I’m not a DM, but I think the common advice is “randomly roll dice for no reason occasionally so the players can’t rely on dice rolls being significant.”

If you’re playing D&D 5e, no perception check, no matter how high, will let you notice an object is actually a mimic.

False Appearance (Object Form Only). While the mimic remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from an ordinary object.

Unfortunately, if a trap goes off or they do spot one, players will tend to question why they didn’t get to roll anything and you have to explain that you were rolling for them behind the screen. Less the fact I’m rolling and more that they didn’t get to roll at all.

My players took great offense to that when it happened, unfortunately, as the rules at the time didn’t really support the DM having that authority.

So, I’m happy PF2e now has it baked in so that DMs are officially able to utilize that method of secret rolls.

Yea and the pile of bones and gore next to the chest is purely coincidental

Traps are puzzles. Even if they didn’t roll high enough, you should still describe enough about their environment that they could reasonably deduce that a trap was there.

Traps Suck

The Angry GM delivers advice to players and dungeon masters of fantasy role-playing games with humor, snark, and attitude. Game masters and players are sure to find something of use, whether they are playing AD&D, D&D 3.5, D&D 4E, 5E, Pathfinder, D&D Next, or any other role-playing game.

The Angry GM (theangrygm.com)

(I don’t always agree with everything this guy says - especially when he strays away from the topic of games - but he’s absolutely right about traps.)

GURPS has an official GM Control Sheet for you to fill out with your PCs base stats and things like Perception. This supports their recommendation in the rule books to secretly roll any check where the PC wouldn’t really know if they failed. It’s fantastic.

Still, as a DM, it’s far too tempting to give a little bit of this away and join in on the hijinks.

Me: You find yourselves in a hidden library. On one shelf you see a series of tomes named “How Not to be Seen”, volumes I-XX.

Newbie Fighter: Oh sweet, those look handy.

Seasoned Rogue: Aw fuck. NOBODY TOUCH NOTHIN’!

Ten minutes later:

Considering that was probably penned in the late 1980’s, why isn’t that standard kit for every other system?

I don’t know much about anything before 4e, which is my reference here. But yeah, it really should be. I jumped ship on D&D because they were just getting so lazy on mechanic content.

I think it might be more widespread than WotC, but my only experience is a distant smattering of PF2, D&D 5e, and GURPS 4e ever since. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the lack of attention to detail for actually running the game is a broad problem.

We can’t really put all the blame on the devs though, I think GMs who forget that it’s their table, and some rulebook isn’t the boss of them, make devs feel pressured to not “impose” rules and features in their sourcebooks.

Like homie, give me tools. You’re not holding a knife to my throat, I can chill on the nitty gritty if I want to. But give me the nitty gritty so I can decide for myself.

I dunno, I made my choice, I think it’s the best possible choice for my play philosophy. I think if more people considered my play philosophy, it would be the best possible choice for a lot of people.

Exactly. Pragmatism wins the day. Or at least it does at my table.

I’ll have to shop around for more and better tools. Thanks for reminding me that there’s a wider world out there.

But give me the nitty gritty so I can decide for myself.

This resonates with me. But I also have to give an obligatory nod to Palladium Games where the nit and grit is the entire point. If you’ve never had the pleasure, the RIFTS character sheet makes (American) taxes look easy to file by comparison. You practically need a session zero and a session zero-zero to get started.

You really should dive into GURPS. Chris Normand has a good YouTube series in the basics, but the gist is that it’s both the simplest and most intricate system out there. Basically everything is a 3d6 skill check, but there are thousands of pages dedicated to figuring out exactly what modifiers apply. The modularity is delightful, basically every rule is entirely and explicitly optional

Disagree. that just erases the point of using dice and having consequences for missing the checks.

I’ll continue to use my system as described above for traps.

Well, is there some true sight or something that let’s you see a mimic?

Who advocated for removing dice rolls? There’s still plenty of room for dice rolls here, but it makes traps more interesting and engaging instead of a boring save-or-suck you blindside players with.

Cool. Mimics breathe. Roll perception to see if you spot the motion of the mimic breathing.

You’re not removing the rolls themselves but you’re removing the point of rolling with how you described doing it.

The way you stated to do it, you have them roll for perception first then you are narrating the area and having players say what they want to do afterwards. That’s backwards. This sets up subconscious metagaming because now their actions are going to be influenced by their low perception roll.

Instead, I narrate the scene first, (where during this time, yes, we as DM’s 100% have the obligation of setting the tone and hinting that players might want to try searching for the traps. That I do entirely agree with) then the players all tell their actions. Once I call for checks, that’s it. The scene now plays and there is no taking back action because of a failed roll.

With this as the order of events, it still keeps traps engaging, as it is just as much part of the storytelling as everything else they are doing when exploring an area, but now rolls come after the declaration of actions so they won’t have an influence on the decision making process.

See, traps are supposed to blindside the players if they fail their check. That’s what makes them traps. The thing about BAD traps versus a GOOD trap, though, is ensuring the players have the opportunity to try avoiding it. You don’t have to ensure their success, that’s up to the roll of the dice.

Traps can be part of puzzle design if you want your puzzle to have lethal consequences and not just story related, sure nothing wrong with that, but to say all your traps have to themselves be puzzles is a convoluted solution to a simple problem.

“Motionless”

“Indistinguishable”

I’ll let you dive into that mystery on your own time.

“Empty”?

What are the mimics disguised as? Floorboards? Lint?

“Empty” is pretty contextual.

you have them roll for perception first then you are narrating the area and having players say what they want to do afterwards

now their actions are going to be influenced by their low perception roll

You shouldn’t be rolling for perception first. Players don’t get to roll until they actually do a thing, until then you use passive perception. And even if you are rolling a perception check on their behalf, you do it behind the screen. So they won’t know if they rolled well or not.

rolls come after the declaration of actions

Hard agree! But passive perception isn’t an action or a roll. It’s passive.

The thing about BAD traps versus a GOOD traps, though, is ensuring that players have the opportunity to try avoiding it.

Exactly. The players should have the opportunity to avoid it. If traps are only a binary - perfectly obvious or completely invisible depending on a single roll - then the characters had a chance to avoid the trap, but the player didn’t. And then “optimal play” is painstakingly triple-searching every square foot of the dungeon in case Schodinger’s Trap is lurking somewhere.

Which is either trivial and tedious (in games where you don’t track the passage of time) or stupidly punishing and tedious (if you are tracking time). Since I do prefer to track time spent, I’d rather give my players the sense that they can ‘logic out’ where traps are likely to be and encourage them to spend their valuable time searching only when and where it makes the most sense. After all, skill expression is a very rewarding part of playing a game. And being able to predict where a trap is likely to be and then finding one there? That really makes players feel like adventurers.