Any help with some death traps?

[hawkfu]

Hi, my heroes will track down the Prankster hiding out in the shut down Playland Arcade. However, the villain of course is prepared for them and has a series of traps/challenges waiting for them.

 

Any suggestions on 3-4 arcade themed traps to run some heroes through?

 

Thanks in advance for reading this post!

[JmOz]

Giant pinball machine is classic

 

Whack a mole could be fun

[Comic]

Funhouse Mirror that Summons distorted opposite equals is a classic trope too.

 

Tunnel of Love.. 'nuff said?

 

Expanding Candy Floss entangles.. Candy Apple grenades.. Popcorn that teleports you randomly up into the air if it pops onto you?

 

Shooting Gallery that shoots back..

 

Do you have a speedster? Can they run fast enough to stay above the whirling scythes at the bottom of the Roundabout?

 

Change Environment.. of.. some.. appropriately arcadish type.. Like shaking the pinball machine of rolling death?

 

And of course giant fuzzy sweet cuddly stuffed robot animals with claws and fangs.

 

Bottle toss, where the heroes find themselves inside power-negating glass bottles they have to use their skills to work their way out of.. particularly those non-combat, character skills like KS: trivia, eg.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

 

I heard the magic word--deathtraps!

 

This depends upon what kind of death trap you are looking for. Perhaps you want   ...

 

• Ambush Trap, where the seemingly normal environment turns deadly
• Hostage Trap, where two victims are captured and one must do something to free one or both of them
• Execution Trap, where the victim has been captured and placed in a situation that leads to their inevitable death

There are others, but these seem most apropos. I'll give some ideas for each

 

Ambush Trap: Clowns. Clowns everywhere. Even harmless clowns up the terror level. Plus they sucker in the victim for the actual deadly clownbot, exploding clown, clown on fire, etc.

 

Hostage Trap: You know all those impossible games on the midway? One has win one of those to free the other. For example, Flukey Ball, or the Ball in the Bucket Game, where you have to get a softball to land squarely in a basket without bouncing out. Except this trap sends an electric shock with every miss. And don't forget, the game is gaffed (rigged).

 

Execution Trap: A great midway flavored trap is the acid filled Dunking Booth. The victim is bound and gagged sitting atop a trapdoor that will release when the lever is hit by a baseball. Shooting baseballs is a wild pitching machine that throws balls in any random direction. One will connect eventually, though. It's just a matter of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Philosophically, the death trap works this way: if you just straight up kill a hero, then you're instantly marked for death by 800 other superheroes from around the world.  You are set apart from other villains by your actions and behavior and everyone knows and understands that.  So the death trap is the "fair play" version of taking out a foe.  You give them a chance, and if they don't make it, well it annoys the other heroes, but they don't put you on the list.

[Cassandra]

A cotton candy machine that explodes coating it's  victims with a sticky entangle that is slowly suffocating them.

 

A hall of mirrors where their own imagines attack them.

[hawkfu]

I want to thank everyone who has responded - really great suggestions and advice!

[megaplayboy]

[freakboy6117]

Country bear jambogeddon ferocious ursine combat robots armed with sonic blaster weapons

[Christopher R Taylor]

From the old Champions mailing list on email:
 

First, a little background info on the trapped character in question.  He's a scientist who had had been doing a little 'recreational chemistry': he gained his powers as the result of an overdose of an experimental hallucinogen.  This overdose also give him a 'vision' of being in Hades and having conversations with various Greco-Roman gods.  When he awoke, he found that he was super-strong and could fly.  So he became Oraclese, research scientist and herald of the gods.  As you can probably guess, he's a little loony.

 

Anyway, Oraclese awoke (after being captured by agents with really big guns) inside some sort of container, packed in by balloons.  He couldn't move much without the risk of popping a few, but there was enough light that he could see that there were six different colored ballons: red, white, clear, pale blue, pale yellow, and black.

 

He realized after a couple of minutes that his air was running out, so he started popping ballons.  He popped (at random) a clear one and was greeted by a breath of fresh air.  Further movement and experimentation revealed that the white ones were full of helium (his voice jumped two full octaves), the yellow ones were full of chlorine (which was bad, because he takes double damage from chemical attacks), and the red ones were filled with some gas that floated but didn't seem to effect him otherwise.

 

He managed to get to the outer edge of his container and found that he was in a glass cylinder.  There was a wire attached from the top of his cylinder to the ceiling many meters above, and the ceiling was covered with pipework of some kind.

 

Anyway, it was at about this time that he popped a blue ballon, which gave him a face full of nitrous oxide, which set off a flashback. (Aren't disads great fun?)  He thrashed about for a bit and broke several ballons, including (just as he came out of the trip) a black one.  He detected a scent of almonds (which meant cyanide gas) and deduced that he had to get out of that jar fast.  [important thing to note here: he's now figured out what's in all the balloons except the red ones.]  So he broke the glass.  This is roughly the conversation that followed when he did it:

 

"Three things happen when you break the glass.  First, the glass shattters, which pops most of the rest of the ballons."

 

"Oh well, I can't do anything about that."

 

"Second, the wire from the top of your jar goes slack, and the pipes above you start putting out flame."

 

"Okay..."

 

"Third, several panels in the floor open, releasing hundreds of red balloons that begin to float toward the flames above."

 

The look of realization that crept across his face was just classic:

 

"Hydrogen...@$*(!" 

[pinecone]

Fun house mirror maze, plus Laser death rays. Classic. Hostages in explosive rigged Bumper cars, at least one is a DNPC of course.  Escape from Roller Coaster of DOOM! Win stupid unwinnable carnival games to keep hostages alive! That's all I got for now...

[freakboy6117]

how about a maze composed of matte black walls with neon blue top and bottom edges suspended at equal distances through out the maze are glowing balls of light.

 

your heroes are perused throughthe maze by hovering brilliantly colored phantasms something like jelly fish impervious to all of there attacks until they aquire one of four larger hovering energy spheres that make the phantoms solid enough to attack for a limited time

[Cassandra]

Trapped in a bumper car and every time you hit another car you get an electric shock.

[BoloOfEarth]

I like the bumper car idea, with a twist. 

 

Hero comes out of a maze into a bumper car room.  Say this one is for a non-flying PC, so he can't just avoid the floor, which is of course electrified.  Two exits:  one just large enough for a person to slip through (leading to the final goal), and the other big enough to allow bumper cars to exit the room.

 

A dozen or so other bumper cars are tooling slowly around the room, each with a bound civilian or two duct-taped to the seat inside.  Another (empty) car waits for the hero's use.  Each time a car hits the wall or another car, the passenger receives a shock.  (The longer it takes to clear them out, the stronger the shocks.)  And every now and then, steel spikes shoot down from above.  It's just a matter of time before one comes down and skewers a civilian.

 

The Prankster's voice comes over the PA, saying that the hero has to "bump" the civilians out of the room using the provided bumper car.  The larger exit slopes down to safety.  The Prankster promises it's safe (and you can trust him, right?).  If the hero cheats, the exits will close and the Prankster fills the room with poison gas.  Cheating includes:  removing civilians from cars, somehow stopping the spikes, moving the cars to the exit by means other than bumping, and being not at least this tall to get on this ride.

[Comic]

This reminds me of a story I tell way too often. A Champions story, at that.

 

Captain Crunch was the amnesiac alien brick (think a lobotomized Ronan the Accuser struggling to fill in the missing bits of his proud military heritage by modelling on Danny Kaye from White Christmas, the cast of MASH, a marching band, Catch 22 and the Village People) I was handed at the start of this undersea death trap dome of the Crimson Craw, who had all our DNPC's as helpless hostages.

 

The five heroes' job was to pass through seven death trap rooms demonstrating teamwork, self-restraint, and guile over raw power. Crimson Craw (yes, everyone had an alliterative name in the adventure, except the grim, brooding superdetective Hooded Cliche who just had to be different) was closely watching the proceedings from his secret control room 'somewhere on the planet' via floating cameras with boom microphones that trailed the team everywhere, under Crimson Craw's control.

 

One of these rooms required a key found at the far end of another side room.. A side room designed to amplify any sound within it a billion trillionfold.. (which it turns out, is a lot) and turn it back at the source of the sound. As his name indicates, the sonic-vulnerable Captain Crunch was obviously not the one to navigate this particular test. While Crimson Craw taunted the heroes from a floating viewscreen, obviously paying close attention to everything, listening with a pair of high tech electronic earplugs clearly of his own diabolical design, Hooded Cliche engaged his ninja-trained stealth and closed himself in the room by very, very carefully closing the soundproof door.

 

We all sweated as roll after roll Cliche went step by step the length of the room and back.

 

Then Captain Crunch, careful alien observer of humanity (as he was objective about human foibles), exploited the Crimson Craw's obviously overdeveloped sense of curiousity. Crunch whispered, very low, to the camera. He had a secret to reveal about his team mates. But he had to say it verrry. verrrry, verrrrrrry quie --- BOOM! 

 

Captain Crunch waited until he saw Crimson Craw adjust his earphones to their maximum, shoved the camera-microphone into the sonic trap, and slammed the door on the room with his full 50 STR.

 

The lights went out. The others in the team cheered and jumped up and down in glee. The two co-GMs, gape-jawed, called a recess in the action -- which had been done real time up to then -- to confer. You see, they hadn't expected anyone to kill the fragile and elderly Master Villain, who was in lone control of the whole death trap from the booth on the far side of the paper-thin wall from the corridor we had been circling the whole time.. and who also had a vulnerability to sonic attacks.

 

In my own defense, it had been a terrifying, engrossing, completely engaging session with four strangers and two of the best GMs I'd ever met, in a finely crafted module they'd spent years perfecting.. We'd almost all taken BODY damage (except Hooded Cliche, who just had to be different), and we'd barely defeated several of the death traps. There had been rhyming couplets as clues to each room, full of hideous puns.

 

There was the floor covered with six-sided tiles, each side numbered one through six, and the clue that rhymed "die" with "pie" to challenge the entrants to the one of five exits that wouldn't kill them all, by the one exact path that wouldn't kill them all. There was the room with the ceiling that not only lowered, but screwed down, so even a child could unscrew it, but not even Captain Crunch could stop it straight on. In the one room a few of the team goofed off, we almost all got a bit skewered by 60' long syringes with rapier-sharp acid-filled needles six inches in diameter.

 

So you can imagine lobotomized Ronan the Accuser getting a little .. vindictive.

 

Still, the GMs badly wanted to see us get through the module they'd slaved over, so they ruled Crimson Craw had 1 BODY remaining and when he regained consciousness was only too eager to run us through the rest of the death trap.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think I would have deliberately gotten myself killed rather than go through the torture of that whole thing.  One or two tricks I can live with but an entire multi-part gaming adventure entirely made up of them?

[Cassandra]

Straggled by Balloon Doggies.

[pinecone]

Trapped in a bumper car and every time you hit another car you get an electric shock.

This   Make the shocks powerfull enough to kill normal, and add DNPCs to flavor. Heroes must get rammed to protect hostages.   They could surely escape, but Marion is about to get bumped!

[pinecone]

Hostages are blindfolded, and dressed in pin covered suits, they must navigate a maze of poison gas filled balloons. The hero watches on a view screen, and can communicate by microphone.

 

"No Your left!"

[hawkfu]

Hostages are blindfolded, and dressed in pin covered suits, they must navigate a maze of poison gas filled balloons. The hero watches on a view screen, and can communicate by microphone.

 

"No Your left!"

 

I love the bumper car ideas! Great stuff.

 

I have one room - the Balloon Room with multi-color balloons. Each color releases a different thing - poison gas, a tanglevine that expands and wraps around the hero, an explosion...The door out reflects attacks back at the hero. I'm counting of knockback being really fun here...

[Nothere]

Test your strength games that fire the weight at people with a ding.

 

Tilt a whirl that whirls out your insdes.

 

Parachute drop ontoeither giant spikes, or flames.

 

Roller Coaster rigged to blow when you hit the third loop of the loop de loops.

[pinecone]

Shooting gallery, the backstop is lined with hostages, so each time the hero is missed a hostage is faced with Doom! If the hero crosses the deadline (gets close to the firing line) several autofire weapons will all fire at once! This only good if the hero is not totally bullet proof though...

[pinecone]

DNPC on parachute ride, rigged to electrocute him/her when they land, at the same time a Roller coaster full of hostages begains a trip that will end in death! Time to choose.