Go For The Schmuck Bait

     I've already gone and done my pseudo-academic Player Advice Blogwagon post, this one's just an off-the-cuff freebie for you: you gotta go for the schmuck bait.

    Growing up, I spent what some psychologists might refer to as "a diagnostically significant amount of time" on TV Tropes Dot Org. If I had to guess, I'd be willing to bet I first saw it linked either in the comments of an 8-Bit Theater comic or in a forum post on Giant in the Playground, but discovering that website altered my brain chemistry in ways that were as foundational to who I am today (/positive) as they are foundational to who I am today (/deeply concerning). For the uninitiated, it is a website focused on cataloguing - and providing annotated bibliographies with examples of - the tropes that appear in popular media. (And unpopular media.) For the tween bookworm who had yet to be taught formal literary analysis, this website was a treasure trove both of discovering new concepts and new media. It led to me finding the TTRPG that would become my white whale long before I ever picked up dice for my first session of D&D 3.5. It was what made me sound far too clever writing papers in highschool, which has led to persistent themes in my writing today. It was...enlightening.

    It was from my time there that I was first given a name for one of my favorite narrative devices: schmuck bait. You already know what it is - there's a reason why the first image on the article is the same Tomb of Horrors image I inserted above. It's the anti-MacGuffin. It's an obvious trap. Only a fool would interact with it!

(OK I'm dropping the bit here, if I hyperlinked as hard as the wiki editors on TV Tropes for this whole post we'd both be here for a week.)

    But seriously - schmuck bait. As a player, when presented with schmuck bait, you have two choices - take the bait, or play around it. My controversial player advice is thus: you always go for the schmuck bait. In the same vein as the adage that GMs should be their players' biggest fans, players should know that if a GM has put an obvious trap into their scenario, it's because there's fun to be had with it. If you're playing a more tactical game, sure, maybe you spend the time disarming the trap, maybe you go full Indiana Jones and slap a sack full of rocks onto the pedestal so you can grab the golden idol, whatever. But going for the schmuck bait automatically ratchets up the tension in a story - and more importantly, it signals that you're playing into the tropes of the game. It can be fun to be genre savvy (ok I swear that's the last one), but sometimes it's fun to wink at the camera and go "ok, I know what game we're playing here" and pick up the cursed object that kills you until you die to death.

   Roleplaying games are about fulfilling our wildest desires, and sometimes we as humans have an insatiable urge to eat or touch or do NSFW acts with things which will at best put us in an embarrassing situation and at worst cause us grievous bodily harm or death. Relieve some of that mental pressure and live out your fantasy - touch the diamond in the middle of the crater. Sit in the chair. Live a little.