Telegraphing Danger

“The more dangerous something is, the more obvious it has to be.” - Chris McDowall (designer of Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland.)

• The best part of a trap is when the players discover a way to circumvent or annul it. Players overcoming challenges through clever play is the best part of D&D. This is even better when their actions are not anticipated by the referee.

• The worst part of a trap is when it feels unfair.

I believe these are the reasons that many referees have adopted the rule that danger must be “telegraphed”, especially that the existence of traps must be declared by the referee.

Announcing traps as an automatic procedure removes the chance of adverse unfairness toward player characters. This allows players to skip straight to attempting to solve the challenge of each trap.

Simplifying a procedure or mode of play without loss of anything of value is elegant. For some referees and for some groups, immediately declaring the existence of every trap when it is neared is elegant. For me though, telegraphing traps in this way is not elegant, though it is attractively straightforward.

Perhaps risk should only exist when players don’t play optimally. If so, announcing the existence of traps would appear to be the best option, maybe even the only reasonable option. Adverse effects should only appear when players reach a failure state caused by a poor decision.

However, announcing traps removes an entire aspect of play, that of avoiding traps. If players will always sense the presence of a trap, the only ways to spring it are by either • deciding that it is not actually dangerous and transgressing the trap intentionally or • fiddling with it incorrectly

Neither of these situations were intended by whoever placed the trap. A trap is designed to inflict harm upon trespassers without warning or to inspire such fear that they turn away from the trap altogether. If the trap is completely obvious, it’s probably a trick, not a real trap. Ten foot poles, torches, rocks, and marbles are excellent tools for detecting traps that are actually functioning as traps, as undetected things waiting to be detected.

Traps are telegraphed a little just by being placed inside of a dungeon. Dungeons want corpses. The traps are telegraphed even further by making the area that they are in somehow different than an area that is not trapped. When the floor is tiled, when the hallway narrows, when the hallway is too long, when a closed room smells of sulfur, the trap has telegraphed itself without any special help from the referee. The referee only needs to portray the area fairly, not to telegraph anything extra. Players will learn to use tools, to ask questions, and to investigate – if their hands aren’t held too tightly.