DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 41E: Return to the Lower Nests

By the time Agnarr had forced the board aside, Tee had joined him. She ducked through first, finding the ratlings waiting with another volley of fire that she narrowly dodged.

If she worked her way carefully down the tunnel in an effort to avoid the traps she knew were waiting, the ratlings would tear her apart with their rifle fire. Throwing caution to the wind, Tee threw herself down the hall – trusting to her instincts and reflexes to avoid the seemingly never-ending stream of dangers.

In Rulings in Practice: Traps, one of the advanced techniques I discuss is combining traps with combat encounters to make them more dynamic and fun in play. It’s a tip you’ll find — either implicitly or explicitly — in a bunch of GMing advice. But if you’re wondering exactly how to do this effectively, you can see on simple recipe for success in the current session: Position the traps as a dilemma gauntlet.

1. Fill a space with traps so that moving through that space becomes a dangerous gauntlet.
2. Put some or all of the bad guys on the far side of that gauntlet.
3. Give the bad guys the ability to attack the PCs while they’re on the far side of the gauntlet or moving through it. (This doesn’t have to be terribly fancy; any effective ranged attack will get the job done.)
4. Make the PCs aware that the traps exist. (Which may simply be accomplished when the PCs trigger the first trap and realize it may not be the only one.)

The PCs will now be faced with the simple dilemma of rushing through the trapped area (unleashing the fury of the traps) or trying to work their way carefully through the trap by detecting and/or disabling them (but also enduring the attacks of their enemies).

And here are a few ways to make things even nastier:

• Have some of the trap effects push them back to the beginning of the gauntlet. (Or set things up so that the NPCs can do the same.)
• Stock the gauntlet with traps that reset. (This prevents, or at least complicates, the strategy of having one character brute force their way through as a human mine detector, clearing the path for the rest of the party behind them.)
• Create the gauntlet in multiple stages, such that — when the PCs penetrate the first stage of the gauntlet — the bad guys can fall back through another section of traps and present them with the same dilemma all over again. (Or, rather than having the bad guys move from one stage to the next, simply position different groups of bad guys between each stage.)

Use them to season your dilemma gauntlet to taste.

You can set up dilemma gauntlets like this when you prep an adventure, but one of the great things about the simple dynamic of this setup is that it’s easy to deploy during play when you’re using adversary rosters to actively play the opposition in a scenario: Simply make note of where traps are located in the complex, and then have your bad guys position themselves to take advantage of them (or even lure the PCs into the gauntlet).

Even more fun is that the PCs can almost as easily create their own dilemma gauntlets: Once they learn where the traps in a dungeon are located, they can similarly force bad guys into the gauntlet. This may work less well, of course, if the bad guys know where the traps are located, but just knowing the traps are there may not help much when you’re getting pelted by ranged attacks.

Creating a dilemma gauntlet can also be useful when you’re restocking a dungeon area to reflect defensive measures being taken by the inhabitants: While the PCs are taking their long rest, the abeil are buzzing away setting (or resetting) layers of traps to help them defend the hive.

Campaign Journal: Session 42A – Running the Campaign: TBD
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Ptolus: Running the Campaign – Inside the Campaign Journal Ptolus: Running the Campaign – The Traps That Move You Ptolus: Running the Campaign – Bond. The Opposite of Bond.