Common Sense Corner

[DerVVulfman]

Traps! 

Dungeons  and ancient tombs have Traps!  
Hallowed vaults of hiding, vile pits of entombed  relics, all have traps!

THEY ALL HAVE TRAPS!!!  Unless you see Starlord's stupid start in Guardians of the Galaxy.  What a knucklehead.

In the days of old RPG games of yore, your players had to actually envision things that their referee, the Dungeon Master (or Game Master) told them was present.  Are they in a darkened chamber lit only by torches along the walls?  Are they in the elegant dining hall of the manor with a crystal and ruby chandelier spreading light throughout?  Are they in a dank stone-carved hallway deep beneath the undercroft of the abandoned and desecrated priory?  And what do they see?  Monsters? Slime and muck? Ancient carvings with holes breathing air into the chamber?

OOPS, those holes feed poison into the room!  DID YOU STEP ON ANY TRAP PLATES IN THE GROUND?

Going through a game, the player needs to be challenged. And more often than not in many games, those challenges are monsters. They are pretty much assumed. You have a bad guy to face... beat him up!  Or her... The Borg Queen wasn't a guy, right?  However, there are two other challenges which may be encountered by the player, puzzles and traps.  Granted, sometimes those can be the same thing.

In old-style RPG games, traps fall into some simple categories, pit traps and dart traps.


Pit traps...

Pit traps may be a little hard, or perhaps boring, to have in an RPGMaker engine game.  A concealed pit should be some event that looks much like the surrounding floor, the map tiles discolored or altered in some manor for the player to 'possibly' notice. Or you may have need of a thief with a special 'skill' to Detect Traps.  Still, if you step on the tile, the player falls into the pit and *SPLAT*... suffers some damage.

There are issues with pit traps however.  They should be avoidable.  Does your game have the ability to let the player jump across?  Can you get to the destination by some other route?  How the hell do you get out of the pit!  This pit isn't a immediate Deathtrap one-shot kill!?

Trap Plates...

Ahh... Trap plates are simple events which can activate so many things.  In an RPGMaker game, this is a tactile event of some sort, made to look like a switch on the floor that MAY be visible, or it may be a beam of light, trip wire, or any number of items that the player may cross or be allowed to avoid.

When such a trap is sprung, it can produce one of a variety of lethal event-based nasties.  Gas clouds that move into the area that poison the player on touch.  Missiles that may shoot out at the unexpected.  Crushing boulders or walls that slide to crush the player.  Give the player some time to get out of the way, or make it as fast as hell to surprise them.

 

True enough, there are issues with Trap Plates and the death dealing results it brings.  Can the plates be seen and sidestepped, or jumped over?  Can you outrun the gas cloud event or missile event in time after the trap is sprung?

Disarming...

Ah, now that's something special.  You may want to be able to cross safely.  This is something that may be done simply by just pulling a lever, or hard to do if the lever or switch is concealed.

Just some ideas, right?

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THE SUICIDE SPHERE
LETHALITY:  High
MECHANISM: Crushing Pressure
FICTIONAL ENGINEER: Gloti Golpep the Gnome
REAL GAME ENGINEER: Kevin Vance © 2003

1.  Uh oh... what the hell is this, Joe Cocksure?
Some stupid boulder is blocking the passageway.
Now what?


2. Ha!!!  Way to put that  Strength to use, Joe.
If you can't go around it, simply push it down
the corridor. Brilliant!


3.  Ouch.  Talk about doing yourself in.
That's just evil.