and exciting, and a dungeon might be dull without
place in my dungeon, because they are placed in a
them and encourage recklessness. However, too fair and logical manner that doesn’t make them
many traps can result in players being afraid to afraid to walk down any ten-foot stretch of hallway
interact with a single feature of your dungeon and without first tediously checking for traps. Think of
slow the pace of the game to the point where it is traps like the “inverse” of puzzles: rather than solving
boring and frustrating. Using wandering monster a problem for a reward, they are solving a problem
rolls to force players to move at a decent clip will to avoid a consequence. But the fun of it, for the
further frustrate them when they are forced by the players, is in the problem-solving! Not in arbitrarily
clock to blunder into a trap. To encourage player being taxed resources for simply exploring the
agency in deciding how and when to check for traps, dungeon, which is what should be encouraged in the
referees must be logical in their placement of those
first place. While recklessness should be curtailed,
traps. Defensive choke points may be trapped, as exploration and interaction is the point of the game!
well as treasure rooms. In my opinion, it’s more fun
for players to thwart a trap they know about than to
If traps can be detected and evaded by interaction, thief’s design space a bit, so I suggest giving the thief
what’s the point of rolls? In my home games, we some buffs here and there to even it out.
rarely roll to detect or remove traps. In a strict
interpretation of the rules, a thief’s chance to find or I encourage you to roll on this table a few times and
remove traps is for small, mechanical traps such as a post any traps you come up with in the comments.
poison needle trap in a lock, essentially traps that are On the screen are a few examples from myself. You
difficult to detect or disarm by interacting with the can also create your own tables to generate unique
world. Regardless, I find myself using less of these traps, and I’d love to see any you come up with
types of traps and therefore encroaching on the yourself, so please post them in the comments as
well. Thank you for watching!
https://www.bastionland.com/2018/08/34-good- So here are 34 good, simple traps. Some classics that
traps.html?showComment=1534815083019#c23922 meet the benchmark, some new stuff I just made up,
26686871908545 some lodged in my brain but originally stolen.
My measure of a good trap: 1. Open pit onto deadly spikes. Both sides of
the pit are sloped into it and greased up.
• At least one part of it is immediately visible. 2. Concealed pit into piranha-filled water.
• It allows interaction and investigation. 3. Metal sword audibly humming, hooked up to
• it has impactful consequences for the victim. electric charge.
4. Green Devil Face with gaping mouth.
I've gone on before about the three pillars of running
Anything going into the mouth is annihilated.
a good game (Information, Choice, Consequences)
5. A fishing rod propped up and cast into a lake.
and you'll notice they match up with these three
The rod is covered in fast-acting glue and
points.
tension on the line triggers a springboard
In short, your trap should have room for interesting beneath the victim, casting them into the
interaction between "oh, a trap!" and "I'm dead". lake.
The trap doesn't have to announce itself 6. A column of light. When a being enters they
immediately, it can even "trap" the players before are frozen, and an evil duplicate of them is
announcing itself as long as there's still room for conjured. The victim is only freed when the
interaction beyond that. duplicate is killed.
7. Walls dotted with arrow-slots. Any
You can break the rules if it's connected to the movement in front of them fires the arrow,
theme of your specific scenario. Like your Tomb of but each hole only has one arrow.
Horrors style deathtrap dungeon might be full of 8. Upside-down spiked pit on the ceiling.
hidden traps that don't announce themselves, but Gravity is reversed under the pit.
you're breaking that rule as a specific exception for 9. Clusters of bright orange fungus growing on
this particular dungeon. If you're going to do this, one or more corpses. Any disturbance
make sure the payoff is worth breaking the rule for. triggers a deadly spore explosion.
Context is also important. You don't just stick a trap 10. Glass vials of green slime hung from a ceiling,
in a corridor and call it a day. Connect the trap to its a guard with a crossbow watching from
location, most typically a passageway to somewhere behind a barricade.
desirable, a piece of treasure, or link it in with a 11. Two panes of glass blocking passage, filled
monster. You wouldn't just drop a monster into an with deadly bugs.
empty room, so give trap placement the same level 12. Shimmering, thick air that slows all
of consideration. movement down to a quarter of normal.
Guards with missile weapons waiting around
I blur the line between Puzzles and Traps a lot, but the corner.
here I'm sticking to things that are placed 13. Glossy, friction-less floor and spiked walls.
deliberately to impair intruders, with nasty 14. A metal room filled with crushed remains,
consequences. visible moving parts to floor, and a sealed
door leading forward. Two buttons. One to the tunnel exit with breath to spare, but
opens the door, the other seals all doors and not if they try to grab the treasure first.
commences the crushing process. 23. Two doors in sequence. First sprays anybody
15. A peephole blocked up with glass fragments. passing through with highly flammable
Breaking the fragments releases a toxic gas. liquid. Second spits out a flash of flame,
16. Giant chomping blade that must be passed harmless on its own but enough to ignite the
through to progress. Visible pressure plate liquid.
on either side. Blades are triggered when a 24. Sloped walkway in a freezing cold room.
pressure plate is released, unless the other Pressure plate halfway up releases a flood of
plate is also depressed. Going slow poses no water down the slope, freezing near
risk. instantly.
17. Stuck door with a gold snake-head handle. 25. Haunted pots, audible screaming within,
The handle will bite and poison anybody placed on wobbly plinths on an uneven floor.
putting their hand near, unless they slip a Any sort of weight on the floor is sure to
coin into its mouth, allowing safe passage release at least one angry wraith.
through the door. 26. Pool of lava, a metal idol partially submerged
18. Disguised springboard, launching the victim in the center. It's glowing hot, but valuable.
straight up into the air. There is a hanging 27. Big metal skull with a gem in its open, toothy
bar they can grab to avoid the fall, but mouth. Obviously it bites anything put inside.
weight on the bar triggers the release of 28. Quicksand, just like in cartoons.
giant spiders onto it, and rained down onto 29. Giant spider lair, huge boulders suspended in
anyone below. the highest webs. Too much disturbance
19. Room dusted with a deadly white powder. might release a boulder, fire will definitely
Any rapid movement disturbs the powder, release them all.
sending it into the air and then the lungs of 30. Bear trap.
anybody breathing nearby. Hidden pressure 31. Sealed door with two identical handles on
plate in the center of the room triggers a the adjacent wall. One releases snakes from
loud siren, alerting any nearby threats. above, the other opens the door.
20. Locked door, key visible in a stinky fountain. 32. Hidden jet spraying you with disgusting
The liquid is fast-acting acid, the key made smelling liquid. Not harmful in itself, but
from a special resistant ceramic. might attract scent-based creatures or warn
21. Rope bridge primed to split in the middle inhabitants that you've been poking around
when the majority of the crossing weight has where you shouldn't have.
passed the mid-point. The characters can 33. Pressure plate triggers part of the floor to
grab their half of the bridge and climb back move down, slowly transporting the victim
up easily enough. into the now-visible lair of a horrible
22. Damp, underwater tunnel with glowing monster.
treasure at a visible dead end. A pressure 34. Giant cauldron filled with treasure. Any
plate halfway through triggers flooding of weight added to the cauldron causes the lid
the tunnel. A normal human could get back to slam shut and a fire to spark to life
underneath it.
https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2018/08/some- A boulder rolling towards you is good. You still have
traps.html options. Compared to. . .
Chris wrote up a list of some traps that don't suck. A subtle pit trap in a random location sucks. It sucks
I'm going to write some more, since that seems like a because the "solution" to them is to spend your time
good thing to make a list of. tapping on the floor with a pole, or pouring out
water and seeing if it seeps between the stones. (I
know there is a whole branch of old-school play that
enjoys this style of play, but it's never appealed to
It should follow good OSR principles (similar to the
me, since I believe that there are more interesting
obstacles post I wrote way back).
ways to challenge players.)
• No obvious solution.
• Multiple possible solutions.
• Solution depends on common sense (rather Please don't hide them willy-nilly. Putting a pit trap
than system mastery). in the middle of a well-traveled corridor threatens
• No specific tool required (no McGuffin, no verisimilitude (since aren't orc patrols passing over it
singular spell, etc). every thirty minutes?)
Place traps in logical places. A kitchen cabinet is
probably not going to be trapped, but the chest in
A trap can be obvious, such as an open pit. With
the shaman's room probably is.
obvious traps, the puzzle becomes how to best get
across the trap. Traps don't have to be difficult. Easy If you are going to hide damaging traps, try to build
traps can be fun, too. AND easy traps can become up to them. Telegraph the possibility before the
weapons that you later use against monsters in the traps appear. Before you have complicated double
dungeon. pit traps and slides, it's good to have a room with a
small pit trap (to inform players that hidden pit traps
Obvious traps are probably the hardest to write, and
exist here). Or better yet, a room with a broken
the most fun. They kind of blur the line between
(exposed) pit trap.
obstacle, puzzle, and trap. An obvious trap needs to
have (a) a reason to engage, (b) a visible mechanism, You don't have to telegraph the danger, just the
and optionally (c) an explicit risk. mechanism.
A trap can be surprising, like a subtle pressure plate. For example: a lever might open a hole in the ceiling,
With subtle traps (where the PC is likely to stumble dumping spiders down onto whoever is below. A
into it) make sure that you give the player a chance smart party will pull the lever with a rope lasso from
to react before the trap goes off. We want to give 20' away.
the players interesting choices to make, not just tax
their HP. This is a good trap. A player who dies from spider
bites will (hopefully) sigh and say "I guess I deserved
that.".
That's what you want from a trap. 4. A dripping wet door. Opening it floods the
room with ancient, rancid water and 3
zombie sharks.
5. Lock that can only be opened at a certain
Not all of these are technically traps. Some are just
minute each day. Adjacent, a lock that can
interesting dungeon features.
only be opened at a certain minute each
Horrible Hallways week. Adjacent, a lock that can only be
opened at a certain minute each year.
1. Wall of fire. 6. Archway. Anyone who passes through it is
2. Zone of unconsciousness. transposed with a ghoul in a nearby room.
3. Climb a diagonal shaft, rotating. 7. Climb a frictionless wall. (Have fun collecting
4. Crush hallway. Find a way to survive the large furniture. Shitty tables are treasure
crush, or at least move really, really quickly. now.)
5. Portcullis that slams shut to split the party. 8. The floor of this room is laminated with
You can reunite 1-2 rooms away (don't split symbols of disintegration. If a symbol is
the party for too long). touched, all non-stone material in the room
6. Obvious pit trap. The correct path is hidden will take 3d6 Con damage each turn. In the
at the bottom of the pit. room, an (unsupported) pedestal with a
7. Insanely hot hallway (or room where you stone McGuffin on top. In the ceiling:
have to perform some activity). Anyone spiders and spiderwebs.
trying to sprint through it unprotected is 9. Everything appears distorted in the mirror.
probably going to burn their feet and die. Humans appear to be orcs, swords appear to
Things that reduce damage: being soaking be hammers, etc. The trick is to notice that
wet, air circulation, walking/standing on the pen appears to be a key, and the mouse
soggy leather. skull appears to be lock. Inserting one into
8. Subtle pressure plate. The trap triggers the other will cause the door to open.
when weight is taken off the plate. 10. Huge wooden bowl, lined with thin, insoluble
9. As above, except there are several pressure gold foil. Filled with horrible, fuming acid.
plates in a row.
10. Goblin barricade staffed by several bow- Obnoxious Obstacles
wielding goblins.
1. The magic stein can only be carried by
Wretched Rooms someone who is colossally, totally drunk.
They have to carry themselves--no one else
1. Obvious trigger: taking the sword off the can help them.
pedestal. Two copper spears shoot out of 2. Carry a baby out of the dungeon. No, carry
the wall, impaling an incautious explorer. A ten babies.
round later, lightning begins to arc between 3. When the lid of the sarcophagus is placed
the spears. A round later, the room begins back on top, the bottom of the sarcophagus
to fill with water. opens.
2. Poisonous gas seeps from a crack in the wall. 4. Sign says "teleporter" but it's really just a big
3. Lake of acid. Get to the island. blender.
5. The dragon is sleeping! Steal things quietly.
(Common sense: it's quieter to carry a chest
away than it is to open it, a sack of coins is
guaranteed to clink, etc).
6. As above, except some goblins just showed
up. They want to kill you quietly, but if the
dragon wakes up, you're all probably going
to die.
7. Crossing an underwater lagoon. Hope you
brought a canoe. Of course something
attacks during the crossing. A fast boat can
escape it, a floating table is easily capsized.
8. Functional teleport brings organic material to
one place, and inorganic material to another.
Allow teleported people to communicate this
(possibly by shouting, roll for random
encounter) so they can make a more
informed decision. An incipient threat
hastens plans.
9. The door can only be opened in your dreams.
If you open it in your dreams, you can pass
through it in real life. While your body
sleeps on the altar, it is inhabited by the
spirit of an ancient wizard.
10. Before you can run through them, you need
to observe the swinging pendulums to
determine their pattern. Anyone observing
the pendulums is hypnotized by them,
staggers safely through them, and begins to
self-mutilate by dancing in the middle of all
of them (1d3 damage per turn).
