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Dr. Lagrangian
2009-10-12, 02:45 PM
We all know riddles and puzzles can be a good addition to a dungeon. They can test a player (or character) and be an interesting break from combat.

But don't they seem a little out of place?

Why protect your vault with a riddle or puzzle, when you can use the product of two very large prime numbers?

Why build elaborate life size chess pieces to guard a macGuffin? or require getting exactly 4 gallons of liquid into a 5 and 3 gallon pitcher to activate the doomsday machine.
Why guard your front gate with a password, but make it rediculously easy for anyone to figure out (Speak Friend and Enter)

Even worse, is that many don't challenge players. They are either too strange to solve, or too simple to be a challenge. All riddles I have ever heard turned into: "If we heard it before, we can solve it, if not then we can't)"


In short: Why do these things exist?

or for those who are more creative than I

How do you design a puzzle or Riddle that makes sense? How can they be legitimately utilized in a dungeon structure?

Foryn Gilnith
2009-10-12, 02:47 PM
It's usually a test of a sort. If you have the will (or mere intelligence) to solve the riddle (or solve for the 19437th term of the 43982th-degree polynomial), then you're worthy of entrance and the associated treasure/knowledge/club membership/etc.

Sure, you can't solve it; but if you're resourceful enough to divine up the answer, that's good enough.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-10-12, 02:53 PM
I think probably the most obvious reason is to keep "the riff-raff" out. A peasant would probably be scared off by the monsters alone, but a bunch of well-armed adventurers can handle that. Throw a puzzle or riddle at them and they might not do so well.

Plus, there's the fact that riddles and riddle-games feature heavily in older literature. Tolkien touched on it with the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter of The Hobbit, and he was drawing from much older Nordic and Germanic mythic traditions.

The issue with riddles in D&D is whether or not it relies on character knowledge or player knowledge. I remember a riddle I wrote for a game a while back:

"The wise man and the judge try to keep me
The fool and the wounded run from me
When I leave you are glad to be rid of me
but when I return you wish you had not cast me aside "

The answer is "sobriety" and I had hoped that the fact that the person who was supposed to answer the riddle was the drunkard of the group would make the answer obvious, but I ended up stumping everyone. If you make the players try to answer the riddle, it can be an interesting diversion, but if they're really stumped it will just annoy them. On the other hand, if you just have the characters make Intelligence or Knowledge checks to try and determine the riddle, you've reduced it to just random chance, discarding the whole point of having a puzzle in the first place.

Besides, if they simply wanted to keep everyone OUT, they'd just brick up the entrance. Generally speaking, these are places that are meant to test the people entering them, and reward them for their success.

Reaper_Monkey
2009-10-12, 03:12 PM
Besides, if they simply wanted to keep everyone OUT, they'd just brick up the entrance. Generally speaking, these are places that are meant to test the people entering them, and reward them for their success.

Pretty much this.

If you want to make a door only open to known allies or your own race, then its much similar writing some simple instructions in your own tongue and assume that almost all of who can read it are meant to be allowed in (and the ones who are are not would be cunning enough to get around it anyway), than making a highly complex magical sensor to do the same job or simply leave it open for anyone.

Equally, if you wish to keep safe a powerful item which you wish only the most pure of heart to retrieve, then you set up riddles and tests (puzzles) which a person who is not pure of heart is unlikely to fathom or will be compelled to pick the deliberate wrong answer (like stealing lesser treasure before hand).

Or, simply if you only want those who will provide the most entertainment for running around your death trap, then its easier to filter out all of those you deem unfit with a few simple puzzles and tests of might at the start. Most evil/crazy/sadistic wizards/master minds/demons fall into this category which explains the frequency of such things in your regular sort of dungeons. It saves them from focusing their attention on lesser sport.

random11
2009-10-12, 03:44 PM
Like others mentioned, the only legitimate option I see, is if the owner of the place wants people in, but only people who pass certain tests.
Of course, even then the owner might want to give some people a free pass. If every delivery man will have to answer three riddles, the old wizard will never eat any pizza, and you know how cranky old wizards can get without pizza!

If someone wants to keep people out, a locked door and a guard will do just fine.
I once did a very funny thing with riddles:
The characters entered a room with a locked door (no keyhole), 9 levers and a set of 9 lights.
Every lever turned on and off certain lights, so of course the characters assumed that they need to turn them all on to open the door.

Fact 1: The door can be easily open with a hidden button.
Fact 2: Every lever also triggers an alarm in the main guardroom.
Fact 3: It's REALLY fun to watch players get frustrated by a riddle, and when they finally "solve" it, they discover that the door is still locked, and that they are surrounded.

random11
2009-10-12, 03:47 PM
Equally, if you wish to keep safe a powerful item which you wish only the most pure of heart to retrieve, then you set up riddles and tests (puzzles) which a person who is not pure of heart is unlikely to fathom or will be compelled to pick the deliberate wrong answer (like stealing lesser treasure before hand).


I always found the "moral tests" quite useless.
Both the players and most enemies know about the item and who hid it in the dungeon, so instead of a moral test, it's actually a simple psychological game of "what would the owner want me to do?"
Usually, it's not that hard to guess.

Saph
2009-10-12, 03:50 PM
Because epic-level casters like to have fun, and one of the things that they find fun is creating weird original dungeons with puzzles, riddles, and deadly monsters. Then they find some adventurers, chuck them in, and get some popcorn.

I mean, as a DM, it amuses me to watch PCs solving puzzles, riddles, and weird deathtraps, so I figure there are probably some D&D wizards who'd find it amusing too.

WalkingTarget
2009-10-12, 03:53 PM
My favorite variant is the standard "one door leads to certain death, one to the goal" with two guards, one who lies and one who doesn't. Except if the players "solve" the riddle they've failed to pick the third door that's hidden and both of the obvious doors are death traps.

Why is there a riddle door in the building? To sucker in anybody who doesn't belong there.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-12, 03:54 PM
Why protect your vault with a riddle or puzzle, when you can use the product of two very large prime numbers?
Because a faux-medieval world wouldn't have heard of two very large prime numbers. Do you know the Caesar Cipher? It is created by shifting each letter three positions to the right. Lw lv odxjkdeob hdvb eb prghuq vwdqgdugv, exw hvvhqwldoob xqeuhdndeoh vhyhudo fhqwxylhv djr.

Other than that, they exist because whoever build the dungeon was insane, terminally bored, and/or both; this also explains some of the more ludicrous traps from e.g. the Grimtooth books.

Anyway, I've seen the obligatory riddle or two in convention modules, but they're quite boring in play, really. Either someone knows the answer, or it's "roll an int check and enter", or nobody knows and we are stuck for the next half hour. All three are pretty boring. Puzzles, on the other hand, can be fun to figure out, as long as they work on logical methods, and not on some gimmick that you must have heard before.

Lysander
2009-10-12, 03:56 PM
The reason you have a riddle instead of a password is that you want intruders to have a chance of making it through. Like Reaper Monkey pointed out, it could be to weed out members of your culture/race/alignment or just set up a minimum required intelligence.

Remember, not all dungeons are like personal safe deposit boxes just for the creator's use. Sometimes they're more like time capsules, where a culture preserves it's treasure for a worthy person in some distant age. Maybe the magic sword that is the only thing that will kill the demon destined to return was put away for safekeeping, and the dungeon has physical and mental challenges to ensure that the champion who gets it is worthy in all regards.

daggaz
2009-10-12, 04:04 PM
Surprising you included Tolkien's mines of moria in there...The idea wasnt to have some random empty dungeon pass protected. The mines, after all, were bristling with dwarves and traders at their height, so anbody who wanted to attack thru the front door? well its not like they would get very far, even if they could get past this first defence. Ultimately, it was an attack from within (or below) that got the dwarves, so the front door had nothing to do with it.

If you read further into it, you might even come to the conclusion that the magic guarding the door could somehow detect intentions, so that only a "friend" could open it as well. All in all a fairly solid first bulward against unwanted intrusion.

In my own campaign, I am busy weaving several large scale puzzles into things. If they players figure them out, it should be epiphany like and they will understand certain aspects of the plot, as well as gain a significant advantage as to what to do next and what is going to happen next. If not, they will still get there, but they will be more like frontliners in the war.. able to see and act and affect things, but missing the secret reasonings behind the scenes without even knowing it.

Saph
2009-10-12, 04:05 PM
How do you design a puzzle or Riddle that makes sense? How can they be legitimately utilized in a dungeon structure?

Well, one approach (if you want it to make sense) is to design a puzzle made by somebody who REALLY DID want to keep everyone out.

Eg: an underground dungeon that has traps that, when activated, do one of the following:

a) kill every living thing within a certain radius,
b) cave the whole place in,
c) set off a fuel air bomb within the complex,
or d) all of the above at once.

Then set up extra traps designed to kill anyone who bypasses the first traps.

I'd say that trying to extract a vital object from a place like that is a puzzle. Not a particularly nice puzzle, but within the capabilities of a mid- to high-level party.

Bouregard
2009-10-12, 04:54 PM
I always found the "moral tests" quite useless.
Both the players and most enemies know about the item and who hid it in the dungeon, so instead of a moral test, it's actually a simple psychological game of "what would the owner want me to do?"
Usually, it's not that hard to guess.

Let's say I'm the goodly Lord Pureblood the Faithful and I want to protect the "Hearth of Good". I will place the Hearth of Good in a big chamber filled with treasure, anyone who just grabs the hearth will go unharmed, everything else will trigger something really nasty.

Or setup some guardians. They will not attack on their own, however are placed in a really vulnerable postion (back to shadows or are spottet first by the party from a ledge). It's easy to kill them and rewardable (good equipment). However only a truly good person would first talk to them and so get a password or hint out of them to survive the next funny deathtrap of doom.




A simple question like "You are faced with someone who killed his brother in cold blood, what would you do?" and then judge someone of their reaction is really stupid.

Katana_Geldar
2009-10-12, 05:03 PM
I've actually just done them for the sheer fun and novelty admittedly, as it was in a Star Wars game and the place they were in was not too much of a stretch to have one: a Sith Academy for assassins. Though the DMs guide DOES say not to have them for purely their own sake.

valadil
2009-10-12, 07:40 PM
I think probably the most obvious reason is to keep "the riff-raff" out. A peasant would probably be scared off by the monsters alone, but a bunch of well-armed adventurers can handle that. Throw a puzzle or riddle at them and they might not do so well.


I like the opposite explanation better. The riddle keeps out the peasants who would just get themselves killed anyway. Once the adventurers get inside, the monsters are the real threat.

Puzzles and riddles are part of the genre. They're not part of modern culture though (at least not to a great extent). An encounter like Bilbo's with Gollum wouldn't work because the players probably wouldn't have any riddles handy. So instead they end up as part of a barrier or boundary.

When I GM I'm a little obsessed with making sure riddles make sense. I can justify an encoded message. I can't justify a guard that opens the door if you can answer a childish puzzle. If I do use a standard puzzle I usually preface it that the puzzle the players solve is an abstraction of what the PCs are solving.

penbed400
2009-10-12, 07:53 PM
well it matters on the situation really. I've had a dungeon completely comprised of puzzles and trickery devised so that the person who gets to the end first has proved himself incredibly intelligent and capable against trickery and thus was chosen for the quest of going out into a world of devils. Because only those with enough knowledge of trickery should even be considered.

I've had a forest where it was only riddles because the master of the trees only allowed the wisest of creatures to gather water from his well that had healing properties.

And I just make my players answer the riddles themselves, I have a fairly intelligent group where I can ask them challenging ones, leave for a soda and slice of pizza and by the time I come back they have an answer.

It helps to not have set answers for them because really most riddles are too ambiguous and have multiple answers that works for them. If the riddle is , "I have never existed, yet I do exist, the human race relies on me and yet I can be a fear inside their heart, what am I?" And you decide that the answer is "Tomorrow" and your characters say "Power" then give it to them anyways, I mean really? I'm not gonna make them come up with the exact answer I want them to unless I have placed hints all along the game. Like they find somebody who's last breath is, "If only we never feared tomorrow...*gasp*" and its centrally themed around tomorrow...power works just as fine.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-12, 09:52 PM
"The wise man and the judge try to keep me
The fool and the wounded run from me
When I leave you are glad to be rid of me
but when I return you wish you had not cast me aside "

I feel it necessary to quote XKCD. Communicating poorly is not cleverness. I love all problem solving riddles, I despise all riddles that essentially consist of describing something in a way that nobody would actually use.

See also the difference between an enigma and a conundrum.

In terms of gaming, it's a problem since the puzzle ONLY exists due to it being made intentionally vague. It's an arbitrary puzzle. Look at yours, and try to think of all possible objects, ideals, etc that fill the above criteria.

A good puzzle either has exactly one answer, or sufficiently few answers that any that fulfill it can be accepted.

Sinfire Titan
2009-10-12, 10:05 PM
I include traps and puzzles to drain resources. I don't expect it to stop them, I expect it to slowly whittle away at their ability to fight equal-level opponents. One particular "trap" was a Spell Turret (DMG) that cast Polar Ray, Dissentigrate, Reach Slay Living, and Repair Critical Damage (on itself). The entire purpose was to force the party Psion (who had a hard-on for Timeless Body) to expend PP. The room was set up to slow the party, with Grease traps, Permanent Acid Fog, and other goodies. I didn't expect it to take more than 10% of anyone's HP, and didn't even ask for it to take more than 5% of the Psion's PP. It drained him a little, hit the rest of the party a little, and then got bypassed. It lived up to my expectations.

When it comes to puzzles, I usually add a combat encounter that requires the players to think while dealing with a threat. I don't do riddles, I prefer jigsaws. The players get some pieces set up? Cool. The enemies mess with the pieces? The party realizes that they need to deal with the bastards.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-12, 10:19 PM
Yeah, adding combat to puzzles adds a time factor, too. People can't simply putter around, take 20, etc. Thinking on the fly is much more challenging.

Bonus points if each area flows into the next so that it integrates more or less seamlessly. I can't always pull it off well, but when it comes together, it's quite nice.

I'm a big fan of elaborate traps and linking things together, of course. Linked doors are an obvious device, but hey, it helps keep the overly cautious parties from clearing *everything* painstakingly slowly.

DiscipleofBob
2009-10-12, 10:23 PM
I remember a trap my brother used:

Two paths with two doors blocking each. One led to the next area, the other one led to a trapped room where the door would shut and some sort of otherwise inescapable trap would kill the player. Each door had some sort of harmless sentient construct embedded in it. One would always lie, one would always tell the truth. Seems familiar, right?

The catch: the construct guardians are misinformed. Leading down the "correct" path instead leads to the trapped room while going down the "wrong" path moves ahead. Why? Why would a wizard NEED a puzzle to remind him where to go in his own study? This was used to mislead all-too-clever adventurers.

The trick to using a good puzzle in an adventurer is to come up with something players haven't experienced before and defies their expectations, but not something that will halt the game and storyline if they can't solve it.

sonofzeal
2009-10-12, 10:26 PM
I feel it necessary to quote XKCD. Communicating poorly is not cleverness. I love all problem solving riddles, I despise all riddles that essentially consist of describing something in a way that nobody would actually use.
That's a very different situation than XKCD was referring to. In their case, ambiguous wording mislead the listener. In this, a series of cryptic clues are given, statements about the thing itself that are all too broad to be useful individually but hopefully add up so that there's only one thing that satisfies all of them. It's a very difficult form of puzzle, but one that can be solved by an intelligent and deductive listener, unlike the XKCD one which relied poorly on misdirection.

deuxhero
2009-10-12, 10:34 PM
"The wise man and the judge try to keep me
The fool and the wounded run from me
When I leave you are glad to be rid of me
but when I return you wish you had not cast me aside "

The answer is "sobriety".

Isn't "law" better?

LurkerInPlayground
2009-10-12, 10:34 PM
Rule of Cool.

Sometimes mythology doesn't need an explanation.

Besides, fantasy is comfortable around such anachronistic pulp assumptions.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-10-12, 11:01 PM
I feel it necessary to quote XKCD. Communicating poorly is not cleverness. I love all problem solving riddles, I despise all riddles that essentially consist of describing something in a way that nobody would actually use.

See also the difference between an enigma and a conundrum.

In terms of gaming, it's a problem since the puzzle ONLY exists due to it being made intentionally vague. It's an arbitrary puzzle. Look at yours, and try to think of all possible objects, ideals, etc that fill the above criteria.

A good puzzle either has exactly one answer, or sufficiently few answers that any that fulfill it can be accepted.

Judges and wise men need to be sober in order to make sound decisions. Only a fool or someone who has been emotionally hurt would drink solely to get drunk. If you're drunk you don't care that you're drunk, but after the hangover passes and you realize the stupid things you might have done under the influence, you wish you hadn't decided to drink in the first place.

It made perfect sense to me. None of the other answers I could come up with fit all those requirements. :smallconfused:

I'll admit it took a lot of hinting for the player to get it, but that's because he was roleplaying his character as a stupid drunk who didn't know what sobriety meant in the first place. All the other riddles I provided were borrowed from the internet and the players figured those ones out in a snap.

By the way, could someone please provide a link to the XKCD comic Tyndmyr is referring to? I'm curious as to just what the context is.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-12, 11:11 PM
It's not that it couldn't apply, it's that it *could* also apply to other things.

Power. Responsibility. Authority. Sanity. Law. Justice.

Arutema
2009-10-12, 11:26 PM
Why guard your front gate with a password, but make it rediculously easy for anyone to figure out (Speak Friend and Enter)

In Tolkein's defense, that wasn't a password, just a simple set of instructions in Quenya Elvish. Anyone who could read Quenya was assumed to be a fried and was instructed to "Say 'friend' and enter."

It was only a riddle because Galdalf botched his Decipher Script check and translated it as "Speak, friend and enter."

Of course, this was too complicated for the movies to explain.

Summary: concise instructions + dead language = riddle.

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-10-12, 11:52 PM
Puzzles are used to protect something that you will want to access without being bothered much.

Think of it as the silly "Give a question so you can recover your password if you forgot it" thing on most websites. If you forget your password, you can rely on your riddle to gain access.

Same thing. Your riddle is used to let you in, while keeping others out. Or rather, letting in a certain type of person, while excluding others. An example of this would be in the book (and movie) The DaVinci Code. At one point, the protagonist was asked a series of questions to gain entry into his friend's estate. The purpose of the questions was to make sure it was, indeed, his friend and not someone posing as him.

We can extrapolate this reasoning to be used as a kind of 'lock' which any member of the group would have the 'key' for, without relying on physical objects which can be lost or stolen. Those with the answers can pass through, those without the answers are stumped.

This works particularly well in 'cult' setups, wherin initiates of the cult have been indoctrinated with their belief system. A puzzle which requires knowledge of this belief system will keep out non-believers and heretics, but admit the faithful.

The key here would be to find, capture, and interrogate a cult initiate, discover the answers, then proceed into the dungeon. The party may have already had opportunities to do so. If they have, then it is no barrier. If they have not, then they should go do so. Either way, is it logical, at least from the cultist's perspective.

Another type of 'puzzle' is to make the opening mechanism cater to something which the party is not, because the creator or intended user of the mechanism is not anything similar to anything in the party. They then have to figure out what the mechanism is, and how to operate it with the materials at hand.

A small creature with a far greater degree of fine manipulation, but not much raw strength, might have an intricate keypad which one must operate in a skillful manner, inconveniently located near the floor on the wall, at least for a Human.

Likewise, a large, strong, but clumsy race might have a door with a large wheel that takes a great deal of strength to turn, placed six or seven feet up.

It isn't that it is designed to stump people, so much as designed to be optimal and ergonomic for the creator or intended user.

random11
2009-10-13, 12:09 AM
Let's say I'm the goodly Lord Pureblood the Faithful and I want to protect the "Hearth of Good". I will place the Hearth of Good in a big chamber filled with treasure, anyone who just grabs the hearth will go unharmed, everything else will trigger something really nasty.

Or setup some guardians. They will not attack on their own, however are placed in a really vulnerable postion (back to shadows or are spottet first by the party from a ledge). It's easy to kill them and rewardable (good equipment). However only a truly good person would first talk to them and so get a password or hint out of them to survive the next funny deathtrap of doom.




A simple question like "You are faced with someone who killed his brother in cold blood, what would you do?" and then judge someone of their reaction is really stupid.

Will it filter out the bad guys? not necessarily.
Think of Aladdin as an example, the bad guy KNEW that all the other treasures are traps, so why can't the current bad guys know it?
The shortest version: The bad boss told some underlings to get it, they failed, but the bad boss learned the lesson from how they died while sending the second group.
Also don't forget that traps are a common thing in the D&D world, so a tempting treasure is usually a test of trap detections instead of a test of morality.

Will it allow good people to come in? define good...
It seems that adventurers (including the good ones) in fantasy settings make most of their money from dungeons such as this.
The common good adventurer will either take the treasure like he does in all the other places, or suspect that it is a trap, which is a conclusion that isn't connected with morality.

The vulnerable guardian option will fail for the same reason.
First of all, why would any good man judge people by sacrificing his own underlings?
"George, it's your turn to stand in this corridor and look only to the north. Unfortunately John died in this spot, but it was for a good cause, he could have revealed the details of a trap but he died before"
Second, while loot is tempting, not all bad guys are stupid evil. They might know they need help to pass through, they might not want to waste time on loot when they need the important item, they simply might be really bad at sneaking, or they might even have a code of honor despite being really evil.

Sliver
2009-10-13, 02:03 AM
Riddles and puzzles are a way to put in an old wise proffesor outside that tried to solve the puzzle for years and Bob the Crusher solved it in a minute and rubbed it in while fighting the proffesor using the same treasure he got from solving the puzzle.

Katana_Geldar
2009-10-13, 02:15 AM
Sometimes players can just solve them with sheer luck. I had the Knights and Knaves logic puzzle with a blue hologram and a green hologram, they had one question to one of them before they both disappeared. Funny thing is, they wasted their question (by asking the guy who lied and he gave them the wrong answer) but picked the right door anyway. :smallbiggrin:

Zen Master
2009-10-13, 03:57 AM
"If we heard it before, we can solve it, if not then we can't)"

Exactly. Basically, it's a lock. I want to be able to open my lock easily, and if I want a friend of mine to be able to enter, I want to make it easy for him aswell. So I tell him the riddle - so he will be able to solve it.

And everyone who hasn't heard it before is assumed to be unable to solve it.

At any rate - what am I keeping out? Do I expect orcs to sit down and discuss the solution to my riddle? Graverobbers? Thieves?

Now, if I'm guarding against an invasion of elder fiends or ancient dragons, a riddle might be a very bad idea. Unless it's 'why did the chicken cross the road?' Stupid and unsolvable riddles might be just the way to foil a supergenius.

Sliver
2009-10-13, 04:05 AM
Now, if I'm guarding against an invasion of elder fiends or ancient dragons, a riddle might be a very bad idea. Unless it's 'why did the chicken cross the road?' Stupid and unsolvable riddles might be just the way to foil a supergenius.

But then you are just blocking the way, not making a riddle, maybe with a pass. No point in a riddle here, if something strong enough wants to enter, he won't guess the pass, he will just force his way in.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-13, 04:06 AM
Obligator DMOTR link (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=680)...

random11
2009-10-13, 04:13 AM
Exactly. Basically, it's a lock. I want to be able to open my lock easily, and if I want a friend of mine to be able to enter, I want to make it easy for him aswell. So I tell him the riddle - so he will be able to solve it.

And everyone who hasn't heard it before is assumed to be unable to solve it.


But why a riddle?

If you want it easy for you and your friends to enter and hard on people you don't know, the best solution is an actual key like a password.
It's a lot easier for friends, and a lot harder for uninvited guests compared to riddles.

JellyPooga
2009-10-13, 04:23 AM
But why a riddle?

If you want it easy for you and your friends to enter and hard on people you don't know, the best solution is an actual key like a password.
It's a lot easier for friends, and a lot harder for uninvited guests compared to riddles.

There is something to be said for having a riddle rather than just a password...a password might be forgotten easily, especially if it's complicated or obscure. A riddle, on the other hand, by the very fact that it is something that must be answered rather than just given, gives you a bit of a reminder.

So if your friend is someone that doesn't visit often, he'll have a better chance of remembering a 'riddle password' than just a standard one...

Sliver
2009-10-13, 04:24 AM
But why a riddle?

If you want it easy for you and your friends to enter and hard on people you don't know, the best solution is an actual key like a password.
It's a lot easier for friends, and a lot harder for uninvited guests compared to riddles.

I think a riddle is more like a "forgot my password" thing here.. But something that a knowledge check won't give you the pass right away.. You can't put a "my phone number" as a riddle...

karnokoto
2009-10-13, 04:31 AM
Sometimes players can just solve them with sheer luck.

Also true. Long ago one player in our regular group (college is dumping on the poor guy right now, alas)was able to solve a riddle that had the rest of us stumped simply because on his version of the riddle, for some reason he had capitalized every E he wrote. Call it luck, his subconcious, or the riddlin kicking in, but everyone else was pretty much awestruck when the DM told us this guy had gotten the riddle right.

From the viewpoint of an evil (or maniacal, sometimes coinciding) dungeon-building villain, a riddle, in my opinion, would be another way to safeguard your valuables from pesky adventurers.
A well thought out puzzle could stop a raiding party of hulking he-men dead in their tracks.
Hypothetically.
The trouble with 'well thought out' here is that a lot of DMs are sapped of creativity, and especially with enough creativity and insight so that their riddle or puzzle isn't totally stupid.

But the truth in the real world is that, for some players (myself included) we need a little more variety than 'kill a hundred goblins, level up, kill two hundred goblins.' There is more to this game than how hard you can hit the bad guys.

AmberVael
2009-10-13, 04:41 AM
But why a riddle?

If you want it easy for you and your friends to enter and hard on people you don't know, the best solution is an actual key like a password.
It's a lot easier for friends, and a lot harder for uninvited guests compared to riddles.

Because while senile arch wizards have bad memory, they still have good intelligence scores to solve that riddle they set up ages ago. :smalltongue:

Manga Shoggoth
2009-10-13, 05:00 AM
By the way, could someone please provide a link to the XKCD comic Tyndmyr is referring to? I'm curious as to just what the context is.

Words that End in GRY (http://www.xkcd.com/169/)

Violet Octopus
2009-10-13, 06:39 AM
Puzzles/conditions like the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin are poor for differentiating good from evil, as mentioned above. However, riddles are a good way of testing if your character has reached some level of enlightenment.

In a Star Wars game, my character encountered a Force Spirit of an ancient Jedi Master. Of course, being a Force Spirit, they didn't need to ask a riddle to determine if my character was light or darksider. The riddle's objective was not "keep the enemies out", instead it was a learning tool for my character, and a springboard for discussion of Jedi philosophy.

That riddle was pretty easy, except that I was sleep deprived. Generally, riddles are fine as long as they make sense (jedi masters, mad wizards, copper dragons, fey, devils bound by complex mystical codes of conduct) and they don't obstruct the main plot if unsolvable. Ideally, they should be one of several ways to the goal (one not expending combat resources), a way to get optional bonus treasure/miscellaneous benefits, or something which exists not for the sake of the riddle's challenge, but for its roleplay opportunities.

Volkov
2009-10-13, 06:57 AM
Don't use math, calculators and computers can break it very easily.

Zen Master
2009-10-13, 07:07 AM
But why a riddle?

If you want it easy for you and your friends to enter and hard on people you don't know, the best solution is an actual key like a password.
It's a lot easier for friends, and a lot harder for uninvited guests compared to riddles.

People forget passwords. Even windows has reminders - and before the age of e-mail, you couldn't just get the site to send you a new one.

Hence - riddle.

Also, rogues can't pick a riddle.

EDIT: Och - ninja'd twice over.

random11
2009-10-13, 07:33 AM
People forget passwords. Even windows has reminders - and before the age of e-mail, you couldn't just get the site to send you a new one.

Hence - riddle.

Also, rogues can't pick a riddle.

EDIT: Och - ninja'd twice over.

There is a reason why password reminder questions are only a backup in case you forget the password, and even then, it's a personal question that theoretically only you know and not a generic riddle.

If the "key" is a verbal password, the best is a personal word with no meaning, a personal question is a backup, and a generic riddle makes no sense at all.

Violet Octopus
2009-10-13, 07:48 AM
People forget passwords. Even windows has reminders - and before the age of e-mail, you couldn't just get the site to send you a new one.

Hence - riddle.

Also, rogues can't pick a riddle.

EDIT: Och - ninja'd twice over.

Actually, that'd be a fun thing to have in a game. The adventurers find the super seekrit vault belonging to the evil royal wizard. They tell the intelligent door they've forgotten the password, and ask it to send a new password to the wizard's office in the royal castle. Cue a sneaking mission into said castle for the scrap of parchment with the randomly generated password.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-10-13, 08:43 AM
It's not that it couldn't apply, it's that it *could* also apply to other things.

Power. Responsibility. Authority. Sanity. Law. Justice.

You do have a point there. Those WERE some of the other answers the players came up with. The only reason I think they caught on was because the glowing blue words hanging in the air that made up the riddle flashed a bit whenever someone said the word "beer." So how would you suggest I narrow my particular riddle down so "sobriety" is the only answer?

SmartAlec
2009-10-13, 09:03 AM
The only reason I think they caught on was because the glowing blue words hanging in the air that made up the riddle flashed a bit whenever someone said the word "beer." So how would you suggest I narrow my particular riddle down so "sobriety" is the only answer?

Some sort of enigmatic last line that doesn't seem to fit with the other three, but clarifies the actual answer is traditional, I think.

Either that, or just make it easier. Something like:

Without me, the wise man won't stay wise for long
The foolish man drowns me, and hopes I'll stay dead
Come morn I'll return, and you'll know when I do
For my favoured herald's a pain in your head.

Fluffles
2009-10-13, 09:10 AM
And another thing about the Mines of Moria, it was the Elvish word, not the dwarven. Hows that for a mind trick?

And I'm writhing a campaign geared around riddles and puzzles :)

First one the party runs into will be requires, "A sacrifice of the Right-handed bird." Not hard to guess, hard to solve :smallbiggrin:

valadil
2009-10-13, 09:32 AM
I'm of the opinion that too many riddles and puzzles don't have enough false positives and red herrings. I'd love to run a dungeon with a hundred locked doors hung from the walls. Or a portal that only opens when the right word is uttered, but opens for a variety of close words, just not to the right destination.

misterk
2009-10-13, 09:53 AM
I would always prefer to reward creativity on the part of my players. so if I were to use riddles (and I doubt I ever will), if they happened to give an answer which fitted well enough I'd let them through.

There are two issues with puzzles- making them make sense in the world you are in, and making them fun.

The former can be solved in a number of ways- I had a set of puzzles in Dark Heresy which were some obstacles hastily created by some people the party were pursuing, there to delay them but without enough time to set up truly lethal traps.

The second problem is important too, and the reason I hate riddles is that they are often too much of a dead end. I want my players to be able to search for an optimal answer, but if they can't find it, to be able to do something less optimal to progress. They will probably pay a price for doing it that way, either in plot, damage taken, or items found, but there should be a way to go forward. In the puzzles I made in DH the solution was always to use the objects from the puzzle they had previously solved. My players managed to ignore those, and come up with different ideas, some ingenious, some less so, and I rewarded and punished accordingly.

ericgrau
2009-10-13, 07:04 PM
OP

IMO the best riddles and puzzles aren't riddles and puzzles. They are a dungeon that is trying to stop the PCs, and fails to do so because it can't. Even if that lock has an open lock DC of 100 (which would be too expensive for anyone to actually buy btw), the PCs can and should just break it, or break the door, or break the wall next to the door, or teleport, or etc. The DM should not set up a puzzle or other challenge with one specific solution in mind. Rather the baddy should create the best security he is capable of while still being able to make use of the dungeon himself. Thus the way to defeat it isn't even determined, but you can be sure there are many creative ways you might not have even thought about. And DMs who make adamantine doors to railroad PCs into a single answer deserve to have the doors stolen and sold for a billion gp. I mean how did the baddy afford it, why didn't he use the money to make a massive army or etc., and why is it blocking such a piddly lesser treasure?

Knaight
2009-10-13, 07:08 PM
I would extend that to a situation where it looks like you are pretty much screwed, but that you can at the very least get out of if you use enough lateral thinking.

Foryn Gilnith
2009-10-13, 07:11 PM
Because while senile arch wizards have bad memory, they still have good intelligence scores to solve that riddle they set up ages ago. :smalltongue:

This.Allahu Ackbar

Danin
2009-10-14, 12:18 AM
I rather like puzzles that weren't ever intended to be puzzles. While exploring ruins find a place they need to get to, due to age the conventional path is gone. Find a creative way up there. Sure, it is put out by a simple fly spell, but you can't go throwing spells like that around forever. What about getting back? Sure it requires the DM to improvise a little bit when the players come up with an absurd solution (Who ever expects players to actually listen when you say they have run out of ammunition for the trebuchet when there is a cattle ranch near by is a fool) but it can sure be justified a heck of a lot more.

Similarly, riddles don't have to be obvious. Simple instructions written by a civilization thousands of years ago suddenly become less clear when they reference a "Left at the world stone (globe) followed by a right at the sun's breath (window)". It's even harder when the globe was smashed and only a portion vaguely resembling the Mediterranean remains and the window is now a gaping hole in the wall.

Myrmex
2009-10-14, 12:51 AM
Well, one approach (if you want it to make sense) is to design a puzzle made by somebody who REALLY DID want to keep everyone out.

Eg: an underground dungeon that has traps that, when activated, do one of the following:

a) kill every living thing within a certain radius,
b) cave the whole place in,
c) set off a fuel air bomb within the complex,
or d) all of the above at once.

Then set up extra traps designed to kill anyone who bypasses the first traps.

I'd say that trying to extract a vital object from a place like that is a puzzle. Not a particularly nice puzzle, but within the capabilities of a mid- to high-level party.

You sound like the most awesome DM ever.

Zen Master
2009-10-14, 05:14 AM
There is a reason why password reminder questions are only a backup in case you forget the password, and even then, it's a personal question that theoretically only you know and not a generic riddle.

If the "key" is a verbal password, the best is a personal word with no meaning, a personal question is a backup, and a generic riddle makes no sense at all.

Guys who build dungeons have minions, remember? And while minions are expendable assets, killing every one of them every time they try to return to base may be bad for morale. Plus expensive.

But yea - if you happen to be the only one who ever has to enter, you could tattoo the password on your tongue (where few are likely to look - especially while you still retain any say on the matter), and make a riddle that actually sets off the trap.

random11
2009-10-14, 06:36 AM
Guys who build dungeons have minions, remember? And while minions are expendable assets, killing every one of them every time they try to return to base may be bad for morale. Plus expensive.

But yea - if you happen to be the only one who ever has to enter, you could tattoo the password on your tongue (where few are likely to look - especially while you still retain any say on the matter), and make a riddle that actually sets off the trap.

You can always give the password to some selected minions.
It becomes less safe the more keys (physical or verbal) that you distribute, but if you have many minions it DOES get annoying to open the main door every time.

A verbal key is slightly safer since people need to both capture the minion alive and force the password out of him. That is, unless he acts like many people in our time, and puts the sticky note with the password right on the door...

Tyndmyr
2009-10-14, 07:01 AM
You sound like the most awesome DM ever.

I agree with this sentiment. I enjoy me a good, properly twisted dungeon.

Zen Master
2009-10-14, 08:49 AM
A verbal key is slightly safer since people need to both capture the minion alive and force the password out of him. That is, unless he acts like many people in our time, and puts the sticky note with the password right on the door...

The sticky note is the riddle tho - that's kinda the whole point.

At any rate, the question of putting a riddle on yer door doesn't pop up unless you have a door that you want selective entry through. If you want it sealed up for good and ever - then you don't make a door. You'd propable rather catapult it out into cold, dead, empty space.

Conversely, if you aren't restricting access, you might want to consider a flashing spotlight and a sign reading 'right here, guys!'

PhoenixRivers
2009-10-14, 11:08 AM
The sticky note is the riddle tho - that's kinda the whole point.

At any rate, the question of putting a riddle on yer door doesn't pop up unless you have a door that you want selective entry through. If you want it sealed up for good and ever - then you don't make a door. You'd propable rather catapult it out into cold, dead, empty space.

Conversely, if you aren't restricting access, you might want to consider a flashing spotlight and a sign reading 'right here, guys!'

Depends on how selective. If you're very, very selective, and want say, only you and your 3 colleagues in, then you don't leave clues. You tell each of the three which 3 levers to pull to open the door, and let them know that pulling any of the other 47 will detonate a fuel air bomb. You then make each lever out of 1 of 4 metals, encrust it with 1 of 8 patterns in gems, and affix it to the wall at 1 of 3 heights.

And make all that meaningless, and include no clue in the lever room. You'll likely want to ensure your colleagues have Mind Blank.

Flying Dutchman
2009-10-14, 12:10 PM
I ran a campaign this summer for my g/f and a couple of people who had never played before. In one part i had them exploring a wizards dungeon. I put a door that when normaly opened led into nothingness. But by flipping switches semi-hidden through-out the duengeon the door would lead to various locations instead. I also gave them a guide to the door with the patterns of the switches all listed in a diffrent language in the back of the wizards journal. But I didn't hide anything behind the door that they NEEDED it was just loot/monsters based on the pattern. however figguring it out would net them some nice stuff as a reward. unfortunatly I never got to try it out cause summer ended and we all go to diffrent schools.

But I think making the riddle/puzzle something you can just walk away from is a good idea. That way if it stumps them they can just continue and arn't bogged down trying to figgure it out, and you don't have to DM them a solution that makes it un-fun. however if they at somepoint get a good idea they can come back and try it again and still get a nice reward.