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ZeroGear
2018-02-25, 11:46 PM
Here's a question that's been nagging me for a little while:
Puzzles and riddles are often a significant feature of dungeons, be they locks that seal the treasure room, passwords that allow clever explorers to bypass guardians, or just plain traps that require creativity to circumvent.
Adventurers often find inscriptions on walls written by the maker of the dungeon asking bizarre riddles that are key to opening vaults within the keep, and these are always in perfectly legible condition (unless someone bumbles the check to decipher it), and keys are usually found within reasonable distance of the lock (or at least within the same dungeon).
As such, I was wondering if excluding clues or key pieces is considered unfair.
It isn't hard to imagine something smashing the tablet the instructions for the puzzle are written on, or one of they small components needed to form the key being damaged or lost. While gears or mechanisms would most likely be intact due to construction quality or a preservation spell, it's likely some fool managed to jam part of a rod into the wrong socket and broke it off in the process.
While these scenarios and many like them are realistic, how problematic would they be if included in an adventure? Is excluding a key piece of information considered unfair towards the players, or is it ok to neglect one line in a puzzle to make a harder challenge?
(One caveat: the puzzle still has to be solvable in some way, such as making an "imitation key" or guessing, even brute-forcing the door with an enlarge spell is viable if the party can pull it off)

Skelechicken
2018-02-26, 12:48 AM
I think including a damaged puzzle is perfectly fine given your last caveat about it still needing to be solvable.

I would caution you however to be careful with the approach. You may accomplish adding a degree of challenge to the puzzle that would not otherwise be there, but you should really only do that if you want them to focus on that puzzle for a much longer period of time. I don't have a lot of fun as a player when I am presented with obstacles just for the sake of there being obstacles. If nothing is going to put additional pressure on them to hurry up, like monsters coming from behind or an NPC about to be sacrificed, I tend not to see much value in making my players take longer to open a door.

For optional loot, or to add pressure to a challenging situation requiring time management, I say go for it!

Yllin
2018-02-26, 01:22 AM
Being fair is mostly about player expectations. If the puzzle looks like it can be solved "normally" (with the tools that the puzzle presents), players will expect it to be solvable that way. And if it is not (for example, one of the keys was destroyed without a trace by a previous adventuring party), players won't trust(and thus enjoy) your puzzles anymore. So, basically, if you want to have a "broken" puzzle, it might be a good idea to make it very clear to the players that the mechanism is not working as it should.

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-02-26, 01:46 AM
I think you need to make a distinction between the in story puzzle and the in game puzzle. If the in story puzzle is damaged in such a way that it leaves an intact in game puzzle, go for it. The key is missing? Fine, as long as it's clear the key is missing so the players don't just go on looking for it, and as long as some other way to make a key or open the door is present. The broken in story puzzle is the in game puzzle.

A broken in game puzzle, one that can no longer be solved, that can be dickish. The characters keep yelling possible passwords at the guardian because that's what the stone tablet said, but the guardian is deaf and they just have to fight him. Red herrings like that need to be handled carefully in games. They're often plain no fun.

Khedrac
2018-02-26, 03:41 AM
Also, remember that if a puzzle that serves as a lock can be damaged, then the easy way to "solve" it is to finish smashing the puzzle to get at the mechanism behind it and then just manipulate that...

wallyd2
2018-02-26, 09:02 AM
As long as the puzzle is still solvable and doesn't eat up hours of game time, I think introducing one of the clues as "damaged" would be fine. For instance:

There are four identical dials that spin and each has 4 possible answers.
Each dial has a clue that can be found to determine its position.
Unfortunately, only 3 of the 4 clues remain intact.
Therefore, the party must correctly rotate the 3 levers with clues and the fourth is by process of elimination.

I would also entertain the idea that some clues might be fragile and there could be a trap if removed improperly.

For instance, clues are written on the back of a painting... but the painting has a magical trap. If not successfully removed, the trap will trigger and destroy the painting.

Great conversation!

Jay R
2018-02-26, 09:12 AM
I was in a game in which one clue was a tarnished and weathered bronze plaque on the wall. It was only partially readable:



Whe he B od of a ose is spille
The Chosen will b eat li e into the Qu e of Win
the Re n of Da k s will Begin
Light will i y.

Pleh
2018-02-26, 09:18 AM
keep in mind other spells that can still apply here:

Mending and other Repair style spells can restore broken keys and smashed tablets with critical hints.

Speak with Dead might help you get some clues from the last fallen adventurer who didn't make it out.

Teleport magic, as always.

Mage Hand to interact with the puzzle in multiple places simultaneously (even in places that might be dangerous to occupy personally).

The list goes on. Just keep in mind what Tools the part has to work with, how the puzzle is MEANT to work, how it is broken, and what needs to be done to fix or at least bypass it.

Remember that going through this much effort should always have a payoff. If you're gonna make them spend the better half of the session figuring this thing out, let them blow it all up at the end or let them discover some bonus magic item in the deal.

Red Fel
2018-02-26, 10:28 AM
Being fair is mostly about player expectations. If the puzzle looks like it can be solved "normally" (with the tools that the puzzle presents), players will expect it to be solvable that way. And if it is not (for example, one of the keys was destroyed without a trace by a previous adventuring party), players won't trust(and thus enjoy) your puzzles anymore. So, basically, if you want to have a "broken" puzzle, it might be a good idea to make it very clear to the players that the mechanism is not working as it should.

This.

It's not just the idea that it should be solvable. I agree with your caveat that there should be other ways to solve it, up to and including brute force, but that's not always enough.

Players expect things. Specifically, players may reasonably expect that, if puzzle exists in a dungeon, the means to solve it are available somewhere in or around the dungeon. That's just how puzzles are "supposed" to work. Now, if you show a puzzle and you make clear that things are broken and pieces are missing, the whole thing is weathered with age, that's one thing - you're setting up an expectation that you can't necessarily solve this puzzle with what you have here. But if, on the other hand, it's just a case of a key component missing or broken, that's a problem - you haven't actually gotten rid of the expectation that the solution is nearby, and the players could spend an inordinate amount of time scouring the area for something that isn't there. If that happens, the two most probable outcomes are (1) players throw up their hands and leave the dungeon, puzzle unsolved, or (2) DM throws them a bone and explains that the solution isn't there. Neither is ideal.

That's why describing the scene in a manner that manages expectations is so vital. Making it clear that the puzzle will not work as expected, and therefore out-of-the-box thinking is required, solves most "fairness" problems.

ross
2018-02-26, 10:38 AM
Puzzles need not be solvable, and there need not be any indication of this for the players. The world doesn't revolve around them. If a dungeon hasn't been maintained in centuries, I'd be surprised if anything still worked; for that matter, there might not even be a usable entrance any more.

If I was dumb enough to store my stuff in a dungeon in a world full of greedy adventurers, I damn sure wouldn't leave command words lying around, and I definitely wouldn't bother coming up with riddles that serve no purpose except to make my stuff easier to steal. Isn't this why banks were invented? Just build a hollow cube of ten foot thick antimagic adamantium, and give it a password of thirty two random characters that you change every week and never write down.

Pleh
2018-02-26, 11:29 AM
Puzzles need not be solvable, and there need not be any indication of this for the players. The world doesn't revolve around them. If a dungeon hasn't been maintained in centuries, I'd be surprised if anything still worked; for that matter, there might not even be a usable entrance any more.

If I was dumb enough to store my stuff in a dungeon in a world full of greedy adventurers, I damn sure wouldn't leave command words lying around, and I definitely wouldn't bother coming up with riddles that serve no purpose except to make my stuff easier to steal. Isn't this why banks were invented? Just build a hollow cube of ten foot thick antimagic adamantium, and give it a password of thirty two random characters that you change every week and never write down.

You're thinking of making a puzzle as hard as you can because you think the purpose of a puzzle is to keep people out of something.

That's not always the reason puzzles exist. Especially broken ones.

Consider the Door of Durin from LotR. They put a password that basically was, "Password." It was like a Catchpa test or leaving the keys to your car in the sun visor. The door wasn't built to keep enemies out, but to keep out stupid goblins and animals. If the hint phrase had been somehow erased, it would have been a fairly effective security method, but that was never the intended function.

Similarly, sometimes puzzles in games are for doors that were never meant to be highly secure, but because the players don't understand what the creator was thinking, it's more difficult to use than it was intended to be.

And even if we ARE considering safe storage solutions, you have to balance how safe it is from intruders against how difficult it is for AUTHORIZED persons to access. Suppose you wanted to ever retrieve the secured item by using your 32 random character password. How would you remember the password? It's about as good as making sure NO ONE ever has access to it.

There are some things you want to keep secure that you ALSO need to continue to have access to. Pirates who bury their treasure and never come back for it aren't actually any richer than before they stole it. In fact, they are poorer now for having expended resources obtaining it, increasing the warrant for their arrest or capture, and expending additional resources securing their ill-gotten booty (which they would never use?).

If you really want to make sure NO ONE ELSE EVER CAN HAVE THIS THING, EVAR

Just destroy it utterly.

Sure, lock it away in an antimagic box in another dimension if that fails, but the lengths you're describing to hide things is just unrealistic for anyone but a 20th level wizard hiding an indestructible macguffin from all other 20th level wizards. It's just stupid to expect that kind of thing to come up with any kind of frequency. That should be more or less a once-in-a-setting-universe type deal.

Usually, the reason that puzzles exist is because someone wanted to control access to something (without making it impossible to access). From there, it becomes a game of piecing together how the thing was protected.

The main thing to take away from all this is to manage player expectation. They are expecting a game where they get to do things. Putting things in the game they can't do anything about may make sense from a setting description point of view, but it makes for terrible gameplay. It's just a non-interactive wall where the best you can do is ignore it and move on to something else. It might as well not even exist at that point.

It's like the Chekhov's Gun of RPGs. If you can't interact with it in any meaningful way, why did you bother to include it in the setting?

ross
2018-02-26, 11:56 AM
You're thinking of making a puzzle as hard as you can because you think the purpose of a puzzle is to keep people out of something.

That's not always the reason puzzles exist. Especially broken ones.

Consider the Door of Durin from LotR. They put a password that basically was, "Password." It was like a Catchpa test or leaving the keys to your car in the sun visor. The door wasn't built to keep enemies out, but to keep out stupid goblins and animals. If the hint phrase had been somehow erased, it would have been a fairly effective security method, but that was never the intended function.

Similarly, sometimes puzzles in games are for doors that were never meant to be highly secure, but because the players don't understand what the creator was thinking, it's more difficult to use than it was intended to be.

And even if we ARE considering safe storage solutions, you have to balance how safe it is from intruders against how difficult it is for AUTHORIZED persons to access. Suppose you wanted to ever retrieve the secured item by using your 32 random character password. How would you remember the password? It's about as good as making sure NO ONE ever has access to it.

There are some things you want to keep secure that you ALSO need to continue to have access to. Pirates who bury their treasure and never come back for it aren't actually any richer than before they stole it. In fact, they are poorer now for having expended resources obtaining it, increasing the warrant for their arrest or capture, and expending additional resources securing their ill-gotten booty (which they would never use?).

If you really want to make sure NO ONE ELSE EVER CAN HAVE THIS THING, EVAR

Just destroy it utterly.

Sure, lock it away in an antimagic box in another dimension if that fails, but the lengths you're describing to hide things is just unrealistic for anyone but a 20th level wizard hiding an indestructible macguffin from all other 20th level wizards. It's just stupid to expect that kind of thing to come up with any kind of frequency. That should be more or less a once-in-a-setting-universe type deal.

Usually, the reason that puzzles exist is because someone wanted to control access to something (without making it impossible to access). From there, it becomes a game of piecing together how the thing was protected.

The main thing to take away from all this is to manage player expectation. They are expecting a game where they get to do things. Putting things in the game they can't do anything about may make sense from a setting description point of view, but it makes for terrible gameplay. It's just a non-interactive wall where the best you can do is ignore it and move on to something else. It might as well not even exist at that point.

It's like the Chekhov's Gun of RPGs. If you can't interact with it in any meaningful way, why did you bother to include it in the setting?

Please. Dungeons exist for the sole purpose of depleting the player character's resources in exchange for xp and loot. They keep treasure in and players out (or at least, they're supposed to give that impression; they pretty much do the exact opposite in practice).

Memorizing 32 characters isn't hard. That's like, a little over three phone numbers, or four without area codes.

The reason that puzzles exist is to be mildly entertaining for the players. They certainly don't accomplish anything useful in universe. A six digit padlock would be cheaper, more effective, and less effort to install - and that would fall to the first thief or high strength fighter to find it (as opposed to the puzzle, which is defeated by the first person with at least a child's intelligence, because the plot calls for the players to figure it out).

Considering how easy it is to circumvent every security measure in dnd, anyone who isn't going to great lengths to secure their possessions is an idiot. If you have the resources to build an entire dungeon, you certainly have the resources to build a security system that actually works instead.

Pleh
2018-02-26, 12:56 PM
Please. Dungeons exist for the sole purpose of depleting the player character's resources in exchange for xp and loot. They keep treasure in and players out (or at least, they're supposed to give that impression; they pretty much do the exact opposite in practice).

Memorizing 32 characters isn't hard. That's like, a little over three phone numbers, or four without area codes.

The reason that puzzles exist is to be mildly entertaining for the players. They certainly don't accomplish anything useful in universe. A six digit padlock would be cheaper, more effective, and less effort to install - and that would fall to the first thief or high strength fighter to find it (as opposed to the puzzle, which is defeated by the first person with at least a child's intelligence, because the plot calls for the players to figure it out).

Considering how easy it is to circumvent every security measure in dnd, anyone who isn't going to great lengths to secure their possessions is an idiot. If you have the resources to build an entire dungeon, you certainly have the resources to build a security system that actually works instead.

This response reeks of OneTrueWayism. There are literally DOZENS of reasons a person might find exceptions to these "rules."

Cynthaer
2018-02-26, 01:23 PM
(One caveat: the puzzle still has to be solvable in some way, such as making an "imitation key" or guessing, even brute-forcing the door with an enlarge spell is viable if the party can pull it off)


[some good stuff about alternate solutions]

This reminds me of an essay I really like about the "three clue rule" (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule).

It's mostly about handling mystery plots, but it applies to any "chokepoint" scenario, like a puzzle that must be solved to proceed:

For any given problem, I make sure there’s at least one solution and remain completely open to any solutions the players might come up with on their own.

But, for any chokepoint problem, I make sure there’s at least three solutions.

[...] Unless there’s some reason why the door should be cannon-proof, the player should be rewarded for their clever thinking. Or, to put it another way: Just because you shouldn’t leave the key to a locked door laying on the floor in front of the door, it doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be multiple ways to get past the locked door.

With that in mind, you should consciously open yourself to permissive clue-finding. By this I mean that, if the players come up with a clever approach to their investigation, you should be open to the idea of giving them useful information as a result.

Here’s another way of thinking about it: Don’t treat the list of clues you came up with during your prep time as a straitjacket. Instead, think of that prep work as your safety net.

I used to get really attached to a particularly clever solution when I would design it. I would emotionally invest in the idea of my players discovering this clever solution that I had designed. As a result, I would tend to veto other potential solutions the players came up with — after all, if those other solutions worked they would never discover the clever solution I had come up with.

Over time, I’ve learned that it’s actually a lot more fun when the players surprise me. [...] As a result, I now tend to think of my predesigned solution as a worst case scenario — the safety net that snaps into place when my players fail to come up with anything more interesting.

In order to be open to permissive clue-finding you first have to understand the underlying situation. [...] Then embrace the unexpected ideas and approaches the PCs will have, and lean on the permissive side when deciding whether or not they can find a clue you had never thought about before.
It's not the One True Way to Build Scenarios or anything. It's just a good approach to make sure you as a DM can both (A) ensure the players can come to a solution, and won't just dead-end because they missed something, and (B) not force the players to find the single predefined solution (or even one of several) built in by the DM to proceed.

To address the OP's actual question, from this perspective I'd say you're fine to exclude the "usual" solution of a straightforward key or cryptic hint as long as you've got a couple of solutions in mind, a couple of hints to those solutions, and a willingness to run with anything else the players surprise you with.

What you don't want is a situation where your players are searching through a dungeon for a key that doesn't exist, or a solution for a puzzle that is built to be unsolvable. You've all got better things to do with your time. If that happens, you've probably gone wrong somewhere, and should reconsider what their expectations are and how you're signposting things.

Some players expect a crafted, Zelda-style dungeon, and if you don't properly set expectations, you can bet that if they see a yellow door they will scour the earth until they find a yellow key. Others will ignore every single clue you provide and use every resource they have trying to break down the door. Most fall safely in the middle, but you still have to work with their expectations if anybody's going to have any fun.

ross
2018-02-26, 02:12 PM
This response reeks of OneTrueWayism. There are literally DOZENS of reasons a person might find exceptions to these "rules."

Yeah I know, here on the forums everyone is a special snowflake who actually roleplays and doesn't care about getting cool items and actually shows up to games on time. I'm talking about real campaigns with real people.

Pleh
2018-02-26, 02:22 PM
Yeah I know, here on the forums everyone is a special snowflake who actually roleplays and doesn't care about getting cool items and actually shows up to games on time. I'm talking about real campaigns with real people.

Ah. I see you never meant to have an honest discussion.

Have a nice day.

Cynthaer
2018-02-26, 02:32 PM
Yeah I know, here on the forums everyone is a special snowflake who actually roleplays and doesn't care about getting cool items and actually shows up to games on time. I'm talking about real campaigns with real people.

So, it seems to me that your proposed approach is to present both solvable and unsolvable puzzles with no indication of which is which, justified by Tippyverse-style appeals to real-world logic. (Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your original post.)

That strikes me as significantly more theoretical, and significantly less practical, than the general approach Pleh and I are suggesting, which is that managing and meeting your actual, real-life players' expectations is important to run a successful game.

I'm not sure where this "punctual roleplaying snowflake" nonsense is coming from, and it's a complete non sequitor to Pleh's point that there are many perfectly legitimate in-universe reasons that solvable "puzzles" would exist.

Lapak
2018-02-26, 02:59 PM
Not a direct answer to the OP’s question, but something that came up just the other day in a book I was reading.

The characters were working their way through a puzzle labyrinth and they found a broken puzzle - some accident had set off the ‘kill intruders who fail the puzzle’ part at some point in the past and the whole thing was smashed up. They were able to bypass it with climbing gear since the way was now open and the traps were all triggered, and they counted themselves lucky...

Until later in the maze, when they encountered a giant meta-puzzle, the successful navigation of which required knowing the approach used to solve all the previous puzzles. They got part-way in before realizing that they were about to run up against the bit referencing the broken puzzle and they had no idea how it should have been solved.

So if you really feel like throwing a banana peel in your party’s path, there’s that. But be prepared for them to throw dice and PHBs at you in return.

Cynthaer
2018-02-26, 05:03 PM
Until later in the maze, when they encountered a giant meta-puzzle, the successful navigation of which required knowing the approach used to solve all the previous puzzles. They got part-way in before realizing that they were about to run up against the bit referencing the broken puzzle and they had no idea how it should have been solved.
That's a pretty cool idea.

In theory, the pattern of repeating the other puzzles plus the fact that they clearly saw the broken one should help ensure that the party recognizes this as a challenge where they haven't just missed the hint.

In fact, you could generalize this to any puzzle where the "key" is missing: Make it explicitly missing. A locked door or magical password-asking sentry usually means there's a key or password locked in a desk somewhere. But a melted and twisted key, or a scrap of paper reading "the password is [illegible burned section]" tells you straight-up that there's no point scouring the area for that solution. (And hey, the Cleric who took Mending is now one of your potential solutions.)

Of course, the nice clean structure of "puzzles 1-8 followed by trickier versions" probably only works if you have a party who really likes playing Ocarina of Time. The average party is 100% going to find different solutions to a bunch of them, so they wouldn't necessarily have the knowledge they're supposed to apply in the megapuzzle.

It's still a fine structure if you're open to multiple solutions, even though it loses a little of the parallelism during gameplay.

Pleh
2018-02-26, 07:37 PM
That's a pretty cool idea.

In theory, the pattern of repeating the other puzzles plus the fact that they clearly saw the broken one should help ensure that the party recognizes this as a challenge where they haven't just missed the hint.

In fact, you could generalize this to any puzzle where the "key" is missing: Make it explicitly missing. A locked door or magical password-asking sentry usually means there's a key or password locked in a desk somewhere. But a melted and twisted key, or a scrap of paper reading "the password is [illegible burned section]" tells you straight-up that there's no point scouring the area for that solution. (And hey, the Cleric who took Mending is now one of your potential solutions.)

Of course, the nice clean structure of "puzzles 1-8 followed by trickier versions" probably only works if you have a party who really likes playing Ocarina of Time. The average party is 100% going to find different solutions to a bunch of them, so they wouldn't necessarily have the knowledge they're supposed to apply in the megapuzzle.

It's still a fine structure if you're open to multiple solutions, even though it loses a little of the parallelism during gameplay.

Actually, it's a pretty fine way to reclaim any lost value in puzzles that were undercut by player ingenuity.

Fine, you teleported past the trap and outsmarted the puzzle, but you never figured out how it was SUPPOSED to work, so you missed the clue that it's solution provided to the final meta-puzzle.

icefractal
2018-02-26, 09:31 PM
It's totally fair, but it might draw attention to the elephant in the room: the idea that you would attempt to access an enemy structure or ancient ruin by following the normal entrance procedures (openly, not in disguise) - as opposed to smashing / dismantling / hacking / bypassing them - is primarily a trope / gamist thing that doesn't (usually) make that much sense IC.

So it's entirely logical that, say, one of the four season plaques that go in the calendar door mechanism is lost or broken ... but it's also entirely logical that the PCs would just take said door out of its frame rather than assume they have any way to legitimately open it.

Pleh
2018-02-27, 06:49 AM
It's totally fair, but it might draw attention to the elephant in the room: the idea that you would attempt to access an enemy structure or ancient ruin by following the normal entrance procedures (openly, not in disguise) - as opposed to smashing / dismantling / hacking / bypassing them - is primarily a trope / gamist thing that doesn't (usually) make that much sense IC.

So it's entirely logical that, say, one of the four season plaques that go in the calendar door mechanism is lost or broken ... but it's also entirely logical that the PCs would just take said door out of its frame rather than assume they have any way to legitimately open it.

Yes, it must needs be handled with care.

If I were to ever employ such methods, I'd probably leave the final puzzle locked under antimagic adamantium/plot armor so it truly becomes a chokepoint puzzle

But at that point, I'd only include it in the game at all as a sandbox element, where if they fail to guess the solution, they can leave the puzzle and come back later, maybe taking a quest to search the world for the missing clues.

Not a great solution, but passable.

ross
2018-02-27, 08:52 AM
Ah. I see you never meant to have an honest discussion.

Have a nice day.

Nothing I've said is dishonest, nice tantrum tho


So, it seems to me that your proposed approach is to present both solvable and unsolvable puzzles with no indication of which is which, justified by Tippyverse-style appeals to real-world logic. (Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your original post.)

Common sense has nothing to do with "Tippy" (lol). No one uses a riddle to protect their home, because locks exist.



That strikes me as significantly more theoretical, and significantly less practical, than the general approach Pleh and I are suggesting, which is that managing and meeting your actual, real-life players' expectations is important to run a successful game.


My players' expectations are that the world makes sense and makes no exceptions for them, which is why I use a procedural world simulator instead of making up bs.



I'm not sure where this "punctual roleplaying snowflake" nonsense is coming from, and it's a complete non sequitor to Pleh's point that there are many perfectly legitimate in-universe reasons that solvable "puzzles" would exist.

Name one legitimate reason to protect your important belongings with methods that don't work.

Amidus Drexel
2018-02-27, 10:10 AM
Name one legitimate reason to protect your important belongings with methods that don't work.

Well, off the top of my head - if your purpose as a designer is not, in fact, to protect belongings from all comers (or indeed, at all). Mythology, fantasy literature, and games are full of examples of puzzles as tests to reward the worthy. Additionally, some puzzles are only puzzles because the characters lack important knowledge - operating esoteric devices, the plot of any mystery, and other things of that nature also qualify.

Pleh
2018-02-27, 10:31 AM
Name one legitimate reason to protect your important belongings with methods that don't work.


Well, off the top of my head - if your purpose as a designer is not, in fact, to protect belongings from all comers (or indeed, at all). Mythology, fantasy literature, and games are full of examples of puzzles as tests to reward the worthy. Additionally, some puzzles are only puzzles because the characters lack important knowledge - operating esoteric devices, the plot of any mystery, and other things of that nature also qualify.

Indeed, the ultimate failure of Ross's thinking is limiting the existence of puzzles to only conscious efforts to protect things from all other possible individuals.

As if no other plausible, conceivable circumstances could exist that might possibly present a puzzle to unrelated adventurers.

Cynthaer
2018-02-27, 11:29 AM
Common sense has nothing to do with "Tippy" (lol). No one uses a riddle to protect their home, because locks exist.

But that's precisely the logic underlying the Tippyverse, isn't it? It takes game elements that are designed to create a certain game experience in a certain genre (a dungeon crawl with pickable doors, a high-magic setting where minor effects like creating water are easy to do) and extrapolates them by asking why anybody would do these things that are part of this genre when the mechanics imply they are inefficient.


My players' expectations are that the world makes sense and makes no exceptions for them, which is why I use a procedural world simulator instead of making up bs.

Right. So those are the expectations you have set with your players, and you meet those expectations. Other groups have different expectations, and their DMs should meet or change those.

Unless you are suggesting that your group's set of game expectations are the only good ones and everybody else is wrong?


Name one legitimate reason to protect your important belongings with methods that don't work.

My office requires an electronic keycard to enter. Anyone sufficiently dedicated to corporate espionage could easily tail someone with a card, or just use the intercom to tell the front desk they forgot their badge.

So why bother with locks at all? Well, it's still better than nothing.

It stops complete randos from just wandering the building unchecked.
A corporate spy still has to learn about the building security to know what they can get away with.
The obvious holes only apply during normal business hours. At night there is no non-suspicious way in without having a keycard, and during the day there is only so much one can do once inside without drawing attention.

It's not airtight, but it makes it significantly more difficult to steal stuff than just having unlocked doors.

On the other hand, ramping up the security has its own costs. They could stop letting people in without badges entirely, but then everybody would switch to tailing when they forget their stuff at home. They could crack down on tailing hard, but then everybody would waste a bunch of time calling coworkers to sign them in through the visitor system or going home to get their badge, and it would really piss everybody off because it would feel like draconian bull****.

In general, the cost and effort of security should be reasonably proportional to the importance of the thing being protected. A hall of death traps followed by a door that requires three keys 50 feet apart to be turned simultaneously makes sense for a vault containing the Rod of Breaking Open a Gate to the Far Realm, but it's complete nonsense for a storeroom containing some very nice diamonds and a +3 Warhammer.

ross
2018-04-03, 07:50 AM
Well, off the top of my head - if your purpose as a designer is not, in fact, to protect belongings from all comers (or indeed, at all). Mythology, fantasy literature, and games are full of examples of puzzles as tests to reward the worthy. Additionally, some puzzles are only puzzles because the characters lack important knowledge - operating esoteric devices, the plot of any mystery, and other things of that nature also qualify.

None of which ever happen in a real game because no players will ever care that much about the world so there's no point in developing anything


Indeed, the ultimate failure of Ross's thinking is limiting the existence of puzzles to only conscious efforts to protect things from all other possible individuals.

As if no other plausible, conceivable circumstances could exist that might possibly present a puzzle to unrelated adventurers.

In an rpg, the purpose of puzzles is to pad out the run time of the game by slowing down the players. The in universe creator is irrelevant, ultimately it's the DM protecting the plot from the players


But that's precisely the logic underlying the Tippyverse, isn't it? It takes game elements that are designed to create a certain game experience in a certain genre (a dungeon crawl with pickable doors, a high-magic setting where minor effects like creating water are easy to do) and extrapolates them by asking why anybody would do these things that are part of this genre when the mechanics imply they are inefficient.

Right. So those are the expectations you have set with your players, and you meet those expectations. Other groups have different expectations, and their DMs should meet or change those.

Unless you are suggesting that your group's set of game expectations are the only good ones and everybody else is wrong?

My office requires an electronic keycard to enter. Anyone sufficiently dedicated to corporate espionage could easily tail someone with a card, or just use the intercom to tell the front desk they forgot their badge.

So why bother with locks at all? Well, it's still better than nothing.

It stops complete randos from just wandering the building unchecked.
A corporate spy still has to learn about the building security to know what they can get away with.
The obvious holes only apply during normal business hours. At night there is no non-suspicious way in without having a keycard, and during the day there is only so much one can do once inside without drawing attention.

It's not airtight, but it makes it significantly more difficult to steal stuff than just having unlocked doors.

On the other hand, ramping up the security has its own costs. They could stop letting people in without badges entirely, but then everybody would switch to tailing when they forget their stuff at home. They could crack down on tailing hard, but then everybody would waste a bunch of time calling coworkers to sign them in through the visitor system or going home to get their badge, and it would really piss everybody off because it would feel like draconian bull****.

In general, the cost and effort of security should be reasonably proportional to the importance of the thing being protected. A hall of death traps followed by a door that requires three keys 50 feet apart to be turned simultaneously makes sense for a vault containing the Rod of Breaking Open a Gate to the Far Realm, but it's complete nonsense for a storeroom containing some very nice diamonds and a +3 Warhammer.

A lock is effective for what it does; act as a deterrent that makes its charge a marginally harder target, so opportunists are more likely to target someone else. As for actually keeping out a motivated attacker, they're mediocre at best. On the other hand, a riddle is like a password entry system except you give out one or more hints to every attacker, making it garbage. A lock is also cheaper and easier to design, manufacture, and install than an elaborate system that records and analyzes answers to riddles and triggers responses based on them.

Pleh
2018-04-03, 08:53 AM
None of which ever happen in a real game because no players will ever care that much about the world so there's no point in developing anything

In an rpg, the purpose of puzzles is to pad out the run time of the game by slowing down the players. The in universe creator is irrelevant, ultimately it's the DM protecting the plot from the players

Your universal language only highlights your lack of alternative experience and does little to support your claim.

"I've never seen it happen" would be a better argument. "Here is why it doesn't work that way" could get somewhere.

Saying, "that doesn't happen, this does" can be refuted with a single counterexample (which it already has been).

erikun
2018-04-03, 10:21 AM
In general, there are two ways to get past a locked door: opening the lock, or breaking the door. When opening the lock impossible, then really breaking in becomes the only option. (Similarly, breaking in not being an option means needing to open the lock.) A lot of players, when encountering a puzzle with both still available, will try to find a way to "open the lock" before trying to just bash the door down. Metaphorically speaking.

The "lock" doesn't need to be a literal key in a literal keyhole, either. It could be having a scholar character who translates some forgotten text into something understandable. It could be refilling an empty pond that allowed a gateway to function. It could be a bunch of rubble that needs to be carefully cleared off to get to the original entrance. Pretty much anything that requires the party to do something that they typically wouldn't do could function as a locked barrier that needs to be opened: pulling on a door wouldn't be considered a "key" because it's something the PCs would attempt anyways.

An obviously broken puzzle is clearly a broken lock, meaning the party needs to go around or through the obstacle; it's clear they won't be opening it directly. The problem with a broken puzzle which isn't obviously broken is that it wastes everybody's time. The GM isn't accomplishing anything since they need to just sit around giving out information that they know is ultimately useless. The other players aren't accomplishing anything since everything they do (outside the odd incidental find) will ultimately be useless. The players aren't likely to enjoy it once they finally figure out/are told that they've wasted a full gaming session trying to solve the unsolvable. One thing to remember, as the GM, is that the players are relying on limited knowledge: they don't know that the puzzle is unsolvable, they just know that they can't solve it right now, and so being presented with a puzzle will cause them to keep searching for a key which doesn't exist. Outside exhausting every possible solution - or just being told outright by the GM - they'll keep trying to find one unless they get so bored they just smash down the door or leave (the puzzle or the game). Most groups I've been in have been plenty good at focusing on the wrong things and jumping to the wrong conclusions themselves, meaning that intentionally putting red herrings in the form or unsolvable puzzles probably isn't necessary. Most parties will probably waste enough time and just try to break through your solvable puzzles as it is.

Also, there is another problem with this. The default assumption by most players is that a puzzle in a game is there to be solved, and thus solvable. Once you introduce unsolvable puzzles, then players will start to wonder if every puzzle they come across actually has a solution. This tends to cause most people to prematurely stop the puzzle-solving aspect and move right to the destroy/bypass element, not wishing to waste more time than necessary on an ultimate dead end. That may certainly be the time of attitude some GMs prefer, but assuming that a GM wants their party to try to solve puzzles presented in-game, I would probably not recommend using puzzles like that.

Jay R
2018-04-03, 09:29 PM
In general, it's the DM's job to invent the difficulty. It's the players' job to invent the solution. I prefer inventing traps and puzzles in which there is no solution.

If I invent a puzzle or situation with only one solution, then the players eventually have to figure out what is in my mind n order to beat it.

But if I invent a difficulty with no solution, then any clever idea from the players might work.

ross
2018-04-03, 10:46 PM
Your universal language only highlights your lack of alternative experience and does little to support your claim.

"I've never seen it happen" would be a better argument. "Here is why it doesn't work that way" could get somewhere.

Saying, "that doesn't happen, this does" can be refuted with a single counterexample (which it already has been).

your counterexamples are all made up and never happened so I don't really give a ****

Pleh
2018-04-03, 10:54 PM
your counterexamples are all made up and never happened so I don't really give a ****

Not my fault if you refuse to read the rest of the page of content from various posters that begs to differ.

FreddyNoNose
2018-04-05, 01:46 PM
a puzzle is either solvable or not regardless of brokenness.

If it is broken and no way to get around, repair or insurmountable, then why have it in the first place without a great reason? Could be setting plot or tone etc. But generally why?