[Kromm]

Essentially, I'm not somebody who gets a lot out of breaking codes, solving mysteries, doing puzzles, cracking conundrums, beating games, etc. in my downtime. When not at work, I seek entertainment rather than accomplishment, and the idea that there is at least one (perhaps several) critical paths through a situation, awaiting my discovery through analysis, is the opposite of entertaining for me. On personal time, I prefer to have few limits save for those of decency, and to function creatively in directions orthogonal to "the expected." This probably explains why I left the sciences to work on RPGs and make things up! (Indeed, I got into the sciences thinking I could float and test blue-sky theories, and was thoroughly disheartened when I realized the majority approach was to view the universe as mysteries to solve in closed form.)

In those old "Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies and Munchkins" memes that used to float around the Internet, I was 50% "Real Roleplayer" and 50% "Loony." I always saw solving problems as being for "Real Men" ("We'll defeat them through major force and good tactics, hrr hrr.") or "Munchkins" ("We'll figure out the optimal use of resources and plusses."). I preferred to do what my alter-ego would do or just what seemed amusing – in both cases, damn the consequences.

Anyway, all this informs how I see traps: They serve to help tell dramatic tales of heroic exploration. They're like Chandler's man with a gun, bursting in to maintain the pace; they aren't like some gadget in a Tom Clancy technothriller, described in minute detail so the heroes can show off their technical expertise. So to me, traps get "silly" when prescribed in excessive detail. I mean, they're basically McGuffins, so how they work isn't important next to what effect they have on the story. If that effect is solid, then the trap isn't "silly" because it has served its purpose admirably!