Trap Design?

[Talya]

Anyone know of any good DM guides to interesting dungeon trap designs?

[ericgrau]

http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/traps.htm
Also in the DMG.

That's a great starting point IMO. Much better than the standard vanilla traps. Especially check out "elements of a trap", not just the example traps. There are 100 interesting elements rather than "search, disable device, move on <yawn>". For example, a trap with a bypass mechanism involves might involve no disable device check at all. Also note that you don't need to be a rogue to find a non-magical trap, and search checks might involve taking a 10 or 20 or searching an entire region over several rounds (rather than declaring every single object). And one part of the trap (trigger/mechanism/business-end/bypass/etc.) might be here, another part might be there, etc. Setting up traps like this provides something fun that everyone can get involved in, rather than being stuck waiting for the rogue to roll dice over and over again like a slot machine of death, striking an un-fun balance between paranoia and boredom.

[Talya]

http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/traps.htm
Also in the DMG.

That's a great starting point IMO. Much better than the standard vanilla traps. Especially check out "elements of a trap", not just the example traps. There are 100 interesting elements rather than "search, disable device, move on <yawn>". For example, a trap with a bypass mechanism involves might involve no disable device check at all. Also note that you don't need to be a rogue to find a non-magical trap, and search checks might involve taking a 10 or 20 or searching an entire region over several rounds (rather than declaring every single object). And one part of the trap (trigger/mechanism/business-end/bypass/etc.) might be here, another part might be there, etc. Setting up traps like this provides something fun that everyone can get involved in, rather than being stuck waiting for the rogue to roll dice over and over again like a slot machine of death, striking an un-fun balance between paranoia and boredom.

I've seen that...i'm thinking more from a standpoint of the puzzle aspect...so it's more than just stats. They still need to roll their search and disable device skills, but I want them to think, too.

[Jack_Simth]

I've seen that...i'm thinking more from a standpoint of the puzzle aspect...so it's more than just stats. They still need to roll their search and disable device skills, but I want them to think, too.

There's a couple of catches with that...

First: if you're doing that, you're weakening the Rogue. If the trap doesn't go away with Search/Disable Device, then the Rogue's Trapfinding ability is effectively worthless.
Now, if there is no rogue in the party, that's not a problem.

Second: There's a very strong tendency with puzzle traps for the DM to create a single solution, and punish all others. This is bad - it means that unless the party thinks the same way you do, they're stymied - which gets dull. Let your planned bypass work, let creative solutions work ("skill" solution - perfectly reasonable, as almost nobody builds something they can't get past, simply because they'll want to bypass it occasionally themselves), make sure there's a few "people" in the area that know how to get past ("diplomacy" solution - after all, if this has been there a while, somebody will have come and gone at some point; hidden, written instructions or keys also fit here), and do remember that pretty much anything can be bashed down ("brute force" solution - after all, almost nothing is indestructible). Make sure there's at least one solution of each type.

As for what to do?

Well, there's always the monkey trap (stuff that looks like it ought to do something, when in fact the door is just a door, and the stuff isn't related at all).

There's the combination lock of any number of natures (a chess game, left unfinished, with a single move to make it checkmate; a set of pillars that work like the game "light's out" where you need to make all of them down; an actual combination lock).

There's the riddle lock (there's a poem on the door, which is a riddle of some kind - saying the word the riddle "suggests" causes the door to unlock itself).

[Raum]

When it comes to puzzles, make sure they're puzzles for the character and not for the player. It's character interaction you want in an RPG after all. But simple rolls for the rogue aren't enough either. That's simply pass / fail busy work with little of the character interaction we like to see.

I highly recommend reading Ben Robbins' Bad Trap Syndrome and Curing the Bad Trap Blues. He makes a case for creating interactive traps instead of simply pass / fail. One of the easiest ways is to remove the surprise. It may sound counterproductive but it works. It changes the game from "check every five foot square" to "there's a trap - how do we get around it?"