Traps & Secret Doors

Torchbearer An Adventurer's Essentials
61

“Card” probably understates the length of the text involved. It also included steps for stripping of anything resembling loot. shrug It was ingeniously adaptive and exhaustive. I’ve seen other lists before on the internet even more extensive though that is in times long past and couldn’t provide a link.

Anyway, I think some of the incentive is taken out with Torchbearer, as description cannot generally be foolproof. It seems more that description becomes just the selection path, which thing gets Tested in which order? Although I find it really hard to make an assessment I have some sort of confidence in till I’m no longer under a 3 Squires moratorium. Also somewhat difficult to feel out the shape of it firsthand with a PC that lacks Scout. I try not to describe touch things and I’m leery of looking at things, least I bring ruin on the other PCs.

62

I didn’t think it was this bad. Ouch… I thought we did it when we had this sort of verbal routine for checking floors, ceilings and such.

If my players produced a card like that, I’d simply say “OK, each Greyhawk takes 3 Turns, roll for random encounters”. It’s really the only weapon against it, but it works in D&D as well.

63

It depends, in my estimation, on willingness of the GM and at least one player to continue escalation. This isn’t something that comes out of the blue, in my experience. So in that context the solution you present isn’t really addressing the root, it is another link in the oneupmanship chain. shrug

EDIT: Also “I bang my tin cup to get a Wandering Monster to kill.” Real thing. Go figure.

64

Ahh, I let the turns be burnt on stuff that wasn’t there, bad GM!! Bad!

65

(WARNING: long post, but has examples.)

I’ve been following this thread with interest since it concerns an general issue I’m trying to tease out as well. Luke’s comments a few pages back confused me and seemed to be at odds with Thor’s.

Let me tell you how I’m planning on running it, using a couple concrete examples, and maybe y’all can tell me if this is in the spirit of RAW—that’s my goal here.

In general, I’m running it the same way I run my current B/X-5e hybrid, which is:

  1. players enter a room and have a chance to look around

  2. I describe the salient features (appeximate dimensions, sense-info, obviously noticeable things)

  3. I wait to hear how they react and what they do (turning their questions into questions, which is excellent advice from the book)

  4. I provide more detailed information if available, ask what do you do?

  5. repeat steps 3-4 until a game mechanic is triggered, namely a trap or wandering monster check (which I roll if they’re taking forever asking me things, which usually doesn’t happen)

(6) it is possible that purely through description and interaction they will discover a secret door/trap and possibly also the way to overcome it. If so, then that’s what happens. Congrats.

(7) if not, they can move on or go to dice, using the base 1/6 chance per toon per turn to search, and if they get that 1/6 chance and they’re searching “in the correct area” (B21), then they find it. if not, then we move on. A character has only one chance (B21) to search for a secret door in particular area.

So that’s the Moldvay procedure, at least as I’ve been running it. Note two things: (1) if I get tired of them asking me things, that’s taking up at least the same amount of game time as real time, and so I’m advancing the turn clock and calling for those nasty wandering monster checks, and their torches are dwindling; and (2) one check per character per area.

Now, in Torchbearer, I’m thinking the RAW says to do the same thing (or at least allows the same thing to be done), with the exception of (5) since “wandering monsters” aren’t bound to game time, but I imagine the ref would be in his rights to say that pixelprodding should count as a Scout check and just make them go to dice.

The big difference, it seems to me, would be in step (7). Here, the players have a big choice to make. If they go to dice, then they KNOW something bad is going to happen on a miss. Someone’s going to get conditioned, or there’s going to be a twist. In Moldvay, if you search for two turns, one of your torches loses 1/3 of its life, and there’s a 1/6 chance of a WM. So it could all be pretty much fine. Not so in TB, and I like that.

The $10k question is: what is there’s nothing there? Just taking the success/fail rules as I understand them, here’s the situation when SOMETHING IS there:

SUCCESS: you find it. (Now how do you disarm/open it?)
CONDITION: you find it, but you’re tired, hungry, injured (from the trap going off or the door closing on your fingers)
TWIST: while you’re searching, the orcs come in carrying a still-living sheep on a skewer

On a twist, you don’t know if it’s there or not because you failed. That means, if you survive the encounter, you’ll have to make the decision about searching yet again, and by now you’ve burned at least one turn.

When NOTHING is there:

SUCCESS: you are really sure that nothing’s there, and you’re right (unless it’s magically concealed or otherwise impossible to detect by your Scout skill or what have you)
CONDITION: as above, but you’re angry that you wasted so much time on it
TWIST: while you’re searching, the orcs come in carrying a still-living sheep on a skewer.

In either case, a twist means you have no idea and either have to move on or start the procedure again, which is fine, because your resources have signficantly dwindled during this period. In other words, you’ve got more interesting choices now, even though you don’t really have any new information.

CONCRETE EXAMPLES
Here are two examples. They’re set up the same way.

Begin turn 1.

The party walks into the room. It’s 30x30 with murals on the wall that provide clues to the history of the place and maybe help out in the “final” room. There’s a dais at the far end, with a throne. A crystal ball is on a pedastal in front of it. Braziers line the red-carpeted aisle up to the dais.

The players ask about stuff. I give more info, probably making it up on the spot. There is no secret door, although the players suspect one might be on the west wall because of the way their map looks. There is a trap on the throne. It’s triggered by sitting on it. Blades will shoot up through holes in the pressure plate concealed by the seat cushion.

EXAMPLE (DOOR)
The party’s caller (ahem, Leader) says, let’s check the west wall for secret doors. I ask him what he does. He says tapping on the wall with his 10’ pole, kinda vague about it. I know there’s nothing there, but I call for a Scout check. He succeeds. He knows there’s not a secret door on the west wall.

Begin turn 2.

EXAMPLE (TRAP)
Now the party turns its attention to the throne. They are of course wary. After some interrogation, the warrior decides to toss the burglar’s cooking pot on the throne. (Is that heavy enough to trigger it? I either decide or randomly determine. We’ll say it’s not heavy enough.) Nothing happens. Warrior still suspicious. He puts the pole in the cooking pot and pushes down as hard as he can. Trap triggers. Cooking pot flies off the seat. No check. Still turn 2.

NOW THEN
Am I missing something here? Is this a valid RAW procedure?

66

Well, the most obvious thing to note is that if there’s nothing there, you don’t go to the dice. There’s nothing there. You don’t roll the dice and you don’t waste a turn and you don’t get a twist because there’s nothing to fail. So, no Scout check to find the secret door that’s not there. You just say, “you don’t hear anything unusual in your tapping”, and move on.

Otherwise, I think you’ve probably got everything else right.

67

Is there anything in the text that explicitly says you CAN’T conduct a Scout test if there’s nothing there? Or is that just a violation of the spirit of the rules?

68

I would say it’s a violation of the spirit, but in the strongest sense. I can’t recall an explicit statement that you can’t do that, but the way it’s described you wouldn’t.

69

So here’s a consequence if tests should only be called if there’s something there to find:

(1) If there is no check when searching thoroughly (but abstractly), then the players can say that they Greyhawk every room they come to. That’s not even a check. So you would end up always rolling Scout checks if there’s a secret in the area and they’re even the least bit in exploration mode.

(2) If you can’t search abstractly (e.g., no Greyhawking), you can still get into a space where players are going on forever telling you what they’re doing to the cracks in the mortar and not using up a check. (This also means you have to come up with a fictional mechanism with which the party can interact for every secret element on the map.)

Am I missing something?

70

Find a balance and put on the pressure. If the players just say “I search the room” you say “how?”. “I greyhawk the room” isn’t an adequate description of what they are doing. However, you should tell them there’s nothing to find will before they launch into their doctoral dissertation on the finer points of searching the mortar of the left brick toward the middle. I don’t see a problem with players saying “I continue down the hallway, walking carefully as I was before” if you know what that means, then you can determine whether that deserves the scout test or not. But don’t let them get away with that all the time. Aren’t there pressures? Aren’t there people to save, or rival adventurers also looking for loot, or monsters patrolling to dungeon, or any number of other things that could constrain their time and make them not want to advance perfectly all the time? If they are advancing very slowly and being meticulous then you have every right to spring a monster on them. It isn’t a twist, so they can react however they want, it’s just the natural consequence of their behavior. They weren’t doing anything risky, but they know there’s danger about. Does that make sense?

71

Yeah, it does make sense. But if you’re going to spring a monster on them for taking too long searching, I’m not sure that’s supported the rules. “Taking too long” doesn’t seem to be a consideration RAW because, within the limits of sanity, time is reckoned according to turns, reckoned according to tests.

All that to say, this may be a matter of preference, after all. I’m really wondering if the rules prevent a Scout test to find something that (from the player’s perspective) may or not be there, when they are describing a thorough procedure for checking a reasonably large, homogenous area, like a 40’ wall.

It’s actually a complicated issue regarding fictional triggers. In B/X, the fictional act of your searching a signficantly large, apparently homogenous area (e.g., “I search the wall, tapping with my pole and stuff”) triggers a mechanic that advances turns, with the cascades that triggers. It’s not dependent on whether there’s something there or not. If you only call for tests when there’s something there to find, the same fictional trigger sometimes triggers a test and sometimes triggers a “move along” by the GM.

NOW THEN!

These two procedures actually produce very different effects, and I’m thinking (unless corrected, and that’s what I’m hoping to nail down) that TB RAW can accommodate both procedures.

If it can, by the book, then the choice between the two approproaches is going to be determined by what the approaches do. If you only call for tests when there’s something to find, there is nothing I can see preventing the party from thoroughly searching every single item they encounter to ensure that they trigger the Scout test. It’s all done Greyhawkey. “Yeah, we’re checking all the walls as we go, just being really thorough about it.” Since in this hallway there isn’t a secret door/trap, then they can do that, and that’s what they do in the fiction.

But, if their fictional action of intensely searching a homogenous area triggers a test whether it’s there or not, there is a cost baked in to such actions in the game, which I think appropriately mirrors the cost in the fiction. Your searches are a resource to be managed, just like your carpentry-ing.

That’s the reason I’m so hung up on this issue, I think. There’s a fictional disconnect that doesn’t necessarily need to be there if the B/X-style procedure is retained; and, if that’s permitted by the TB rules, that makes me feel fuzzy on the inside. The downside to the B/X-style procedure is that, I suppose, it’s easier to miss treasure since you will, all things being equal, be less likely to search the area containing the secret item. But that makes me feel fuzzy on the inside too.

I really, really like TB. I’ve read the manual a few times now and should have a dungeon ready to go for my players this week. The only parts that bother me are those areas where I’m sensing a fiction-disconnect (e.g., scripting 3 actions rather than 1, which makes sense to me in BW/BE but not so much in MG/TB because of the different timescales involved).

To reiterate my central question: do the rules prevent a Scout test to find something that (from the player’s perspective) may or not be there, when they are describing a thorough procedure for checking a reasonably large, homogenous area, like a 40’ wall.

72

I think so, at the very least implicitly. Let’s look at what the rules say about tests:

So, characters are searching an area and you the GM know nothing’s there. What’s the problem to be overcome? What is the obstacle that they are testing for, and how are they besting it? I submit that “test Scout for something that isn’t there” fails this basic litmus test, isn’t an obstacle, and therefore isn’t tested for. I don’t believe “we don’t know if there’s a hidden feature in this room” and “so we’re poking around with our 10’ pole” is an obstacle/action pair any more than “we’re not over there, where we want to be” and “so we’re walking over there” is.

-B

73

The obstacle could be “I don’t know if there’s something hidden there, but I think there might be.” The obstacle could be construed as ignorance or suspicion or a hunch you want to confirm. The bit of difference I see between a scout check and walking across the room is that walking across the room is easy and will get you there 100% of the time, and that’s not the case for prodding a normal-looking wall with a pole for however long: maybe you pick up on the signs; maybe you don’t.

But I can also see where that might be considered a stretch.

Thanks so much for quote; that’s just the kind of thing I was looking for.

74

Always give the players information that leads to a new set of choices. If there’s no new information to be gained, there’s no reason to test. Simply describe what’s happening and move on. Once there’s a question of risk and discovery, figure out how to get the dice in there! (TB 117)

Guess it all depends on now you classify knowing if there’s a secret on that wall or not. I consider “there’s no secrets here” to be a new piece of valuable info, especially in a play style that features repeated visits to the same dungeon. Discovery = yes/no re: secret; risk = conditions from time spent or WM showing up.

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I honestly think there should be NO test if there is nothing there; fictional disconnects are something you need to worry less about, or at least approach in a different way, in this kind of game as compared to B/X. You are writing the fiction along with the players. There are lots of checks that can be triggered from searching a room; make sure you place traps, hidden treasures and such so that there are things to find. Torchbearer doesn’t work well with a large expanse of featureless dungeon, I’ve found - make each room have meaning. Make each test have meaning too. Finding out there’s nothing there is a really weak outcome for rolling dice and taking such a massive risk.

I think changing to your method will eat turns like popcorn, which is extremely punishing to the players in a game which is already punishing enough as it is. But, by all means, I think you should playtest this and see how it goes.

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Nothing in the rules say that if your characters describe themselves standing in a patrolled hallway for hours they can’t run into a guard until they make a test. Of course players actions have consequences even when there aren’t tests. Otherwise they would never set off a trap unless they scouted for it. Things can happen in the game as a consequence of non-player tests.

I’ll give you a very clear example of something form my own session. I had a character that was following a dog to find a lost boy. The dog at one point got excited and started running ahead. This wasn’t a twist, it was just what was happening. Could the character continue to search slowly for traps and somehow not lose the dog? No, of course not! Even though there was no twist, by not reacting to the fact that the dog is running ahead, the players agree to lose the dog.

It’s the same with those patrolling monsters. You tell the players that the hallways are dangerous and if they stay in one place for too long they will get attacked. Maybe they know someone is chasing or hunting them. You apply the pressure. If they take their time anyway, then you are perfectly justified in springing that pressure on them.

This. If there isn’t anything interesting about a room, it just isn’t a room, it’s a pathfinder check to the next actual room. Then again, there doesn’t have to be a trap or hidden treasure to make a room interesting. Still, if they describe searching and don’t find anything there’s nothing in the rules that would have them use up a turn or test.

77

jovialbard has it exactly, although I only use Pathfinder in the wilderness, not in dungeons.

78

right right, I suppose it would be dungeoneer in the underground then… I mix that up sometimes

79

Thanks for the clarifications, all.

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As you can probably tell from the length of the thread this is one of the more… revolutionary? unique?.. systems in TB, so it’s definitely on the top of a lot of people’s list of questions about how to run this game.