Puzzles: the thread

[Azreal]

Monsters are easy, but what are some puzzles you guys like to use in your dungeons/campaigns/etc..

Could be anything from riddles, to complicated trap systems, to even a magic maze system.

[Rabidmuskrat]

I've actually been working on a random dungeon that randomly generates the next room, with each room being a kind of self-contained 'puzzle'. In my case, 'puzzle' could be anything from a skill challenge to a particularly tough to beat monster, but I will post a few of the true puzzles among those I've thought of. Oh, and each room has a 'theme' (or name), both for inspiration and as an ID. Note that I don't even try to explain how they work in terms of DnD spells or anything.

Origin
A square stone room with a single entrance. Softly glowing runes are scrawled on all the walls. Decipher script check reveals it is just the word 'Origin' repeated over and over again.
Solution? Close the door you entered by and open it again. It will lead to the next room in the sequence.

Model
Square room with an entrance and exit. In one corner is a scale model of the room with several dolls lying inside and around the 'room'. Closer inspection reveals the dolls inside to be copies of the PCs, while the dolls outside are various types of monsters. Damaging a doll damages the corresponding player/monster. Putting a monster doll inside spawns the monster (which can also figure out the dolls). Taking a PC doll out makes the PC vanish. All PCs vanished = TPK.
Solution? Kick down the exit door in the model (the real one has high hardness or something). This breaks the real door and allows the party to exit.

I'm also looking for interesting monster fights and things, so I'm going to be keeping a close eye on this thread for ideas, if you guys don't mind.

[Azreal]

One of the ideas I has is that when they go through a doorway each person ends up by themselves in a short and narrow hallway, the wall to their left is completely lined with a mirror, once they enter the main room, their reflection is standing next to them. Anything they do is perfectly mirrored by the reflection including spells and speaking. Any had caused to a reflection also happens to the original and vice versa. The real solution is to shut off their lights, since reflections can't exist in the dark.

I just don't know how to hint that without making it super obvious.

[JoshuaZ]

One serious problem with most puzzles is that if there's a single intended solution then it becomes more akin to just guessing the DMs password, and if they come up with another solution, one will have to be careful not to railroad. For example, in the mirror example above, the PCs might instead try to break the mirrors.

Puzzles also can break verisimilitude (why does this castle or tomb or dungeon have this thing?). I did use more standard puzzles once, but in that case it was to get through to a specific dragon oracle who wanted to make sure that anyone who went to it was sufficiently intelligent to not waste its time.

One thing I've been tempted to do for a puzzle but never had a chance (I decided it was too difficult in the context of the dragon oracle) was to make a situation that duplicates a Zendo game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendo_(game)) where the PCs are moving around giant stone pyramids and get only a certain number of guesses to figure out the rule. I would then represent it with actual Zendo pieces on the grid. Alternatively, they are given a certain set of valid and invalid configurations that are fixed and in order to pass must take the remaining pieces and make them into a valid configuration.
Part of the problem with this sort of game inside a game (and with a lot of puzzles) is that they can effectively shut out players who aren't good at or don't enjoy puzzles.

[tommhans]

I loved doing riddles and puzzles when i was a DM, they had to f.ex do 2-3 riddles to pass the keeper of the dungeon and he would tell you the right way to go from here. my players loved the variation of style. i sometimes also had a weight puzzle where they had to have the right height or word puzzle or sometimes even a traditional maze with traps that they had to go through ^^

that nr 1 post, the origin puzzle sounds awesome btw!

[Knaight]

I generally avoid 'puzzles' per se, on account of them tending to feel contrived and arbitrary. That said, interesting enemy capabilities in combat, and complex social/political/whatever situations are a major enough part of my game to make puzzles redundant.

As for interesting enemy capabilities - space opera technology is your friend here. You get situations where a bunch of bombs have magnetically attached themselves to a character, and they cycle their retractable weapons out at the last minute to throw them so they blow up at a safer distance, or people manipulating fields that accelerate projectiles that go through them by flipping the vector then opening fire through them, or whatever else. The thinking involved in puzzles shows up beautifully in these situations.

[Azreal]

One serious problem with most puzzles is that if there's a single intended solution then it becomes more akin to just guessing the DMs password, and if they come up with another solution, one will have to be careful not to railroad. For example, in the mirror example above, the PCs might instead try to break the mirrors.

Puzzles also can break verisimilitude (why does this castle or tomb or dungeon have this thing?). I did use more standard puzzles once, but in that case it was to get through to a specific dragon oracle who wanted to make sure that anyone who went to it was sufficiently intelligent to not waste its time.

In regards to your first paragraph, if the pcs come up with a solution that makes sense, but isn't the solution I intended I'd as a gm allow it.

For the second. That's also down to the GM you shouldn't use puzzles just because you wanna have puzzles to get to the BBEG. Like in my case I'm setting up a maze essentially, the goal is treasure but its been trapped to protect it from outsiders. They wanna get past the obstacles and traps to get to this ancient almost-forgotten treasure.

[JoshuaZ]

In regards to your first paragraph, if the pcs come up with a solution that makes sense, but isn't the solution I intended I'd as a gm allow it.

That's good.




For the second. That's also down to the GM you shouldn't use puzzles just because you wanna have puzzles to get to the BBEG. Like in my case I'm setting up a maze essentially, the goal is treasure but its been trapped to protect it from outsiders. They wanna get past the obstacles and traps to get to this ancient almost-forgotten treasure.

So why is it set up as a maze? If the treasure is great, why didn't whoever set it up just use it themselves? The usual explanation is that one of the objects is somehow dangerous in which case one has to wonder why they bothered making a puzzle to get access instead of say simply putting it in a dungeon under a mountain and then collapsing the entire dungeon. Or if they wanted to get it back themselves, instead of a puzzle using a very long alphanumeric passcode.

[Tim Proctor]

I find that it is almost always the fact that the players as a community are smarter than the DM/GM.

I've put an elaborate array of traps and puzzles in dungeons that weren't solved and just went until the players came up with a way to solve it that made sense.

I also have a huge preference for looking for off-skills and/or feats that players take and then ensuring there is a trap that is more easily defeated with that. I love making puzzles/traps on Profession/Craft skills in D&D (Astronomer, Alchemy, etc.).

[CarpeGuitarrem]

While playing Torchbearer, I and my partner dungeon-delver got into a Riddle conflict that the GM wove a sort of puzzle into. Like Guess Who, but with dwarves, one of whom held a pivotal key. The dragon whom we were riddling would give out a single hint each time we scored a solid hit against him, allowing us to eliminate possibilities.

It was pretty great.

[Acrux]

This is a puzzle/trap I've heard of that sounds clever:

A cage falls onto the party with several buttons or switches. Whenever the party presses a button or flips a switch a small grinding sound is heard, but nothing visible appears to happen. No magical effects can be detected, either.

Solution: The party must simply wait out the trap. After a given period of time without any of the devices on the cage being used, a timer will end lifting the cage off of the party. Any time one of the buttons or switches is used, it resets the timer.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I've heard a variant on that one: instead of a cage, it involved a room with a slowly-descending ceiling crusher and a button that accelerated the descent of the ceiling.

[veti]

Puzzles also can break verisimilitude (why does this castle or tomb or dungeon have this thing?). I did use more standard puzzles once, but in that case it was to get through to a specific dragon oracle who wanted to make sure that anyone who went to it was sufficiently intelligent to not waste its time.

This, basically. I always treat puzzles with grave suspicion. Who put it here, and in Heimdal's name, why?

The only good explanation I've ever encountered is that a puzzle is basically like entering a password. If you know the solution, it's easy, and you can just go on your way with no fuss or bother. If you don't, then you're not supposed to get through, and the designer certainly isn't going to leave hints around to make it easier for you.

From that point of view, I think the mirror idea described above is pretty good (the answer is simple, easy to remember, and makes the puzzle itself trivial).

Mazes, on the other hand, annoy me, because even if you know the solution, it's still a non-trivial amount of work to remember it and work through it. As I see it, a maze isn't a puzzle so much as an environment: the point of it is that it's easy to negotiate for the critters who live there all the time, but confusing and disorientating for outsiders.

[valadil]

I like puzzles on two conditions:

1. The puzzle makes sense. Solve this sudoku to open a door does not qualify.
2. The puzzle can be solved in character. A lot of puzzles make me feel like I'm not roleplaying. This condition is harder to satisfy so I'm more lenient with it.

Here are a few of my favorites I've come up with:

Black mail logic puzzle.

@EccentricOwl just reminded me of this one. I posted it a few years ago asking for beta testers. The PCs had called in information from a variety of contacts. I wanted to give them useful info, but also made them work for it. So I wrote up a logic puzzle. They got little tidbits of info, which combined into some pretty interesting stuff.

Here's the puzzle. https://www.dropbox.com/s/txvg9p0e67o0by9/nobles_puzzle.zip Clues are in the clues file. The puzzle file is the worksheet I gave the players to figure things out in. The answer key is self explanatory.

Double secret message.

The players received a sheet of paper on which a hidden message was written. The goal was to use the lemon juice/flame trick to hide and reveal the message. But the person sending it was dyslexic, so instead of lemon juice they used melon juice.

The first part of the puzzle was to extract the text. Melon juice doesn't turn brown like lemon juice does near flame. I didn't tell the players that and they were welcome to burn up the note, but they didn't want to risk it. I think they ended up attracting bugs which licked the sugar where the melon had touched. It was a bit of a stretch but I gave it to them.

The text they got was of course not readable. They assumed I was giving them a cipher of some sort and started guessing at letter substitution. I actually gave them a clue right in the beginning by saying the sender was dyslexic. The letters were merely jumbled. It's not the biggest deal to solve that once you figure it out, but I liked that I was able to hide that clue in plain site.

An actual puzzle puzzle

I haven't gotten to use this one yet, but I really want to. I have in mind a grid of images that the players have to align to get information. How does that make sense in game?

Okay, it's for a modern game. The players have someone's laptop and they're trying to get their location. There's no useful text stored anywhere, but the browser's image cache is intact. What's in the image cache? Google maps.

If you've ever looked at Google maps on a slow connection, you'll see that it pieces together its maps from many smaller images. I plan on giving the players each of those images (possible at different zoom levels so they have several puzzles in front of them) and letting them work out a location.

[EccentricOwl]

http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1nma42/coolest_puzzle_youve_ever_seen_in_an_rpg/

A bunch of other interesting puzzles.

[SimonMoon6]

I don't like puzzles as game-stoppers. However, I think they can have their use as game-helpers. What I mean is, a puzzle shouldn't stop the plot until the PCs figure it out. Instead, figuring a puzzle should make their life easier.

Here's a pathetic example: The PCs find (among a bunch of other treasure) a magic sword that seems particularly wimpy (maybe it's only a +1 sword as far as the PCs can tell) but they are told (possibly by the sword itself) that it seeks beauty. Wow, worthless, huh? Then, the PCs fight beholders. An army of them. Maybe some beholder mages too. The PCs are getting their butt kicked until they think to use that sword. It seeks beauty, right? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it smashes through beholder eyes (maybe it's a beholder-bane sword or maybe it's +5 against beholders or maybe it has other powers), all in its quest to find beauty in the eyes of the beholders.

Or maybe there's a book which has a cryptic note to place it in the devil's workshop. But there's no place like that around. Well, later, the PCs have a climactic battle, and at the far end of the room is a gigantic idol with its hands reaching out, palms up. So, if a brave PC manages to tumble his way over to the idol and place the book in the statue's hands, the statue animates (as a stone golem under the PC's control) to help in the fight. After all, idle (idol) hands are the devil's workshop.

[Azreal]

So why is it set up as a maze? If the treasure is great, why didn't whoever set it up just use it themselves? The usual explanation is that one of the objects is somehow dangerous in which case one has to wonder why they bothered making a puzzle to get access instead of say simply putting it in a dungeon under a mountain and then collapsing the entire dungeon. Or if they wanted to get it back themselves, instead of a puzzle using a very long alphanumeric passcode.

It's a reward for those worth of earning it, not so much a hidden away prize.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

One possible justification for a maze: like in the Minotaur's Labyrinth, it's designed to hide someone away that should never see the light of day.

Or it's the result of a dungeon falling into disrepair.

[JoshuaZ]

One possible justification for a maze: like in the Minotaur's Labyrinth, it's designed to hide someone away that should never see the light of day.


Then why not destroy it? And if that's not an option why not just bury it? Why actually make a way to get to it?

[tasw]

Every DM who considers a puzzle needs to buy pizza and beer.

most of his players will wander off annoyed fairly soon and giving them food and beer will keep them happy while the 1 person out of 5 or 6 you have at the table who actually finds a puzzle to be fun rather then a horrible imposition on their limited free time can work the puzzle.

Once he has AN answer, ANY answer. Move on.

dont forget to drink yourself as the GM.

Your players will be bored out of their gourds by your puzzle for the most part and hope to just move on with the story and if your drunk you might let them. So be drunk.

So my advice is to start drinking before the players get there, explain the problem, let everyone get drunk, and one hour in solve it for them.

That way the annoying puzzle is out of the way and everyone there for fun can get back to having fu slashing orcs and raiding treasure without you ruining their entire (limited) night off with your puzzle.

[Yora]

I think the biggest problem with puzzles, even much more so than traps, is the question why they are there to begin with.

Someone went through the trouple to build them. And if some PCs can solve the puzle in 15 minutes, the builder better intended that anyone would be able to do so, because as a protective lock mechanism, it would be a complete failure.
"Speak friend and enter" wasn't meant to be a puzzle. At no point it said "this is a riddle you have to solve to progress", and the characters almost were unable to solve it at all. Discovering that there was a puzzle at all was the biggest breakthrough in the whole situation. In an RPG, that puzzle would have been virtually unsolvable.

When I use puzzles, then it's more the kind of using sabotage to remove an obstruction. Since most dungeons are in a poor state of repair and there are no longer any guards around to stop people who start getting out their pickaxes, it makes enough sense that you could "outsmart" these security mechanisms.

[Galdor Miriel]

I set up the PCs once with a riddle and a black dragon. The dragon a asked them questions and they answered, the dragon then said one of you may come forward and receive the magic sword. One guy steps forward, a wall of force slams down and he is one on one with a highly amused dragon who has used folk lore to his benefit. In the end it was close to a TPK but they squeaked through, so I was happy as a DM.

Seriously though, puzzles and riddles are part of the world if they are part of the game. I mean, in the hobbit, the idea is that there is a riddle game and even evil creatures feel bound by the rules. In the world of tolkien there is obviously some agency that makes the actions of malificent creatures rebound on them and they know that. A dungeon crawl with puzzles needs an in game justification is all, and the willingness to accept different approaches.

I like riddles asked by ghosts who guard a chamber. I like traps that have a switch to deactivate them being turned into a puzzle. I like illusions that hide danger. I think the OP wants some real puzzles though rather than a digression.

Change the rules. Put a magical effect on an area that stops flight working. Have an obstacle course coupled with fight and an illusion.

Have an entrance to a wizards tower which is a puzzle because the wizard thought it was fun, and guests had to solve it before they could enter. Every time the puzzle is solved it changes for the next entrant.

Puzzles are awesome and if done right can be fun for all at the table, especially if there is beer.

[SethoMarkus]

This is a puzzle/trap I've heard of that sounds clever:

A cage falls onto the party with several buttons or switches. Whenever the party presses a button or flips a switch a small grinding sound is heard, but nothing visible appears to happen. No magical effects can be detected, either.

Solution: The party must simply wait out the trap. After a given period of time without any of the devices on the cage being used, a timer will end lifting the cage off of the party. Any time one of the buttons or switches is used, it resets the timer.


I've heard a variant on that one: instead of a cage, it involved a room with a slowly-descending ceiling crusher and a button that accelerated the descent of the ceiling.



I was actually in a campaign that used this puzzle. We (the PCs) were mook (read: level 1) defenders of a magic tower guarding a powerful artifact when an invading army began to overwhelm and take the keep surrounding the tower. Things were getting pretty bad, so the leader of the keep/tower guard tasked the three of us with making our way through the tower's challenges and trials to reach the artifact, then bring it down into the basement level where a magic portal would send us off to a random destination to keep the artifact away from the enemy (who, it should be mentioned, were attacking specifically to gain control of the artifact).

Upon entering the tower we were faced with the first trial. The door we entered through vanished into the stone wall, leaving only a closed and sealed heavy stone door across from us. A pedestal in the center of the room had a button on it; upon pressing the button, the ceiling, 200 feet above us, began descending towards us. As it got closer we noticed that there were spikes protruding from it. I tried to blast the stone door with an (Lesser) Orb of Acid, but it had some sort of magic resistance. We tried pressing the button again and the ceiling re-ascended 20 feet, before starting to slowly descend towards us again. This repeated every time we would press the button. Eventually we had the idea to let the ceiling drop all the way down, trying to position ourselves to avoid the spikes. When the ceiling was 10 feet above us it suddenly stopped, the door opened, and the ceiling starting to rise back to the top.

I don't remember the order of the other challenges, but they were also pretty decent, and the DM allowed us to solve them in interesting ways that he hadn't planned on (he's a pretty generous guy if you have a cinematic idea).

One challenge had us crossing a 120 foot gap of a broken bridge. Looking down, we couldn't see the bottom, as it stretched into darkness. Looking up had the same result. I had the bright idea of tossing a large stone off the bridge, and low-and-behold the stone fell from the "sky" several rounds later. Awesome, but still no way to cross the gap. I get then got the not-so-bright idea of jumping for it, figuring I would fall like the stone and continue forward until I reached the other end. I did not think about fall damage. Well, again, my DM was pretty awesome, so with a Concentration check and a well-time Lesser Orb of Sound, I was able to avoid (most of) the fall damage and survive. Two rounds later the rest of the party found a mace that allowed the wielder to cast Mass Feather Fall 1/day...

Another challenge had us solving riddles with a statue much like Olmec. I'll see if I can get the actual riddle from my DM and post it here, but basically we had to answer three questions using only "Yea" or "Nay" and only one person could answer the series of questions at a time (so whoever was answering couldn't ask for help in- or out-of-character). The first question asked was whether we were ready; the druid said "No" and was vaporized with lazer eyes... We were finally able to get through the challenge with no one else being disintegrated, and feeling generous (again, awesome DM, more interested in story, and since this was the first day of the campaign...) the druid was brought back to life by the statue.

The last challenge, and one I came here to write about, was a bit of a failure on the part of the PCs. As background, PCs were TN Warmage who followed Wee Jas (me), NG Cleric of Pelor, and CN Druid who was a bit of a pyromaniac (on the grounds that forest fires are a part of nature and vital for new growth). We entered a room with a sea of acid as the floor. There were two platforms on either end of the room for the doorways, and a floating island in the middle of the room (close enough for a simple jump check to get across). On the platform was a tree, three bandits tied up in rope, and two or three mechanical wolves. When we jumped onto the island, the doors on either side of the room closed. We quickly put together that the doors were triggered by some sort of weight mechanism, and began to think of a way to reduce the weight to open them up again. The cleric proposed chopping down the tree; the druid countered by proposing that we chop the cleric's face. We settled for "killing" the mechanical wolves and tossing them off the island. Nothing happened, still not enough weight. The cleric proposes the tree again, the druid glares; I propose sacrificing the bandits (just enough to open the doors). So, one way or other, we ended up distracting the cleric long enough to toss two of the bandits into the acid. This lightened the island enough for the doors to open and we carried on our way. After we completed the challenge, the DM turned to us and said, "You know, the three of you could have just jumped all at the same time." *facepalm*


And there's my story for the day. I hope someone enjoys it :smalltongue:

[WeLoveFireballs]

SethoMarkus I recognize that exact list of puzzles from a webshow called Unforgotten Realms, right down to the Mace of Windu. :smalltongue:

[SethoMarkus]

SethoMarkus I recognize that exact list of puzzles from a webshow called Unforgotten Realms, right down to the Mace of Windu. :smalltongue:

xD I had no idea! Lol, well, that explains a lot =P The entire campaign was a campy escapade with liberal doses of pop-culture references, so doesn't surprise me too much!

EDIT: When did this web-show come out? The site I just looked it up on was posted 2011 but it looks like a repost... We played in 2009.

EDIT 2: Wow, that is crazy how similar it was xD Not just the challenges, but how our parties reacted to them. Given our DM was probably familiar with the series, but none of the players had ever heard of it (until now), I'm really dumbstruck!

[WeLoveFireballs]

I'm not sure when it came out (I haven't watched it in years) but I know I saw at least some of the series before 2009. The dedicated urealms website is new, it used to just be on the escapist and partially youtube I remember.

[SethoMarkus]

That really is incredible though. Disregarding that my DM probably got the idea for the challenges directly from the series, none of the players had seen it (of that I am sure, since neither of the other two were very good at solving the trials, and I know I hadn't seen it), yet we still reacted in almost the same exact way.

I guess all D&D players are just Murder-Hobos at heart after all...

[Bucky]

The PCs find the doorway forwards blocked by a legless construct. It counter-attacks with nonlethal damage when damaged, throws rocks when attacked from a distance, and is a lot tankier than the whole party put together. But it leaves the party alone unless they attacked it in the last round.

They might eventually wear it down by chipping away at it while exploring the rest of the dungeon. Or they could find another way around - the dungeon's designed so that it can be bypassed with difficulty. Or they can bull rush it out of the way - since it can't move itself back, they can walk right by it.

[Acrux]

Hilarious! I've been re-watching Unforgotten Realms this week, and reading your description of the "island" puzzle immediately made me think of it. Here's a link to the series. Definitely worth the watch:

http://www.urealms.com/content.php?150-Unforgotten-Realms-Episode-1

[Braininthejar2]

I like riddles, but I agree they require an explanation IC.

Currently I'm GMing a campain based on Baldur's Gate series. While thinking about the problem, I discovered that I can get away with ridldes in three places, and each of them offers the same explanation - someone wanted the party to run a cliched dungeon crawl IC :smalleek:

(The three places are Durlag's tower, Firkraag's lair and Spellhold dungeon - each designed by someone who was crazy, sadistic or both)

[DigoDragon]

I had an odd dungeon puzzle that was more for fun than anything. Some of the larger rooms in this dungeon would have three doors. Each door had a red, blue, and green dot painted in a different order. When the PCs enter the room, six monsters get teleported in to attack the team. Monsters are colored in pairs; two each of red, blue, and green. The monsters could be anything and the pairs were usually not the same kind of monster (for example, a blue tucker kobold paired with a blue mummy, while the red geletinous cube is paired with a red mimic).

Whichever order the pairs are killed will open the corresponding pattern door. If no pattern was achieved, then no door would open. Now, this dungeon had a path that didn't require the party to open any of these special doors, but it was the longest path filled with the most traps/encounters and had the least treasure.

Thus, it was worth fighting the color-coded monsters to make shortcuts and get better loot along the way. This required the team to work together and plan out which order to take on the monsters.

[Couronne]

I like to use puzzles as an aside - not as 'required content'. That way, if the players don't work the puzzle out then they might miss out on something cool, but would still be able to complete the adventure. I tend to keep my puzzles relatively simple and more so, the more plot relevant they are. A couple of illustrations:

1) I ran a campaign which included four rings - one each of Sapphire, Emerald, Onyx and Ruby and a secret order 'The Order of the Rose' (which the PCs didn't find out about until halfway through the campaign). The PCs found the rings and at various points then on could find a series of depressions which, if the rings were pressed in in the order Ruby, Onyx, Sapphire, Emerald (i.e. ROSE) they would unlock some extra lore or a magic item hidden away by the Order. They missed the first two completely, found the third one but didn't have enough clues to work it out, had figured it out from scraps of clues by the fourth and fifth ones.

Then they went to fight 'The Plaguemistress' who had been a major antagonist, and by this point the PCs had discovered more about the Order and knew that The Plaguemistress used to be a member, but had corrupted the Order's knowledge of healing and used it to inflict vile diseases on entire towns. They found another set of depressions in her lair and tried the usual method, which just released a nasty cloud of disease spores and drastically weakened them. Eventually, they figured that The Plaguemistress had corrupted this secret too and they tried SORE (there'd been a bunch of hints in descriptions of various diseases) - which got them into her secret lab and access to a whole truckload of bonus potions and research.

It seems obvious, but it took the players a while and they appreciated the reward for their effort. Now of course, whenever I give my players anything they immediately make as many anagrams from it as they can and keep the list handy.

2) This was a lift in a tower built by a genius ditz gnome who tended to invent things that weren't always that intuitive to use (he did a good line in puzzle boxes). The tower had 7 floors above ground (including the ground floor) and two basement levels and the lift was the only way between them. The contraption that made the lift go had a lever on each of the left and right sides which could each be set to down, middle or up, a slider in the middle that could be set to left or right and a button that made the lift move - the instructions were in an archaic form of Gnomish which nobody could dechipher (it was a fairly simple substitution, but they didn't want to spend the time to crack it and none of the PCs had a useful language skill/spell).

The trick to it was that each lever position corresponded to a number (1 - down, 2 - middle or 3 - up) and the left/right slider corresponded to either 'plus' or 'minus' depending on which side it was set to. The button then did the calculation and took the PCs to the appropriate floor (so Up Plus Up was floor 6, Down Minus Up was floor -2, Middle Minus Middle or Up Minus Up or Down Minus Down was back to the ground floor and so on).

The PCs could get everywhere in the tower just by trying combinations and seeing what happened. Eventually they decided they had figured out how it worked, so then I let them find the language cypher and they were vindicated when they used it to read the instructions.

[Rabidmuskrat]

An alternative approach to keeping a puzzle interesting is to make it possible for the players to 'play around' with it. You can still get away with a "you can't pass unless you do seemingly arbitrary action" type puzzle, as long as your players can experiment with it without getting either "you die" or "nothing happens" if they attempt anything other than the right answer. To that end, seed your puzzles with hints and tips and things to interact with.

As an example, consider the the puzzle Model I have above. If you left out all the dolls what would be left is simply a scale model of the room. Enough to solve the puzzle, and arguably simpler, but then the players can't DO anything with it except solve it. Unless they guess the admittedly arbitrary, though logical, solution, they will simply sit there twiddling their thumbs. Especially monsters make a great addition to puzzles, keeping both the murderhobos occupied and entertained and giving the brainiacs some incentives to solve the challenge sooner rather than later.

[Bucky]

I endorse using the 'rule of three' with puzzles. If solving the puzzle is important, rather than a bit of treasure on the side, they should have three ways to solve the puzzle. Sets of hints count as a way, as long as, if you have two sets of hints, they can deduce a solution from one set with a bit of effort.