Tell my players there is a button on the console labeled 'don't push this button, it will kill you'

>tell my players there is a button on the console labeled 'don't push this button, it will kill you'
>one of my players thinks it's obviously important and a plant by the villain to make them not push it
>the PC lift the plastic cover off it
>the PC pushes the button
>he dies
>entire table royally pissed

It literally says it will kill you, right fucking there.

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>this ever happening
Move along, folks. There is nothing of value here.

>*wah wah* My players don't like it when they die to a stupid joke that doesn't make any sense if you think about it for two seconds

>here you go, stupid player, a button that will kill you!
>dare you press it? dare you call my bluff? why else would I put in this obvious and totally random kill button but to bait you into meta gaming?
>what? you pressed it?! ha ha! you fell for my ruse! you die! all according to my brilliant keikaku!

What the fuck did you expect, OP? Were you trying to be clever for this shit? I wouldn't have pushed the button because I'm not stupid but I definitely would've called you out for literally baiting the party into killing themselves for no reason.

It was a trap that could feasibly be built in-setting and it worked as intended, what's the problem?

That's probably what the villain was thinking. He knows to not push the button, but what if some retard does it.

>not summoning a creature to push the button for you
Martials, when will they ever learn?

The one who pushed it was actually the party sorcerer.

>Would rather waste their power to kill an innocent being to satisfy their own curiosity
>Their curiosity is literally the dumbest thought that could be had
>Can't read/follow simple instructions
Sounds like a wizard alright

This is actually funnier as a meta-joke making fun of the tendency of copypasta-only GMs to include obvious instadeath options in their campaigns, and then to feign outrage at the players, who never existed, killing themselves upon the instadeath option, which also never existed, to prove a point about suicidaly stupid players, who also never existed.

Example: The Head of Vecna was never real. The entire story was fabricated from beginning to end to illustrate the way in which payers SEEM stupid to a bad DM because they are not capable of solving the DM's idiotic puzzles out of the insufficient materials granted them.

In the real world there is no button, anywhere, not on a Soviet artillery piece, not on a North Korean nuclear silo, not in a Columbian Drug Cartel's deepest cocaine laboratories, that will kill you if you push it--no, not even with a plastic cover. That's a meme from James Bond. Return to reality: Self destruct options always require multiple people.

So if you treat the fantasy world like reality, "push this button and it will kill you" means "I don't want an intruder unaccustomed to our protocols to push this button" as surely as "if you zerg rush me my dad who works at Blizzard will ban you" means "Zerg Rush the faggot."

This sort of trolling is so cancerous and so cultureless, but moreover, so YOUNG in its attitude, that it pains me, but moreover is the idea that ANYONE would take it seriously.

How does it kill him?
You're not going to answer because this never happened.

wut

It kills you. You press the button then you die. No fanfare. Just death.

Don't reply to this thread. It is literally a troll.
Don't not hit the reply button.

Literally a no-win situation.
>Lever says DO NOT PULL OR ELSE
>Player reasons it must be a feint, why would the BBEG put such a stupid thing in an otherwise moderately serious game
>Pull lever
>Player dies

Fast forward in to alternate game
>Lever says DO NOT PULL OR ELSE
>Player reasons it's not worth the risk to essentially have the GM fuck them over for no reason
>Does not pull lever
>Players live
>OH MAN YOU GUYS TOTALLY SHOULD OF PULLED THAT LEVER, YOU WOULD OF GOT X OR Y WOULD OF HAPPENED

Literally a retarded choice.

so, the idea is... the evil overlord is like "My great armies and power will kill everyone, but if for some reason they don't, I better set a trap. But I won't use a normal trap, I'll add a button on my console that looks like all the other buttons. But if I forget which one it is, it'll kill me, so I better label it...

Seriously? This is believable to either of you?

I dunno, I liked the one where the button cause the whole party to fall into the tentacle rape pit

This stuff really does happen in games, but I agree this story is not very interesting comparitively...

I've seen worse in rpgs.

>I don't want an intruder unaccustomed to our protocols to fist android girls, because them fisting android girls would be bad for ME, not for them

If it works, it ain't stupid.

It worked though so obviously it was a good idea. The villain was meta-gaming any idiot who walks into his console of evil. It actually makes a lot of sense, it's like the Indian Jones "shiny gold thing you know is booby trapped but you pick it up and die anyway because you're a greedy retard" macguffins. Except instead it's the "button that literally says it will kill you but you press it anyway because you just have to know what it does and it's probably something they don't want you touching."

I mean, to a degree some people have laid traps and shit in their own castle to deter invaders. Just because you think you won't get fucked doesn't mean you shouldn't plan on it if it ever happens.

It makes sense to a degree, putting a button that kills you through some magic bullshit is a little... abstract for a trap but it is something. It's like the schrodingers button. And it works to a degree in the idea of psychology. You will at least kill someone before they understand that what it says is true.

Which just begs the question of this, how the fuck does it know who pressed the button? If I used a magical hand or a magical force to push the button from a distance, does it kill me or do fuck all because how does a button know who pressed it if they aren't physically touching it. It's a fucking button.

No, the Head of Vecna story WAS real. I know the guy who ran it. His players were that munchkiny STUPID. it was like watching a slow motion trainwreck and seeing how the blood and bodies were going to land in slow motion.

>mfw reading this post

I was there too and it didn't happen

Funnily enough in D&D the button can be sapient and watching.

if it's such a stupid idea, why did it work?

*pokes sphere of annihilation with a 10' pole*

Yeah, as if a Veeky Forumsm would ever allow a character to die for any reason ever.

Why go to the trouble? I'd just call it a day and say it was contact poison.

The sphere of annihilation turns out to be an umbral blot, leaps out of the demon's mouth and kills you, your party, and goes on to destroy the world.

If I push the reply button, will I die?

well, theres always this... archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20070401a

I quite like the 'fake pressure plate' trap. Someone steps on the plate and it goes CLICK and sinks into the floor. If you step off, nothing happens. Tampering with the mechanism, however, will trigger the trap.

Mechanically it's DC20 to disarm, you tell the player it's DC15, and unless you try to disarm it nothing happens. In lore any authorised person knows to ignore it.

It will be extremely painful.

>It was a trap that could feasibly be built in-setting
No it isn't.

You'd put a button on your console that says kills you if pushed, on the off chance that someone will be dumb enough to push it? ASSUMING it's not your fucking henchmen? That shit's fucking ridiculous. A ludicrous waste of effort, time, and resources. Assuming you have a finite amount of time and money to create security devices, what the flying fuck is that nonsense.

Only way this trap makes sense is in the case of a loopy baddy, like some sort of Joker figure, because it plays into his retard humor.

Well human curiosity has been the greatest strength and weakness.

You know, to provide a counterpoint to OP, I ran a mecha game where every single player had a button in their cockpit for a "black module". It was explained pretty clearly that these experimental function were not actually designed features, but rather vestiges of design that the things were dug out of the ground with, and they didn't have a strong idea of what they did other than knowing that they were all different, and being pretty confident that some of them could conceivably be apocalyptic if activated. The science team also were pretty clear that they had elected not to provide their best guesses on the matter because this might encourage them to actually be used. These buttons were pretty clearly big red button absolute last resort material.

I really didn't expect players to have the level of self-control necessary, but they actually DID genuinely only use them in situations of complete and ultimate desperation where the fate of the world was at stake, and of the 5 black modules distributed amongst the team (one unit had 2), they only ever actually identified / used two of them in the course of the campaign.

Wow, what a fun adventure. What's their next quest? The don't open this door or you die quest? And then mock them as a dm for taking the bait time? Kys

Read that post again. It was a trap that COULD feasibly BE BUILT in-setting. That means nothing in the setting prevents the possibility of building such a trap. It's not a matter of motive, not a matter of WHY, but of HOW.
According to there is magic in the setting and it's probably D&D, so it would be child's play for a high-level wizard to build a magic button that kills whoever pushes it.
>ASSUMING it's not your fucking henchmen?
The wizard's henchmen would already know it's a trap.
>Assuming you have a finite amount of time and money to create security devices, what the flying fuck is that nonsense.
It killed an intruder, so it wasn't a waste.

>If it works, it ain't stupid.
If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid and you just got lucky.

It worked. That means it was a good idea.

If you have a box labelled 'Not cookies, DO NOT TOUCH!' it's a pretty safe bet you found someone's cookie stash. Might not be, but there's a chance. Why not take a peak?

Can he withstand the temptation to reply to the bait post AT THE MERE PUSH OF A SINGLE BUTTON?
THE BEAUTIFUL SHINY BUTTON
THE JOLLY CANDYLIKE BUTTON
WILL HE HOLD OUT FOLKS?
CAN HE HOLD OUT?

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLawOfConservationOfDetail

4-quads of truth here, boys.

If it works, it's not stupid.

IF IT WORKS, not "if there's a spontaneous coincidence in which it becomes useful"

building a pit trap in the ceiling "in case" is stupid, even if an intruder coincidentally decides to test the gravity-reversal spell they invented while under it.

A trap that requires someone to tamper with something they're instructed clearly not to tamper with? Makes sense.

It just killing whoever pushes it is dumb, though. Have it set off the alarm or something.

NO, YOU FOOL! THAT'S THE HISTORY-ERASER BUTTON!

>7000 assblasted numales start complaining because their retarded asses would have been the one who died
when the fuck will soyim ever learn

How about a story that actually happened
>after boss battle we all go to rest in this abandoned evil guys lair
>one player, lets call him Retard has an infactuation with another PC, lets call him Flowers, and is carrying Flowers in his arms
>decides he wants to explore the one room we didnt clear and since he cant "trust" Flowers safety in our hands he carries him off to said room
>room has a door that says one thing "DANGER: DO NOT ENTER"
>Retard opens the door with Flowers in hand and all he sees is a hat stand with a nice coat on it
>Retard: "I put the cloak on sleeping Flowers."
>DM: "Uhh the cloak reveals its true form as a mimic and starts devouring Flowers face."
>Flowers is instantly killed
>All Retard can say is "This game is stupid"
>Mimic kills Retard since we all metagame not to respond to his cries
>Roll up into the room, kill the mimic, and grab flowers to try reviving him
>Leave retard behind

Really hoped Retard would leave the group but he just rolled an even more obnoxious character. Flowers is currently a revenant until we can truly bring him back.

So it's magic? Poison? Something else?

>Don't not hit the reply button.
Well now I just have to! To see what'll happpen.

I don't know what you're worried about, it's perfectly sa-