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frasmage
2013-08-27, 10:22 AM
As a result of a sudden scheduling conflict of my groups current GM, I find myself thrust back into the GM position. I'm about to start a PF campaign set in Planescape that I have been slowly cooking up over the past little while. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to iron out all of the details. Hopefully, the playground might be able to help me come up with some last minute ideas before tonight's session.

My players will soon find themselves in a temple dedicated to the Three Principles of the Planes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape#Rules). As part of this dungeon, I am trying to come up with three puzzles that each embody one of these three laws, but I haven't found much solid.

Initial ideas:
- For the rule of three, I was thinking of playing on the idea of three greater races of each alignment (i.e. demon, yugoloth, devil). The players would find a eight totems, each representing a different race symbolically. The totems would have to be place in a specific order around the room such that the correct three are placed on each axis. As the kicker, one of the PCs then needs to stand in the center of the room to complete the two arrays of neutrals.

- The Unity of Rings should definitely be some for of endless corridor/room, where no matter which way the players go, they always end up at the same location. What I haven't come up with is the puzzle piece to allow them to figure out or break the cycle.

- I haven't had a chance to design anything for the Center of All yet.

So playground, have any clever puzzle ideas that I could borrow?

NichG
2013-08-27, 11:10 AM
Some suggestions.

For the Rule of Three, you could do a classic object-grouping puzzle, with the extra twist that its ambiguous how to group the objects unless you realize that each group must have three objects in it.

You could also do a spin on the Sigillian saying 'If you see two things then one's hidden, if you see four things then one's a lie'.

For Unity of Rings, instead of an infinite corridor it could be a puzzle that seems to be cyclic, but when you get back to your original position something subtle has changed and the way forward gradually becomes open as you circle around.

Or if you really want to be mean, have players enter the area by moving their minis around and keep track of where they step - in order to exit the area, they have to walk in their own footsteps one full time around. You should probably forgive mistakes of +/- 5ft or this will be impossible.

A more cerebral puzzle would be one of those talking-door things (the builders of the temple installed a Modron into the wall...). When you talk to the door and express an idea, philosophical topic, etc, the door responds in a way that takes it from its current point of view to being vehemently against whatever point is made to it. To unlock the door you have to get it to go in a circle. That might be a bit much though.

For Center of All you could have a room whose walls always appear to be 30ft away from everyone, simultaneously. The door out of the room is at the wall. You have to realize that since everywhere is the center of the room, each person creates a door for another person, and the party has to arrange themselves in a sort of 30ft polygon such that everyone simultaneously has a door (a line would leave one guy stranded in the room). To make this work, the door has to be at a different angle for each person - the easiest way would be that whatever way you face is where the door will be.

frasmage
2013-08-27, 11:57 AM
wow, those are fantastic! You sir, deserve a medal.

Your Center of All suggestion is my favorite. It not only implies that each character is at the center of their own universe, but that they also affect and depend on each other (the solution also nicely works in the theme of rings). I think I we have a winner.

I think that I might add the decoys/hidden elements to the races puzzle.

As for the Rings puzzle, I had another thought: the puzzle could also involve not only the players going in a loop, but having to send other puzzle pieces around a cycle.

For example: the players stand in an infinite corridor, before them is a keyhole in the middle to the room and they hold a key (format is unimportant, ball+net works too). Every time they approach the keyhole, it recedes. To exit the room, they have to throw the key backwards such that it comes back around from the other side and lodges itself in the keyhole. Obviously, something would need to prevent them from simply throwing the key forwards.

Segev
2013-08-27, 01:23 PM
What if the ring puzzle isn't spatial but temporal?

The self-fulfilling time-loop is a classic trope of time-travel stories (my favorite occuring in the El Hazzard OAV).

Have a relatively short cycle of events that "begins" with the PCs being shoved into a time portal back to the start of it, and have no matter what they do, they wind up being shoved through again to start it over.

Attempts to break the loop get thwarted by increasingly mysterious means, which you may even go so far as to brazenly make look like deus ex machina.

Keep track of all their efforts to do so, and how they do it.

The solution is that they have to shove THEIR OWN PAST SELVES through, because the ones who shove them through go on forward in time, having completed the loop. The reason you keep track of everything they did to try to thwart the loop is because, when they realize what they have to do, you have the NPC-past-thems use each of those techniques in order to try to stop the PCs-who-have-figured-it-out from pushing them through.

When they get their past selves through, fulfilling the loop, they can go on to the rest of the adventure.