Suddenly, A Hole

I remember visiting a geyser area in Iceland, and there were warnings about being careful where to step. The ground was fragile in places. If you stepped somewhere where the ground would give way, you would fall into an extremely geothermally heated pool of water and die instantly. I imagined how treacherous this landscape must have felt before it was transformed into a tourist destination. I thought about how it would be an evocative trap during wilderness exploration.

The most iconic of all traps is the spiked pit, which is a type of hole. The hole reveals all the pitfalls of designing traps. The original rules of D&D with its detect traps skill checks are an unsatisfying method of using the trap in play. Rolling to detect, and therefore avoid, a trap turns the trap into an HP tax, the trap is reduced to a game of attrition. By scrapping the detect traps skill check, we rely on the power of observation and reasoning of the players. From that gameplay design traps have a certain set of traits, all of which the hole easily illustrate.

Traps can be hidden but discoverable (a hole with false ground as the example of the geysers in Iceland), or they can be obvious, but the solution to overcoming them non-obvious (a gaping chasm).

The consequences of failing to avoid the hazard of the trap can vary from instant death (see again, geysers) to taking a modest amount of damage (it’s a 10 ft hole). For the sake of enjoyable game play, the more lethal the consequences the more the GM should telegraph that danger.

Traps can be used against enemies (they too can fall into a hole).

Traps can be trivialized with the right tools or abilities. The power of flight makes the hole no risk at all.

Traps can contain treasures. Perhaps another adventurer died at the bottom of the hole, and one can claim their ill-gotten gains for themselves, all one need to is descend into the hole.

Traps can be multi-faceted. One might think the trap is simply the hole, but as you descend via rope you discover spear traps that threaten impalement.

Traps can be secret opportunities. Sometimes a hole leads to the next floor of the dungeon.

What Does One Find in a Hole?

In my first campaign of Vaults of Vaarn I had one player who rolled up a new-mole character. While conducting overland travel and water rations dwindled, his solution was to dig to try and find an untapped source of water. Naturally I allowed this, but it meant eating up precious time, risking encounters, and finding water was not guaranteed. A reasonable ruling, but not very exciting. Vaults of Vaarn is supposed to be littered with the detritous of past societies. More appropriately, I have since constructed a basic table of what one might dig up in the blue Vaarnish desert.

Roll Quality Item
1 Nano Orbs
2 Toxic Bots
3 Prismatic Circuitboards
4 Transluscent Tokens
5 Electric Figurines
6 Hypergeometric Clothes
7 Quantum Pods
8 Disintegrated Limbs
9 Holographic Displays
10 Calcified Bones
11 Biolumenescent Masks
12 Fragile 3D Compasses
13 Ferro-steel Crystals
14 Fleshy Magnets
15 Cracked Data Recordings
16 Viscous Music Pipes
17 Radioactive Animal Remains
18 Invisible Dice
19 Fibrous Weapons
20 Cloudy Water