A "puzzling" conundrum

[Graymayre]

As a DM, I have trouble adding puzzles to my game.

Sure, I have the dungeons, the traps, the monsters, roleplaying, intrigue, treasure, and all the other bells and whistles that make a good session. But it seems like that is all my campaigns ever have. The players rarely have to solve any puzzles, and I want to press myself to start adding them in. Do any of fellow members of the playground have advice for adding more puzzle elements in this modest DM's game?

P.S. The sessions take place in the world of Eberron (D&D 3.5).

[Stupendous_Man]

Two guards, two doors.

Trouble is, both guards like and both doors lead to certain doom. The party must kill the guards and search the room for the hidden door to progress.

[Graymayre]

Two guards, two doors.

Trouble is, both guards like and both...

Both guards like? I'm sorry, I don't follow that bit and it keeps the rest of what you said senseless.


But, what you said made me want to throw PCs in a room with a door painted onto the wall and see what they do!

[Vexxation]

Both guards like? I'm sorry, I don't follow that bit and it keeps the rest of what you said senseless.


But, what was clear made me want to throw PCs in a room with a door painted onto the wall and see what they do!

Lie. They both lie.
It's a play on the old "One guard always lies, the other tells the truth" trick.

I like the idea of traps that don't really so much do anything as make players think they are.

They enter a room with one large door. Thousands of keys are scattered on the ground. A ghostly hourglass appears in the air above the door, and inverts itself.

Proceed panicked searching.

The trick- the door yields when pushed open with a DC 20 strength check, or something along those lines. Maybe it opens after the hourglass is done.

[The Glyphstone]

He means "both guards LIE". T

EDIT: Failed my spot check against the ninjas...

[Bonecrusher Doc]

I believe there's actually a whole book, Book of Challenges or some such thing, full of puzzles and traps you can put in your dungeon.

[valadil]

Fitting realistic puzzles into games is challenging because puzzles don't appear in real life. What I've done in the past is use puzzles that don't fit at all and explain that they're an abstraction of the puzzle the characters are facing, rather than the puzzle itself. For example, give your player a sudoku to solve and say it represents dispelling a series of magical traps and runes which are tangled together somehow.

[Stupendous_Man]

Fitting realistic puzzles into games is challenging because puzzles don't appear in real life.

Jigsaw.

Calculus.

[Doomsy]

Jigsaw.

Calculus.

Are not used to protect anything close to vitally important in the real world. They do not make you solve a complex equation before authorizing a nuclear strike or accessing a government secure area.

Though for an actual useless example from the real world they do have puzzle chests - small hand puzzles of interlocking wooden slides and occasionally other things that once you 'solve' they open to show what they were containing. Of course, given their size, it is nothing really big in the most literal sense. Also you could probably just smack them open.

Unfortunately *that* kind of puzzle is really not applicable to D&D either. Simple tricks are probably the best over anything complex - a main door that is trapped as hell and everybody uses the side door, something you could spot on a good tracking or whatever roll. Just little things like that, since hiring a lying and an honest guard is a bad idea compared to just hiring two guards that kill unauthorized people on sight after pulling the alarm.

[Stupendous_Man]

Are not used to protect anything close to vitally important in the real world.

But if they were.... would you know about it?

[Zeful]

Jigsaw.

Probably the best thing you can do. Especially with all the custom puzzles you can make now.

Of course with the door thing above, it made me want to design a magic life sized jigsaw of a door that makes a real door when assembled.

[Proven_Paradox]

Perhaps instead of puzzles, you could give them riddle-like hinderances in combat? For example, in one battle, perhaps there are colored tiles with some kind of whimsical rhyme recited to them on a signpost or a magic mouth before they enter. Different effects happen depending on which tiles they're standing on at whatever time, or perhaps if two tiles of a certain color touch they do something different.

Give them some time in the room with nothing to rush them so they can investigate these tiles and their effects. Then throw some flying monsters (or monsters warded against the tiles' effects) at them, let them figure out the effects at they fight.

Another thing is simply a standard danger room. For example, in God of War 2, there was one room with holes all in the floor and a lever or something in the middle. Pulling the lever activated the trap that eventually opened the door, but in the meantime had spikes coming out of the holes that you had to dodge around. Then monsters showed up and you had to dance around the spikes while fighting. If you do it right, you can corral enemies into the spikes and actually use the trap to their advantage. Perhaps you can try to simulate something similar in your games?

[BobVosh]

But if they were.... would you know about it?

He is Doomsy. He knows all important things and what guards em.


My favorite trap is a 3x3 grid. It loops. So going from 1 to 3 is possible, skipping 2. Each door has an opening at each compass point. Going through all three in a row and into the fourth grants an illusion trap spell. (so going from 1->4->7 and trying to loop to 1) This is *insert suitable illusion spell, I did it in exalted* Which makes the floor look like it is going to break. Or there is a 40 foot pit. Rocks are falling. Horrid flames. Pretend to roll, and just make up whatever illusion you want. All they have to do is walk through and they win.

1.2.3
4.5.6
7.8.9

[Hal]

I'm a fan of mazes in dungeons. This one worked well for me.

[chiasaur11]

Well, there's always figuring out the combination for a lock.

Dull, but if it can't be picked...

[Recaiden]

THere's the puzzle with a few rooms. You go from room 1 to room 2, but if you go back the same way, your in room 4 or something. A maze of teleporters or rooms in 5+ dimensions.

[Tacoma]

I think that the puzzle should be something physical and concrete. The "puzzle" in this case is overcoming an obstacle with objects presented.

Undermountain is great for this because Halaster could have just built the puzzle just for fun or found it somewhere and wanted to keep it, so he threw it in a side room somewhere.

Example: the room you just fought some orcs in has their normal lair trash, but on one wall there's a series of six panels. Each has a symbol except the last. That last panel is magically malleable so you can draw a symbol on it, and the marks fade after a couple minutes.

The answer, after the players look at the first 5 marks, is for a player to say his character is going up and drawing a symbol. Then he should physically draw the symbol his character is writing.

You could use that one where the series is 6 numbers but they're two copies with one mirrored, set right against each other so it looks like a weird symbol. But that one is kind of obvious since they did it in a Simpsons episode.