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zephiros
2010-08-02, 01:15 PM
I don't know if there is a thread about this that I missed, but a quick search yielded nothing beneficial.

I was wondering how DMs go about crafting puzzles and riddles for dungeons. They aren't really things I'm particularly great at, so I was wondering if there's some online guide that someone's written that's really good, if any of the books deals with it, if anyone has personal experience or wisdom to share.

How are your puzzles and riddles made DMs?

Also, since this is a thread on DMs providing information, as a kind of extra question here: How do you guys find is a good way to tie plot threads together. I'm working on mapping out some basic details of a campaign at the moment, and I've created a few legs of the adventure, and then one major looming darkness that'll come after those. Thing is, I don't know how to connect all the separate parts with smaller villains back to the main theme there. Any help with that is great as well.

WarKitty
2010-08-02, 01:18 PM
http://www.rpgbg.info/Other/drugi_d20/Fantasy%20Riddles.pdf that's what I used for riddles last time, although you do have to be flexible a bit with the answers. Generally if my players come up with something that isn't the "right" answer but fits everything I'll give it to them.

Protecar
2010-08-02, 01:28 PM
Riddles are a tricky thing, for the second part, I'm not sure how complex you look at these things but I usually break it down pretty simple. A for instance:

I'm running a campaign with a standard evil looming in the background. But, what my players don't know, there's actually parallel big evils looming out there: one with a mastermind agenda, and one rather quasi-sentient wave of evil spawned from excessive abuse of necromancy that's plagueing the general land of the living.

The plague is the underlying reason for lots of future potential encouters--pretty much a solid reasoning for any undead encounters I send at them. Further, they have a macguffin currently in their possession that attracts undead and aberrational creatures to them.

For plot devices to push them in certain directions, the current macguffin talks to one of my players and influences him(major artifact with a strong ego and a dominate person ability) to try and push the players to further its goals. And also there's third party NPCs with their own desires and needs(side quests) that can push the players into certain encounters and plot-discoveries if they choose to pursue them.

I'm not sure if any of that helps, but if you want to specify more of what you're looking, I'll be more than happy to elaborate on how I do my campaign to set up encounters and the like. I don't doubt that there are plenty of people doing it better, but my players seem to enjoy my distribution of plot and encounters without feeling too railroaded(at least I hope. I try/am trying to give them plenty of options to explore).

Good luck! :smallbiggrin:

Edit: after re-reading the question I'll add a brief elaboration:

If you have a BBEG, it's pretty easy to just add lieutenants and generals under him who are out trying to collect macguffins or set up plot-devices to further the Big Plan. Also, for more random chaoticness, I refer back to my parallel evils that are working towards seperate goals that add a little spice to the mix, I feel.

jseah
2010-08-02, 01:41 PM
Not sure how useful you'll find this, but an interesting take on a standard multiple choice puzzle.

http://www.drunkmenworkhere.org/170

Took me two hours to work through the first time. You will wish to make your own four/five qn test.
Have the players be able to get hints with Int checks.

Shpadoinkle
2010-08-02, 01:48 PM
As a rule of thumb: Don't. It's annoying and if it's too hard it's incredibly frustrating. It's also horribly immersion breaking. I think it's a jerk move to stick a riddle or a puzzle in the PCs way, especially if there's no way around it. Putting a riddle or a puzzle in the game, that the PCs encounter but the PLAYERS have to solve is like telling the guy playing a fighter that instead of rolling dice, he has to get up and fight the DM, and how well the player does determines how well his PC does against the monster.

I saw a post somewhere where someone suggested that instead of making a puzzle with a predetermined solution, just throw a bunch of random crap together that looks like a puzzle. It doesn't have to make any kind of sense as long as it looks like a legitimate puzzle. Then set a DC. When the PCs try to solve it, roll against the DC, with bonuses based on how well it fits clues to the puzzle and the PCs Intelligence score. It can be a completely ludicrous solution that makes no sense, but unless the DC is low then it's not likely to be solved that way.

WarKitty
2010-08-02, 01:53 PM
As a rule of thumb: Don't. It's annoying and if it's too hard it's incredibly frustrating. It's also horribly immersion breaking. I think it's a jerk move to stick a riddle or a puzzle in the PCs way, especially if there's no way around it. Putting a riddle or a puzzle in the game, that the PCs encounter but the PLAYERS have to solve is like telling the guy playing a fighter that instead of rolling dice, he has to get up and fight the DM, and how well the player does determines how well his PC does against the monster.

I saw a post somewhere where someone suggested that instead of making a puzzle with a predetermined solution, just throw a bunch of random crap together that looks like a puzzle. It doesn't have to make any kind of sense as long as it looks like a legitimate puzzle. Then set a DC. When the PCs try to solve it, roll against the DC, with bonuses based on how well it fits clues to the puzzle and the PCs Intelligence score. It can be a completely ludicrous solution that makes no sense, but unless the DC is low then it's not likely to be solved that way.

Depends on your players actually. I threw a riddle-based dungeon at my PC's once, they still tell me that was one of their favorite sessions. And they'd have been sorely disappointed if they had to just roll for it.

zephiros
2010-08-02, 01:56 PM
Riddles are a tricky thing, for the second part, I'm not sure how complex you look at these things but I usually break it down pretty simple. A for instance:

I'm running a campaign with a standard evil looming in the background. But, what my players don't know, there's actually parallel big evils looming out there: one with a mastermind agenda, and one rather quasi-sentient wave of evil spawned from excessive abuse of necromancy that's plagueing the general land of the living.

The plague is the underlying reason for lots of future potential encouters--pretty much a solid reasoning for any undead encounters I send at them. Further, they have a macguffin currently in their possession that attracts undead and aberrational creatures to them.

For plot devices to push them in certain directions, the current macguffin talks to one of my players and influences him(major artifact with a strong ego and a dominate person ability) to try and push the players to further its goals. And also there's third party NPCs with their own desires and needs(side quests) that can push the players into certain encounters and plot-discoveries if they choose to pursue them.

I'm not sure if any of that helps, but if you want to specify more of what you're looking, I'll be more than happy to elaborate on how I do my campaign to set up encounters and the like. I don't doubt that there are plenty of people doing it better, but my players seem to enjoy my distribution of plot and encounters without feeling too railroaded(at least I hope. I try/am trying to give them plenty of options to explore).

Good luck! :smallbiggrin:

Edit: after re-reading the question I'll add a brief elaboration:

If you have a BBEG, it's pretty easy to just add lieutenants and generals under him who are out trying to collect macguffins or set up plot-devices to further the Big Plan. Also, for more random chaoticness, I refer back to my parallel evils that are working towards seperate goals that add a little spice to the mix, I feel.


Yeah, that was pretty helpful. I'm pretty much setting it up so the players won't know really about the main threat itself until all the other legs are finished, and basically these legs are all going to seem, at first, to be villains with their own ambitions, who are pretty much separate.

I'm essentially looking to drop subtle hints and clues that each of the seemingly separate antagonists is somehow linked (I figure a recurring symbol that they may / may not find in each location is one good way, but I'm looking for others if I can find them.

I'd like to do this while suggesting involvement with a greater evil force, but have them guessing at what that force may be, mistaking it for the next evil they come across, etc. They can't find out the nature of the main evil, but should be drawing connections is my main thing with the second part of my question.

I figure so far the best ways are the aforementioned recurring symbols, and letters of correspondence between the villains, which may also help drive them in the right directions.

Also, thanks for the book Warkitty, it looks helpful.

jseah, that thing is annoying. :P lol but it does give me some ideas.






EDIT: I agree with Warkitty, riddles can definitely be fun. I remember some being really bad but it made it funnier when we ignored them. :P

Our DM gave us a riddle one time to tell us which of three levers to pull to continue onwards. It was something like "One and one and one is two, and three and one for two and none." Or some craziness like that. We ended up rather politely informing the DM that crack is a bad habit, before pulling all 3 levers at once. :P

valadil
2010-08-02, 01:59 PM
How are your puzzles and riddles made DMs?

I don't do a lot of riddles or puzzles. I include them when they make sense in the context of the campaign. I don't put a riddle on the door and wait till the players solve it. When a riddle makes sense, it presents itself to you.

For example, my players recently entered a new town and wanted to dig up dirt on the local nobility. One of the players had connections here. He called in some favors and got a lot of dirt on the nobles. I decided that because I'm a jerk I shouldn't just give out that info for free. So I decided that he got a lot of little tidbits from different sources. They could be put together to form a decent amount of info, but individually were worthless. It was up to the players to sort those clues into valuable information. The result is this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8523826).

It worked because it made sense in the context of the game. It was absolutely believable that the PCs were solving the same puzzle that the players were. There was no sense of breaking character to deal with the puzzle. I probably won't use another logic puzzle this game, but I was happy that the opportunity presented itself. It was really just a question of looking at the scenario and asking "how can I make this a pain in the ass" rather than giving them a free info dump.


Also, since this is a thread on DMs providing information, as a kind of extra question here: How do you guys find is a good way to tie plot threads together.

I merge NPCs. You won't have NPCs 1-5 for plot A and NPCs 4-9 for plot B. Instead they'll be given connections to each plot. 2 NPCs will be involved in A and B. Another 3 are involved in B and C. Only 1 is involved in A and C. Nobody is involved in all the plots (this is key if you want to avoid a quest giver NPC).

I like this method because it lightens the load on NPC creation. Just keep recycling them and adding character to them.

zephiros
2010-08-02, 02:05 PM
I like your concept Valadil, although in the sense of an Arcane Trickster / Beguiler / Rogue, that type of character (or an Illusion-focused Wizard / Bard for that matter) riddles may be kind of a villain motif. That's the kind of thing I'm planning ahead for. :P

Also, a question, do you mean to recycle friendly NPCs that the characters encounter? Or antagonists?

Either way I like the idea, although it would have to probably be an underling antagonist, cause if you let drop that the BBEG for a particular segment got away, the players will probably be a bit pissed, unless they find out later. But I'd only pull something like that on them once if I was going to, making the major antagonist of any leg of the campaign escape and return, or res or whatever.

Friendly NPCs I can see too though. And it would help a sense of connection on the other side.

valadil
2010-08-02, 02:12 PM
I like your concept Valadil, although in the sense of an Arcane Trickster / Beguiler / Rogue, that type of character (or an Illusion-focused Wizard / Bard for that matter) riddles may be kind of a villain motif. That's the kind of thing I'm planning ahead for. :P


Ah. That makes sense then. I would make it clear that the villain is where the riddles are coming from.

Honestly, if I had that type of game planned I'd buy a big book of riddles and read through it for genre appropriate ones. Riddles are damn hard to write.



Also, a question, do you mean to recycle friendly NPCs that the characters encounter? Or antagonists?

Either way I like the idea, although it would have to probably be an underling antagonist, cause if you let drop that the BBEG for a particular segment got away, the players will probably be a bit pissed, unless they find out later. But I'd only pull something like that on them once if I was going to, making the major antagonist of any leg of the campaign escape and return, or res or whatever.

Friendly NPCs I can see too though. And it would help a sense of connection on the other side.

I recycle everyone I can. Recycle is actually the wrong term for this. I prefer to think of it as merging.

When I start thinking about the game, my plans might call for a shady bartender and a priest of Pelor. When a PC backstory mentions that the PC is a regular at a bar, the shady bartender gets merged into the NPC from the backstory. Same thing happens when the cleric has a mentor. I usually change some details around so the players can't tell I had other plans for the NPC.

I even go so far as to merge player created NPCs together. If two PCs had a father figure, bam! it's the same NPC. I just tell one of them that I had to rename the NPC since I already planned around another name.

I try to avoid villains that get away. But I will recycle minor antagonists. Not every bad guy gets killed at the end of the day. The shopkeep who kicked them out for haggling too much, or the guard who was suspicious of the PCs. These people can come back and play bigger roles at a later date. It'll make your game world feel that much more alive to have persistent characters who have a bigger role than providing a quest or information once.

Lysander
2010-08-02, 03:27 PM
My one pet peeve with riddles and puzzles is that it's an incredibly unrealistic security system. I could understand a dungeon having a password, and maybe even a hint to remember it, but it would be something highly specific to the dungeon owner "What is your mother's favorite flavor of ice cream?" instead of a general question that anyone could potentially figure out.

There are really just a few scenarios where riddles make sense:

A) Sadistic and/or playful villain or wants to give intruders a chance (or at least make them think they have a chance)

B) As a test to prove yourself worthy (or at least to prove yourself not an idiot)

C) If the riddle's answer is precisely obscure so that just people from a specific country, profession, organization, etc. would be able to answer it.

In a normal abandoned dungeon instead of having a riddle/puzzle designed as such, it might just be a natural obstacle that requires ingenuity to get around. For example, "The bridge over the underground chasm has been destroyed. Figure out a way across."

zephiros
2010-08-03, 03:03 PM
That's also true Lysander, though I'm thinking the leg of the campaign that will have riddles / puzzles, will have a very playful villain, something like a sadistic version of Jack from Erfworld, very quirky, aloof, head in the clouds sort of person, but with a pinpoint wit. Guess it's the kind of personality one could also ascribe to the Riddler. :P Kind of the playful Obsessive Compulsive villain I suppose.

I'm just hoping I can make it interesting for them. I've played with a few different people, first DM I had was great, if a little too fixated on the riddles / puzzles / traps idea. Second was good, made full maps of dungeons, did well with what he had. The storytelling was there but less immersive. The third and current one does very immersive storytelling.

But alas, University means we're losing our current DM come September, I do have one of the other people in the group running a sort of intermission thing (we're thinking of taking the same characters from our current campaign, scaling them up to around level 5, and putting them in a gladiator arena, then they break out with a grudge against the city, and pretty much take on a metropolis worth of guards, kind of a low-maintenance thing)

That's more or less to buy me time to write more about what I'm trying to do, so I suppose I've got as long as I need to prepare in advance, cause I would like to get things prepared in advance, despite the possibility of the PCs breaking the game.

I plan to have it more largely based around a series of places and fairly obvious antagonists than having any dependency on whether they put Sword of Truth A into mysterious NPC B or Altar of Time C. I guess that's more or less in hopes that doing things that way will be a bit harder to break. The only dependency they have is where to go, and I can just as easily alter it so they get to the right place in the end anyway.

But enough of that for now, I think that gives a pretty good idea of how things are going. Hopefully I don't do too badly, this will be my first time DMing and I love writing, so I'm hoping to make it a living world. I did read AKA_bait's guide (which I found very helpful)So I feel at least somewhat prepared.

Lysander
2010-08-03, 03:20 PM
One tip is to give the puzzles more than one solution. For example, you might design a door to be open if they correctly answer a riddle, but you would also let them through if they figure out that they can use a metal statue in the previous room as a battering ram, or if they figure out that by removing the tiles beneath the door there's enough room for someone with high escape artist checks to slip through and open the door from the other side.

zephiros
2010-08-04, 05:04 PM
That's also true.

Another thing I've been wondering is if anyone has any good ways beyond the ones I've mentioned (recurring symbols, or letters between them) of connecting multiple minor antagonists to one larger more insidious plot?

I need the BBEG hidden for much of the campaign, but there should be a sense of intrigue, and a constant asking "what's going on here?" feeling from the PCs. I know villain speeches cut off by death can sometimes serve a good purpose for that as well, but I'd like not to have to fall back on that. As fun as it would be to turn the campaign into Assassin's Creed. :P

So does anyone have any ideas on how to build an antagonist web of intrigue?

Darkmatter
2010-08-04, 08:23 PM
My last campaign had a very nice web of intrigue. I wove it by throwing plot lines around willy-nilly and deliberately not figuring out how to fit everything together until I had to. The PC's were constantly in the dark and befuddled by clues, and in large part I was as well. By the end of the campaign I had more than a dozen factions allied with or against the PC's (sometimes flip-flopping in their allegiance, of course, depending on their motives).

This web came naturally though a fluid approach to world-building and plot-building. Just don't be afraid to completely change things if you (or the players) see a way for everything to connect that was better than what you initially imagined. For example, one of the players' favorite plot twists occurred near the end of the game when a mercenary they had been thwarting for most of their career turned out to have been working for an entity that had the same ultimate goals as the PC's, just with more questionable methods and understandable trust issues. Originally, I'd planned this mercenary as a foil for the PC's and working for their enemies, but given the PC's hatred of this NPC I decided it was much more interesting to make uneasy allies out of them. I made up a new employer for him, embedded it in the campaign world, and for all the players knew it had been that way all along. If the PC's had killed the guy, of course, I would have just reverted to my original plan, and left the plot intact, if a little less convoluted.

In short, it's easy to make a villain into a genius planner if you can retroactively change the world to make their plans genius. As long as you make the new version of your world as convincing and seamless as the old one (and this is the really important bit - using deus ex machina will make everything pretty obvious), your players will never be the wiser.

Lysander
2010-08-04, 08:34 PM
That's also true.

Another thing I've been wondering is if anyone has any good ways beyond the ones I've mentioned (recurring symbols, or letters between them) of connecting multiple minor antagonists to one larger more insidious plot?

I need the BBEG hidden for much of the campaign, but there should be a sense of intrigue, and a constant asking "what's going on here?" feeling from the PCs. I know villain speeches cut off by death can sometimes serve a good purpose for that as well, but I'd like not to have to fall back on that. As fun as it would be to turn the campaign into Assassin's Creed. :P

So does anyone have any ideas on how to build an antagonist web of intrigue?

Always provide the players answers that lead to more questions. For example, if the players discover that the BBEG was mind controlling the captains of a shipping company...what were the ships transporting? So they investigate the island where the ships had loaded mysterious crates...and find an ancient troll temple. But all the skeletons have been stolen from the crypts...why does the BBEG need troll skeletons? A carving in the temple shows a strangely shaped mountain, perhaps a place they could search for. Etc.

zephiros
2010-08-05, 11:46 AM
Hmm, both good advice, I'll keep those in mind.