A Tale of Three Doorknobs

The First Doorknob

"It's the most efficient way to get through this dungeon," he explained in a weary voice.

Every group has a player who says things like this. He was that guy, but at the moment he was that guy with a suspiciously high-HP Cleric. That guy who had just volunteered to try out every potentially-poisoned doorknob in the dungeon. It was HP poison and the low-HP thief's detect traps percentage was as low as it gets. There was no way for the players to know there were no more of them, but every door after was a tedium of protocol. Even amid mortal danger, the Cleric's player had to be woken up every time they needed his beefy palm. He would raise his hand above the table and make a turning motion, then go back to sleep. 

This was a published AD&D 2e adventure. I am not going to name it because the authors are now inexplicably game-famous and have lots of zealous followers. That's another kind of trap and I am not that kind of doorknob.

The Second Doorknob

"I mean I turn clockwise, wait, no, counterclockwise? Would they be expecting that? You're just messing with me, I turn it clockwise!"

Flash to The Oldenhaller Contract, from Warhammer Fantasy Role Play 1st Edition, and it was wonderful. The pit that opened up below him was the cherry on top, and fortunately more humiliating than lethal. The party was enraged and engaged. They raced through on mine carts, fought a non-canonical Nurgle Ninja using plague rats as nunchaku, and tried to join the end boss instead of fighting. We did it all wrong and loved it.

But the doorknob we did right. There's some other rants about how traps need an element of choice to be interesting, and they are right on the money. This had that, but it also had a few other things:

• It gave you lore - the thieves would know this info well and be smart enough not to trigger this trap, which was almost an initiation. It let you know what they were like and how dangerous they were.
  
• It made sense - it wasn't placed arbitrarily to inflict challenge, it was there because of course this group of thieves would want to keep outsiders, well, outside!
  

So why do so many published adventures do traps the first way and not the second? It's not just laziness, and you can hardly blame them - popular media is after all full of traps with no warning, used as jump scares. This doesn't often translate well to RPGs however. Chalk it up to another big difference between RPGs and movies.

Later Doorknobbery

"I don't know, man. I'm not a Rogue in real life, I just want to roll."

Flash forward to D&D 3.5, playing my conversion of B4: The Lost City, which is also my favorite module. I had learned my lessons about decisions and traps well, and was happily implementing them. There was another door trap and I asked how the Rogue was approaching the door. This player wanted none of it. No stressful decisions, just take what fate gave them and move on. I let them. Sometimes things just bounce off, or maybe I just didn't play it right. Who knows.

In the end you can learn all the "right" ways to GM or design adventures, but they rarely survive contact with players. You probably came here expecting an easy moral: that it's better to use a trap that has a decision point, makes sense in the setting, and conveys lore. I'd rather say it is fun to get excited about new ways to do things, but don't take them as gospel. 

The table always wins.