12/04/2019
It's come to my attention that some rogues out there have lived such deprived lives that they have never seen or had to deal with a trapped box... I wrote this tutorial years ago, and thankfully, the principles involved have not changed substantially. No, I don't think demonstrating how Giggling rogue productions' trapped boxes should be picked is a good idea - but hopefully this will help you understand the basic approach. Enjoy!
How I Do It - Box picking, Crowscar-style.
(yes, this is where the years of experience come in!)
1) Imagine.
If you're reading this, then you either are a LARP rogue or have a vested interest in blowing them up. In either case, it's time to use your imagination for more than enriching your s*x life or lack thereof (unless you're REALLY kinky). It's time to use a LARPer's favorite toy - your imagination.
Imagine that you - not your character, you - are locked in a closet. In this closet with you are six sticks of C4 packed in industrial ball bearings and affixed to a timer, a device perfectly capable of turning you - not your character, YOU - into a fine red mist. The naughty person who has done this horrible thing to you has a fixation with dirty tricks and boobytraps, and is so confident that he's the smarty-pants in this situation that he has provided you with a set of tools with which to poke at his bomb in a vain effort to save your own life. You've never defused a bomb before. You don't even know where to start.
Your move.
No, I'm not trying to scare you. I'm trying to impress on you the mindset and emotional state that you should go into every box-picking situation with - the sensation that you have no idea what you're doing, and that the wrong move will permanently end your life, but you're stuck with doing it. I wish that I could give you a step-by-step set of instructions for making your way through a box. I'd have written one up years ago, just to try to save the art of box picking from it's encroaching extinction. However, this facet of the LARP life is specifically designed to be unpredictable. You can't have a blueprint for it, because every trap, every box, is going to be different. Therefore, to be any good at it at all, you have to start with paranoia and build on that - you can't learn how to do it, so you have to learn how to think about it. And the way to think about it is that you've been thrust into a situation beyond your control, and have to prevail by using your wits or you're dead.
2) "Shall we start like David Copperfield? I am born, I grow up?"
No, we shall start with a little anecdote - the Secret Origin of Crowscar the Wild Elf!
It's all Random's fault. at the tender age of 19, my bestest buddy Random introduced me to the concept of LARP. I was in the car on the way to a module day at camp Nobscott before I knew we wouldn't be tabletopping, and it was in that beaten up POS that I had the concept of LARPing explained to me. I learned that the one thing the team needed was a rogue, and being easy, I agreed to play that position. Having played thieves in D+D before, I figured that it would be much the same thing, because I still wasn't quite scanning the whole 'you actually have to physically do it' concept. I had no tools. I had no clue. And away we go!
So no s**t, there I was - Lori Turey was marshalling us through my first ever LARP module, Ped Xing. I'd just been through my first fight, in which I learned that the key to good parrying is adrenaline. And here's a door. And there's a lock on it, a Master 55 padlock.
"A lock. Can I pick it?"
Lori: "I don't know, can you?"
"I don't have any tools."
Lori: (sigh, eye roll) "Here. I need it back after the mod."
I stuck the pick in the lock, gave it a wiggle and a twist, and the lock popped open. Lori's eyes about bugged out of her skull.
"Well. I guess I can."
Yes, I won't lie - part of it was natural aptitude, a predisposition to being underhanded and disreputable. Part of it was having 4 other people staring at the back of my head, waiting for me to do the part they'd brought me along for. But the biggest part was that feeling - 'I don't know how I got myself into this ridiculous situation, but it's my responsibility as the team's official crash test dummy to do it, because I'm the only one who can.' It was much the same when we finally reached Ped Xing - There was a very sensitive sound-activated trap in the outer room. I had to sneak completely silently through a decrepit camp cabin without making the floor squeak in order to make it to the module objective. Lori had had to walk through the cabin to prep the NPC playing Ped Xing, and she'd set the trap off even though she'd done her best not to. But not me. I managed it, because that was my job, the position I played. Because I was a rogue.
Now, as some of you know, I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, in the ugly end that you see in movies. I've carried a knife within easy reach at all times since I was 8 years old. That's the only reason that I had any kind of tool on hand when I reached my first box. I also hadn't had the concept of 'if you die, you go to the healer's guild, they slap your wrist and you come back out' explained to me. I figured if the thing blew me up I'd be writing a new character. That cold sweat is the proper way to go about picking any trap because it engenders an almost autistic fixation on what you're doing, which is what will save your life. Think about the bomb in the locked closet scenario - You've got to do this, and you've got to do it by making absolutely no mistakes. Your life is on the line. Therefore you're going to want to know Every Single Detail, no matter how minute. Any detail in this situation could be the key to your survival.
3) In which we prove that I lie.
So, now that I've impressed upon you that I can't give you a step-by-step on how to pick a box, here are the steps that I follow in picking a box. This should not leave you with the impression that I intentionally lied to you (although I did), but rather that the steps that I provide you with are an infinitesimal fraction of the process. The true key to my being good at what I do is now and has always been that paranoia, that expectation that the next box that blows up in my face will be the last thing I ever see. It's a lot like character acting - live the part, be your character. Know the fear of being blown to tiny bits by some sadistic pinhead with a fe**sh for tripwires. Think about the pain of being inches from a sizable explosive charge when it detonates. Then say 'to hell with said sadistic pinhead' and do it anyway, because that's your job. your team is counting on you. This, of all places, all endeavors in the LARP world, is your chance to shine. Do it right, and the team will be congratulating you outside the cabin. Do it wrong, and they''ll be consoling you outside the resurrection point.
Picking the box starts with the module hook - the minute you step into a potential combat situation, having to deal with antipersonnel devices becomes a possibility. From that moment on you become the team scout. You should be point man (or woman) in this situation, checking every square foot your team will have to cover for traps. You should inspect every door before it is opened, should be first person into every room, especially dark rooms. If you find bad guys, then it becomes the thugs' problem, but in the meantime, if anyone gets blown up, it's because you missed something or because they did something stupid and pushed past you.
Once you see a box, freeze. Tell your teammates that there's a box over there, and not to approach it. It's fairly common to trap the area surrounding a box, because rogues start salivating at the sight of one, and might be so eminently foolish as to bull straight at it, setting off any traps that might be in it's vicinity. Make sure that your teammates are not in any immediate danger, give them a safe area in which to mill anxiously while they wait for you to blow yourself up, and once you are fairly sure that you have the necessary time and space in which to safely search the box, THEN approach it. Carefully. Checking for traps as you go. Like I said, build on that paranoia - mere fear just isn't enough. If you're ONLY afraid, you're not taking the situation seriously.
At this point, you should do a thorough examination of the box's surroundings - especially the table, shelf, chair or piece of floor that it's on. If that's trapped and you miss it, you may never see the inside of the box. You'll be too busy being all blowed up. Remember, stray bits of information can tell you what you're dealing with - a pinch of sawdust or the scent of cordite could indicate the presence of poppers. A scrap of wax paper could indicate that mounting tape has been used for some reason. A squiggle carelessly scratched in the dust could point out the use of thread or string for tripwires. A smudge of petroleum jelly is a dead giveaway for the use of contact poison. Use your senses, that's why they're there.
Congratulations, you've reached the airspace around the box. Now for the hard part. Shut out everything else - the NPCs undoubtedly waiting to fillet you outside, your team, the cold/heat/rain/meteor shower/burning hail/rain of frogs/what have you, how much your feet hurt, everything. The only things that exist are you and the box. And since you theoretically know your own vital statistics fairly well, you can devote all your attention to the box. Without touching it or, indeed, any other surface, examine the box as thoroughly as possible, from every side and angle available to you. There's always the possibility that there will be some external indication of what you're facing, like a bore-hole to give access to a kill switch. Scratches at a specific point on the lip of a box could indicate the regular passage of a metal tool, giving you an idea of where you should be looking. One of my favorite tricks is to shine my light through the crack at the back of the box lid while pressing my eyes to the crack at the front, to see if there are any obstructions that could give me a clue as to the triggering mechanism. Remember, your best tools are your senses and your wits. You've got to use them or your going to wind up in bite-sized chunks. Pay special attention to the way the bottom of the box meets the surface it's on - there could be a pressure switch under it. Also take a close look at the hasp on a box that has one, there could be a pressure switch under it or a wire attached to it's back. If you assume that the thing's only going to go off when you open the lid, you've already lost.
This is where it becomes important to pre-plan everything that you do, and do it very slowly and carefully. You should be watching even more vigilantly for the unexpected at this point, because that's how the trap setter can get the better of you most effectively - by hitting you with something you didn't see coming. For instance, when I'm opening a box with a hasp, I put pressure on the top of the lid to make sure no internal pressure (such as from a sprung mousetrap pressing against the inside of the lid) will pop the lid open. I could have seen the inside of the box as clear as day, and know exactly what's inside, but I'd still hold the lid closed - because once you assume that you know what you're dealing with, you've invited the setter to blow you up. You've made an assumption. An assumption that will get you dead.
Unfortunately, this is where the concept of a step-by-step breaks down. I have no way of knowing what will be inside that box, any more than you do. From here, it's pure inspiration on your part - seeing what there is to see and coming up with a game plan to keep it from detonating in your face. The 'tips for trap pickers' piece I did for [redacted] site has a listing of the tools I use, and that should provide you with something for just about every occasion. The one thing I will tell you is what some of you have been doing wrong with my buzzer-boxes. (a tip on Just One Type of trap can't be too imbalancing, can it?)
As faithful trap pickers, you are going to see a lot of Radio Shack merch, especially the lever switch, the switch I generally use on my buzzer boxes. If you use the 'shining the light through the crack and looking through' trick, you should be able to see the switch fairly clearly, if only as a paper-thin silhouette directly on the other side of the lip of the box. the thing about a lever switch is that it has only about 2-3 millimeters of give before it opens, and you go boom (or buzz, as the case may be.) That means you have about 2 millimeters maximum to work with, probably less. This is why one of the items in my kit is a credit card. Use something suitably thin to press the lever down while you open the box. A playing card should do it - a lever switch's spring isn't that strong. It really is about that easy...you just have to use a bit of finesse, a bit of forethought, and a bit of dexterity.
I hope this helps those of you who have been having difficulty with trapped boxes to find them more exhilarating and less frustrating. As I've said before, there's really no other rush quite like it - cheating ugly death by just being that damn good. I love it so much that I've spent 29 years building trapped boxes, largely so that I could practice picking them and improve my own skills. I heartily suggest that, by the way - build your own box and practice with it. Trade them with your friends. When you've got one beat, build a harder one, and so on. Just remember the rules - If you yourself can't pick your box within the space of 60 seconds, it's not fair to use it on other people. Surpass me. I could use the vacation.
