patricky

I keep forgetting it's Easter, despite the reminders everywhere. At some point today I will have to get a bit of chocolate, since the indulgence is pre-excused already.

But! I came by to give you the following bit of journal spammery: Yesterday was my semi-weekly GM'ing stint for my online RPG forum, and I got to run a goofy little trap based on an OSHA employment law case (see, edumacation always pays off. Even if it's just in yoinking PCs around). It went off well enough that I wanted to share.

Original OSHA case goes like this: Employees work in an oil refinery that uses processes involving several dangerous chemicals. Supervisor tells employees that if they smell "sulphur," they should leave the plant immediately because that means one of the more serious chemicals has leaked. What the supervisor doesn't tell the employees (it's not clear whether the supervisor in fact knew this, but that's irrelevant to the trap-adapted version anyhow) is that the gas initially acts to deaden the olfactory nerves, before the more serious effecs kick in.

So there's a chemical leak, and the employees smell the gas, but it swiftly kills their sense of smell (which they don't realize). They assume it's gone and just keep on working. Within a few hours, they're all dead.

It's a sad case, but it makes a great trap effect. The trap can either be intentionally set, a pool of unseen heavier-than-air gas encountered in a mine or other closed space, or stored in bottles that the PCs might carelessly break (mine set it off while throwing stuff around in an abandoned alchemical laboratory and accidentally breaking some discarded glassware). PCs spend so much time trying to figure out whether it's a red herring, whether the scent-loss is the only effect (and might tie into a later encounter), and otherwise tying themselves up into mental knots over the "harmless" weird effect. It's great.

Then you get to poison them, and that's great too.