"The GM should have a good understanding of how his traps work mechanically (unless they're magical)...

"The GM should have a good understanding of how his traps work mechanically (unless they're magical)." Do you agree with this statement?

Basic understanding, and even of magical traps.

Yes. Otherwise, the players will get mad when they can't engineer their way out of it.

How do you understand how a magical trap works?

Automagically?

This is poor design.

It should be a long, straight hallway so there is nothing to grab onto when they are sliding into the pit.

>exact point of magical energy emanation
>power source
>effect tied to area or material
>enchanted parts hidden or in plain sight
>damage via material object moved by magic or directly via magic

Yes, unless playing with a mechanical engineer in the group in which case all mechanisms should be replaced with "It's an invisible magic rune that explodes when you touch it, now shut up and roll, you colossal ass."

All a gm needs to know are the circumstances of how it triggers and a general idea of how it would be disarmed, that way if a player comes up with something creative that's in the right ball park they can roll with it.

Ideally. But that will mever be true for the majority of DMs, who live busy lives and can't afford to spend time on minutiae.

They can't really grab onto the sides of the pit though since the ceiling would come down and crush their hands.

Seconding this Also generally magic without patterns or limitations is kind of boring.
Using anything as a "ain't gotta explain shit" button generally devalues it because it turns into a monolithic plot band-aid, resistant to exploration or discovery. This sort of sucks because magic is generally a big part of most fantasy setting. Delegating such a big part of the setting to "big blog of whatever" in turn pulls the setting itself into featureless, generic limbo.

Now thematic band-aids aren't horrible, they're necessary for most games to function but there should be at least one more step added to least explain the effect to some degree. Also varying the band-aids you use, if this world's sorcery can't be applied to a problem maybe it is some other obscure branch, or maybe it is amazingly complex dwarven craft (craft which actually strengthens with age and hardens with force but becomes brittle against intricate sonic effects) or maybe it is advanced alien technology which needs a constant supply of thermal energy to run. But these extra minor details add intriguing furrows and cracks to the world and turns it into something that is actually worth exploring. Not only that it gives adventurers something to work with and potentially solve with something other than dice-rolling.

>tl;dr
If you are going to hand-wave make it a mysterious flourish.

What triggers it?
Touching the crystal?
Heat?
Lifeforce?

What does it do and how?
Does makes disappear, how?
Are they annihilated or just sent to the astral plane?

Stuff like that.

Post diagrams.

what kind of traps could be done in an area based on biological technology? Like something giger-esque

Sphincters.
Gigantic. Crushing. Sphincters.

Followup question: I'd like to include a clockwork knight in my next game. Should I handwave its senses and have it attack and defend normally, if a bit inflexibly, or have it respond to something like where someone is standing on a tiled floor?

maybe something with pheromones?
Like, you have to have a certain combination of pheromones to get past certain doors, and if you don't get it exactly right, the defense systems activate and you find yourself trapped in a room slowly filling with stomach acid.
And, like, if you're in a bee-like hive, certain areas can only be accessed by certain varieties of creatures in a specific stage of their life, so the players have to determine which creature they need and harvest pheromones from them.
Or you need more than one creature's pheromones, because they go into a certain chamber in pairs. Probably to mate.

have both
Make most of them trigger based, only reacting when a plate sends a signal. These should be the mooks; if you are able to rig the tiles or walk without triggering them then they won't do anything
And then later have another knight, but subtly different. Different material/finish, different movement, slightly different design. Something subtle. Should your players make the perception check (or game equivalent) they should be told that this one seems to have eyes and ears. Otherwise they will notice if they try to sneak past and it turns around

...

Any scaled up carnivorous plant could work fairly well.

Also perhaps something making use of symbiotic parasites living in the area?

Locks and password doors need to be opened by shoving hand in a hole.
>>some holes are just locations mouths.
>>they catch and begin to slowly digest hand
>>Players need to understand logic behind placing
Room with seats and treasure-looking-thing in a cell.
>>if someone sits - he gets wrapped in bloodsucking tubes.
>>why? because it was sacrificing chamber or some other shit
Lifts that go COMPLETELY NOT THE SIDE PART WANTS THEM.
>>because it's thrash\food tube
Strange sounds in some rooms
>>echolocation defence system, in case players follow the sound not like inhabitants of location - wall appears before point which is defended by system

I know exactly how it works. The PCs step on an invisible button and then the ceiling falls on them.

>2017
>Still using traps in your games.

Well, what do you prefer, Satan?

A co-operative, narrative, storytelling experience where me and my liberal arts major voice actor friends explore gender imbalance, social injustice and feminism.

It's called Dungeon World.

they could grab the downward stairs if they make it far enough, or jump while partly vertical and land in that alcove

But that's terrible!

The bottom needs to be heavier than the top portion, so the trap will return to its original position.

Acids, diseases, and poisons.

I may not completely agree with that phrase, but it helps a lot.

Depends on the game the GM is running. Not, like, the game system, but the specific goals of the game. If it's a beer and pretzels game, all you need is disarm DCs, save DCs, and the effects for fucking up one or both. Generally speaking, though, PCs should be able to engineer their way out of a trap because that helps with immersion and encourages exploration.