"Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

[Wormhole]

Ah, the deathtrap...a staple of classic supervilliany. What evil scheme de jour is complete without the opportunity to cackle maniacally as you dunk the heroes in a tank full of ill-tempered mutated seabass?

 

A question to all the GMs out there: Have you ever had one of your villains put the PCs into a deathtrap? And if so, what kind? And how did the PCs escape? (always assuming they did escape...)

[pinecone]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

My fav was PC on small island in big tank, sharks in water....NPC tied to chair on other island, with ticking time bomb. PC has "Turn into metal" powers

Can't swim if armor is on, can't rescue NPC if can't swim...cue jepardy music... Yeah he was fine...Hero and all...

[Comic]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

I've been placed in more than one deathtra.. oh.

You mean in game.

I once was presented with a hex map of a room where each side of each of the hexes were labeled with a seemingly random digit, and the room had six doors out.

The clue was a rhyme. "Crossing this room is easy as pie. Take one misstep and all of you die."

Without missing a beat, the first character marched across the hexes labelled 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9 and out, rapping, "You can't corner us in a round room, with weak pun-ishments and threatening doom."

Everyone stared.

"What? It's obvious," saith the rapper's player. "Everyone knows a die is a cube with six sides. Six sides, six doors. And the ratio of the length of a cube's edges to the longest line from corner to corner is 3.14159."

[lemming]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Every so often I put my players in deathtraps, but one time I hadn't really planned on capturing everyone.

 

I had the players design each others deathtraps.

 

My favorite was the tank with the robot piranha that could strip a Cadillac in 30 seconds.

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

 

My favorite was the tank with the robot piranha that could strip a Cadillac in 30 seconds.

 

 

Yeah, but once they parted it out, did they have a decent fence to sell to?

[Drhoz]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

how about nibbled to death by slugs? slugs on crack?

[lemming]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Yeah' date=' but once they parted it out, did they have a decent fence to sell to?[/quote']

They had a good fence for their school.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Death traps... I know I've got a few of them around here somewhere...

 

Ice character trapped in a room where the temperature is increasing... check.

 

Electrical character (susceptable to water immersion) in a room filling with water... check.

 

Non-flying character on a pedestal in the middle of a pool of water with sharks, other pedestals scattered around of various heights, water slowly rising... check.

 

Any hero forced to listen to a Foxbat monologue... check. (Hey, I'm the GM, "cruel and unusual" is second nature.)

 

Had one powered-armor type trapped in one room, while his DNPC was in another room strapped to a chair with a bomb on the underside. The villain had temporarily overriden the powered-armor to keep the hero from moving, long enough to tell him that a motion sensor in his room would trigger the bomb on his DNPC. Then the villain released the control, forcing the hero to stand rock still while he figured out a way to disable the motion sensor. (I think I borrowed that from an Iron Man comic book.)

[teh bunneh]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Every so often I put my players in deathtraps

 

You put your players in deathtraps? That is so awesome! Most GMs only put characters in deathtraps. I totally want to game with you sometime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BNakagawa]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

You put your players in deathtraps? That is so awesome! Most GMs only put characters in deathtraps. I totally want to game with you sometime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can I have your stuff if you die?

[lemming]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

You put your players in deathtraps? That is so awesome! Most GMs only put characters in deathtraps. I totally want to game with you sometime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, yea. If they don't bring the proper amount of snacks, they have to pay someway.

[Nekkidcarpenter]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

You put your players in deathtraps? That is so awesome! Most GMs only put characters in deathtraps. I totally want to game with you sometime.

 

 

You want to be in a deathtrap? Jeez, just buy a hybrid and drive 40 on the freeway.

[Marcus Impudite]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

You want to be in a deathtrap? Jeez' date=' just buy a hybrid and drive 40 on the freeway.[/quote']

 

...with Al Gore riding shotgun.

[Enforcer84]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Hmm. If I played Twisted Sister the whole time, I'd be Al's Death Trap.

[Metaphysician]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

I haven't done any death traps in my current game, Vanguard, and don't really anticipate doing so. The name team is basically this world's JLA, and any death trap would either rely on helpless hostage prisoner to keep them in it, or full out Plot Fiat levels of effect.

 

Amusingly, though, one of the PCs has in his backstory what amounts to playing a male Lois Lane to a female NPC ( one who didn't realize he was unkillable, as he didn't tell her ). Thus, *he* probably lived through his share of death traps.

[Wormhole]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Sharks With Frickin' Laser Beams Attacted To Their Heads!!!!!!!

[gmurie]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

You want to be in a deathtrap? Jeez' date=' just buy a hybrid and drive 40 on the freeway.[/quote']

 

Or take a sharp fast turn in an SUV.

 

Really, this sort of commentary doesn't belong in a gaming forum. Though I couldn't resist myself.

[NestorDRod]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Way back in the first super campaign I was in, the heroes tracked down one of those silly theme villains to an abandoned cement factory. they got captured and woke up bound at the bottom of a pit with a large steaming container over their heads.

 

The villain explained that the container held "molten concrete" that would pour on them and seal their fate.

 

After escaping the trap, they found out the container actually held hot oatmeal.

[Comic]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

Heroes entered through a door labeled "NUT" (opposite SOT, EAT, WET) a cylindrical room, its round walls seeming oddly familiar with a regular pattern of minute ridges that formed a continuous single spiral like the thread of a bolt, or to be more exact a nut.

 

And as the door disappeared seamlessly behind them, the ceiling began to rotate slowly, downwards.

 

The only feature remaining in the room was an hourglass in the ceiling, which started filling from some source above the ceiling.

 

Couldn't break out, or damage the floor. Couldn't lift the ceiling back up.

 

It wasn't until the ceiling was low enough for the Brick to walk while gripping the ceiling, in a circle opposite the way the roof was rotating, that the ceiling started to lift.. Only as far as the brick's reach. And that's when the water started coming in from below... and sand pouring in through an hourglass-shaped hole in the middle of the ceiling.

 

The weather-manipulator froze the water into a ramp for the brick to climb, the gadgeteer unscrewing the hourglass and using the sand to give the brick traction on the ice ramp.

 

When the ceiling was completely unscrewed, an exit on the room's upper level was revealed...

 

Actually, several exits.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

The weather-manipulator froze the water into a ramp for the brick to climb' date=' the gadgeteer unscrewing the hourglass and using the sand to give the brick traction on the ice ramp.[/quote']

 

That is too cool! Repped.

 

The players in the games I ran were probably clever enough to have solved that one, but I suspect I might not have thought of anything that devious.

[Drhoz]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

a dead-man trigger, a quantity of high explosives, and a few barrels of radioactive waste. It doesn't even have to be real nuclear waste - the risk of letting go of the doorhandle/stepping back off the booby-trapped floor/ triggering the motion sensors and thus spraying radioisotopes all over downtown Campaign City should keep the PCs quite occupied whilst the bad guys get away.

[Drhoz]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

A microchip transmitter hidden on or in the PC, and a Big Bad coming after them, and only them.Or spraying the PCs with an irresistable love pheremone.Or both at once.

[Drhoz]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

big delicate balloons and binary nerve gases.giant armour-piercing fleas ready to hatch from their pupae at the slightest vibration. Hostage in a hazmat suit, in a giant one-piece bird-cage, and a thousand pigeons with bird flu, or West Nile Virus, or etc etc etc.Or the building is really a disguised rocket, sending the PCs into deep space.Captured DNPCs - PCs have to fight each other, or the DNPCs get it.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

big delicate balloons and binary nerve gases.giant armour-piercing fleas ready to hatch from their pupae at the slightest vibration. Hostage in a hazmat suit' date=' in a giant one-piece bird-cage, and a thousand pigeons with bird flu, or West Nile Virus, or etc etc etc.Or the building is really a disguised rocket, sending the PCs into deep space.Captured DNPCs - PCs have to fight each other, or the DNPCs get it.[/quote']

 

That was one of the fun things about running TCWOAN, since, realistically, nobody expected the cat to come to the rescue anyway. If it looked too difficult, the cat would leave, regretting the loss, but valuing his life..

[Narratio]

Re: "Guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism..."

 

I remember a GM (sadistic, evil, vicious bugger) who enjoyed making death traps. He started on themed traps, then moved onto no-win aimed at specific power traps. Example, the hero (me) whose power was that he could assume a gaseous form, was bound and placed in a steel tube with a jet engine at one end and open air at the other. He was lying on a large pressure plate. He couldn't wiggle much but could have, in time, managed to wiggle down the tube and out. But, as soon as his wieght was off the pressure plate the jet engine would fire up and he'd be toast. Likewise, turning to gas would remove wieght, firing up the jet, at which point he was a gas caught in a high temperature, high pressure flame. Result the same.

 

But, with 3d6 of luck, a massive push in power and the expenditure, on the spot, of 10 carefully saved experience points, I was able to turn just a hand into gas and thus was able to free myself, wedge the plate down and escape. After the night was over I rewrote the powers to show the new abilities. And I can fondly say that, if I ever come across that GM on a dark and stormy night, I'm gonna crucify him.