06-10-2021, 07:17 PM | #31 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: When did traps get silly?
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06-11-2021, 03:39 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: When did traps get silly?
As to "when" if you happen to lay hands on some of the very early Dragon ... or even The Dragon magazines, they occasionally feature some traps varying from the outlandish to the silly - and those are from the late 70s and 80s. Likewise, many of their contemporary gaming mags have write in slots with reader designed traps as silly as anything in Grimtooth.
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06-11-2021, 08:23 AM | #33 | ||
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: When did traps get silly?
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I've often explained extraordinary traps as having parts enchanted with such Making and Breaking spells as Fasten, Knot, and (especially) Animate Object, or such Movement spells as Glue, Grease, Pull, Repel, and (especially) Dancing Object – often alongside Link tied to suitable Information spells. These spells exist in the game world in general, and have all their non-trap uses. On traps, they show up in places built or operated by individuals with wealth or great magical resources (like most dungeons!). Elsewhere, they show up on the homes, businesses, and vehicles of . . . well, individuals with wealth or great magical resources. What makes one application more or less common than the other is found in the answer to the question, "Where are there more people with wealth or great magical resources?" If there's an evil god who goes around granting evil temples excellent security, whereas mortal wizards need to put in massive work to place the same enchantments, you might just find more of this stuff on traps. As for the question "What keeps PCs from stealing this magical stuff and getting rich selling it?", the answer is "That depends." In most cases, I simply invoke the rules: The power of a magic item endures until the physical item breaks, at which point the magic dissolves permanently. Traps are built into things and the magical parts are affixed to the nonmagical parts in such a way that prying the enchanted items out breaks them and removes the magic – so sad, too bad. But in a few cases, the trap is the treasure, which has plenty of pulp precedent! Quote:
But also, lots of people have proposed ways in which dungeon inhabitants can avoid being harmed or even seriously inconvenienced by traps. There are keys that deactivate traps temporarily, traps that simply require knowing where not to step or when to duck, secret passages around traps, and more. With my magical traps, there's that Link spell and its Information spells, which can include Sense Foes, or just Sense Life in a crypt full of undead. Honestly, I find it fairly easy to justify traps with magic, but real-life security systems use keys, and some have other workarounds, all of which work in fantasy, too.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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06-11-2021, 11:52 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Earth, mostly
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Re: When did traps get silly?
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If you break the laws of Man, you go to prison. If you break the laws of God, you go to Hell. If you break the laws of Physics, you go to Sweden and receive a Nobel Prize. |
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06-11-2021, 11:53 AM | #35 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: When did traps get silly?
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06-12-2021, 04:20 PM | #36 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: When did traps get silly?
It also gives the character-players agency and diminishes the arbitrary power of the GM.
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06-12-2021, 08:09 PM | #37 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: When did traps get silly?
That appeals to me, but then I've always liked the monkey's way better than the kitten's way. But I think there is an approach to gaming based on the expectation that "We're the heroes, so the author [GM] is on our side!" And I think many people like that.
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06-12-2021, 08:32 PM | #38 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: When did traps get silly?
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For instance, I've always been a highly extroverted, non-traditional, liberal-minded improviser – the sort who likes do-it-yourself punk music, makes career choices based on feelings, just kisses the girl, cooks without a recipe, invents cocktails, and is now deeply invested in a fully improvised dance with no standard patterns. I've always attracted likeminded people who preferred to ad-lib quite literally everything. That includes those I game with: We're gaming for the laughs and socialization, and there's no "power imbalance" in the first place because I just let players alter "how things are" as takes their fancy . . . which makes having a laid-out, mapped, planned version of how things are seriously uncool. The irony of this being that I need Rule Zero, not because it lets me be the boss, but because I'm going to have to say, "Damn what the rules say, where we're going is more fun!" anyway, so I prefer to have that eventuality spelled out ahead of time.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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06-12-2021, 09:02 PM | #39 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: When did traps get silly?
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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06-13-2021, 08:35 AM | #40 |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: When did traps get silly?
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!
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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