Three Trap Types to Minimize Boredom

I have been thinking a lot about traps. 

Grimtooth

My games tend to be fairly crawly. Dungeon crawls, blob crawls, forest crawls. Always crawling. 

Traps are an iconic part of the crawling mode of play but it's easy for them to be boring or frustrating. 

The key to making traps fun is to have a clear idea of what you are trying to add to the game play by placing a trap. There are three distinct reasons I use traps: as obstacles, as set-ups and as resource taxes.

It's also worth mentioning that I never use traps that punish players for insufficient caution. Game time is scarce and I don't want to waste it tapping the walls and examining floor tiles. 

Golems and Robots

 

Cybermen = Necrons = Warforged

Of the canonical D&D races, Warforged are one of my favorites. 

Made Men

Constructed life interests me.Where is the line between machine and person? What must it be like to know that you were made for a specific purpose (or made for no reason at all)? Does your creator own you? Can you rebel?

Frankenstein, Pygmalion, Blade Runner, the Iron Giant. Perhaps even Milton's Lucifer?

This is a cluster of themes and questions, that I find myself invoking a lot in my games, both when choosing characters as a player and when building worlds, societies and NPCs when I'm DMing.

For me, it all originates here: 

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. - Genesis 2:7

Our Successors

Will we be overtaken by our creations? Will they resent us for making them to labor? Will they enslave us in return? Will we become to them, what cattle are to us?

Second Variety, At the Mountains of Madness, Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, the Matrix and the anxieties of Nick Bostrom. 

Relics of the Deep Past

What if the past is better left buried? Will the uncovered armies of lost ages resume their wars, unconscious and uncaring towards present people?

The Mummy, The Pastel City, Prometheus.