Oooooh. OK, let’s mostly ignore physical traps. We all know what physical traps can do, and how they can be unfair ICly or OOCly, and how they can add to a dungeon or take away from it.
I’d like to invite you to consider how the same ideas can be used in a social context. Go on, take up that invitation to boast of your prowess. Oh, you got picked instead of your host’s favoured daughter, to go do that dangerous thing? Well, he set a good trap, didn’t he?
Physical traps can do enough damage to destroy a character. I don’t know if there’s a social equivalent, but some outcomes of social situations might have death being preferable. Like most parts of a dungeon, the trap concept can be mapped elsewhere, and they don’t all have to be death-traps. Like any others, though, they are deliberately built.
Who hates your character enough to do that? Who doesn’t care about them at all, and is protecting something precious? Who just wants to test you socially?
