Puzzles!

[ShadowImmor]

Hey

I need help with some puzzles for my game, I gave my players a note that was a Shift Cipher, then changed into a Freemason Cipher (also known as the Pigpen Cipher), so two layers of encryption and it took them nearly all session to solve it, after I gave them hints (up to and including the solution to the Freemason Cipher).

I want to give them some good, fun puzzles that they can solve, but apparently, a (what I thought) fairly simple puzzle was more difficult than I intended. (I have been given puzzles like that before and had no problem breaking them).

Any ideas for puzzles I can use? For both Players and Characters and any Themed ones?

Thanks!

[ImthebOHGODBEES]

My only major comment/warning is that not everyone is able to process ciphers or is as knowledgeable about them as you appear to me. If you gave them a key or if it came partially translated so they could see how to do it that might help next time.

As for puzzles, think back to any adventure video games and see how many similar puzzles you can pull in. Gems in slots, mazes, standing on giant buttons.

[MrStabby]

The trouble with puzzles like this is that they are a bit metagamey. Your int 7 barbarian is more likely to solve it if the player is smart than your party wizard played by a more pedestrian intellect.

It also comes down to player knowledge rather than character knowledge. If the players know about ciphers etc. Then they will get it.

I would suggest pushing the puzzles to something closer to what the characters will solve rather than the players.

[Ganymede]

If you want inspiration for puzzles, a great source is to check out the various Escape-Room-In-A-Box games out there. They are filled with different kind of puzzles and riddles you can adapt to your game.

[holywhippet]

During a one shot game a fellow player ran almost all of his puzzles were basically Dad jokes. Please feel free not to follow that route. You could try to make the puzzles more of a side thing - like a bonus treasure room. Let the players work out the puzzle both during and outside of the game.

[DarkKnightJin]

During a one shot game a fellow player ran almost all of his puzzles were basically Dad jokes. Please feel free not to follow that route. You could try to make the puzzles more of a side thing - like a bonus treasure room. Let the players work out the puzzle both during and outside of the game.

A DM ran some riddles for us the other day. While I managed to 'get' 2 out of 4 riddles, I needed plentiful tips to get where I needed to be mentally.

One of the riddles was a talking door.. and we got past it by telling it a gods-damned 'knock knock' joke. I wish I was joking right now.

We kindly requested that he NOT pull that kimda thing again. We 'wasted' a good hour and a half to 2 hours of about a 5 hour session trying to crack these things.

I might inform him that if he wamts to do riddles, to do more IC ones, and maybe take some inspiration from Zelda games or something.
Not so hard that you waste several hours trying to get past them.. but also not so simple.. Ah, who am I kidding? Most Zelda puzzles aren't so bad.
Except ice block puzzles. Those are a dumpsterfire.

[wallyd2]

Hey

I need help with some puzzles for my game, I gave my players a note that was a Shift Cipher, then changed into a Freemason Cipher (also known as the Pigpen Cipher), so two layers of encryption and it took them nearly all session to solve it, after I gave them hints (up to and including the solution to the Freemason Cipher).

I want to give them some good, fun puzzles that they can solve, but apparently, a (what I thought) fairly simple puzzle was more difficult than I intended. (I have been given puzzles like that before and had no problem breaking them).

Any ideas for puzzles I can use? For both Players and Characters and any Themed ones?

Thanks!

Hey there! I think I can help you out with this. I have an entire YouTube channel that focuses on Puzzles for D&D / Pathfinder. Each video gives a full demonstration on how the puzzle works and provides a link to download handouts to give to your players, if needed for the puzzle.

Sure thing, quite a few of my puzzles are "on theme". Like "The Chamber of Tymora". Heck, I ran an entire one-shot off of this one puzzle.

D&D Puzzles Ideas for DMs - Wally DM (http://youtube.com/c/wallydm)

There are now over 40 puzzle videos and I plan to release a new one every month.

I am sure you can find a few ideas here that you can build around and have fun with. Hope this helps! :)

[DMThac0]

Simply put: puzzles don't work in D&D.

Not so simply put:
Puzzles require us, in real life, to agree to be confined by a particular set of rules. Don't break anything, don't lift the pencil, don't look at a dictionary, don't do a thing. Those are confines which we allow to be imposed on us when we do puzzles in real life, in D&D those confines mean nothing. We are already agreeing to be confined to the D&D world, even if those confines are our imagination's limits. Then you ask them, at times, to take all those amazing powers and not use them to do a puzzle. This type of thing doesn't work in D&D, so we have to take a different approach to answer your question.

How to build a puzzle in D&D:


Figure out what the characters' goal is. Get the gem, open the door, stop the giant pyramid from sinking, close the portal to the abyss.
Figure out what is stopping them from achieving that goal. Locks, obstacle, creature, planar travel.
Figure out why they can't use the most obvious solution. Lock is magically protected from picking, there's a magma flow into a bottomless cavern between you and the goal, the creature is hyper alert and fast, the location is inhospitable to humanoid travel.
Figure out the solution you'd like to see. The party hunts for the key, they befriend a lava golem, they poison the creature making it sleep, they find a magical trinket to allow them to travel the plane of existence.
Add 2+ more problems to achieving the goal. Follow steps 2-4 a few more times for each of the obvious solutions.
Let your players win if they think of something you didn't.


That kind of approach seems to work well for me, it gives a feel of a puzzle but doesn't force the players to limit themselves. You also get to customize the situation to force your players to think outside the box and test their skills.

[ShadowImmor]

Hey there! I think I can help you out with this. I have an entire YouTube channel that focuses on Puzzles for D&D / Pathfinder. Each video gives a full demonstration on how the puzzle works and provides a link to download handouts to give to your players, if needed for the puzzle.

Sure thing, quite a few of my puzzles are "on theme". Like "The Chamber of Tymora". Heck, I ran an entire one-shot off of this one puzzle.

D&D Puzzles Ideas for DMs - Wally DM (http://youtube.com/c/wallydm)

There are now over 40 puzzle videos and I plan to release a new one every month.

I am sure you can find a few ideas here that you can build around and have fun with. Hope this helps! :)

Thanks! I'll be sure to look some of these up and see what I can use/reskin.


Simply put: puzzles don't work in D&D.

Not so simply put:
Puzzles require us, in real life, to agree to be confined by a particular set of rules. Don't break anything, don't lift the pencil, don't look at a dictionary, don't do a thing. Those are confines which we allow to be imposed on us when we do puzzles in real life, in D&D those confines mean nothing. We are already agreeing to be confined to the D&D world, even if those confines are our imagination's limits. Then you ask them, at times, to take all those amazing powers and not use them to do a puzzle. This type of thing doesn't work in D&D, so we have to take a different approach to answer your question.

How to build a puzzle in D&D:


Figure out what the characters' goal is. Get the gem, open the door, stop the giant pyramid from sinking, close the portal to the abyss.
Figure out what is stopping them from achieving that goal. Locks, obstacle, creature, planar travel.
Figure out why they can't use the most obvious solution. Lock is magically protected from picking, there's a magma flow into a bottomless cavern between you and the goal, the creature is hyper alert and fast, the location is inhospitable to humanoid travel.
Figure out the solution you'd like to see. The party hunts for the key, they befriend a lava golem, they poison the creature making it sleep, they find a magical trinket to allow them to travel the plane of existence.
Add 2+ more problems to achieving the goal. Follow steps 2-4 a few more times for each of the obvious solutions.
Let your players win if they think of something you didn't.


That kind of approach seems to work well for me, it gives a feel of a puzzle but doesn't force the players to limit themselves. You also get to customize the situation to force your players to think outside the box and test their skills.

That process seems pretty good for simple puzzles/problems. I will give that a go and see if it helps. I never like the idea of limiting what my players can do for the sake of a puzzle, that has never seemed fair to me. So I need puzzles that can't just be solved with a single spell.

[kraitmarais]

Yeah I dislike puzzles like this in games, because it's about the players and not the characters or the game world. The players can google up cryptograms on their own if that's how they want to spend their evening, and don't need a DM to run it.

That being said, I sometimes use puzzles, but try to involve the characters and game world instead of the players, by allowing the solution, or partial solution, to come from knowledge checks that characters have had the opportunity to make in the past. Even better, local NPCs may know the solution, or additional clues, and this information can be obtained through successful roleplay with them.

If you really want to use a cipher and it doesn't seem to be something the players are interested in cracking themselves, they can do a short side-quest to bring it to the local spy-master, with whom they can negotiate for code-cracking services.

[MoiMagnus]

One things to remember:

Sometimes, (especially if you are a wizzard), the player is less intelligent then the character. Sometimes the contrary.
So
1) Makes sure that when you need to give some help (indices, ...) to solve the puzzle, it is trough intelligence check from the intelligent characters.
2) Make sure that your stupid characters have something to do (move giant blocks, sneack out to get the key, ...) so that their player are not tempted to go out of character and solve the whole riddle in meta.

[Eärendle]

Happiness!

One puzzle I offered my players that they enjoyed was a sealed portal operated with a control panel based on sudoku. The nine grids of the panel held nine types of gemstones. Approximately half to two-thirds of the most expensive gemstones had been previously stolen but enough of them were present that characters could establish the pattern and the equivalencies between numbers and gem type. In the original campaign, the portal was something of a MacGuffin and opening it was non-essential to the plot. The characters eventually sourced replacements for the gems but could just as easily finished looting the panel themselves.

[MrStabby]

One thing to think of is to ask what is the in game reason for something to be there.

For a code is is easy enough, although there is a good question as to "why that code?" rather than something which is a little more secure.

For a puzzle to get through a door, you have to ask why would the builders of the dungeon use that rather than use something like a complex combination lock. That said there is nothing to say that a correct answer to the puzzle isn't to find someone who knows and beat the truth out of them.