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Older players who look at the D&D 5E rogue would be forgiven for thinking traps aren’t in the game anymore. In fact, throughout the 5E Players Handbook, traps are given less attention than in previous editions. But that doesn’t make them any less important to the game, or any less tricky for the DM to get right.
D&D Traps require the DM to walk a fine line. Balance them right, and your PCs will find themselves in a world of trouble that’s entirely their fault. But overdo it, or make traps too randomly deadly, and the party can slow to a crawl as they check for traps every 5 feet — cursing the DM the whole time.
Deathtraps are a dungeon classic, but the best traps cause chaos more than straight kills. Before you line the entryway of your fort with lightning runes, are you sure the people living there can get in and out themselves? Do these traps even make sense in the dungeon you’re running?
You want a trap to engage your players in some kind of problem-solving. In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they build hazards that up the mayhem and force layers to solve problems, without reducing traps to two rolls to avoid random death … at least not too often.
2:00 Do traps still fit into modern, encounter-heavy, exploration-light D&D with its murder rogues?
7:00 Your traps should make sense in the world and the environment, and also at your table
11:00 What do good and bad traps look like? Would you want to live next to it?
14:00 Do you want the party checking for traps every 5 feet? How careful do you want them to be?
19:00 What’s the goal of your trap makers?
27:00 Tony’s favorite traps: The Mirror of Opposition, Glyphs of Warding
29:00 Dave’s favorite Traps: The no-trap trap, the stone wall that splits the party
34:00 Aside: Handling magic weapons with unarmed PCs or PCs with specific weapon needs
40:00 Cursed treasure and the Lich that faked his death to let the party TPK themselves
44:00 “That was on us!” What good traps teach the party
45:00 Bad Traps: Revisiting the Murder House debate and the salt it left on the table
51:00 Bad Traps, Marvel Edition: The “Big Bomb” with multiple fail states and what it taught the PCs
58:00 Traps that create chaos and disadvantages for monsters to exploit are better than instant death
64:00 Trap specialist classes vs. D&D 5E’s approach where anyone can find/disarm traps
72:00 Final thoughts
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How do you create your own RPG campaign from scratch? Do you build a railroad straight through the story, or an open world for the players to explore in their own way at their own pace? Or do you do what DM Dave does, and try to split the difference between a tight story and an open world without getting lost along the way?
In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they build their campaigns, from what they want to accomplish to how they prepare week to week. Along they’ll way, we’ll look at how the different styles affect the players and their game experience. And we’ll discuss whether or not, in the end, they’re really all that different?
2:00 3 Different styles of campaign building
3:00 Building Dave’s Halloween railroad to Weird New Jersey
5:00 Adjusting BBEGs for player level
10:00 Building Woodstock: A border town on the edge of MADNESS
12:00 Is there really that much difference between paying in an open world and tight story-focused adventure?
17:00 How players must find their way in an open world (and some freeze up)
24:00 Can player characters REALLY have agency in a pre-built adventure?
33:00 The “No” reflex: How DMs react when players try to do big, cool (campaign ruining?) things
41:00 The limits of memory: One advantage straightforward, story-focused games have over open worlds
44:00 How even open-world games see their paths narrow to a railroad as the game goes on
48:00 Gaming outside the box: What does a truly player-driven campaign look like?
52:00 Pacing, technology and the great fear of coming up short
59:00 Who defines a PC’s role in the story, the DM or player? (i.e. Who wants to be a sidekick?)
63:00 Player agency on the large scale: How the campaign unfolds, not just encounters
68:00 1st level to 20th in 3 months: RPG timelines are weird
76:00 How we build our campaigns and prep for sessions week by week
85:00 Final thoughts
