Fail Forward, Traps, Investigation Ability Checks Part 2

Part 1 was here.

Just wanted to report on the results of testing the foreshadowing of traps system and investigative ability checks.

The players were not listening carefully enough to catch the "hints of danger" from my descriptions that there were "beads of water hanging in the air" to realise that there was a giant spider web in front of them. I only tried putting "hints of danger" in my description once though; perhaps if I used that repeatedly they would catch on very quickly? More testing needed there.

(As an aside, gosh, the giant spider web was easily defeated by a player having an enemy guide walk ahead of them to show the way! Cunning challenge-seeking players being clever as usual. The fact that they didn't walk into it themselves may have contributed to the lack of crying and moaning. Perhaps the players felt it was fair they didn't notice it too.)


Presenting a trapped dungeon as a puzzle to be solved through ingenuity and "spot the pattern" worked quite well though I think. The players had fun finding solutions to navigating through the maze filled with traps safely, and the cunning challenge-seeking player very quickly realized what the pattern was. If they couldn't figure it out we could have defaulted to dice rolls to undo the traps I suppose.

However, the players reacted extremely hostilely to the investigative ability checks. They hated having the rolling of dice taken away from them! Should have realised sooner that all players have a bit of submission-seeking/hobbyist in them so they hate not getting to roll the dice. I didn't realise it because I'm ambivalent about rolling the dice myself; just because I roll the dice myself doesn't give me the feeling that I'm actually playing anything. I'm not in control of the dice outcome at all! But submission/hobbyist players feel differently.