(http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs50/i/2009/336/f/c/Cobra_Trap_by_Concept_Art_House.jpg)
This image inspired me to suggest a new kind of randoms: trap randoms!
You don't need 2 minimum players to explore it. You just need to happen to fall into its way and GET TRAPPED.
The first one could be just like that: a hole of snakes prepared by some yuan-ti trying to capture new targets for sacrifices or maybe for increasing their numbers of tainted ones.
I am so very ready for this.
Fugue me now.
Regular explorables can be dangerous enough. Do we really need ones that only exist to kill players?
These sound like regular randoms. If you have an idea for a TRAP random or whatever you should just send it to DM's.
You walk into a little cave and it is nothing but a big empty room. There is a little bit of webbing on a wall with a big sack there. It looks like it might be a web victim. The area has no webbing other than that however. It seems like a singular incident.
Adventurers approach, greedy as they always are, to pilfer the remains of this sack stuck in the web when OH MY GOD IT WAS A SPIDER EGG-SACK!
The small cave was going to be the start of a new hive and this was the first sack! They were still a little underdeveloped and maybe needed another two or three days to hatch, but they are still spiders, albeit baby spiders. Like little shadow spider swarmings, but not shadowy. Just baby giant green spiders. And there are lots of them. Ten at first crawl out in a cloud of poisonous gas, then a round later another ten. Then five rounds later twenty pour out. Then ten rounds later FIFTY pour out. Small, easily squashed spiders. Hardly a threat but oh boy are there so many of them, and baby spiders are just as poisonous as adults. In the end they are defeated and this hive was squashed before it got the chance to grow into the dangerous giant spiders we are used to.
The adventurers look into the egg sack and realize that not all of them have been hatched. They get a dialogue option to squish the immature eggs and get a slight xp reward, or to harvest them, giving 1d10 Spider Egg-Sack items. Each of these are throwable summon items. When thrown a Spider Egg-Sack releases a small swarm (5) of spider hatchlings, hostile to everyone around them.
If I had the slightest toolset competence, I'd pounce on this inspiration for an explorable that initially entails nothing but the rope down, a massive treasure pile on the far end of the chamber, and a pit trap that spans the width of the passage.
The pit sends you to kobold trap hell.
Vengeanssssssse against warm-blood greed.
Fort Iron Dread V Knighthood Recruitment Center
You go in, but it is a trap! You fall down too far for a rope to pull you back from, though if you have a grappling gun you could shoot vertically enough to climb out.
You are in a room with six portcullis doors. One has a way up via stairwell, one has four levers that are operated by two goblins and their overseer. The other four, well, that is what is really troublesome.
The other four have monsters! One might be a dozen snakes, one might be a bear, the other might be a couple really pissed off rock lizards- like hissing and snapping little hellions. The goblins set this trap to test other goblins and force them into the ranks of Fort Iron Dread V's knighthood, but they just happened to find YOU instead, and they're going to have a little fun.
And you better kill them fast enough too. The first door opens, and all the other doors open after a set ammount of time, so if you're dallying about the goblins will just get bored and throw more enemies at you.
Now there are a few ways out, incase you are not able to handle this or the rest of your party doesn't come looking for their missing scouts. You can vertically grapple, or you can pick an easy lock to run up the stairwell, or you can break the door down. Killing the goblin overseer with ranged attacks will make the other goblins panic and fling all the levers, opening the escape but also opening all of the cages.
Or you can just wait in invisibility for all four cages and the escape to open then walk out.
You are walking somewhere in the Underdark, you find a hidden passage. Cheers, you're lucky, none spotted this before. Walking into it, you notice that it's all green and blooming with flowering fungi, fragrant spores and beautiful glowflies of all colors and shapes.
You notice that, for some reason, the passage you came from isn't accessible anymore. You don't fret yet, there must be a way out somewhere, such a beautiful place couldn't impose any danger... could it?
You walk further, a peculiar scent tickles your nostrils, you start to worry. Isn't that the scent of rotting flesh? Decided to get out of the place, you press further, the stench becoming less gentle to endure. Here and there, the bones of long gone creatures mix perfectly with the beautiful landscape of the place. You try to ignore them, advancing. Still, you cannot ignore them further when you hit a boneyard in the middle of a luxurious oasis, where all fallen creatures raise to make sure you join their numbers.
They're many, but manageable... and after a good while bringing them back to their rest, you notice that one of them got a beautiful pendant, which you might decide to scoop or not (it could have something paradoxal like animate dead and +4 Animal Empathy).
... the main idea of this suggestion is a place that has no way back other than going further and getting through whatever challenge you might be forced to face (some monster... puzzle or even quiet landscape)
You enter into a purple crystal cavern. Score, a random that won't murder you and might help you stock up! Wander on in and pass all the normal crystals. Those are just healing, not loot, after all. Some of them appear to be mineable. These are real crystals. You can actually mine them. The others... well that's not such a happy situation.
See instead of healing you when you touch them these crystals get really pissed off. Near the back of the cavern are some broken crystals with shard piles at the bottom, looking like normal lootable crystal shard piles, but when you touch it or any of the crystals it causes the area to come alive. Little Purple Crystal Shardlings spring up and start biting at your ankles! Nom nom nom nom nom, meaty mammal flesh and nutritious blood to water the plants that like to grow around the crystals. Die crystal defilers, die!
There are a lot of these little shardlings. When they die they poof in that aoe spell effect of cure minor, so they end up healing the shardlings around them as they explode. They're just so many and they don't hurt very much, but they do 1 point of positive damage when they strike, so you feel it.
And if you touch one of the non-shard crystals to try and recover from the shardlings while conserving your precious potions, well, then the crystal comes alive and you realize it was actually a Purple Crystal Knight waiting dormant and protecting the smaller crystals! Oh crap, now things are starting to get out of hand...
Of course, if you are an accomplished pillager and able to stand your ground against the wrath of pissed off Mother Nature you can carve into Her stony flesh and rip the crystals from Her body. Each slain Purple Crystal Knight might have a crystal you can take from the remains, and the little shardlings might have some leftover pebbles. And of course the mineable crystals are still A-OK.
Puppet Spider Quest.
Just that. This random is the Puppet Spider quest, and you have to go to the end to make your way out. Except instead of the puppet spider it is a tentacled aberrant corrupted spiderish monster with fifty tentacles and 20 eyes, and instead of skeletons it is zombie flesh-puppets that it is controlling via tentacles that sneak through hundreds of tiny little holes in the cave walls originating from its lair. A fleshy bubble of eyes and lumpy brain matter and tentacles suspended aloft by its burrowing grip into the rock, sensing the vibrations of all around it and manipulating its tentacles to peek an eye through here and there and snag new skin puppets to play with. Such a sneaky spy, you wonder how much information this thing has managed to learn from its time here. You might even have to fight off a weak little tentacle and some Entangle spell effects as it tries to make you into one of its puppets.
The tentacled master of this twisted maze is actually pretty hard and guards the main loot pile of the best pieces it took from its victims, so once you escape you might want to bring back friends to kill it. Optional more dangerous route. You can give it a miss to just escape though and pillage the small rewards from the corpses along the way.
You could of course run out to the end invisibly or stealthed, because just because it might be an easy little quest for melee doesn't mean your average wizard could happen to have the right spells for it, and it would be ooc'ly not fun to keep them trapped without any means of escape from a surprise event.
The Secret Library
You enter into a hole. But it's not a hole. It is actually a portal that takes you into a library that seemingly has no way out. Some malicious alien mind is studying you. You can feel its presence... You know it is watching you like a lab rat in its maze.
There are a number of different options here. Many ways out. Books, pedestals, orbs. A riddle or two secretly hidden within. A locked door with a combination. Some lorechecks.
You only get one choice though.
Different choices might have different rewards, or penalties, like a Curse spell applied to you. The alien creature studying you wants to provide positive reinforcement for the right decisions and negative reinforcement to help guide you on the right path. It is the only way to train an animal. Either way once you make your choice it completes a quest so that you can't go back into the 'hole' and make another choice during that reset.
Satisfied with studying your response to this bizarre situation the alien mind ejects you from this library chamber. Maybe it will find you again and see if you make the same choice next time, or try to understand how your primitive mind adapts to the situation... or, perhaps, if you learned from your last experience and are able to defeat its puzzle for good and destroy the mysterious master behind the curtain.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of OH MY GOD WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES!
Just a funny little gauntlet for a little comedic relief. You fall down a hole into some ruin and land on top of a pedestal, knocking over whatever was on it (Your treasure for the random. Pick it up!). An emote comes through about the place beginning to crumble. The pillars start to fall and rock traps pound all around you, though you're in the middle of the room and safe, for now. That would just be mean if you fell into a potentially insta death trap situation. That's the only mercy however.
There is one way out of this giant collapsing altar hall pedestal place thing, and a sign, with a dead body there.
"Why did it have to be snakes! AARRGGGHHHHH!"
Yes. The dying man took the time to write that. Even the AARRGGGHHHH!
You step on a trap by the body, and it is a snake! And lots of other snakes spawn in the room behind you. Like a LOT of snakes, but they are fat, and slow, and really scary looking. Better start running!
You race down the hall and step on more traps, and more snakes come out! They spawn behind you, just out of range of murdering you, but each trap you trigger is more snakes than before. The place is still collapsing though and the snakes are adding up! There are some alcoves along the way though.
An emote appears stating that you notice that this hallways is actually descending, and the snakes are starting to pick up speed as they slide down the ramp, but there is a rumbling too...
And similar to the trams quest a giant boulder comes slowly sliding down the hallway! It kills the snakes, but there are always more to appear. Sometimes there are more signs or amusing graffiti. Maybe even some interesting little tidbits of factual information too.
Eventually you escape with the little treasure that you knocked off the pedestal.
Meant to just be a fun little trap. No more dangerous than the trams quest, just a neat adventure. Gods help you if you are encumbered.
To add up on Rose's fat snakes Trap... a giant bolder comes rolling towards you, forcing you to speed up towards the exit.
Lucky you found the Wanderlust Amulet in the way out, which gives you 1 per day Expeditious Retreat (if you cared to stop by that skeleton that held a pretty amulet).
The Living Nightmare
This random is just a spooky little campsite. Nothing special, but it has a fireplace and a tent and counts as a resting area. There is no sight of anybody around though. Just an abandoned campsite.
Unless you rest.
If you rest there then once you 'wake' you find yourself in an utterly black area. Like Old Stones with the permanent Darkness impossible to see a damn thing right in front of your face black. There are lots of ambient scary messages like the Old Stones Curse and maybe some of the effects, but not the one that can permafear you and kill you from gouging yourself to death, because that was a little not fun and you had a choice to enter Old Stones or not- this is a trap though.
So you're in this pitch black area. There is whispering and general scaryness. It is absolutely horrifying. Every once in a while a tiny little rat might nip at you, or a ghostly mist-vision type apparition will appear right in front of your face, or you might hear a wail of the banshee shriek, or two random people might appear and kill eachother right in front of you. You can never be sure if you are imagining something, or if it is real, or if it is a benign threat or something serious. You might even have a minotaur appear around a corner and face you just to realize that it wasn't even real... But striking at the minotaur releases a Sleep effect, which might happen sporadically from the encounters within. But that's not the worst of it...
You realize you are trapped in the nightmare of whoever made that camp, but the worst thing about it all... That person has been trapped here long enough that he IS the nightmare. A Grue appears! It is super slow, but it follows you... forever... you might even end up having multiple grues. You never know when you'll round a corner and come into something else scary! You never know where a corner even is! You're trapped in this dark maze trying to find an escape from the nightmare. It's not particularly lethal, but it is very scary, and if you are in there for too long it can certainly become genuinely dangerous as more and more grues start to appear and you run out of safe places to hide from them.
And if you fall asleep by one of the nightmare illusions, well, that's just more time for the grues to catch up to you.
The Garden of the Fey
You stumble upon a hidden passage surrounded by a strange, glowing mist of spores and vapors... (ANOTHER ONE!)
... you decide to enter, after all, what could be of dangerous after a misty path (of course, you weren't around in EFU:M)?
As soon as you come in, giggling emotes pop here and there and the first scary encounter: the vision of a worg comes out and starts, "sup, Imma worg!". Your eyes pop out, but soon you calm down, after all, it's nothing, just an hallucination. Maybe it's just the spores filling the place.
You walk further, the fog becomes thicker (if it's even possible). Now and then, the colors of the mist change and new visions pop in. Stories of the past, visions of nightmares of the incoming future, spoilers of next chapter and misleadings about how Old Port is getting that tower quest released soon or that ninelives finally finished that Castle's loottable.
Then, out of the blue, a sound of footsteps coming from behind you! It's yourself that comes, ready to strike you down with your own set of powers (and maybe loot). Lucky you, it doesn't seem as good as you in fighting and soon you manage to put the apparition down.
Now and then, the mist turns blue and you notice that it weakens your mind focus (Mind Fog) or it confuses you (Cofusion spell traps)... sometimes it makes you blind (Blind/Deafness)... or attacks you with any other scary enchantment spell while another apparitions of yourself (and companions) pop here and there.
There are three possible ends for this walk, only one of them holding anything decent for you hungry looter. The other two have more dangers or just some comedic surprise about some neat lost lore of the server that you will walk away with not sure about what to do about it. Maybe a fourth and rarer exit could randomly give you a permanent physical change in fey prank style.
Give that one the deer that Jessica Valerios met also. The one she wanted to give the Thayan Firelord Crown to and name her champion.
A random deer walks out of the mist and says "Hello (name here)." then after a few seconds it just explodes in a mountain of meaty gore.
Oh... I like that idea, Rose!
What about the dream Miranda had as well?
Out of the blue, a familiar old lady comes and offers you a tankard of ale. You accept it automatically, so confused you are. Then you drink it and before you understand what is going on.... the crone starts cackling and YOU EXPLODE. Blackout comes and you wake up afterwards... confused, but still whole.
Machine based area trap random
You enter this hatchway, but it is a trap, and you fall into a cage. All around you there are scrappers and other miscreants. Vapors rise from the grates beneath them. Some of them are glowing, then they start throwing paint bombs, then they start killing eachother. After a few rounds in this cage with everybody randomly murdering eachother around you the cage walls lower into the floor. As soon as this happens though giant glowing green blobs of Substance start to surge up from the grates on the opposite side of the room.
You can either join in the murderfest and try to scavenge what you can from the bodies before the Substance oozes consume them or you can just bolt for the door. More and more Substance cubes keep spawning until they would begin to fill the room in entirety.
I'm not sure these would be a great idea. Random explorables already carry some pretty high dangers to them, so it is not like there isn't a good amount of risk versus reward when you see a hole pop up out in the wild. Encounters that are designed to trick or 'get' players are very rarely satisfying from the player's perspective. Plus, another big problem is that try as we might to not metagame, it is something that we do. Once you've seen a 'trap' explorable you'll recognize it and either effortlessly disarm the situation in it or just avoid it if the reward isn't worth it.
Efu is a pretty rough place and while a certain adaptation to that is required, imagine being a new player whose first explorable is designed to kill/seriously muck them up. The worst feeling for a player trying to get their bearing is that there was nothing they could have done to avoid their death.
That is exactly why all of the traps are less dangerous than leaving Sanctuary and have non-combat options :) Much less dangerous than a normal random area, but a bit of a surprise to mix things up so that you can't anticipate so easily what you are getting yourself into.
I am watching this thread.
My, my, the toolset is open.
Alas, you're not allowed to discuss here!
Just suggest awesome stuff like Miss Rose! :D
Quote from: Sankis;381411Regular explorables can be dangerous enough. Do we really need ones that only exist to kill players?
This. What's being described here is, bluntly speaking, fake difficulty. Artifical or fake difficulty is a 100% random act of "you're boned because reasons". Not even critical hits fall into this category because you can still reasonably assess the danger of a crit off of observation of enemy AB and damage, and heal accordingly.
To reference a popular game based on difficulty, a large part of why Dark Souls is so popular is because while it may be crushingly hard at times, it is never unfair. Risk is always in the player's hands. Trap explorables, as described, fail to meet this standard of game design.
Satisfying difficulty is about choices.
the corgi hath spoken
Foolhardy sprinting through the wilds might just cost someone their life? Who ever would have thought such a thing could occur.
Suggestion made, this is not a discussion thread. Take it to IRC.