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[Alucard2099]

I have a question for everyone out there that either DM's or plays... Given the choice.. do you prefer to have more puzzles or battles in a dungeon.

Now, I mean you have 2 dungeons.. one has all kinds of puzzles and one big boss battle at the end...
The other dungeon is stock full of battles but no puzzles at all.

You can choose between them, and no other options.

I am basically doing this to take a poll. Feel free to be as open about this as you want.

[silveralen]

Those options are both awful though. Anything gets boring with repetition.

[Talyn]

That's a bit of a false dichotomy. What constitutes a "puzzle"? Is a trap a puzzle? Is a trap ONLY a puzzle if it has to be solved by the players using their wits, rather than the characters using their skills and a d20 roll?

What about combat situations that have puzzle elements to them? Does that count if the PCs can brute-force the combat while ignoring the "puzzle" part?

Let me give you an example:
The PCs need to defeat a swarm of corrupted water elementals that have taken over an underground water treatment plant. If there are X number of elementals, and they all need to be killed, that's a straight up combat encounter.

What if there is a lever that can be pulled that "flushes" the water elementals and defeats them that way? Now, the PCs can either kill them all, OR pull the lever.'

Now, what if every round, more corrupt elementals spawn from a central cistern to replace ones that fall. No amount of pure combat will "win" the encounter - it's either pull the lever, run away, or die of attritition. Is this the line where is stops being a "combat" encounter, and becomes a pure "puzzle"?

[Yagyujubei]

I'm with the first two responses on this. Too much of anything is bad, and the lines between puzzle and battle can be blurry.

another thing to note is that most DnD groups will have one or two pace makers that really do most of the heavy lifting as far as RP and strategic decisions go, and in these situations alot of puzzles can really take the quieter players out of the game. At least with battles they get do to something every round without fail.

that said I would personally prefer strategic battle and stealth/deception elements in a dungeon over puzzles.

[AstralFire]

Both options are awful when done solid, but if I had to pick one, battles. If I wanted to do heavy hardcore puzzle-time, I still have Tetris, Tetris Attack, 2048, Bubble Witch, Bejeweled, etc. 90% of the time I've been presented with a puzzle in a tabletop, it has been awful due to an element of failed communication and I want to do anything else. A dungeon full of nothing but puzzles will make me just tune out.

[Alucard2099]

Apparently, almost no one likes a good puzzle...

[Talyn]

No, most people like a good puzzle. The problem is, there is very little agreement about what a "good puzzle" is.

- a statue that asks riddles?
- a cunning trap that requires outside the box thinking?
- a mechanical trap that requires good dice rolls?
- unusual combat circumstances like the one I mentioned supra?
- an honest-to-god sliding tiles puzzle on the wall that unlocks a treasure?
- a game of poker against the DM?

Any of these might be a "good puzzle" to one person, but a bore to another. That's why we need more information than what was provided to answer the question.

[Easy_Lee]

Apparently, almost no one likes a good puzzle...

Most D&D players like a good puzzle, I suspect. Players and DMs just often disagree on whether the DM's puzzle is actually good or not.

[Alucard2099]

Most D&D players like a good puzzle, I suspect. Players and DMs just often disagree on whether the DM's puzzle is actually good or not.

I absolutely agree with you on this. I was simply trying to take a poll to see what people liked better, battles or puzzles.

[AstralFire]

If the GM can provide a decent visual aid for the puzzles, I get less annoyed with them, but a puzzle that is challenging without being supremely frustrating and that I haven't seen three dozen times is rare. I hope I never again see the Towers of Hanoi, for example.

There's also the part that puzzles tend to be more immersion breaking than not to me. Often times they are so blatantly game-y that I don't understand why anyone would build this into their infrastructure. The only time I've really felt otherwise was in a few of the newer cRPGs, and the types of puzzles that I felt worked are of a sort that's hard to replicate in a tabletop.

[Theodoxus]

Depends on time parameters. Do I have an 8 hour block and start right away with minimal RP extraction and just get to the dungeon? Give me three or four epic battles in that 8 hours and I'm happy to either run or play.

Is this a 2.5 -> 4 hour session? Let me fuss with puzzles for half that time and then have an epic boss battle for the remainder.

Puzzles are nice because they don't tend to take as much time as combat to get through. Plus there's generally less bickering about 'hurry up and cast something, I'm bored!' from the players.

I know it's outside the OP, but having answered the Q, I think it's only fair... I prefer running RP storytime over either puzzles or combat. I think I like being in control... as a player, I prefer combat, as I get to be tactical, where as a DM I have to be strategic.

[AstralFire]

They take less time for you? I remember being stuck for 6 hours on some awful color matching puzzle in an AIM game back in 2001... 3E fights could get pretty long, but 5E ones tend to be quick!

[Edenbeast]

I prefer puzzles, with the occasional battle. I don't like the hack&slash style "enter dungeon, kill everything on your path, loot the place and get out" it's too simple.. You can always have one as backup off course. I think the key is making something challenging. A well designed battle can be fun too, but in both cases you can go wrong as DM. I remember one time our DM used portals, and we went through portals from one room to the other, and we were really forced to backtrack everything. We got lost several times. It was brilliant! That kind of stuff I like. Never come with Skyrim-styled puzzles :P

[Yagyujubei]

I absolutely agree with you on this. I was simply trying to take a poll to see what people liked better, battles or puzzles.

well thats not really what you asked. you asked if we would rather run a 100% puzzle dungeon or a 100% battle dungeon which; and im sorry to say it, is a stupid proposition since as everyone has pointed out either one would become repetitive and boring.

but in this stupid situation where it's one or the other, I doubt very many people would want to spend multiple sessions and countless hours never rolling their dice once, never using their battle skills, and just trying to solve a rubik's cube.

that's why the answer is both, but you didnt include that so yeah.

[neonchameleon]

I have a question for everyone out there that either DM's or plays... Given the choice.. do you prefer to have more puzzles or battles in a dungeon.

Now, I mean you have 2 dungeons.. one has all kinds of puzzles and one big boss battle at the end...
The other dungeon is stock full of battles but no puzzles at all.

You can choose between them, and no other options.

I am basically doing this to take a poll. Feel free to be as open about this as you want.

Depends what I'm playing. If Feng Shui or Wushu, battles are fun! And what makes the engine sing. If 4e good battles are puzzles (amongst other things)

Generally no gaming is better than bad gaming. I'm going to walk away from All Puzzles before All Battles. But I'm going to walk away from both eventually.

[Shining Wrath]

When DMing, it is much easier to create a bunch of battles than it is to create a bunch of puzzles.

When playing, it depends upon the puzzles. I dislike puzzles which have to be solved by the player rather than by the character, because we don't all have the same education. If the DM has read Hunger Games and bases a puzzle off of that, and I have not read those books, I'm at a serious disadvantage. It takes real work to set a puzzle that relies upon truly general knowledge / reasoning ability.

Puzzles which are solved by characters using their abilities and skills, a la 4e Skill Challenges, are better. But they can be tedious to work through and bad dice can render a party which ought to be able to solve a puzzle trivially failures with less chance for recourse than bad dice rolls in combat.

[Slipperychicken]

Now, I mean you have 2 dungeons.. one has all kinds of puzzles and one big boss battle at the end...
The other dungeon is stock full of battles but no puzzles at all.

You can choose between them, and no other options.

I'd trust my DM more with the battles. Also, I want to slake my bloodlust instead of committing sudoku.

[GiantOctopodes]

What I like best is interesting things, whether battles or puzzles. A fairly obvious puzzle with a distinct 5th element theme had our group going for a solid 20 minutes, and a invisible maze nearly TPK'd us and was interesting and compelling. Even an obvious riddle can be fun, sometimes. But a place filled with *only* puzzles and no combats would be just as one dimensional as a place filled with *only* combat and no puzzles. What's more, it makes it all the more likely that the puzzles could get bland and repetitive.

Combat *can* be fun, engaging, and interesting. Or it can be an absolute one sided massacre that presents no danger, or worse, a simple matter of attrition. It's not your fault as a DM if players don't use the obstacles and terrain you've included to their advantage, and if they just whack a mole enemies until they're all down. It is your fault if there is no interesting terrain or obstacles in the first place, and if the enemies are just whack a mole-ing the players. Combat with a bunch of generic guards can be stupid. Combat with a bunch of generic guards with an empty well in the center of the room, where the guards try to grapple, drag, or otherwise shove the players into the well, while attempting to use it as cover, is a little better. Throw a dangerous creature at the bottom of the well, grease up the sides, and throw in a second level to the room with some archers in position there, as well as some tables and other objects that can be overturned and used as cover by either side, and now you've got yourself a proper battle.

Basically, my feeling on either one is, "don't waste my time". Don't give a battle which is repetitive and uninteresting, and don't give a puzzle where it's a matter of simple repetition, especially if solving that puzzle provides nothing meaningful as a reward.

[Shadow]

Apparently, almost no one likes a good puzzle...

It's not that no one likes a good puzzle. It's that what constitutes a *good* puzzle is subjective. And even the simplest of puzzles can grind the game to a freaking HALT if the players simply miss the obvious answer. If the DM is arbitrarily strict with the solution, things get even more compounded.

Example:
Our group trades off DM duties and games to keep things fresh so that no one DM gets burned out. We switch off every couple of months. We're currently running a 5e game (mine), and are well into a 4e game (player Z).
It's player Z's turn. He converted an old 2e Al-Qadim module.
A few weeks ago we got stuck on a puzzle to open a door. Above the door were the letters:
H O R O B O D
We struggled with it for over an hour before getting the door to open. We basically said 95% of the answer, and didn't get it to open, so we moved on from that line of thinking. It's a puzzle that a 3rd grader could figure out.
Robin Hood. That's what you needed to say to open the door.
We said rob hood, hood rob, every derivation that you could imagine. Every derivation except for Robin Hood. Because there is no such thing as Robin Hood's legend in Al-Qadim, and we didn't metagame the crossover legend, we were stumped.

It was a puzzle that a 3rd grader could have figured out under normal circumstances. It was a puzzle that we would have figured out easily if we weren't in an entirely different WORLD in our minds. But in this case, under these circumstances, it ground the game to an halt for an hour because the DM needed to hear the exact words spoken properly before the door would open.

[OldTrees1]

Enemies, Terrain, Hazards, Traps, and Puzzles are all important ingredients in a Dungeon Stew.
Personally I like:
More Terrain than Hazards
More Enemies than the total of Terrain and Hazards
More Traps than Puzzles
More Traps than Hazards
More Terrain than Traps

Example 4 encounters

Hazard - Supernatural Chill: Fort save every hour or be slowed.
Encounter 1: The Bridge
Terrain: Rope bridge over deep chasm
Enemies: 3 Winged kobolds

Encounter 2: The Halls
Trap: Long shallow pit trap before area
Trap: Falling net (Reflex save vs entanglement)
Enemies: 8 Kobolds

Encounter 3: The Sealed Door
Puzzle: ???(takes more time to think of then I am giving it here)
Terrain: A physical obstacle to add to the mental puzzle

Encounter 4:
Terrain: Ice cold river cutting a curved path through the ice floor
Enemy: White Dragon
Enemies: 4 more kobolds

So 16 enemies: 3 terrain: 1 hazard: 2 traps: 1 puzzle

[randomodo]

As a DM, I'm not horribly enamored of either puzzles or traps, though I include both in my campaign design because players like them.

Most traps struck me as a legacy of Raiders of the Lost Ark being a thing at the same time that D&D was getting nationwide popularity. I have a hard time thinking that the level of engineering resources needed for most traps is something that is going to be expended terribly frequently. (Seriously, think about the machinery required to set up a trap where a sinking floor tile causes a crossbow to fire from 40' away, then the crossbow is recocked and reloaded automatically).

When I include traps, I try to have traps that can be defeated more by player ingenuity than by d20 rolling.

Puzzles can be fun, but the problem I've encountered with puzzles is this - they can stop an adventure dead in its tracks, particularly if they can't be bypassed. If the players themselves can't solve whatever riddle/logic problem/sliding tile/whatever puzzle that you've created, then you run the risk of the adventure grinding to an immediate halt. You can run away from a bad combat encounter (sometimes), but a too-hard/too-weird puzzle can kill a game session faster than a bad combat encounter.

For that reason, if I include a puzzle, I try to make it something that either can be bypassed. For example, if they solve a puzzle, they might get a straight shot to their next destination; but if they choose, they could take a longer (and potentially more dangerous route). The most recent puzzle I used was one in which a puzzle (fluffed as a ritual) was required to open a tomb door. Failure to figure out the ritual still allowed the door to open, but having failed to perform the ritual marked the characters as intruders to the guardians just beyond the door.

Thus, I try to write in the option of "failing forward," into puzzles.

To liven things up, I try to use "meaningful moral problems" (a phrase I stole from Dragon Age) as a primary source of non-combat drama.

[jaydubs]

It depends entirely on the types of puzzles. One of my favorite things in TTRPGs is that there's often more than one way to approach a problem. The issue I find with puzzles is that when poorly done, they often end up like this (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=680). The DM has 1 solution that he thinks is really clever, and rejects other approaches. This is less likely to occur in battles, unless it's a contrived "special monster has specific weakness and is immune to everything else" encounter.

That said, I'd prefer a dungeon with open-ended puzzles and an end boss to a dungeon of nothing but combat. But perhaps those are better described as non-combat challenges than puzzles, specifically. For instance, let's say we're looking at the drop-away tile scene from Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade. You can try to figure out what tiles to step on, in the traditional puzzle sense. But maybe we can just pull out grappling hooks and get a line across. Or have someone find which ones are trapped. Or use a flying creature to ferry us across 1 by 1. Etc.

Actually now that I think on it, the puzzles from that film are good examples of the types I'd enjoy. Each of them had a way through by thought and knowledge. But a prepared party could have pushed past it by other means.

From a DMing perspective, I favor the same thing. Most of the challenges I throw at players are non-combat (or combat purely optional). And they rarely have a single solution. In fact, often I just think up a reasonable obstacle to their course, without even bothering to come up with an answer. And much of the fun is seeing how my players think, fight, skill, or magic their way around it. (I cheer them from the sidelines.)

[Gnaeus]

One of our players/DMs loves math puzzles. I am not fond of them at all. They were invariably placed in such a way that there was no progress until they were solved (like you need to figure out the puzzle to open the way out of the demiplane or get the plot device or whatever). The first few were easy and we just solved them (I'm not BAD at math, I just don't like it). My second response was to take ranks in Profession: Mathematician, so that when they came up I could Roll play my way into contributing. By the end of the game, I had turned off. As in, "I would rather the party fight the epic godlike monster that is tracking us and all certainly die here than spend 3 more minutes trying to figure out this pattern and how the perfect squares interact with the prime numbers. I would really rather have my character of 2 years be eaten please." kind of turned off. If they had been some other kind of riddles, I might have enjoyed them.

[Particle_Man]

I choose battles, the more the better. I hate puzzles.

[mephnick]

I've almost always completely hated them. Most DM's are not professional puzzle designers (if that's a thing) so they almost always fall flat. Also this:



There's also the part that puzzles tend to be more immersion breaking than not to me. Often times they are so blatantly game-y that I don't understand why anyone would build this into their infrastructure.

Why the hell would someone design a door that can only be opened when 5 glass jars are filled with a certain amount of liquid? Locks exist. Magic exists. They would have just done one of those things.

The only one that worked fairly well was we had to find the true name of a demon and walk along a set of tiles correctly to enter a temple once. That only worked well because it was stolen from Indiana Jones.

Give me battles and traps any day.

[Tvtyrant]

They are both super easy to trivialize at mid to high levels. I prefer diplomacy and role playing myself.

For instance, Disintegrate deals with any "locked door" puzzle you can imagine. Passwall, invisibility, flight, the keys to unlock problems are numerous.

[Feldarove]

I'd trust my DM more with the battles. Also, I want to slake my bloodlust instead of committing sudoku.

I was going to say puzzles, until I read this, and wholeheartedly agree'd.

I don't mind just a bunch of fighting in a long dungeon crawl, as long as the fighting encounters become different. Murdering goblin after goblin is boring.

I love puzzles though. Sorta backwards, but I usually throw a big puzzle at the end of the dungeon crawl after a BBEG. Like, figure out this trapped treasure chest sorta deal. That was its more relaxed, and the players can move about the puzzle at whatever pace they want.

[Gnaeus]

They are both super easy to trivialize at mid to high levels. I prefer diplomacy and role playing myself.

For instance, Disintegrate deals with any "locked door" puzzle you can imagine. Passwall, invisibility, flight, the keys to unlock problems are numerous.

Yeah, until the DM just makes it so that doesn't work. "You can only reach the lair of the big bad you have been tracking for 6 months by following him through this portal. And the portal can only activate by solving the puzzle". Or "the ancient dwarven treasure room is encased with magical metal and protected by powerful magic that prevents it from being disintegrated, teleported past..." Any puzzle that could be bypassed with a burrowing thoqqua is a puzzle i ignored altogether.

[Easy_Lee]

Yeah, until the DM just makes it so that doesn't work. "You can only reach the lair of the big bad you have been tracking for 6 months by following him through this portal. And the portal can only activate by solving the puzzle". Or "the ancient dwarven treasure room is encased with magical metal and protected by powerful magic that prevents it from being disintegrated, teleported past..." Any puzzle that could be bypassed with a burrowing thoqqua is a puzzle i ignored altogether.

I think the real issue is some people like puzzles and some don't, but many / most DMs are not proficient in making good puzzles. And many have had a bad experience with a DM who thinks his puzzle is awesome and flat-out won't let the party progress until they solve it.

[Vogonjeltz]

I have a question for everyone out there that either DM's or plays... Given the choice.. do you prefer to have more puzzles or battles in a dungeon.

Now, I mean you have 2 dungeons.. one has all kinds of puzzles and one big boss battle at the end...
The other dungeon is stock full of battles but no puzzles at all.

You can choose between them, and no other options.

I am basically doing this to take a poll. Feel free to be as open about this as you want.

It depends on the character I'm playing. In general, I like a bit of both, but I look forward to getting to try out tricks in combat more, I think. So I'd pick option 2. Could you also add in one big puzzle at the end? That way it'd be the inverse of option 1.

[OldTrees1]

I think the real issue is some people like puzzles and some don't, but many / most DMs are not proficient in making good puzzles. And many have had a bad experience with a DM who thinks his puzzle is awesome and flat-out won't let the party progress until they solve it.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

The existence of players that like puzzles that also have opinions on what would decrease/ruin the enjoyment of a puzzle, indicates that this is a 2 variable problem. Since single answer puzzles are one of the problems, open ended puzzles are pushed over single answer puzzles. (But still know your playerbase to know if/how much/what kinds of puzzles should be included.)

[Easy_Lee]

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

The existence of players that like puzzles that also have opinions on what would decrease/ruin the enjoyment of a puzzle, indicates that this is a 2 variable problem. Since single answer puzzles are one of the problems, open ended puzzles are pushed over single answer puzzles. (But still know your playerbase to know if/how much/what kinds of puzzles should be included.)

Perhaps then the best way to handle puzzles is to make sure the players have at least one or two ways to progress without solving it. That seems more realistic anyway, since I've personally never seen a real life puzzle / obstacle that couldn't be circumvented somehow.

[OldTrees1]

Perhaps then the best way to handle puzzles is to make sure the players have at least one or two ways to progress without solving it. That seems more realistic anyway, since I've personally never seen a real life puzzle / obstacle that couldn't be circumvented somehow.

Very good addendum.

Another I would add(though more minor) is come up with 2+ working solutions to the puzzle for every PC(overlap is ok as long as no PC has less than 2 working solutions that you have figured out). Again this is with an open ended puzzle so that there are meant to be more solutions than these. [Warning: 2 solutions < the 3 clues rule]

[Yoroichi]

From the two options i prefer the puzzle-puzzle-puzzle-Boss.

Boss fights are always more interesting.

But in general i agree with everyone before me, its much better to mix the two, for my group that play around 4-6 hours/session, the maximum we can do is 3 battles.