Topic: Give me some "cool" Futuristic Traps

[DavidKlecker]

I built a character with a 90 bonus in Trap building and 50 in trap setting yet I can't think of too many traps he could build. We are playing a Star Wars based campaign. The plot line will take the characters through a city, his room and then the surrounding Wildlife Preserve outside, so if you could think of any cool futuristic traps for either setting. A couple of ideas I had which I am looking for...

1) one was a motion-sensor bomb in his room. One click arms it, another click (movement) sets it off.
2) a contraption that you can set in a "corridor" of either an alley or a set of trees where if a laser is tripping it springs a trap on one wall that shoots an entangle net much like in AvP but this won't cut your skin and "cube" you and at the same time shoots a tranq dart.

A mix of lethal and non-lethal will be awesome. Remember this guy is an awesome trap maker so any "cool" and practical trap ideas that are futuristic will really help.

Thanks!

[lev_lafayette]

I guess in the main traps are about getting a device and adding "trigger"  (time or action) and/or "remote" functions.

So get a standard item, add some of those benefits and indeed, with those skills you could do several layers and iterations.

I can imagine the fun you could have, for example, with a Repair Scanner linked with a Personal EW Generator with an opponent's central computer system.

[DavidKlecker]

I guess in the main traps are about getting a device and adding "trigger"  (time or action) and/or "remote" functions.

So get a standard item, add some of those benefits and indeed, with those skills you could do several layers and iterations.

I can imagine the fun you could have, for example, with a Repair Scanner linked with a Personal EW Generator with an opponent's central computer system.

I'm assuming this causes an overload?

His technical know-how is a little limited but he is still a good engineer with basic physics, chemistry and electrical engineering. He is a good computer programmer, hacker, blaster technician, he has an awesome gimmickery (88 bonus), blaster, droid and sensor repair and an general engineering skill of 70.

[mocking bird]

Have you ever seen the movie Cube?  Some really evil traps in that one - most of which are greusomely fatal however.

Quentin: Listen, we can't go climbing around in here.
Holloway: Why not?
Quentin: There's traps.
Holloway: What do you mean traps?
Quentin: Booby traps. I looked in the room down there, and something almost cut my head off.

[yammahoper]

Clear walls, usually one way.  Allows lasers to pass through as if the walls are not there. 

Gravity well; some trigger causes a momentary surge in the gravity net, creating a brief intense local gravity well, causing unbalance crits, or nastier damage.  Also useful for deflecting any particle beam.

Knock out gas/any drug in gas form; insert into life support.

lynn

[David Johansen]

Weighted monowire that spools out from the ends of the ventilation fan blades.

Air locks that mix hydrogen with the oxygen and then produce a spark.

Boxes containing a credit voucher with holes that are big enough to get your hand into empty but not while you're holding something.

[Oldgrue]

Traps are inherently low-tech though.
its a question of what sort of trap:
dead drop - some thing or some one falls through a space.
movement - some thing is moved to harm the victim
and its trigger mechanism.

then its all a matter of combinations, and details - are we fountaining high-energy plasma, sucking breathable atmosphere out of an area, sewing polonium 210 into their jockstrap, what have you.

Sick of fantasy crushing walls? move him outward: 2 gravity planes whose pull are in opposite directions can be fun (like a knife, or the cutting wall...)
The heck with that crossbow shooting when they slip a tripwire...shoot a half dozen weapons high, forcing the opponent down to the ground onto pressure-sensitive pads...

Do you have a copy of Grimtooth's Traps?

[DavidKlecker]

No I don't have a copy of that book.

I came up with something but it's a little late to see it in action, or at least it all depends on the future of my campaign story (see Gamemaster corner for details).

One trap idea I had was have a kidnapped victim bound to a chair. Around the chair is thin wire like trip wire. There would be four walls of this stuff criss-crossed so much that it would look like a chain-link fence. The idea is try and rescue the man inside. Each wire is linked to a device. The tiniest vibration activates the device and bombs go off.

I would love to see my group tackle this kind of challenge. 

[markc]

IMO the biggest thing about traps is you make one very easy to see and disarm. The real trap is harder to spot and not as easy to disarm.

I also tend to think of liquid nano bots that seep into a persons skin and disrupt thier system. Or records all they see so someone else can retreve the info.

MDC

[David Johansen]

Here's a mean one: a scanner system that reads the target's DNA sequence and then uses it as a positive ID to make lots of on-line purchases using their money.

[Ramoran]

It depends entirely on how hi-tech your world is.  Here are a few examples:

The thing from Ghost Busters that they caught ghosts in, but for people.

Laz trip bombs a la Duke Nukem 64 (never gets old).

A web that when triggered stretches across a hallway.  It would stretch, allowing a number of charging soldiers to pile into it before breaking away from the wall, at which point it promptly seals itself shut.

Again with the hallway idea, you could always calibrate a strip of lightsaber emmiters that could be inconspicuously placed around a corner, on a tree, etc.  When the enemy crosses a lazer trip, presumably at a run, the sabers would switch on, emitting a series of horizontal bars for said moron to charge into.  The result would be a neatly sliced moron, not to mention a barrier that other morons would have to figure out how to switch off.  Put it far enough around the corner and they won't be able to hit it with blasters effectively without wasting a lot of time.  If you really wanted to get creative, and you happened to be in a ship that's lit with vertical flourescents lining the hallways (as sci-fi environments often are), you could jam the strip into one of those near a corner, encasing it in the wall and making it unreachable.  The beams would deploy the short distance through the wall, then span the hallway.  The length of the blades would have to be adjustable, of course.  That last situation is pretty specific, but you never know.  Your character would also need to be a jedi or sith in order to be able to use the force to calibrate the emitters.  Still, using lightsaber blades as traps would be pretty darn effective, not to mention having almost endless applications.  Using different size/style devices, you could trap boxes, doors, switches, almost anything (think of what a box would do if it triggered a grid of blades when someone reached into it).

Okay, I'm getting a little devious now.  I'll stop.

[GoblynByte]

Micro EMP bursts are always fun in high-tech settings.  They're the rust monsters of the sci-fi genre.  A "bouncing betty" type mine could "hop" out of the ground when triggered (stepped on) and send out an EMP burst at about 3 feet off the ground.  A "blast" radius of about 20 feet will probably get every player character in the group without a lot of damage to the surrounding area.   This is especially effective if you players are overly dependant on their technology.  A quick burst will render 90% of what they carry completely useless.  Even most of what you might think would be purely mechanical would probably have some essential electronic components in a futuristic setting (conventional firearms will most likely have electric security features on them in the future).  Any character "smart" enough to carry a low-tech weapon with them (a knife) will suddenly be the heavy hitter of the group.

[dutch206]

Did you see "CSI:NY"  This week?  One of the characters was kidnapped and tied to a chair, then surrounded with a web of laser beams.  If any of the beams were tripped, it set off a gun aimed at the head of the person in the chair.

Other ideas: 

1)  A sensor set across a hallway which would sound a silent alarm unless the person was wearing a badge which emitted a certain signal.  The silent alarm could trigger anything from biotoxins in the ventilators to a team of killer robots.  Unless the party had a can of laser aerosol to spot the sensor, there would be no way to avoid this trap.

2)  Low-tech, but still one of my faves:  place a plasma grenade under a corpse and then pull the pin.  When they disturb the body, the grenade goes off.  (Curiousity killed the cat)

3)  An assault blaster rifle tied to a multi-sensor.  First person to enter the kill zone gets blown away.  (Only way to disarm this one is to crawl through the ventilation system and disarm the sensor array from behind the gun.)

[Balhirath]

Force Fields
Always good, since they can make a lethal trap into a non-lethal one... which means that they can be placed just about anywhere and still make sence. I usually avoid traps that doesn't make sence and I feel that nobody in their right mind will place a lethal trap in an area where they go each day.
A trap that blocks the exits to a room or trap the PC's in a force field, makes a lot of sence to me.

Also in a culture that have command of gravity, there's a lot of fun with simply reversing the gravity field or just have the room/area to go Zero-G and watch the players trying get out of there before the guards show up to make target practice.
If you want to be mean a simple combat robot or automatic blasters/stunners/lasers could open fire

[Marc R]

Hmm, Star Wars tech level.

Inertial dampners offer up all sorts of fun, if you can thus play with inertia/gravity. . .depending on setting, can turn people into paste, or just trap them. (Apply say 5-7 Gs and you'll be stuck almost unable to move.). . .no need to jam them to the floor, jam them to the celing or a wall.

Super magnets. . . .pull all their gear down to the magnet (or up, or over).

Magnets as triggers can be nice too. . . magnetic triggers or gravitic triggers can be built into the floor, and if set passive, are essentially non detectable. (Short of something like ship scanners or the force.). . .i.e. sensor underneath the floor, no moving parts, it merely senses passively the presence of an object above it.

Force items (no jedi, force fields) always offer nasty weapon possabilities, usable in traps.

Super glue, non-stick slip foam, poisons, gag gas, incapacitating ultra or sub sonics. . . .do a google on "Non lethal weapons" and "Future Weapons" and you should get links to a lot of usable DARPA stuff.

Lovely stuff from the real world:

Frictionless foam. . . .spay and slip, and you cannot get up or get out without serious effort or help.

Ultrasound guns. . .that cause all targets in the cone to loose control of their innards. . .the "puke & poop" gun. Make it a bit stronger, or on another freq, and it could just kill you by internal damage. (This one resonates water, hence the effect.) I shudder to see this used in riot control (it's stated design purpose.)

Sticky foam. . . .rather dangerous if it gets in your eyes, nose or mouth. . .(I recall joker killing someone by hitting them in the face with a pie filled with epoxy.)

Microwave pulse guns . . .make you feel like you're on fire, but cause no permenant damage. . .so targets run out of the cone. (Sucks if you can't.)

Droids. . . .if he can modify droids. . .or if he can modify the internal control mechanism or computer of a ship. . .think 2001, think Terminator. . . .many of the regular mechanisms of a starship are lethal:

Blast Doors. . .intended to slam down in emergencies to prevent spread of decompression, explosions, fire, etc. . .if you're in the way, you get guillotined. (Over-ride the safety sensor. . .likely, the logic of "If the emergency is big enough, the door will cut one crewman in half to save the rest" is already in there. . .so fiddle the priorities.)

Atmospheric systems. . .vent to vacuum. . .add too much CO2. . . .add too much O2, especially combined with a fire. add any other poison, drug or bio into the air. . .(and shut off the sub system that prevents it.)

Fire control. . .a lot of fire retardents range from annoying (foam) to potentially lethal if inhaled powders. . . what brand does the empire use?

Walls full of air, power, water, waste and other conduits. . .results from tampering range from annoying to gross to lethal.

A personal fave of mine. . . .had a rather unstable PC in a Robotech game. . .another PC wired a half ounce of plastic explosive into a crevice inside his armor, tied to his communicator. . .command detonation if a certain code was sent out. . . .if you say took a pound of plastique and 20 detonators, and had a few hours alone with 20 suits of stormtrooper armor. . .insert tiny bomb, tied it off to something that takes a long time, like "Switch over from air filter 1 to air filter 2.". . .start trouble, STs mobalize. . .about an hour into the alert, troopers start blowing up.

doesn't take much of a bomb to kill someone planted inside armor. . .in the game in question, when the wee bomb was set off it was. . ."There's a muffled pop sound, the interior of Vin's helmet visor goes red."

[markc]

 I allways liked BioWire from the old Warhammer 40K system. It is a living version of barbwire.

MDC

[jasonbrisbane]

For an idea as to what a futuristic house may look like (futuristic??) have a look at the link:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;396147352;pp;2

He might try to either set this up or disarm it to break in. (No Pun intended!)
A good knowledge of  computers, electronics and engineering would be essential for a futuristic criminal trapbuilder.

LOL 

[markc]

 I am reading a book right now called Star Strike by Ian Douglas that has NanoDissemblers that basicly turn un protected people to goo by breaking down thier structre on a atomic level. Of course the good guys have nanites that counte the ND clouds but it is a very interesting weapon/trap, sort of a futuristic super acid cloud. I am not far into the book but I think their will be others as in the other two series he has done a good job to imagine how future military tec will evolve.
MDC

[broodhunter]

Traps are inherently low-tech though.
its a question of what sort of trap:
dead drop - some thing or some one falls through a space.
movement - some thing is moved to harm the victim
and its trigger mechanism.

then its all a matter of combinations, and details - are we fountaining high-energy plasma, sucking breathable atmosphere out of an area, sewing polonium 210 into their jockstrap, what have you.

Sick of fantasy crushing walls? move him outward: 2 gravity planes whose pull are in opposite directions can be fun (like a knife, or the cutting wall...)
The heck with that crossbow shooting when they slip a tripwire...shoot a half dozen weapons high, forcing the opponent down to the ground onto pressure-sensitive pads...

Do you have a copy of Grimtooth's Traps?

Depends on your definition of low-tech.  A Claymore mine is low tech by SM standards, but no less effective.  Same thing with Bouncing Bettys.  Monofilament nets or line are terribly effective.  In Space:Above and Beyond had a land mine that when you stepped on it emitted a laser that slashed in a 180 degree vertical arc.  sliced you in two, also hit anyone else in the same linear plane as the laser.  The High tech end is in the triggers.  Mercury switches are really hard to get around.  Think about air density based triggers.  triggers based on the amount of a substance or gas.  Tactical scanners are relatively cheap and can be set to track movement and/or heat. In SM2 they talk about how ID cards are keyed to your heat/chemical/DNA...Now imagine a ID card reader that has been rigged with a relatively small amount of explosives.  You now have a bomb keyed to a specific person.  Cuts the likelyhood of collateral damage by alot.