Puzzles : matching paintings of landscapes to places on maps

[MartinHarper]

Has anyone ever played puzzles that required them to match a view of a landscape to a map, to find out where on the map the landscape was taken? For example, given a photo taken from the top of a hill, work out which hill it was taken from. Do you know what that type of puzzle is called?

I want to introduce a puzzle of this sort to my d&d game, and I was hoping to find some examples online to work from, but I can't find any. Any ideas or sources?

Also, if you were in this game, would you find this a fun puzzle, or would it remind you too much of geography classes at school?

[MichielHagen]

I cannot find a name for it on the internet. But i would enjoy it as a one time thing i think.

Mind though, in real life one can recognize a church or something, in the game one cannot, you will have to say which church it is if they know it.
In real life one could get an approximate location given two landmarks on the picture, and they would go to that location to find the details. This is where i think it will be kind of boring, as you will have to say "you see a bush there, and a pinetree over there" instead of them finding the details.

If you want an example....take any picture of the internet, it has to be taken somewhere....

<edit> also, do they need to find a specific location within a few feet or something? then you need to work out a very detailed map yourself, then take your time drawing the picture from the location you want, but it might not be as easy as you think. You have to take the horizontal placement of objects (in the picture) into consideration, but also the size of the object in the picture, which is determined by it's real size and distance to the location. And yes, that should be done quite accurately for the players.

[valadil]

I played one of these and it was much too difficult. It might have been easier if we had an actual map to work with, but instead it was just an overview from where the game was set.

I had ideas to do a similar puzzle. In a modern game I was going to give the players access to someone's browser cache, which included images from a recent google maps search at varying levels of zoom. The players would have to sort the images into the zoom, arrange them as a puzzle, and hopefully figure out the location the NPC was trying to get to. The varying levels of zoom should help the players identify the area on a map, but you never know. I haven't gotten to run this one yet, but I will as soon as I run a modern game. I'm especially pleased with coming up with this because it's a realistic puzzle instead of the usual "solve me a puzzle and the dungeon door opens" type of contrivance.

[herrhauptmann]

I have here a spoiler regarding a discworld book. Only read click if you've already read all the discworld books, or know that you never will.

Spoiler

Show

Read Thud! by Terry Pratchett. The maguffin of the book is a 20x60 ft painting of the battle of Koom Valley by some human who lived a thousand years later. And is done as a panorama style painting, with the attached legend that somewhere in the painting is a clue to a certain treasure. The clue is the location the painter was standing at, not where some dwarf or troll is pointing.

[Ravens_cry]

I think the best thing to do for this, if you do it at a table top rather then online, would be to distribute feelies, the map as well as a perspective picture. This will be quite a lot of work for you though, and may be impossible if your skills in the visual arts aren't up to snuff.

[dragoonsgone]

It sounds like a lot of fun if done right. If you could maybe use an old vacation photo and use a travel brochure for a map.

[Skorj]

Also, if you were in this game, would you find this a fun puzzle, or would it remind you too much of geography classes at school?

If I were in this game I'd say "my character looks at the picture and map, and makes an INT roll". I generally don't play the brightest characters, but I can easily solve most puzzles, so it always feels like bad RP to do that. Maybe that's just me?

[MartinHarper]

This is tabletop, not PbP. I think printing out the map+picture would be essential. Maybe a miniature-scale map based on the foreground of the picture, so we can run from puzzling straight into combat.

My skills with the visual arts are poor, but my players are forgiving. The challenge will be making the match good enough that the puzzle is solvable...

[MartinHarper]

In the end I used this picture:
http://www.fantasyillustration.se/si...Bridge_BIG.htm

With a homedrawn map with a variety of bridges, statues, and mountains, and the PCs figured it out pretty quickly. The tough thing for them was realising that they could use the picture to locate a spot on the map.

[Steward]

What level is your goat?