Johnny Krillers
2017-01-24, 03:45 PM
As the title states, let's share some of the best/most fun and or worst/nonsensical of the puzzles you've seen in a dungeon, or what are the best that you've run. Try to keep positive and non-ranty with the worst if you have one, maybe how you would have fixed it? I'm curious.
My favorite that I've seen in a game was from the D&D stream "High Rollers", the characters had entered an ancient temple of Melora (elven goddess of nature, the wilderness and the sea) which had an option of two doors to get into the temple proper from the atrium/entry way area that they were in, in between the two doorways was a statue of an elderly elven man with a blooming flower in his left hand and a sword in his right, above his head was a carving that read: "Only those with the wisdom of the wilds may pass without trial. When Melora's name is spoken the way shall be open." in elvish. The statue came to life and spoke to them saying that the sealed door on his left was just a way into a hallway that would let them through without incident, and the open doorway on the right was a series of trials and challenges that would end at the same place. The statue was very polite and conversational, welcoming them as pilgrims and explaining the issue, but very crucially never said Melora's name and claimed to not know how to open the sealed door, just that they needed to solve the riddle with "cunning and guile", whenever they said "Melora" he would just smile, or ask if they were worshipers, whenever he mentioned the temple, he just called it "This/The temple". The solution was just asking the statue to say "Melora", when he did, the door opened and they were able to pass.
There weren't a lot of puzzles at my first table as the group I was with didn't generally do a lot of straight up riddles or mazes or anything like that, it was more of a "how do you get past this really inventive trap that your lack of a rogue is making you pass?" kind of a deal, that said we once accidentally killed a construct of Stitch from Leelo and Stitch 3 rooms a head of time and before we had done more than heard him in the distance, the room we were in was mostly featureless except for a pool of ankle high water kept inside the room magically and what looked to be 626 written in chalk on the wall, we tried everything we could think of to erase or scuff it (I don't know why that was our first course of action) and nothing did anything, until I, the ranger of the party decided to splash it, we heard a scream from down the hall, and there was a blue puddle of goop with a key sticking out of it, I don't know why or what the original intent was but it was a cool set up that kinda helps me see why neither of our group DMs did a whole lot of puzzle writing.
The worst I saw, which was also from the same table as my second example, it's important to the set up to know that our DM had an NPC party member whom I had been given control of after my character died to a trap that we didn't find a creative solution around, he was a young knight trained under the kingdom's champion (whom we had gotten killed in an early skirmish with a dwarven army that had been convinced and corrupted by the big bad), we came up to a chasm in the dungeon like lair of the arc big bad, when a group of the retinue that had followed us tried to jump over, at the middle of the chasm a series of tentacles shot up and pulled them down, our ranger tried to run across, because it looked like the tentacles were avoiding an invisible bridge, and he was grabbed exactly in the middle and dragged down, after a long uneventful period of table planning, I had my former NPC stick his arm out over the chasm to see if the DM saying "exactly over the middle" was important, it got my character's arm ripped off, after a while longer the DM took over the young knight, whom he claimed seemed to be in a trance, and just walked calmly across the invisible bridge with no ill effect, saying "You just had to be calm and non aggressive." So then we had a one handed paladin, an under leveled necromancer with no zombies, whom the paladin had been trying to kill and two guards as written in the 3.5 DMG against our young knight whom it turned out was really the Dark Mage big bad of the arc that we had been tracking all over the kingdom for the past five sessions, along with his followers. The lack of any hint or instruction screwed over an up to that point fun and interesting campaign.
My favorite that I've seen in a game was from the D&D stream "High Rollers", the characters had entered an ancient temple of Melora (elven goddess of nature, the wilderness and the sea) which had an option of two doors to get into the temple proper from the atrium/entry way area that they were in, in between the two doorways was a statue of an elderly elven man with a blooming flower in his left hand and a sword in his right, above his head was a carving that read: "Only those with the wisdom of the wilds may pass without trial. When Melora's name is spoken the way shall be open." in elvish. The statue came to life and spoke to them saying that the sealed door on his left was just a way into a hallway that would let them through without incident, and the open doorway on the right was a series of trials and challenges that would end at the same place. The statue was very polite and conversational, welcoming them as pilgrims and explaining the issue, but very crucially never said Melora's name and claimed to not know how to open the sealed door, just that they needed to solve the riddle with "cunning and guile", whenever they said "Melora" he would just smile, or ask if they were worshipers, whenever he mentioned the temple, he just called it "This/The temple". The solution was just asking the statue to say "Melora", when he did, the door opened and they were able to pass.
There weren't a lot of puzzles at my first table as the group I was with didn't generally do a lot of straight up riddles or mazes or anything like that, it was more of a "how do you get past this really inventive trap that your lack of a rogue is making you pass?" kind of a deal, that said we once accidentally killed a construct of Stitch from Leelo and Stitch 3 rooms a head of time and before we had done more than heard him in the distance, the room we were in was mostly featureless except for a pool of ankle high water kept inside the room magically and what looked to be 626 written in chalk on the wall, we tried everything we could think of to erase or scuff it (I don't know why that was our first course of action) and nothing did anything, until I, the ranger of the party decided to splash it, we heard a scream from down the hall, and there was a blue puddle of goop with a key sticking out of it, I don't know why or what the original intent was but it was a cool set up that kinda helps me see why neither of our group DMs did a whole lot of puzzle writing.
The worst I saw, which was also from the same table as my second example, it's important to the set up to know that our DM had an NPC party member whom I had been given control of after my character died to a trap that we didn't find a creative solution around, he was a young knight trained under the kingdom's champion (whom we had gotten killed in an early skirmish with a dwarven army that had been convinced and corrupted by the big bad), we came up to a chasm in the dungeon like lair of the arc big bad, when a group of the retinue that had followed us tried to jump over, at the middle of the chasm a series of tentacles shot up and pulled them down, our ranger tried to run across, because it looked like the tentacles were avoiding an invisible bridge, and he was grabbed exactly in the middle and dragged down, after a long uneventful period of table planning, I had my former NPC stick his arm out over the chasm to see if the DM saying "exactly over the middle" was important, it got my character's arm ripped off, after a while longer the DM took over the young knight, whom he claimed seemed to be in a trance, and just walked calmly across the invisible bridge with no ill effect, saying "You just had to be calm and non aggressive." So then we had a one handed paladin, an under leveled necromancer with no zombies, whom the paladin had been trying to kill and two guards as written in the 3.5 DMG against our young knight whom it turned out was really the Dark Mage big bad of the arc that we had been tracking all over the kingdom for the past five sessions, along with his followers. The lack of any hint or instruction screwed over an up to that point fun and interesting campaign.