Players demand puzzles

[loodwig]

So, my group is going well, but they gave an interesting critique last night: "We want more puzzles... or any puzzles." So far, I've given them encounters and a detailed world, but I haven't really given them much the way of traps, puzzles, mysteries, and so on. I think puzzles are fun, and I'd love to add some into the game. The trouble is, I'm not sure how to add some in without it seeming obnoxiously shoe-horned.

The setting right now is that the party has arrived at a new city, which is really a dot on the map on the way to another bigger city. One character has a personal grudge to settle with someone in the next city, and they're supposed to find some mysterious hero and "talk him out of" his great quest. Beyond that, there are some looming big bads, and the group is generally amenable to just hanging out, getting treasure, and going through things.

Most of the puzzles I've encountered are in the dungeon variety, such as "One guardian tells no truths, the other tells no lies." So, given the setting, how can I introduce puzzles in a more organic way, or how have you (other DM's) done the same?

[Groshuk]

There's a book you can find online called The Book of Challenges I believe that will give you all sorts of ideas you can fit in to your campaign.

[Lightlawbliss]

how I make puzzles:
1. decide what the goal of the puzzle is: open a door, cross a room, ...
2. decide the general idea of how it is going to be done: levers, keys, pressure plates, ...
3. decide the penalty for failure: nothing, loud click echos through the room, get hit with a spell, room starts to flood, ...
4. Refine general ideas
5. Make the details of the puzzle: Are there any labels? What does the room look like? IS there any evidence of those who came before? ...
6. Alter things to make sure the puzzle is solvable but also not too easy.
7. Adjust CR as necessary/desired: Add a monster (if monster if vulnerable to the trap, expect it to be used against them), add a weaker trap along side, throw in an active spell effect (love silent image), ...
8. Clean up your now very messy notes.
9. Forget about the puzzle until the players run into it.
10. Practice poker face.

[Tarlek Flamehai]

Grimtooth's Traps

[Galen]

My favorite puzzle is: "a pair of Ogres lumbers your way. Can you defeat them using nothing except the information on your character sheets?"

[Extra Anchovies]

There's a book you can find online called The Book of Challenges I believe that will give you all sorts of ideas you can fit in to your campaign.

Book of Challenges is definitely worth a look. It's first-party material (WotC 3.0), and it has some good bases for both the puzzles (e.g. follow the pattern by placing the tiles correctly) and the means by which to make them seem dangerous (e.g. the room is filling with water, and there are kuo-toa around).

[OldTrees1]

I am fond of using Puzzles and Traps in Dungeons. They fit in nicely as a means of reducing the types of people that can be expected to breach the dungeon (allowing the inner defenses to be more specialized and thus more effective). Denizens of the dungeon would use the Trap's bypass and would have the Puzzles memorized.

[finaldooms]

actually i just did a maze with a randomized ( sorta) door trap ..first door look them to 1 of 3 rooms .red, blue,green each with a different thing..after they solved that part they showed up in another room with more doors and so on untill the end with some fights
..turns out everyone loved it ..works great if you are chasing after some rare items or even a mage who was bored

[loodwig]

There's a book you can find online called The Book of Challenges I believe that will give you all sorts of ideas you can fit in to your campaign.

Yoink


how I make puzzles:
1. decide what the goal of the puzzle is: open a door, cross a room, ...
2. decide the general idea of how it is going to be done: levers, keys, pressure plates, ...
3. decide the penalty for failure: nothing, loud click echos through the room, get hit with a spell, room starts to flood, ...
4. Refine general ideas
5. Make the details of the puzzle: Are there any labels? What does the room look like? IS there any evidence of those who came before? ...
6. Alter things to make sure the puzzle is solvable but also not too easy.
7. Adjust CR as necessary/desired: Add a monster (if monster if vulnerable to the trap, expect it to be used against them), add a weaker trap along side, throw in an active spell effect (love silent image), ...
8. Clean up your now very messy notes.
9. Forget about the puzzle until the players run into it.
10. Practice poker face.

This is excellent, especially #10. I think my issue here is that they're not going into a dungeon anytime soon. So, I kind of need to go with the "they need to open a chest," or "they need to break into someone's house," or some other way to deal with a party that's basically travelling from city to city. Then again, I could also create my puzzles, and just have them encounter it in several weeks when an appropriate situation does arise (#9).


Grimtooth's Traps

Also Yoink

[Ferronach]

You could always hook them with a "Damsel in distress" or some such nonsense in order to get them into a mage's/rogue's house which is rigged with fun but mostly harmless shenanigans :)
The local tavern keep could ask them if they would be willing to look into the disappearance of a keg of beer from his cellar every week. They need to determine who is stealing it and how they are doing so.

Local priest has heard strange sounds in the abbey/church at night. It turns out that there is a hidden room that is accessed by turning statues in the abbey to all face a certain direction etc. When I do this I usually have a clue written on a wall that I mention only as “you see religious frescoes and writing on the walls” if they ask if any of the writing looks out of place they get “one looks different from the rest because it does not appear to be religious. It says….” `

The “police” could ask the party for help getting into a trunk they discovered in a criminal’s hideout. It has a sliding puzzle. These are great because you can either give them a physical puzzle if you have one or just find one using google.

Puzzles do not have to be a physical puzzle though. You can always set up a situation where if the party think their way through something and maybe use their items in a clever manner they will solve/overcome/get something. Even something as simple as a game of “who did it” or a guy in the tavern that promises a reward for anyone who can solve his riddle/puzzle (fyi the reward is usually just a pat on the back, bragging rights and the knowledge gained by solving the riddle/puzzle).

[Extra Anchovies]

If you're feeling in the mood for harmless side-quests, local festivals involving tests of mental and physical strength - e.g. chess boxing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing) - could be a fun mix of (nonlethal) combat and puzzles, for some roleplaying XP, a moderate cash reward, and possibly some unique trophy or crown.

[Morof Stonehands]

The Challenge of Champions from Dungeon Magazine #138 and #108 are fun puzzles. Not a dungeon crawl puzzle, but an in town festival type puzzle. Can be very hard too.

[daremetoidareyo]

Hire the PCs as consultants. Give them a 5000 gp budget to rob a caravan. Stat up the caravan and its riders and just let the PCs problem solve. They need at least a 10% return on initial investment.

Hire PCs to kill a mayoral candidates' son. Give them a blueprint of the house, then stat up the whole thing, and let the PCs decide how to proceed.

Fey court is having its bicentennial scavenger hunt. The PCs are hired to procure items for a leprechaun, the list includes griffon feathers, a two headed snake, 2 fingers of a dwarf (need not be from the same dwarf), a page from a king's diary, a key that has gone entirely through a humanoids digestive track, the tears of a medusa and the seed of a centaur warrior. Leave it to the PCs for how they acquire these items. Losing the scavenger hunt will mean that the unseelie court will take over, a major goal of which is to burn down a nearby city for charcoal to power their new steam powered illusion generator. Time limit 2 weeks, the team with the most acquisitions wins. For helping, each PC gets to take one shovel full of gems from the Seelie treasury. PCs will need to decide how to get these things: Lots of skill checks, roll playing maybe even, in game research. What is the disguise DC for a two headed snake? gonna need to buy a scroll of charm monster and to hire a bard... whatever, this is about seeing how the PC team works together to solve a weird crisis. If you want to introduce necessary combat, make a team of duergar and dwarves attempting to win for the unseelie side because their kingdoms will be selling those fey a contract for coal for their illusion generator and I don't know...maybe they both see a centaur warrior at the same time?

[Magesmiley]

Real world physical items can be a nice twist on puzzles.

I had one dungeon that I built which used shapes made out of tangrams as the keys to opening different areas. They first had to find a set and then figure out how to assemble the shapes on the doors using the pieces.

In my current adventure I picked up a clear plastic 3D puzzles (this one was in the shape of a sapphire). They know that a complete sapphire can serve as a portal key to several portals that they've already found. They've been finding bits and pieces of the sapphire scattered around various places and have been slowly assembling the complete puzzle.

Damaged scrolls and maps which give the players some of the info they need are easy to make too. Print something up using a nice looking font. Crumple it up, rip small pieces out of it. Stick it in a cup of tea or coffee to stain it. Apply a lighter to make a few burns and other damage to it. Leave enough info intact to get the players on the right track, but enough missing that they're going to struggle some to figure out what else they need to do.

If you're doing a modern game (or some fantasy games) a cute trick is to hide something on/in a piece of furniture, such as a sofa. When the PCs go to search, point them to piece of furniture and say that it looks just like that, and let them search.

Other items, such as games (chess boards, dominoes, dice, etc.) can make good props for puzzles too. Maybe the game has to be set in a particular way to trigger something. Or the PCs have to defeat an NPC at the game to get critical info.

There are also those puzzle boxes that you can put gift cards in. How about using one of those to secure some vital bit of info.

I've also come across some sets of cards with math and geometric puzzles that I've used in games as well. The sorts of logic puzzles where you have to figure out the next sequence in a pattern or some other bit of logic.

[Smegskull]

Another thing to look at other than gadget puzzles are murder mysteries and who stole it puzzles. These are great for story as you don't have to tell the party if the solved it or not and can bring it back up later. Especially when the guilty villain is a Lord and the party have figure out how to get him arrested without it being their word against his.

[sideswipe]

tomb of horror's :smallsmile:

[Barbarian Horde]

http://s4.postimg.org/5dtv9xy1p/Untitled.png

[sideswipe]

http://s4.postimg.org/5dtv9xy1p/Untitled.png

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/012/367/evilest.gif

[The Viscount]

I was going to jokingly say the Lemarchand Box, but that's way worse. Bravo, sir.

[aleucard]

One fun one I saw a while back was a somewhat short (maybe 10') pit that was 10' wide in a corridor with some odd-colored liquid at the bottom. Obviously, the idea is to jump it, right? There's a somewhat thick pane of clear material right in the middle of the gap, and there's nothing dangerous in the bottom of the pit.

[Blackhawk748]

http://s4.postimg.org/5dtv9xy1p/Untitled.png

Epic good sir, just epic. Also i recommend giving Traps and Treachery 1 and 2 a look through, they have some fun traps as well as some quirky puzzles, most work well in mages tower. Just ignore most of their PrCs.

[Jack_Simth]

So, my group is going well, but they gave an interesting critique last night: "We want more puzzles... or any puzzles." So far, I've given them encounters and a detailed world, but I haven't really given them much the way of traps, puzzles, mysteries, and so on. I think puzzles are fun, and I'd love to add some into the game. The trouble is, I'm not sure how to add some in without it seeming obnoxiously shoe-horned.

The setting right now is that the party has arrived at a new city, which is really a dot on the map on the way to another bigger city. One character has a personal grudge to settle with someone in the next city, and they're supposed to find some mysterious hero and "talk him out of" his great quest. Beyond that, there are some looming big bads, and the group is generally amenable to just hanging out, getting treasure, and going through things.

Most of the puzzles I've encountered are in the dungeon variety, such as "One guardian tells no truths, the other tells no lies." So, given the setting, how can I introduce puzzles in a more organic way, or how have you (other DM's) done the same?
Riddles are fun... however, they also need to be sensible. A door with a magical lock may have a password to unlock... but because the STUPID MINIONS kept forgetting it, they put a reminder on the door, in the form of a poem, riddle, or word puzzle. One might have the intended answer to the riddle being the unlock code. For one, the word formed by the first letter of each word in the poem; for another, the word formed by the last letter of each word in the poem (in either of these cases, you need at least one deliberate misspelling to make it relatively possible to guess). Another might have a big distraction puzzle on it (to open, you simply lift the puzzle and check underneath for the actual doorknob). A bridge might be trapped to all get-out... but they still need people to be able to pass. So because STUPID MINIONS, there's some labeling on the bridge, a safe path through it, and a cutsey reminder note about it laying around somewhere.

Do note, however, that you need to be careful with such things: There is a strong tendency to make "single solution" puzzles that are otherwise invulnerable. And while yes, shouting out "Camphor Oil!" might cause that door to open... a few full attack routines at full power attack from the party meatshield should probably get it open too.

[Blackhawk748]

Oh also look at Legend of Zelda, has great puzzles in their dungeons and most can be solved with simple determination.

[aleucard]

Riddles are fun... however, they also need to be sensible. A door with a magical lock may have a password to unlock... but because the STUPID MINIONS kept forgetting it, they put a reminder on the door, in the form of a poem, riddle, or word puzzle. One might have the intended answer to the riddle being the unlock code. For one, the word formed by the first letter of each word in the poem; for another, the word formed by the last letter of each word in the poem (in either of these cases, you need at least one deliberate misspelling to make it relatively possible to guess). Another might have a big distraction puzzle on it (to open, you simply lift the puzzle and check underneath for the actual doorknob). A bridge might be trapped to all get-out... but they still need people to be able to pass. So because STUPID MINIONS, there's some labeling on the bridge, a safe path through it, and a cutsey reminder note about it laying around somewhere.

Do note, however, that you need to be careful with such things: There is a strong tendency to make "single solution" puzzles that are otherwise invulnerable. And while yes, shouting out "Camphor Oil!" might cause that door to open... a few full attack routines at full power attack from the party meatshield should probably get it open too.

Yeah, nobody likes "Guess what the DM was thinking" puzzles, especially when you're penalized too harshly for not being able to pull it off. Yeah, lifting puzzles from things like Zelda is somewhat cheap, but you don't have to copy-paste them entirely either. Sometimes, it's a classic because it WORKS. All else fails, make it something that 1) can be done with an Int or Knowledge (engineering) check and 2) can be repeated for the Take 20 option.

[Theomniadept]

Puzzles? How willing are you to commit blatant plagiarism?

Think of puzzles in games like Legend of Zelda. My favorite from that one is in Majora's Mask when your movement through the dungeon involves smashing these icy slabs out from this giant tower of stone and ice slabs in the center that reveals new paths to proceed through the dungeon.

Or Golden Sun - that series has a lot of good puzzles for pushing large heavy objects and such which would at least make the wizard burn some summons and at best make the fighters look better and more necessary.

Be careful what puzzles you're taking though; notoriously bad puzzles exist in games too, a simple google search can tell you that much.

One of my favorites is the 'leave someone behind' puzzle. The puzzle is a series of rooms where the puzzle is 'how do we use these weapons and spells to give the enemies the 'dead' status?', but in order to progress you must leave someone behind. For example; some magical doomahickey set in place focuses a beam of light onto a door to open it. The trick is how to get this to happen; if it's just a switch that needs to be held down then there are many solutions to that; rocks + rope are standard for adventurers, summoned monsters help but can be mitigated by simply requiring to be held down permanently (beyond 1 minute usually). Probably want something like a simple magical 'lever' that requires mental concentration to keep activated like a magic item/spell - usable by anyone but not solved by spending 8 gp on a mule. Plus your party will continually debate over who to leave behind which will cause THEM to add time to the puzzle, rather than you.

Above all avoid dumb metaphysical puzzles. I've had multiple bad DMs make puzzles where the solution is to think of something. Like a room full of butterflies and a door with eyes on it that requires the players to catch ones with their eye color and press it to the door. The hint allotted, however, were the door's engraving of 'the eyes of the forest', and the DM saying 'there's all kinds of butterflies'. Or worse, the puzzle where to copy a book of some creature's memories we had to 'think' about it happening. Don't use non-physical or non-mechanical elements in puzzles, or you'll end up basically having to tell them the solution and leaving everyone with a bad taste in their mouths.

Also, avoid Walls of Force. Permanent Walls of Force are expensive and it makes no sense for an enemy to have 10k gp worth of loot in his base with 200k gp in Walls of Force to keep puzzles intact.

[Barbarian Horde]

Silent Image is really a good choice for setting up traps and puzzles. Your PCs do not get a save unless they interact with the image. The limitation is your imagination.
Programmed Image is another good choice. Have the PC fight this image wasting their resources trying to figure out how to defeat it. Do it like wizard of oz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn3is-lKUME
Also programmed image and Permanent Image you can imitate fog and PC do not get a save unless they have a reason to suspect the fog is magical. Then I so pose id allowed a spell craft check. Person who cast it can keep announcing that the fog is an illusion, party keeps making the save till they dont see the illusion. Mean time everyone that doesnt know this only has 5ft of sight and doesnt know its an illusion.

Flanking buddies.
False walls/doors/manhole covers.
Lower level version of Mirror Image.
Terrain obstacles.
Free partial or total concealment, and breaking line of sight to avoid casters.
Fake hostages.
Snazzy hats.
By Piggy Knowles

[nedz]

You could run a whodunit.

Easy way

Buy a suitable book
Adapt the characters, and items, for your world
File off the serial numbers


Be careful about your source material: Agatha Christies are not whodunits, but rather feature a mary-sue who solves the crime with with secret knowledge.

[loodwig]

Wow, these are just brilliant.

With respect to "too esoteric," I thought of the following puzzle:

A room contains 12 metal pipes, suspended in the air. The largest is twice the size of the smallest. A massive stone carving is in the middle of the room, with the number "5" carved on it. Each pipe has a number carved on it too (0 to 11). If a note is struck, there is a tremor felt. Afterwards, if the wrong pipe is struck in the sequence, darts fly to the pipe in 4 directions, each doing 1d3 random stat damage.



Each pipe is a semitone (might give them musical note names, just to confuse them more, but then I'd need to make the symbol IV instead of 5). The puzzle revolves around using a cirlce of 4ths pattern based on the lowest note started. This means that each note should be a perfect 4th above the previous. Using numeric notation:

0 5 10 3 8 1 6 11 4 9 2 7

So you can begin at any point, and open the door once all other pipes are struck in order.

DC 20 Perform : music anything will give the player a hint that the symbol is musical notation, indicating that the pattern is a circle of 5ths ascending.

DC 40 Perception, DC 20 Dungeoneering : the puzzle is linked with several massive pipes submitted within the floor, which are triggered by a resonance device.

DC 20 Perception : All of the pipes have been struck, and it looks like the panel in the floor opens.

DC 10 Perception : The pipes have something to do with the floor.

DC 0 Perception : The pipes are hanging like chimes.

And for the gordion knot people: if they can break / see through the stone somehow, they can see a circular link indicating the pattern that will open the gate. Otherwise, it's 5 feet on solid stone enforced with 12 8-inch steel bars, so the manual will indicate the location of traps. Digging through will take time, and of course... alert guards & monsters and they'll need to move heavy stone & steel assuming they can pry it out of the ground... taking hours and fatiguing the group.



Too esoteric?

[OldTrees1]

0 5 10 3 8 1 6 11 4 9 2 7
Too esoteric?

Probably. A brute force pattern matching approach would take 5.5 + 5 + 4.5 failures on average before getting 0, 5, 10. Then they might take about 4 more failures before they discover 0, 5, 10, 3, 8. At which point the pattern becomes clear. So that is 19 failures before the solution.

Edit: The 19 failures before a success is based on if you had players like me or aleucard who would have to solve the puzzle without using the OOC musical knowledge.

[aleucard]

That puzzle is completely incomprehensible to me. Maybe it's just that I'm not in a music program? Either way, include something for the people who don't want to have to open up a search engine to figure it out. If you're running a .//hack campaign or something, fine, but otherwise.....

[loodwig]

I'm Definitely glad I asked. A google requirement is not what I'd call a good role playing experiment.

I was thinking of a puzzle evolving around a golden ratio, but again, it relies on OOC ability to solve puzzles pertaining to math rather than character logic. That said, I assume I'm not asking them to RP their character's intelligence to solve a puzzle, but rather try to actually solve a puzzle that will allow the quest to proceed (or not, and take some form of penalty). After all, no one in the party is a Wizard, so counting on them to have an in-character insight to pattern recognition may be asking much.

The players have stated that they've solved puzzles that pertain to the fibonacci sequence, as well as riddles and plays on words (so that's what I was more aiming towards). They said they'd love something that they'd have to spend an entire session just thinking on, musing over, testing things, and possibly getting stumped throughout the process.

What do you guys think of puzzles that deal with mathematical logic? I could just do a variation of the BG2 puzzle: "A princess is as old as the prince will be when the princess is twice as old as the prince was when the princess' age was half the sum of their present age."

[OldTrees1]

If the players are familiar with the fibonacci sequence(most are) then they should be fine with the golden ratio. Especially since a famous example of the golden ratio is the tiling of the square of the fibonacci sequence (1^2 + 1^2 + 2^2 + 3^3 is a 3x5 rectangle).

Mathmatical logic is another universal puzzle (although it takes some finagling to justify being in a dungeon). However eventually they can get too complex. The Knights and Knaves puzzles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Knaves) are a good example of how they can be too easy, just right, or too difficult.

[DreganHiregard]

Mathematical Puzzles can be a great deal of fun IF the players are the kind to enjoy them. Now since your players specifically asked for Puzzles I think that's a great opportunity.

A lot of people are suggesting Zelda style puzzles, but the problem is most of those are very very sight dependent and require large dungeons so I'd advise using them sparingly.

I firmly agree with the mystery angle, I'm running a mystery for my player right now where they have been the victim of increasingly distressing vandalism. The first night their pig was killed and it's blood spelled out "sinner" across their house wall.

The player did their investigating, searching for as much information as possible and found the pig's head was severed by a sword or axe in one blow by someone large and physically powerful. Other than the players of course only the towns lumberjack or smith had access to a weapon and had the raw brawn to accomplish this. But neither of them knows how to read.

The second night one of them wakes up with rats in his bed, a prank his childhood friend used to play on him. Again searching around their farm they found footsteps in the tall grass, someone small and very agile gathered up the rats and snuck them inside. That definitely couldn't have been either suspect they had. And other than the party halfling only a few of the villiage children were so small and nimble.

They had two crimes that seemed connected, but couldn't have been committed by the same people. And then finally on the third night a different player was found naked on their farmland digging a giant holy symbol into the mud, with no memory of how and why. The party realized that THEY were being controlled into committing these crimes. And since only one member of their party hadn't been affected yet they had a good idea who was going to be targeted next.

A good mystery should slowly add more and more clues, each time giving them a chance to change their minds about who it could be, and then ideally Also giving them clues as to what will happen next. But critically important is: Have a backup plan. If your players can't solve a mystery there needs to be another resolution that feels organic. In my example these events unfold on a certain timeline. If after the first night they figured the sword wielding fighter had been charmed they could have acted sooner, but if they hadn't caught the player in the field the third night they'd be even more baffled, but either way after the fourth night the mystery and the dynamic of the puzzles, changes.

[aleucard]

Mathematical Puzzles can be a great deal of fun IF the players are the kind to enjoy them. Now since your players specifically asked for Puzzles I think that's a great opportunity.

A lot of people are suggesting Zelda style puzzles, but the problem is most of those are very very sight dependent and require large dungeons so I'd advise using them sparingly.

I firmly agree with the mystery angle, I'm running a mystery for my player right now where they have been the victim of increasingly distressing vandalism. The first night their pig was killed and it's blood spelled out "sinner" across their house wall.

The player did their investigating, searching for as much information as possible and found the pig's head was severed by a sword or axe in one blow by someone large and physically powerful. Other than the players of course only the towns lumberjack or smith had access to a weapon and had the raw brawn to accomplish this. But neither of them knows how to read.

The second night one of them wakes up with rats in his bed, a prank his childhood friend used to play on him. Again searching around their farm they found footsteps in the tall grass, someone small and very agile gathered up the rats and snuck them inside. That definitely couldn't have been either suspect they had. And other than the party halfling only a few of the villiage children were so small and nimble.

They had two crimes that seemed connected, but couldn't have been committed by the same people. And then finally on the third night a different player was found naked on their farmland digging a giant holy symbol into the mud, with no memory of how and why. The party realized that THEY were being controlled into committing these crimes. And since only one member of their party hadn't been affected yet they had a good idea who was going to be targeted next.

A good mystery should slowly add more and more clues, each time giving them a chance to change their minds about who it could be, and then ideally Also giving them clues as to what will happen next. But critically important is: Have a backup plan. If your players can't solve a mystery there needs to be another resolution that feels organic. In my example these events unfold on a certain timeline. If after the first night they figured the sword wielding fighter had been charmed they could have acted sooner, but if they hadn't caught the player in the field the third night they'd be even more baffled, but either way after the fourth night the mystery and the dynamic of the puzzles, changes.

For emulating the 2D Zelda puzzles, all you should need is a whiteboard and a detailed DM map of the room and its mechanics. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of work for that second one and making sure you didn't miss any key details is going to put the first just a step under it, but such is the nature of being DM. The fact that they can be slotted in at any point where the place's architect can be expected to be a paranoid bellend (or just a bellend, some of these are MEAN) is a bonus.

Another point that I feel needs to be addressed; time limits. For a particularly meaty puzzle, one that is on a time limit is one that can VERY easily become indistinguishable from one that's supposed to be either forced-loss or a "Guess the DM's Thoughts" game. Don't put the players on the clock unless if there's multiple equally correct answers to it that the players can deploy as their panicked thoughts dictate.

[DreganHiregard]

For emulating the 2D Zelda puzzles, all you should need is a whiteboard and a detailed DM map of the room and its mechanics. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of work for that second one and making sure you didn't miss any key details is going to put the first just a step under it, but such is the nature of being DM. The fact that they can be slotted in at any point where the place's architect can be expected to be a paranoid bellend (or just a bellend, some of these are MEAN) is a bonus.

Another point that I feel needs to be addressed; time limits. For a particularly meaty puzzle, one that is on a time limit is one that can VERY easily become indistinguishable from one that's supposed to be either forced-loss or a "Guess the DM's Thoughts" game. Don't put the players on the clock unless if there's multiple equally correct answers to it that the players can deploy as their panicked thoughts dictate.

Quite right, heh honestly I kinda ruled out the whiteboard thing for my games based on my own ineptitude at drawing, but for a normal DM that would definitely work. And yeah, I'd agree with time limits on Puzzles. That's one of the big differences I suppose between a puzzle and a mystery. Nobody likes being rushed when they're trying to solve a rubix cube with a single correct answer. But in a case of gathering intel, thinking outside the box, and discovering new clues having timed events can be very important. Oh! and that reminds me, you mentioned multiple equally correct answers. I'd also recommend,in general if the players get an answer that could have been correct, even if it wasn't the one you picked, see if you can change the answer to match their pick. We can all agree there's nothing worse than getting the right answer only to be told it's the wrong right answer, and I would even recommend designing some puzzles or mysteries with a few possible answers.

[Almagesto]

...given the setting, how can I introduce puzzles in a more organic way, or how have you (other DM's) done the same?

Random episode of CSI. Substitute cell phones with message spells and the lab technicians with crazy gnomes. That should do the trick.

[Nibbens]

Simple code breaking like letter and number (or symbol) substitution. 1=A, 2=B and so on. Drop hints and have a word/number clue. After players figure out the puzzle (which shouldn't be too time consuming for simple number work (symbols take longer)) drop various letters in the dungeon giving hints about the boss or whatever - so players had to solve a puzzle and use what they learned from figuring it out to get clues about beating a bigger threat down the road. It really tickles a players brain when they discover a formula and they have to use it to save their hides a couple times.

It doesn't matter that the puzzle is not hard in this case, because the act of transcribing the letters lead to valuable info that saves their lives - the players feel like solving the puzzle important to their survival, and they "beat it".

[loodwig]

For emulating the 2D Zelda puzzles, all you should need is a whiteboard and a detailed DM map of the room and its mechanics.
I basically do this with puzzles now.



Another point that I feel needs to be addressed; time limits. For a particularly meaty puzzle, one that is on a time limit is one that can VERY easily become indistinguishable from one that's supposed to be either forced-loss or a "Guess the DM's Thoughts" game.
I think time limits can be used in the sense of game, but they should only be used to simulate a sense of reality. I'll warn the party if they're taking "game time" to solve a problem, debate a solution, etc. The remote temple that has a cryptic puzzle to permit entry has waited years undisturbed and will wait another hour. By comparison, if you're trying to figure out the lock in someone's house, sooner or later he's going to notice you're in there. Nothing should be "critical fail" of course.


I'd also recommend,in general if the players get an answer that could have been correct, even if it wasn't the one you picked, see if you can change the answer to match their pick. We can all agree there's nothing worse than getting the right answer only to be told it's the wrong right answer, and I would even recommend designing some puzzles or mysteries with a few possible answers.

I tend to reward "out of the box" thinking. When we started out, the party was stranded on an island with a crazy guy who was obsessed with a rock. The rock was, of course, the macguffin of some later plot point, and the crazy person was sort of a solution waiting to happen, but also a danger because he was infected with a serious disease. This played out in the form of the diseased person becoming increasingly erratic and obsessive, but was otherwise not terribly useful to the team. My "plan" was to have the crazy guy get treatment, gain clarity, and then spread the disease to the local town... bringing forth the first major conflict of the campaign. What happened instead is that they straight up murdered the NPC, burned his body and the surrounding area to a cinder, and vicariously saved the lives of the entire village. I then had to scramble to make some new plot in the no longer doomed village, and saved the plague for a later date. When it came up again, they used their first hand knowledge on it to recommend quarantine options, researched a cure via quest, found the origin of the disease, the conspiracy around it, and took the fight to the enemy. Their solution ended up with a lot less dead people and whole chapters of story and drama skipped. It was awesome!

[DreganHiregard]

That sounds like a ton of fun, and definitely the kind of unusual but accidentally useful behavior our great game is famous for. Sounds like you've got things well under way. With players like that I've got no doubt you'll wind up with a lot of good puzzles and a lot of fun watching them solve them.