I'm thinking about the kind of traps players may find when exploring ancient ruins. I have some pretty pointed views on the subject which I thought I'd share.

If you are thinking of dastardly modern traps I'd get a copy of Grim Tooth's traps to get your (Creative? Bloody?) juices flowing. Usually you don't need anything too complicated for most players;

First, you must understand the purpose of a trap. Is it a safety system gone wild? (Halon systems will kill you.) Is it to kill? Who is it to kill? How lethal is it? (If its there to stop a grave robber, it should be utterly lethal for a average grave robber. i.e. a one way ticket to the bacta tank if the player survives.) You shouldn't penalize the players trying to resolve it but always remember how lethal it needs to be. (A Jedi Decapitator would obviously be pretty lethal to average EOTE players. But maybe not so much for Jedi who are trained to duck.)

In game terms the Emperor (that's want I call myself) needs to determine what the mechanical purpose of the trap is. Is it to consume player resources? Is it to challenge the players by removing one from their midst? Is it part of a combat challenge? Is it for levity? How will it affect the story arc and narration? "Snakes. Asps. Very Dangerous. You go first."

How old is it, and how has it aged? Folks, entropy is b*tch. Batteries age and wear out, metal rusts, chemicals react, semiconductors degrade. If you want ancient ruins full of functional stuff, I recommend some sort of stasis field that stops time. (Always unstop time when the players least expect it. What fun!) Traps that stand the test of time need to be low tech, and use very long life materials. 'Treasure' in the form of equipment would probably difficult to adapt and use. "Does that Sith vibro-sword take D cells? No? Too bad."

Really ancient ruins may have other issues. Like global warming, ice age, exploding asteroids, etc. In that case the terrain and climate my be utterly alien to when it was built. If you came across an empty diving pool complete with diving board on the moon, it would certainly give you a pause for thought. What if you found that in the arctic? "THIS IS CETI ALPHA FIVE! Ceti Alpha VI exploded 6 months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of the planet, and everything was laid waste!"

But back to traps. Passive traps are the easiest to set up, are very effective, and long lasting. In the real world if you want butterflies in your gardens, you could A) buy some, B) buy butterfly food, C) plant butterfly food to obtain a never ending supply of butterflies. This provides an interesting challenge for players. "Look... Cozy Worm droppings in the jungle... Did anyone bother to check whether that was the primary food staple for Krayt Dragons? No!"

The food chain is your friend. No one sleeps under the Rancor Tree, at least not more than once.

Mechanical traps are ideally not very complex. Shock devices should be relatively easy, drop a magnet through a giant copper coil, and you got giant lightening bolts of pain. (Actually this happened to a friend, someone dropped a screw driver in a sonar coil.) Falling rocks, and rolling boulders should be easy enough to implement. Remember folks, its the little things in life that bring pleasure. Try not to make it complex or do lots of things, they should also be single use. One shot, one kill should do the trick.

I've done all these things to my players in fantasy games. Naturally, they are a very nervous lot.

Assassin vines in the apple orchard. What a fun day that was.

Rotting bodies create methane... flint golem... steel swords... *Boom* Wizard was blown clean out of the room, and knocked out. Fighters were dazed and confused dealing with the aftermath.

Monk falls down pit and takes a lot of damage. As he's struggling to climb up, some guards come along and offer him a rope. Just as he's clearing the edge, they let go of the rope. *Womp* Monk stops moving.

Darkness... don't forget to turn out the lights every now and again. Works best if the guy who can see says something like, "Duck now."

Ah... and who could forget the log suspended a long ways back from the door. The rogue wouldn't touch the door knob, so the fighter said, "I'll do it..." *boom* he was sent flying backwards right into a sticky mushroom patch followed by a swarm of zombie hands. (In Star Wars, fire ants would be fun.... Yeah real fire. You wanna do it. You know you do.)

So long, and remember... don't walk into the stasis field.

Ah Grimtooth. I love that series, but I only have one or two.

In terms of stasis fields and star wars, you may not need to go that route. There's 10,000+ years if space faring civilization with hyperdrive and energy weapons. I would bet someone has invented plastic that doesn't degrade in that time.

You don't have to have mechanical traps bevbuilt from metal. But if is best to kerp them simple. If it is a temple dedicated to some force using tradition or cult, make traps that require a force user to navigate. Lifting doors, etc.

In terms of stasis fields and star wars, you may not need to go that route. There's 10,000+ years if space faring civilization with hyperdrive and energy weapons. I would bet someone has invented plastic that doesn't degrade in that time.

US car manufacturers introduce the concept of Planned Obsolesence in the 60s. When my Bosch dish washer failed for the 3rd time the hotline said, that it's planned obsolesence...

This is infinitely the opposite direction of perfect total chemistry, perfect total armour, perfect total efficiency.

In Star Wars if you told a guy that he could have a hydro spanner that would last 10.000 years but it would only cost 1000 times more, would he pay? I'm pretty sure that the guy who renovated my house wouldn't pay $25000 for a perfect hammer....

Some materials are enduring, gold for one. I read a piece once our toilets will outlive our culture, porcelain is very resilient.

In terms of creating traps for PCs stumble into entropy is your friend. Anyone who has spent any time in old buildings that have not received proper upkeep know that floors, walls and ceilings have a habit of becoming unstable. Not to mention exposed, uninsulated wires, those are great fun to brush against... Holes in the floor that once served a purpose but now are loosely covered over and unmarked.

For Star Wars there is also the option of long abandoned/trapped droids whose programming has gotten wonky.

That is primarily what in talking about, materials that don't break down/degrade for whatever reason. Gold while a soft, useless for construction, doesn't oxydize (rust), we have plastics that are bad for the environment because they won't break down.

I was not talking about planned obsolescence that has come about do to the greed from a flawed capitalist society. (Socialism for the win! I'm from Canada, many of the yanks already think this of us). Not to mention a sith temple, as were many old things such as roman aqueducts and several highways are still usable today, and in terms of those highways, able to bear the wear and tear of most modern equipment. There are many ancient structures that survive.

The point is, if you want a ruin to be in good shape have it degrade the speed of plot. You don't need to have some pseudo-scientific star trek technobabble stasis field. In a galaxy that has low cost reliable ftl travel, energy swords, planet scale cities that are aprox 1313 levels high, they have made some better msnufacturing leaps than our (really young) species has. I really doubt cloud city's repulser engines are designed to fail after 5 years operation. The star wars universe says "it works this way due to plot, 'nuf said"

I don't agree.

We have Mechanics in Star Wars for a reason. They are there to fix stuff that breaks. Every ship and floating city in Star Wars needs Mechanics even if it doesn't break or get into combat. They are there for maintenance which is hardly necessary if all Mechanics do is swap power cells on the infinitely long lasting gizmos.. If you think Bespin floats forever, try firing the maintenance staff and seeing how long it floats.

Replacement parts are also necessary. In a galaxy where worlds have become the single source of a material its easy to see that they might run out of something.

Heck.. The Sa Nalor is looking pretty bad after 20 years and I'm not talking about the crash damage. The crew is running out of Blaster Gas, and it has also lost quite a few power sources. And that is with active use and active maintenance over a short time frame.

But taking your point, I'd argue that you could restore stuff that you find assuming it was well protected. This would be kind of cool in that I'd make it hard or daunting to do, mainly because it would be so incompatible. (How many people here besides me know how to fix a tube TV?) Frankly, our kick *ss mechanic is looking for something more challenging to look after so this fits the game scaling as the players level up. "You found a Cortosis Weave Superior Vibro Sword... it needs a funky power converter and something with more juice than a D Cell... that will be daunting to repair every time you roll a Despair."

But fields of toilets... that's an image.

The Rebel base on Yavin IV was built in an existing ancient structure. Likewise Jabba's palace was in an old monestary. The Millennium Falcon was prone to frequent mechanical breakdowns. R5-D4 blew his motivator, the Treadwell Luke was fixing vapor actors with malfunctioned rather spectacularly.

Entropy seems to definitely occur at the speed of Plot. I have also seen this rule used in some post-Apocalypse games. Thing are in pristine condition or rusted to dust as the story requires. It's Star Wars, if we can accept giant, sentient mollusks (Hutts), FTL, light sabers and Jedi then inconsistent entropy should be no problem.