PDA

View Full Version : Simple illusion- making them knowable but non-obvious.



theMycon
2014-12-26, 12:00 PM
My players are about to enter a wizard's tower- the temporary residence of someone who might become the BBEG. She's both smart & clever, and there are a handful of "legitimate puzzles and traps" that they're guaranteed to at least notice that there is a puzzle or trap.

And then there's a staircase behind an illusory wall. It looks just like any other patch of wall, in a perfectly normal room (currently, no fights or other puzzles). You walk right through it. There's nothing special about it and no other way up. Anyone the wizard employs just knows that this is how you get from floor 2 to floor 3. You can guess "the stairs from floor 1 to 2 wound around the outside, maybe he stairs from 2 to 3 do the same?" Reasoning and having a decently drawn map are the only things to help you out.

I can totally see my players neither stopping to reason it out, nor making an accurate to-scale map. Without some hint, this might be impossible.
I don't want them to spend hours running around the first two floors of the tower not figuring out a simple illusion because they were expecting a puzzle. I don't want to inspire the type of "touch everything with an 11-foot pole" paranoia this might inspire. But, most of all, I want them to respect the BBEG as an outside the box thinker with at least basic reasoning skills.

How can I hint that there is a subtle illusion there without totally ruining the point of the illusion?

jedipotter
2014-12-26, 12:48 PM
What game system are you using? Most have a boring and lame way to do this. For example in 3.5E D&D a character just walks into the room and if they ''intact'' with the illusion they get a save to see that the illusion is not real.

An illusion should not flicker like a cheap Star Wars hologram, otherwise it would be pointless.

And it's hard to really point out something odd, without just saying ''there is an illusion here''. Like if you go out the the way to say ''Oh, and over by the north wall you see the shadow cast from the chair does not show up on the wall'' or ''a cool breeze comes from across the room, from right in the middle of the solid north wall''.

Though one obvious thing that half works is having the accessories around. So you'd have a landing with two lion statues on either side...but no stairs. A lot like having a door frame on a wall, but no door or a windowsill with no window.

And the detective route can work. The carpet over by the plain north wall is odd worn...but why would anyone walk over to that wall anyway? And why so much?

Deaxsa
2014-12-26, 03:07 PM
Jedipotter made a couple of points, but I think that there is even a more basic question to ask: why have this be the illusion in the first place? To your point, they are gonna have trouble getting through. So why make this the illusion? It will jus slow the game down. The sad fact is that you can't rely on the players to solve mysteries like some sort of mystery novel. Instead, I'd do something like make the center of the staircase a slide with an illusion of real stairs, and a pressure trap that summons a monster or something at the bottom. Or, if you'd rather not have a fight, make certain doors in the building portals that take you to a location that's not the one across the threshold. It could be random, or there could be a logic to it, or maybe even an emotion to it (the doors can hear you and judge where they want to take you depending on how much they agree with what you say. ) however, just remember that you should try and ensure that the pcs should never feel stumped. An example of the opposite of this is to ensure that the macgiffin is always super obvious, either because it's in a prominent location (sword in the stone), or because the party has some knowledge that makes it prominent (not a macgiffin, but the man with 6 fingers is a good example of this). So always, always ensure that the plot can move forward. And if making a superbly hidden staircase is opposed to that, then don't do it. Another idea that comes to mind would be to tell them that the staircase is hidden behind a wall, but they don't know which wall, and in fact, there are many illusory walls, each with its own trick (or trap.)

NichG
2014-12-26, 04:54 PM
If you want to have subtle hints that an illusion might be present, try designing the hints such that they could suggest multiple explanations, but such that only when multiple hints are intersected together is 'its an illusion!' the only possible answer.

For example, jedipotter mentioned a breeze going through the room. You could do something like this:



The second floor of this tower [start to describe room]. There are two small open windows with wooden shutters just above head-level. A faint breeze passes through the room, carrying the smells of smoke and strange reagents.


So, the party could conclude that the breeze has to do with the windows. Maybe the windows are portals, who knows? So they start poking at the windows, etc. That gives you an excuse to say 'the breeze flows out through this window' on each window. At which point, they have the second hint: the airflow is not consistent with cross-ventilation. That suggests there's an extra source to the breeze in the room (and they can close the shutters in order to localize the source, or just map out the direction of airflow in the room using Survival checks or whatever).

Of course, the golden rule for puzzles that block progress is that you need to have multiple independent clues as well as a failsafe in case the PCs don't figure it out. For extra clues, you can make it so that the floor of the tower with the illusion has very sparsely decorated walls, but the other floor is very lavishly decorated. You can also mention things like 'some of the decorations in this room appear to have a bit of old water damage', suggesting an exterior door that was at one time left open in a storm.

For the failsafe, maybe if the PCs get stuck for too long, an apprentice with his golem escort returns home to the tower, and after a resource-draining fight, negotiation, or bit of stealthy espionage then can move on; however the mage in residence has had ample time to observe their tactics and maybe fill a few spell slots left intentionally empty for the day with spells designed specifically to counter the party.

Jay R
2014-12-26, 09:24 PM
If they have to solve the challenge, so you dumb it down so that they solve it no matter what, then it's no longer a challenge.

To preserve it as a challenge, it must be possible to continue the game even if they fail it.

So instead of making it too easy, have a plan for if they cannot solve it.

That may be leaving and finding somebody in the next town who's heard of this trick, so they have to assault it again. It may be a surprise attack from behind the illusory wall.

But it has to be OK for them to not solve the puzzle.

theMycon
2014-12-26, 10:40 PM
It's D&D 5e, but I'm aiming to keep this system independent because I feel puzzles should be as removed from mechanics as plausible.
The players are, in general, very smart people, and about half of 'em are good at out-of-the-box thinking.
(Note that the wizard who's tower it is isn't there, because she's doing stuff, and an encounter with her would be possibly survivable but not at all in the party's favor.)


I am, in general, getting 3 kinds of responses that I like.
1: Give them multiple hints that don't necessarily point to the answer, but together lead to one conclusion.
2: If you don't think your players will figure it out, don't make this challenge.
3: If your players don't figure it out, have a work-around.


So...
I'm definitely going to start ramping up the detail on every room, so it only seems a little out of the ordinary when I describe the breeze coming from the windows. I'll make the room itself stand out and draw no detail to the walls. I'll highlight that she uses illusions on entering the tower and at least one other time per floor.
If necessary... I'm still not sure if I should go with "sub boss comes to get them" (so they don't have to leave the tower) or "liberated townsperson just happens to know" (so they can rest.)

goto124
2014-12-26, 11:33 PM
If necessary... I'm still not sure if I should go with "sub boss comes to get them" (so they don't have to leave the tower) or "liberated townsperson just happens to know" (so they can rest.)

Or 'random lost minion walks down the stairs and through the wall from the other side'.

kyoryu
2014-12-27, 01:12 PM
But it has to be OK for them to not solve the puzzle.

This is a general rule for all puzzles (and really should be for all encounters).

Telok
2014-12-27, 04:39 PM
One thing I've used is to have an illusionary door and a door covered by an illusion and a nearby mysterious NPC warning the party about the use of illusions.

It's a good thing that I also planned for them to fail, they never did find the real door on their own.

endoperez
2014-12-27, 05:25 PM
Set precedents!

One, that there's a reason to suspect illusions, and two, in this specific case they need to describe their actions carefully.

For the latter, have some sort of logic puzzle where it matters where they stand and what they touch. For that one, make those two rules clear, but make the other details the puzzle. It will help players to try those things again here.

To prime them for an illusion, use illusions!

Put in another illusion of the same general idea in smaller scale into a few other items in the tower, in places where players expect trickery.

A treasure chest is a good option. A locked treasure chest with a trap is something that will draw the player's attention and interest. It has a false bottom with a simple latch hidden by an illusion. To make the players extra suspicious, make it empty but the hidden treasure very heavy, & give hints that it's regularly used, the bottom is very thick compared to depth, etc.


If the players can figure out a way to follow tracks (scents, marks on the floor) they can follow them to the wall. If they try listening, they can hear something more loudly near that wall.

NichG
2014-12-27, 05:26 PM
Another possibility is that if your villain is clever enough, she may realize that the PCs won't give up faced with blank walls and nowhere to go. So she might create a badly-hidden 'secret' which would throw them off the trail. Something to make them think that they had in fact found everything important to find in the tower.

Then the consequence of failure is that the villain gets away but the PCs get whatever she sacrificed to make them think that it was a success. And of course she can re-appear later or whatever. For the campaign as a whole, that's probably not a failure condition, it means that there are long-term stakes to getting this right or not, and it means that the PCs are less likely to sit there banging their head against a wall.

Picking that sacrificial ruse is tricky though, in this case. If the tower has 4 floors and the PCs have only found access to 2, that's already a big hint that there's something hidden left to find.

Knaight
2014-12-27, 06:00 PM
If they have to solve the challenge, so you dumb it down so that they solve it no matter what, then it's no longer a challenge.

To preserve it as a challenge, it must be possible to continue the game even if they fail it.

So instead of making it too easy, have a plan for if they cannot solve it.


I don't think a plan is necessary. You just don't need to actively interfere with a plan the players come up with that bypasses it. They'll come up with something, they have tools available.

theMycon
2014-12-29, 12:50 PM
Another possibility is that if your villain is clever enough, she may realize that the PCs won't give up faced with blank walls and nowhere to go. So she might create a badly-hidden 'secret' which would throw them off the trail. Something to make them think that they had in fact found everything important to find in the tower.

...

Picking that sacrificial ruse is tricky though, in this case. If the tower has 4 floors and the PCs have only found access to 2, that's already a big hint that there's something hidden left to find.

This is brilliant. This and "make precedent" are exactly what I needed to hear.
"Make sure to point out the height of the tower beforehand, use illusions beforehand, and set up a badly hidden secret to stop them if they don't think."

Thank you all so very much.

FWIW- this is the end of "adventure 1 of 3", and is designed so if they succeed, they learn about her not-wicked-but-possibly-catastrophic-if-it-goes-wrong schemes and slow her down a tiny bit; if they don't they just get enough of a hint to move on to the next stage.
Adventure 2 I'm banking on their success, to stop her scheme and drive her desperate enough to actually do something evil.

(I am not sure what to do if they decide to help the BBEG, since two players have professed a similar "greater good at any cost" motivation on a smaller scale; but... I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.)

saxavarius
2014-12-29, 08:18 PM
From a mechanic standpoint: have a decent search check reveal that the bricks/stones of the wall don't quite match up perfectly.

Demidos
2014-12-29, 09:02 PM
Have a minion walk of the room empty doorless room right in front of them if they've already looked around and dont seem to be catching on. Wait for them to be outside the room though, and make sure the minion is nonmagical, so they'll be curious how the minion managed to avoid their notice while they were there....