Educating players... + heroism and courage

So this isn't going to be a post about Player Impact as I had previously intended.  That'll have to come later.
Here John Wick talks about a suggestion he made to a friend who was running a High Fantasy game for his 16 year old daughter.  I heartily recommend checking it out.  Nice idea of how to educate careless characters.

Mr Wick is actually talking about heroism and courage, but I like it as an idea to educate players.

On courage and heroism, I recall a game I played in - not GMed, for once! - many years ago.  The party journeyed into these subterranean caverns which transpired to be the lair of some hideous spider god cult.  On the way in we were confronted with a pit-trap.  In the floor before us was a huge pit, hundreds if not thousands of feet deep.  Hanging from the ceiling above it, dead centre, was a rope.

One agile member of our party (to whom we attached a safety rope) ran and made a jump for the rope dangling above the pit.  As soon as he grasped it, the entire section of the ceiling to which it was attached dropped down, slottingd perfectly into the mouth of the pit and stopped, thereby creating a floor over the hole.  The trouble was, our thief was now trapped under this 'floor' dangling from the rope within the now sealed pit.  Thank goodness we had him tied to that safety line.

He decided to let go of the dangling rope and trust in the safety line.  As soon as he did so, the section of ceiling that slotted into and blocked the mouth of the pit, rose rapidly to form the ceiling again.  Effectively reopening the pit.  We pulled our thief to safety.

So we had a problem.  How to get across?  The pit is too wide to jump.  The inside of the pit walls too smooth to climb, even for our agile thief.  What we did was this:  We tied a rope to our thief and got our brawny dwarf fighter to hurl the rest of it, in a big coil, across the pit to the other side.  This he managed on his second attempt.  The thief then made a jump for the rope dangling from the ceiling.  Sure enough the ceiling dropped and slotted into the mouth of the pit again and our thief clung on for a count of 30.  Meanwhile the rest of the party ran across the 'ceiling now floor' and grabbed the rope which had been hurled across, and which was now being trapped by the dropped ceiling section, but still attached to our thief dangling beneath.

With the party comfortably across, when the thief got to 30 he let go.  The ceiling rose once again, but the party had hold of the other rope and we pulled our thief to safety.  We had safely negotiated the pit trap.

Or so we thought.

The trouble came about five hours later in the game, when we had disturbed some foul spider god ritual and were now being pursued by a bunch of psychopathic cultists (aren't they all?) and a handful of giant spiders,  and were fleeing back out of the dungeon.  With the thief in front the party rounds the corner, runs up the passageway and realises they now have to negotiate the pit trap again, in order to escape. Trouble is they don't have enough time to tie a rope around the thief, hurl it across the pit, have the thief jump for the dangling rope, blah blah blah.  The cultists are hot on their heals, and outnumber the party about five to one.  If they stand and fight, the party will unlikely survive.

There is a moments hesitation.  And then the dwarf fighter in a moment of extreme courage, heroism and self-sacrifice jumps for the rope himself.  He only just makes it.  And once again the ceiling slides down into place, forming a floor over the pit.  The party run across the pit and turn around to face the cultists.  As soon as the dwarf hears the second set of pounding footsteps across the ceiling above him (which he guesses are the pursuing cultists, he lets go of the rope.  The dwarf plummets... and we never hear him hit.  Of course as soon as he lets go the 'floor come ceiling' rapidly rises into place again, crushing the few cultists that were on it at the time.  The remaining cultists are on the other side of the pit and hurl rocks at the party as they retreat in stunned silence.  Their warrior, the brusque dwarf fighter had sacrificed himself so that they might live.

That scene remains one of the most memorable in my history of roleplaying.

Can't remember the name of the dwarf now.  But it was played by the inimitable Chris Hart.  (A valuable addition to any game.  No one gets more scared, and infects the rest of the party with fear like Chris).
Thanks mate.  =)

The images below illustrate how the pit-trap works, in case my explanation confounded you....

1. Shows the trap unactivated.

 2. Shows the trap activated, with the thief dangling from the rope, safety line in place.

 3. Shows the trap activated for a second time, with the safety line tossed to the other side (prior to activation).

 4. Shows the remaining party members (in truth there were five but I couldn't be arsed to draw them all) scamper to the other side.

 5. Shows the thief let go from the dangling, trap-activating rope, and being hauled to safety by his party.  I didn't bother drawing the trap to illustrate the sacrifice of the dwarf... it was just too sad.