Schmuck Bait: Difference between revisions

** Nearly every encounter in Gary Gygax's adventure ''[[Tomb of Horrors]]''.

** ''Keep on the Shadowfell'' has a door marked "Do Not Enter. SERIOUSLY." That's where the slime is. The slime that can kill an entire party by itself.

** Deck of Many Things? Sure, there are some extremely good magic cards in there, but how many gamers can resist drawing again? They will almost always end up regretting it.

* Any ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' game is inevitably Schmuck Bait for anyone with passing knowledge of Lovecraft's work. Why read the fabled book of dark magic? Why go into that creepy cave? Because otherwise the game would be over. Specifically ''Horror on the Orient Express'' takes this to ridiculous levels. A [[Character Filibuster|suspiciously well-informed quest-giver]] tells you that you must save the world by collecting the six parts of an ancient doomsday artifact, all located conveniently on the path of the Orient Express. Inevitably, the [[Genre Savvy]] players ask themselves why they're re-constructing a [[Artifact of Doom|statue that can destroy the world]] when the individual parts are [[Artifact of Death|dangerous]] but not [[Earthshattering Kaboom|cataclysmic]]. When you finally reach the end of the line after fighting cults, vampires, and fascists and suffering [[Killed Off for Real|character deaths]], [[These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know|permanent insanity]], and increasing stat penalties as you collect the parts, it turns out, of course that the quest-giver was {{spoiler|the [[Big Bad]] all along, and just wanted some [[Unwitting Pawn]]s to collect the parts for him.}} Then again, the alternative to taking the Schmuck Bait is to just not take the job, in which case you sit around and stare at each other until the [[Game Master|Keeper]] can come up with a new adventure.