Build A Rune-Trap Encounter — Indiana-Jones Style

[Palanan]

For my next game session I’d like to design an encounter built around a chamber with runes carved into the floorstones. I’d like this to be a challenge for the party’s linguist and arcane specialist, and....

…Everything after that I need help with.

Ideally I’d like to be able to challenge the player with a mellon-style riddle that involves moving along the rune-stones to find a safe path across the chamber. But I’m not quite sure how to work this in a way that will be interesting, challenging and fun, and which will take more effort than a couple of basic skill checks.

Can anyone suggest either an existing published design, or better yet something of your own devising? For purposes of this encounter I’m open to all official content from 3.X and Pathfinder, but I’m also open to anything deviously inventive and linguistic from any delightfully warped minds here in the Playground. How can I challenge both player and PC with a language-based encounter, with the added requirement of a chamber with runes on the floorstones?

[Saintheart]

Making runes that hurt or do horrible things to people is easy enough. Runecaster runes can basically turn any divine spell you want into a trap more or less regardless of what their normal target is meant to be, so have a look in FRCS's rules on rune magic for inspiration mechanically.

But let's turn to the real problem, which is how the hell we build an encounter to look and feel like a movie scene that turns out one way. In short, I don't think you can. That turns an encounter into the equivalent of the campaign on a plot railroad: there's only one way to solve the problem and really only one way to approach solving that problem. In that scene from Last Crusade, Indy doesn't have a path forward other than on the correct flagstones, he can't go around it, he hasn't got a mechanism he can sabotage or subvert, he can't (or doesn't) test what happens when he puts a foot wrong.

(And if you're looking for inspiration on how to think about traps from movies, don't watch Last Crusade, watch Lost Ark. In particular go back and watch the first scenes of the movie where Indy does act like a classic rogue and has to think and work his way through any number of traps before getting the gold idol. And even notice how that has a trap that spring after the object is stolen, not to stop Indy from getting to the idol in the first place. The traps in Last Crusade are - without passing judgment on the film - basically a Pilgrim's Progress thing, follow certain religious precepts and you're totally fine.)

This encounter feels less like a trap encounter and more like a riddle, so maybe the approach is to think of it mechanically like that first. And with all the usual caveats that apply to building riddle encounters in D&D: in general, don't do it, because the party never solves the damn things and just bashes down the door instead.

I'll come back to other thoughts later, but just this as a starting point.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Saintheart
I'll come back to other thoughts later….

Will be looking forward to it, thanks.

[Eurus]

Even if the encounter is designed to let one player in particular shine, you probably want something for the others to do... This isn't really like the scenes you're describing, but how about a rune golem?

As the players enter the room, a golem comes to life and begins attacking the players, and the way forward is blocked by some kind of barrier. The golem shrugs off damage with ease, but perceptive characters will notice that it's covered in glowing runes that look similar to the ones etched into the floor, and certain runes glow with each action it takes.

Each floor rune, when activated, causes an identical rune to temporarily appear on the golem's head. If you activate a combination of runes that forms a valid command, the golem will attempt to follow that command on its next turn. Unfortunately, while some of the runes are similar enough to surviving languages to be translated with a Decipher Script check, others are impossible to translate except by activating them and seeing what they make the golem do or observing them from the golem's own actions.

The goal is to figure out how to give the golem a sequence of specific orders that will result in the way forward being opened. Perhaps there's an unreachable lever on a high platform, a barrier of vines blocking the door, and a power source that needs to be reactivated; the golem needs to be ordered to throw intruder (at) lever, to burn plants, and to attach self (to) generator. Hopefully without too many throw fire at intruder commands along the way. In the meantime, maybe the golem keeps summoning adds that the party has to clear out.

If the players are having trouble, you can give them hints with skill checks. Maybe the character notices that the verb, subject, and object runes are grouped separately, making it easier to form a valid command by picking one of each.

[Saintheart]

I was going to get into a long waffle about traps, but I'm short on time right this second, so, a couple of templates for puzzle traps that might be of interest:

In 3.5, the Book of Challenges, Pool of Endless Froglings and Curse of Iron. These are low EL but have notes for scaling up. Seem to be on theme-ish.

[Saintheart]

Right, next bit which is really more of a bunch of thoughts on design than a flat-out recommendation.

First, let's get away from thinking of this thing as a trap, or a riddle. Let's start from the idea that it's an encounter, as in, an interaction with something in the virtual world of the game.

What's the point of this encounter? To overcome it. No, why is the encounter there? "Because in bygone ages those annoying dwarves built a gate with a floorful of runes--" No, I mean, what is the encounter's purpose in the game? I presume it's there to stop the party from getting from one place to another, that all it's meant to do is prevent someone from going from one place to another. So what does succeeding in this encounter look like? Maybe it means a doorway opens, maybe the party's final three steps to the objective are accompanied by an award of 200 XP as each step is taken, something the characters can feel, maybe they're teleported somewhere else.

Point being this is designing backward: if you know what a successful end to the encounter looks like, you can start designing two things: what a failed end to the encounter looks like, and ways to get to the successful end. Knowing what failure looks like for static encounters like traps and similar is really important, because it means you have to work out whether the party's got one shot at getting this right, or else the entire campaign is dead. That may require you to look at what the purpose of the encounter is, because if you're going to create a no-BS, no-reload gate to the entire adventure on one trap, you should be working towards that as a climax of the adventure, not as a random trap the party runs into on the way. Parties can accept it - or at least accept more readily - if they TPK on the Big Bad. They don't quite accept TPKing to a pit trap, not unless they're conscious in some way that they chose to be here, it's a feeling akin to "Rocks Fall Everyone Dies" but without being presaged by the DM losing his dice over something a player said about his girlfriend/DMPC/both.

And if it isn't a Critical Mission Failure on failing to solve the trap, then you need to ask: what do I do if the party wants fails and wants to try again? What does that look like? As they say, if the party takes 20 on this sucker, what consequences flow from that?

Next thing to be asked: if you're going to create an encounter that needs player cooperation to overcome, you're going to need to disguise whether any element of it can be solved by a dice roll. This isn't easy to suddenly impose on the game so ideally you're not giving your players the idea that the dice are buttons they can push to solve issues, but designing the encounter will be important along those lines.

Don't expect the party to realise immediately that their skills are applicable. You may have to prompt them a bit: "Clooney, you recognise the phrase on the floor next to your tasselled boot. It says 'Speak friend and enter' in the tongue of Old Valyria. There seem to be a number of inscriptions in similar text, or a similar hand, all around the room. Damon, you can see the same text but it strikes you as pretty odd given the components of the walls that they would've used gold pixie blood as the ink - it doesn't stick that well..." They say you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink, welp, I say players often need to be within about two feet of a tsunami before they realise it might be H2O coming at them, don't assume high capacity for recognition, these guys are flat out just imagining your world and keeping their stats straight, try not to make it harder for them to think abstractly as well any more than you have to. Reward them with little tidbits of information when they realise something about the room or the trap, to encourage them to keep investigating further. Then when they do start going after the little bytes of information you've scattered around the room like dandruff, start asking them how they're doing that, to get them in the mode of visualising the surroundings.

I'll try and think of more.

[ciopo]

Will this be an online or an in person session?

For in person, having physically something the players can interact with to represent the rune thing progress can be both quite helpfull to their puzzle solving process, and also engaging.

I'm thinking something like, make little cardboard squares, with a blank side and a rune on the other, arrange them in a grid or a circle or a pattern/whatever. Tell your players they can flip a square to indicate they've turned on/off that rune. Maybe by voice tell them little "other" clues like how the third rune tile of the second row seems a bit loose, perhabs it could be pried out

Etcetera etcetera.


Doing this online is much more difficult to set up,but same thing.


Basically, do a videogame minigame :)

[Ramza00]

Make sure to include an intelligent golem, outsider, etc to do maintenance.

What are traps? Well just a form of an intelligent machine where the dungeon itself is alive, imbued with a sensing-soul a soul that responds to the premade desires of the former owners of the temple / dungeon / etc. Well the non mindless golem is merely the immune system which does temple repair, and maybe notice something else is inside the alive thing beside itself.

[Saintheart]

The other thing that an encounter needs is decision points.

Most encounters have at least some form of choice for the party, and that choice is usually either:
(1) pick one of several ways to resolve a conflict;
(2) choose which of several conflicts to solve.

If there's only one way to solve a problem, and the party knows how to do it, then there isn't a lot of choice left and an encounter should be over assuming there is no real element of chance to whether or not the party succeeds in its chosen method or not.

I think this might be why straightforward riddle encounters never really quite come off in D&D. Riddles have only one answer. Which means you've only got one conflict to solve ("The sphinx needs the correct answer to let the party go forward") and only one way to solve the conflict ("Guess wildly and hope the players appreciate clever wordplay enough to restrain themselves from throwing their PHBs at you when you reveal the answer was 'a duck'").

Change those parameters, and you introduce more decision points. You make the encounter more fun. Not every encounter needs half a hundred decision points, but the simplest way to make a riddle encounter more interesting is to give the player three buttons to press: "If you solve this riddle, you will know which button to press." This immediately then gives the players more than one way to resolve the encounter: they could try and work out the riddle, or they can brute force it by pressing one button after another. And you can then introduce different pros and cons for that approach: "Press the right button first time, you get a big hit of XP. Press the right button after a failed attempt, you still get through but you're drained a level. Press the right button after two failed attempts, you're dead."

One interesting way to introduce more decision points onto the good old rune-covered floor might be to start with one rune visible. When the players step on that rune, other runes become visible on connecting stones. Perhaps the runes spell out different messages depending which stone you step on. Maybe as you choose one rune, others disappear or go entirely inactive (although be careful with that since up to a point that's actually removing choices, not making more available.)

The rune-covered room doesn't just need a particular phrase to be worked out, it needs more than one method of working out that phrase -- if you're going to create an encounter that basically has only one way of being resolved. Me, I actually like the idea of the rune golem above or moving constructs and similar. These immediately give some possibilities for different ways of resolving the problem.

[Palanan]

So, I’ve been working on this encounter a little more, and need advice on how to adapt one specific aspect into game mechanics.

Before entering the room with the runes carved into the floorstones, the PCs will find a stanza in the standard Elven script, which the players should be able to work out. That will lead them to a specific word in Elven.

But the runes carved into the floorstones aren’t standard Elven—they’re in a different alphabet, derived from Elven but intended to be a simpler phonetic alternative, roughly approximate to how hiragana is a phonetic complement to Japanese kanji.

The challenge will be for the players to work out the phonetic values of the Elven hiragana characters, given what they know of the word, and then work out the correct path across the floorstones. But how can I present this in a way that’s both challenging and engaging, and doesn’t just rely on a couple of skill checks?

[MornShine]

Ah, the classic puzzle dilemma. Does the DM hand the players a sudoku puzzle and tell them to solve it, or allow them to make skill checks?

Crossword based on in-game history, which gets skill checks from characters to remember who that guy was and skill test from the players to rephrase "he wanted to rule the kingdom" to a eleven- letter word starting with an 's'?