realy technical tasks

[Stryke]

Has anyone ever played a campaign that had really technical tasks or problems to solve. By technical I don’t mean answering riddles or “after passing three rooms with three enemies you find three levers with three positions” ( the answer obviously lever three to position three) I mean really technical stuff like working equipment in the engine room of a gnomish steam ship where it was necessary to puzzle out piping systems or a major dam where you had to operate a large gate to prevent flooding. Anything along those lines.

[Aroka]

Seems like the amount of knowledge and effort required to both create and solve these kinds of puzzles would not really result in a worthwhile payoff in fun.

If you're an engineer playing with a bunch of engineers, though, why not? I rather want to run Twilight 2013 for my group because they've all been conscripted and served their year in the army, with NCO training, and I'd love to see them put the knowledge to use in a game. (Indeed, one did it in a modern-day Call of Cthulhu game, innocently asking after household chemicals and acquiring them, and then explaining how they're combined into IEDs.)

[Stryke]

Seems like the amount of knowledge and effort required to both create and solve these kinds of puzzles would not really result in a worthwhile payoff in fun.

well that depends on just HOW techincal the puzzle is and how you progressed to it. Personally i would start with things like find and open this valve, then have them try to figure out which of two levers to pull and then incorperate knowledge of the layout and consecenses from previous actions to make a gradually growing puzzle and system

[kamikasei]

Sure. It's the characters who have the knowledge though, not the players. I know I couldn't use my intelligent magical Device to decipher an ancient script, but that didn't stop my character. Likewise in another game where another player built a heat ray and, later, an anti-invisibility device.

Generally I'd see it as poor form to give a task like that to the players rather than their characters.