Scaffolds for Disaster

We like fairness, don't we folks? The oldly new idea that if our PCs fall in a pit, it's because we the players failed some minor challenge, whether of preparedness or of observation of the DM's description. That's fundamental to "skill"-based play, the idea that your decisions affect the outcome for your guy. But there's some give there-- how informed does your decision have to be, and how fitting the consequence for the occasional failure?

This is a matter of feel and theme, something people shouldn't even necessarily disagree on, but modulate for different campaigns and situations. Some games can be about perfectly-telegraphed danger you build intricate solutions for, about jack-in-the-boxes with acid that kill you when you step into an empty room, about anything. As long as there's some kind of information for decision-making, and some difference of outcome, it can give the fun and achievement of being good at a game.

I like the occasional trap with telegraphed, but perverse tells, and extreme consequences, the sort of thing that will seriously punish standard party procedures. It isn't a "gotcha", where the information they gather about the trap is bad. Instead, the explanation behind the information is simply surprising but perfectly fitting.

Example:

• Standard OSR trap: The party looks into a hallway, where a drag mark in the ground abruptly stops. The party correctly guesses that a pit trap interrupted someone in the midst of dragging something, and carefully step over it.
• Gotcha trap: The party looks into a hallway, with that same drag mark. As they attempt to step over what they think is a pit trap, an invisible magic beam shoots a hole in them.
• Perverse-yet-fair trap: The party looks in the hall, sees the drag mark, and tries to step over the pit trap. Unbeknownst to them, a grue lives in the pit trap and grabs one, dragging them in to grind up into her bread.

In the initial usage of the term "scaffold for disaster", Kahva was referring to another important principle, one of game rules and the importance of using them to create a framework for negative outcomes. Many DMs find it easier to adjudicate dealing 13 damage to a PC that would die from taking 13 damage, or calling for a save vs death after being jabbed by a Scorpion, Giant's tail than they would simply informing the PC's player that they die, or suffer some other major negative outcome, without specific game rules to make the outcome indubitable.

The term has bounced around in my head for a while, and I like to apply a similar principle to adventure and location design. It's fun to bake in situations where the whole dungeon is one big perverse-yet-fair trap, where ruin is not signposted but you state all the facts that go into the conclusion. Adventure fiction is dense with sudden reversals of fortune and spikes of danger, and building in the scaffolding for more of those (in addition to the normal viccisitudes of play) has been a successful tool for adventure play to me. For inspiration, check out the classic dungeon the Lichway, where disturbing the dungeon's central feature not only angers a powerful monster but awakens hundreds of undead guardians. I wrote a smaller dungeon along the same lines, a tower that collapsed when its topmost treasure was removed.

I think the reason I enjoy scaffolds for disaster in this sense is that they offer a different kind of skill-based challenge. Players have to be careful they aren't just taking the same rote precautions as always, and when things start to go dramatically wrong they will need to improvise. They will make decisions taking less for granted, which is often the exact sort of adventure I'm going for.

d10 Scaffolds for Disaster

1. The harsh weather in the seas directly between you and your destination may abruptly blow you into the middle of the ocean.
2. The party is attacked by a frenzied warrior on their way to their destination. After arriving, they realize that warrior was the only person who knew some vital information.
3. The party is invited on an exploratory expedition by an ally who radically overestimates their own ability to plan such a journey.
4. A council of the wise asks the PCs to take a powerful evil object to the one place they believe it can be destroyed, but this actually isn't true, or it's too late for doing so to stop the evil threat they intend to stop.
5. An heir or chosen one is ill-fitting, incompetent, or outright malicious, but manages to hide it pretty well as the PCs are told this heir is their only hope.
6. A gently glowing ribbon of light runs from the dungeon's entrance in a meandering path towards its treasure vault. Opening the vault burns through the magic ribbon and seals the exit.
7. Killing the leader of an army either leads their forces to despoil and wreak havoc, or causes the defenders to strike out and commit shameless and horrific retributions.
8. A long-time rival of the PC's patron arrives with an obvious pretext to cause chaos, but after any conflict this causes is resolved their are eventually vindicated by the facts.
9. Important infrastructure, like a dam or bridge, is surprisingly easily destroyed by a common dungeon action like pulling a lever or picking up a magic item.
10. Without making a huge fuss, the weekslong ritual a mid-tier NPC has been performing summons six thousand dragons to your area.

You'll notice a lot of the more narrative scaffolds for disaster read like reversals of common story structure tropes. But a lot of those reversals are now well-known tropes as well. Try to design such situations around the tactical, information-based thinking that players can deploy rather than guessing what "kind" of story they're acting out. If you go with entry #5, the unwise heir, don't give them an evil or stupid voice to foreshadow their evilness or stupidness, just play them straight and don't contrive situations where their moral character or general incompetence is sure to come out. In an adventure dense with incident, there will be plenty of opportunities for the heir to opine, make split-second decisions, or otherwise act in a way that accords with, but does not signpost, their deepest character. And when you play them straight, you make them very susceptible to deliberate investigation by the players. You're being perverse, but fair!