Rogue: I would never do such a thing, and you should be ashamed of yourself for subscribing to stereotypes. Paladin: Or, is there a chance, no matter how small, that the person we hired to be a sneak-thief, who then proceeded to be a sneak-thief that had no qualms about sneak-thieving from his employers until Alarm spells were implemented, has once again been a sneak-thief? Rogue: :(
My favourite puzzle experience came with my first time running a campaign. I was introducing new players to D & D 3.5 and wanted them to experience all the fun stuff. So they are tracking down a necromancer baddie. As they fight off various types of undead they find on their vanquished foes slips of paper with a series of holes in them. They come to the doors to the inner sanctum where the baddie is hiding out and find a wall with words randomly inscribed on it. Opposite the wall is a shimmering rod. A few quick checks reveal it is a rod of light. There is a slot in front of the rod which I described as exactly perfect for holding slips of paper. Then a few INT and WIS rolls later they slid one of the slips of paper into the slot. The paper blocked the light from the rod except for the spots where there were holes in the paper. Light shone through the holes. Each beam of light fell on a different word on the opposite wall. The first sentence made this way was "An awful bard boisterously belted ballads.". There were a series of 6 switches near the door. Switch up was A, switch center was OFF, switch down was B. All switches were currently in the OFF position. The newbs got it in three tries. AABBBB. The gate in front of the door opened revealing a second set of switches. They switched out the first paper for the second and got "A brave barbarian always battles boisterously". At this point the guy who was helping me with the campaign came in with coffees. We asked him to try solving the riddle\puzzle to open the door. His character was a very clever rogue\thief. Several rolls later he still couldn't get it. The newbs were leaping out of their skins (figuratively). They were proud to show him how the riddle\puzzle worked. Once the doors opened, combat with the baddie began. The baddie lost, of course. The newbs got the loot and returned to town. They were heros. They were hooked. They have been gaming ever since. They never realized my mentor dm was faking his inability to solve the puzzle iddle.
Im probably insanely late for this but anyway You guys are realy good personne, in the way you're able to purposedly look dumb / not show off your ability to do this and that, just for the sake of making your players feel proud, this is rare enough to notice it, good job lads.
I'm a big fan of what I call the Natural Puzzle. It's seen in a lot of platforming video games or exploration games. The obstacle is not an obvious puzzle meant to be a lock. I don't like puzzle locks. The best way to keep someone out is a key. Puzzles don't keep bad people out. They keep stupid people out. However, in the case of a Natural Puzzle, the problem isn't man made. Or rather, it's not intentional. It's a collapsed bridge, or a room without light, or a disconnected power source or something. In my dungeon design I ask three questions: What was it's original purpose? What went wrong? What's changed? This helps inform puzzle design. Here is an example: The party is searching for an ancient research facility. The facility long ago was above ground, but a great disaster buried it beneath the ground. The doors that gave access to this facility can only be seen in daylight, but having been buried underground (what went wrong) there appears to be no entrances. When the party arrive, they find a series of camps from an excavation that came before them (what's changed). The camps are empty and abandoned, and carry some clues (including several large mirrors, some broken, some not fully set up), before leading them through dark underground tunnels and to the walls of this facility. Investigation could lead to notes about the security of the hidden doors, and some thinking will bring them to think of the mirrors and after that they should realise that the mirrors can be used to bring daylight down to the buried facility, allowing them to reveal the entrance. Inside they'll discover the original purpose of the facility, which is hinted at by the nature of its security up to this point.
I always hate making puzzles precisely because the notion of a puzzle to keep someone out, in MOST situations, is pretty stupid. Just use a damn key (or magical key). Of course, you could design a dungeon that was made with the purpose of testing whoever went inside of it, so, in that case, it would make sense. Or maybe if all magic that can lock things also involves a puzzle in your setting, so there is no "aboslute" locking magic. But I really like this idea of natural puzzles, I will try to think of it in the future. Thanks for your perspective! :D
@@son_guhun Yes, those types of puzzles I categorize as Trials. Riddles fall under those, as well. They can still be fun, as long as it's purpose is a test. Or even a transformation. I did a thing one campaign where when the players reached level 15 they were at a threshold they needed help to get past, in their growth. The Wizard had reached the limits of what a mortal could do on their own (it was a setting of low power level similar to Eberron) and had to go through this magical labyrinth created by the goddess of magic herself that was mostly a lot of puzzles.
@@dm_ex_machina3395 Another use of trials-type puzzles that I enjoy is the lesson/warning puzzles where you have to use a bit of lore gleaned from the environment to progress through the dungeon -> e.g. a powerful artefact is sealed away unless someone enters a sequence of symbols found in a poem that laments those killed by a villain who used the artefact for evil in the past; or a castle infected by a plague is sealed unless they correctly mix the antidote.
> "They keep stupid people out" I agree that no one would ever use puzzles like that. But such puzzles are still fun for players and therefore worth having, so with a little extra worldbuilding they can make sense. First, always pair them with actual security like a key; the players need the key and also to solve the problem. Second, make the solution to the puzzle thematic: for example, a religion or cult may leave a puzzle with a theme that forces people to think about their doctrines. An individual may leave a puzzle as a memento based on details from that person's life, such as the name of a loved one. Wizards may have left a logical puzzle to ensure that an important book didn't fall into stupid hands. And so on.
selylidne Exactly! In my current campaign, the BBEG is a long-term strategist. He’s been a war general, & built up a wealthy trading company. He also happens to be a vampire. The city his family was given by the king (for vanquishing a brood/coven of vampires, actually) is split into 3 by a river. A river he can’t cross as a vampire, technically. His solution is a tunnel that goes under the river, & a special bridge rebuilt so that its interior includes soil from his home all the way across the length. Anyway, he solves problems & does not harbor idiots well. His tunnel includes a puzzle of stone guardians that form a triangle blocking a constructed entrance to/from his keep. It’s the triangle & pegs game from Cracker Barrel restaurant. My players couldn’t figure out how it worked. I let them all roll INT & WIS, and it was the child NPC with them that got the roll! “It’s a game! It’s a game! We play to jump over each other.” Suddenly all the players did facepalm - duhhhh, they got it, and we progressed quickly. Result was any remaining “pegs”, the guardians, not eliminated became animated and guarded the entrance in full phalanx defense & attack mode. Interestingly, players decided NOT to continue forward because they had burned their spells & HP. So when they return, the “game” will have changed! It’s magic is coded to up the strategic challenge each time. Still thinking about what the next challenge will be - maybe checkers or GO, with the players themselves being the pieces in one side.
*Party member enters wrong combination* "A trap door opens above you, and several snake skeletons rain down upon your character. Someone seems to have forgotten that snakes need water." Love these videos by the way, beginning the steps to writing my first short campaign and they have been a TREMENDOUS help.
Do it! I had the same problem, but I just ramped up the difficulty. I had to learn the hard way (by having very frustrated players) that it was only easy, because I myself designed the puzzle in the first place
you gotta learn the group. I have had people struggle with a basic scale and weights (where the door starts opening everytime the scale swings over balanced) for hours (the solution was to balance the scales) and figure out full scale cryptography (heh CRYPT) in a matter of minutes
Because people all think differently DMs think we are making easy puzzles when we are actually not. If the solution is not obvious to you, It will be almost impossible for a player. If the solution is obvious, the players will find the puzzle difficult. If the solution is blatantly obvious, it will be about the right difficulty for most players. A good way to check the functionality of a puzzle is to grab a friend (preferably not from the group) and run them through the puzzle. It can really help you sort it out and streamline it. Often something that makes sense in your head doesn't translate well, or you will forget something/notice a problem, and you will need to adjust the puzzle or the clues.
I as a player have not lived an hour in your head, but my character has lived his entire life in your world. Knowledge rolls to make me the player aware of something that my character would know is also helpful.
This is how I do puzzle solving in my games. If the character has a 19 intelligence, I would expect them to work out clues to a puzzle even if the player themselves can't.
I find that the "idea roll" mechanic from call of cthulhu is great for any rpg, if the players are stuck you get them to roll an int check to provide a clue or help them to figure out what their character is starting to piece together, should be a staple in all games imo, even if it's purely used for puzzles
Just thought I'd share a puzzle I ran for a group of players a while back. Some dungeon, party (no darkvision in the group members bar a single frontliner PC) comes into a barely lit room, and almost immediately get attacked by cave-dwelling creatures that do not seem hindered by the lack of light. After they defeat the creatures, the party notices a door on the far end of the room. Shut. Next to it is a brasero with smoldering embers, and on the door is a (poorly written) riddle, for which the obvious riddle is "darkness". One member of the party speaks the word, but of course nothing happens. Once they snuff the embers of the brasero, the room goes dark, no-one can see anything anymore, and they hear rumbling. The door starts opening. Slowly. Veeery slowly. And the noise attracts more creatures, leaving the one PC that can see in the dark alone to face them. Being used to fighting in the dark in this dungeon, the wizard casts Light. Door slams shut immediately. They fight off the creatures, and start again. Only this time they know they'll have to bear the complete darkness for a bit, in order to pass through the door, while the frontliner tanks the creatures. Was quite a fun night, and got the players mighty afraid of turning on any light before having all crossed the door.
I'd like to appropriate and change this for my own purposes as well. Need a puzzle for tonight and this sounds entertaining. Teases the brain but isn't too difficult to figure out.
I had a similar one where doors are either solid wall or doorways depending on if there is light or not. This means, doors might be one-way only if the room on one side of the doorway has light and the other doesn't.
I like that you could technically grind the hell out of this and just lure hoards of the creatures into the dark, turn on the lights, wipe them out, and eventually (because no species is infinite) kill enough or all of them that you no longer get attacked in the dark.
I have my first real puzzle coming up in our campaign. An escape room situation. I decided to give multiple solutions, as we have a large group and I know different people go at things differently, so this is a good test to see how they do it, and different methods will apply to different characters better. And I put it on a timer. And then, as a safety measure, the door has a strength check of 50, wide enough for three to press against it, so worse comes to worse, they just knock down the door.
While I applaud having a few different solutions I'll caution you this, if its possible to skip the puzzle by breaking down the door, the party will. Assume they will always break whatever you put in front of them unless it can't be broken. I once put a cave-in in front of them, with the dead end only supposed to be a clue and they used the spell shape earth to go THROUGH it.
I guess it depends on the players if they first try to solve the puzzle or to break things down. If it's the latter maybe give them a fear bonus once they triggered enough traps. So if they try to break the door down initially they are unable, but once the characters realize their lives depend on it, the get a burst of strength. Though like people above me said: it's good to give them some disadvantage like alerting enemies through the noise caused by breaking the door.
I recently made a custom dungeon for my party, they're currently playing Curse of Strahd and they asked for something that's a little less... dreading. So now there's a temple below lake Zarovich. Obviously there's a treasure chamber. I thought about who put that stuff there and since it's Vedalken Mages, it figured they'd have the most intelligent solution. So they made this impenetrable forcefield that can be accessed solely by playing through a ridiculous text-adventure book that is able to put you to sleep for 3 hours, or fill your mouth with dirt. But since the guards are dead, the alarm doesn't work anymore, which means my party has infinite retries. It's a funny little thing and doesn't fit the campaign theme at all, i imagine it like a little mini-game. But hey, they get a bunch of gold to boot if they beat it and the temple they clear could be their new base of operation. I've test-run the thing with 3 people, most gave up. It's the perfect security system.
I like the idea of puzzles as an alternative to combat; put an encounter with a monster/enemy the PC's know they aren't capable of fighting, but set it up so that the environment can be used to weaken or defeat the enemy. Like breaking a sluice to flood a tunnel and wash away a lethal swarm of some kind.
Totally right on players loving props. The group I run found a contract written in Abysal which none spoke. I simply used an online legal contract software filling in blanks then cut and pasted into google translate and changed the language to Basque. Sprinkle food coloring on it and tie it with a piece of leather cord. They went crazy.
Some great tips there, makes me want to create something new for next week's session! I ran fun puzzle for my players recently, feel free to steal it. You know the kids memory game where you have an array of cards face down on the table, turn over two at a time, and if they match you keep the pair? Basically that. With zombies. They'd been through a dungeon crawl, and every room featured carvings of the same motif - somebody blasting an ancient tree with lightning, and a glowing gem arising from the tree. This is part of the lore which is central to our campaign, adjust as necessary. In the penultimate room, they were faced with a 4 by 4 grid of pressure plates on the floor. No markings, nothing like that. No obvious mechanism, although faint magic could be detected. On stepping on a plate, it would be illuminated with one of 8 symbols (16 plates, 8 pairs). If a second plate was activated, its rune would light up, but with additional effects. If it revealed a 'correct' matching pair (tree, lightning, or gem) then that symbol would appear above the door at the end of the chamber. Illuminating all three symbols would open it. If it was another pair, nothing would happen. If it was two different symbols, two holes would open at random spots on the ceiling, and a zombie would drop from each. Every fourth 'fail' would release a zombie ogre. The players had a lot of fun with this, especially as one of them is a rather enthusiastic Kobold who kept mashing buttons and releasing zombies without thinking. And then they figured out that zombies (especially ogres) walking over plates would trigger them. I did give them an out in that I was rolling behind the scenes to see if the mechanism jammed, which it did after about 6 releases. That gave them breathing room, although I was then rolling to see if it un-jammed! I think it worked well because the players had been primed enough with the motifs on the walls of the preceding chambers, even though they didn't realise it at the time, that as soon as the relevant symbols were triggered on the floor they knew what to aim for. Although there was no way to know which plate would contain which rune until it was activated so there was still chaos in the trial and error stage. Obviously you can make it easier with fewer plates and symbols.
Especially don't forget to highlight the puzzle elements when you'll be adding the sand/water/acid of doom. Without the clues, it can end up feeling like just a particularly nasty and vindictive trap.
I made a puzzle once that doubled as a trap. A flooding room witha couple corpses. Soon as the door closed on one side the room starts to fill. The trick is that its an illusion. Fail the per eption and you'll hold your breath til you suffocate. But the perceptive would realise that the water didn't affect the corpses. Once the room was full, if you survived, the other door unlocked. In a party of five, only one person needed to realise it was an illusion and convince the rest of the party, but the panic it created before they realised it was fun.
I've got a color code puzzle planned but it's in a dark room, where the words "Red" "Yellow" etc are actually colored differently, and it's the actual color of them that is the real code. I will be using this on a party of everyone who has Darkvision, so will be interesting to see if they pick it up that they will actually need light for this one.
Quite possibnly my favourite puzzle comes from Island of the Lizard King. Hobgoblin bridge guard "What is the password." Player "What?" Hobgoblin bridge guard "..... Yeah... That's right. What IS the password. Pass friend." :D
had fun with a simple puzzle in my last session- there is a treasure chest 40ft up on the ceiling and a switch on the wall when the players pull the switch gravity gently reverses in this room they get the treasure, but now they have to figure out how to get back down.
If you specifically want the puzzle it's the second paragraph, though there's build up to it. Cheers :) Made a puzzle recently centered around an old cult that mummified their participants and worshiped the dawn (specifically the god Amaunator). A group of intellectuals knew about an old city and they wanted it's knowledge so they hired the PCs and gave them a treasure map that showed the way to an old outpost with a compass on it that pointed at the dawn instead of north. It also said "In the desert the city awaits with open gates. Monstrous towers and beautiful city streets. The dawn of a new day will show you the way. Looking towards the dawn, the watchers wait." Following the map and the hints on it (x marks the spot) they traveled through a magically darkened area of desert to an old outpost on the map that showed them where the invisible city of the cult was, similar to the Mummy movie (at dawn with a beam of light through the giant statue worshipping the dawn at the outpost). After reaching the city and avoiding the sand worm for the second time they ran into a trap that activated runes that were 'mostly' covered with sand and activated a bunch of "sand dunes" (hidden skeletons all facing the dawn as though in worship) with the same compass symbol with the dawn part a different color and they found that if they faced the dawn the skeletons would stop attacking them. Finally the puzzle was in a small round room that had 5 dais's 4 of them had four different symbols on them that looked constellations and the final one in the middle had 5 dials, and there was a small plaque that said "Remember our faith, and we don't ever repeat ourselves." So long story short the constellations were points on the map compass I designed and you had to pick the 4 correct symbols and rotate them on the last Dias correctly so they made the compass without overlapping their lines, and then point the whole thing in the direction of the dawn to open the door to the next room. However every time they failed to get the correct answer the roof would open the first time and then multiple magical lens would shift above them and start amplifying the sunlight and slowly do more and more radiant damage with each wrong answer. Then they fought a mummy lord which my bard tried to convince the he worshipped the same god, and the mummy lord after being convinced asked him to become "immortal" ( mummified lol) and he wasn't so keen about that lol. There was one other trap room before the puzzle that had a pressure plate that released snakes. This whole thing was a one shot for lvl 7 characters and a new player that went over fairly well if anyone else would like to use. I obviously modified a few things, and also thank you if you've actually read this whole thing. I'm not the best DM always but I certainly do my best if this helps anyone else great.
All my players are residents of Japan with different levels of Japanese. I gave them a readable passages on stone walls pertaining to some tomes than all had kanji based on the elements on the covers. It was super meta-game, but man did it work. They were all excited to remember what those symbols meant. Don't underestimate the meta/cultural aspect of puzzles. If it's fun, it's good enough.
I recently made a wizards tower for my stepkids to play through with lots of puzzles, they seemed to love it and ended up being quite fun to build and put the puzzles together.
I do damn hard puzzles for the players because they always exceed my expectations. :D But just in case, the rules are always: You can either make a guess, or you can make an Int roll to get a clue (and better roll = better clue). Go around the table giving each player a shot at it. Most players will roll when they're stumped and guess when they have an idea to test. So every player can always contribute meaningfully to solving the puzzle.
I stole that idea and modified it. Fountain in the middle of the room, when the timer gets to zero, any weapon submerged in the water gets Magic Weapon effect for 1 hour. The cultists were using it to make sure they could fight the devils they were summoning if anything went wrong. I.E. it was never meant for the players.
One of the best pieces of advice I've heard for making puzzles is to not come up with a solution - maybe have something in mind but be willing to change it. Let the players squirm for a while and when one of them things of something cool, it works, because you're the GM and you say so. Guaranteed success for your players, less work for you. The only exception I can think of is if your puzzle is acting as a barrier for some powerful gear or wealth and you genuinely want your players to earn them.
I was about to comment something like this as well. Sometimes the players start making these crazy connections with information you've given them in one of the previous sessions that you never could've have come up with yourself. The satisfaction on their faces when you say that one of their far-fetched ideas actually works is one of the most beautiful things you can see as a GM :D
Sometimes I space out from listening to what Guy is saying because Im in "Aww" of his gift of presenting. He does so in a manner that is so well done, it's hypnotic, and you are forced to take a moment to appreciate it.
Guy, I have "Sorting Your Sock Drawer" Game as well. Do you have the "Sweaty Sporty Summer" Expansion? If you don't, you should get it. They add the cup and the shinguard pieces, and it totally transforms the game in ways you won't believe.
@@bionicdragon5 Haven't gotten around to that one yet. Still stuck on the "Feminine Delicates" from the Valentine DLC. Who would have guessed that something with two cups could be so challenging?
Hold up, Stargate has 7 symbols, 8 for intergalactic travel. You're forgetting the point of origin, which is critically important on at least a couple of occasions where a stargate isn't working because the characters haven't realized that it's not where they think it is, so they're getting the point of origin wrong.
@@Killercreek I was thinking of the one where O'Neil and Carter are at the Antarctica gate and can't dial out because it's silly to try the Earth origin point because obviously we're not on Earth, right? I'd forgotten episode 1 had that issue as well.
I tend to use puzzles as optional extras - succeed and it opens up into a secret area, usually with some kind of treasure but not needed to progress the story. "Failure" often just means they won't get this treasure, plus an arbitrary amout of damage to create tension and put a limit on the amount of attempts they have. I sometimes use vague puzzles open to interpretation (kind of puzzle/riddle hybrids) just to get the players thinking and give them a sense of accomplishment when they "solve" it. I once had a puzzle where all 3 players simply had to simultaneously interact with an object in SOME way that I felt was interesting and creative enough
I always try to leave my puzzles at least a little open ended so that if the players come up with a solution that's thematically more cool than what I had, it works, and makes them feel super smart for figuring it out. That has to be used sparingly though.
I did a puzzle ones for my party that involved a computer and a shotgun. Basically a shotgun was aimed where it would hit a person who types the wrong code into a computer. The funny part was if you type the right code it also shoots you. The trick was as they went into the room I explain to them that the room was filled with books and bookshelves laying all over the floor. So many books that you couldn’t even see the floor underneath them. I was hoping the party would use the books and the bookshelves to form a barrier between them in the shotgun. Instead they just took turns punching in codes and getting shot in the back. I love my party.
I used to play with some GMs who really did those handouts well. Really well hidden codes in a whole page of hieroglyphs for example. Some rolls told us that the solution of the puzzle would likely be on a certain piece of wall above the door. And the gm really designed that well. That made all the difference! We sat around the table thinking about what to do exactly. Because it WAS a death riddle we had to solve and only as much tries as player characters. We lost 2 out of 5 and made it on the third try. But after the first we took it seriously! And I still remember that as one of my greatest role playing experiences.
I like to have my puzzles make sense from the perspective of those that design them, in game. The clues I try to embed in the story, or as part of the experience of the place they are in. In one adventure, the players were in a mansion owned by a giant snail. After a roper-like security system swallowed them all, they found themselves inside a slick spiraling surface, with Ocher Jellies floating about. They soon realized they were inside a massive shell (or were shrunken down within a normal sized shell!) A mass of tentacles also patrolled the shell. The topology of the shell was looped, so that the top of the shell connected to the base in a continuous circuit. There seemed to be no way out. Skeletal remains of past trespassers who had been digested by the jellies were found. There were some stalactite and stalagmite blemishes on the nacre surface. They noticed one of these was atypically on a wall. Checking that out, they found a draw. Pulling it out, they found engraved a spiraling surface (like a nautilus shell), divided into 7 depressions. In an 8th depression were gathered 7 faceted crystals. The two smallest crystals were of the same size. The other crystals grew in size gradually. Each was inscribed with numbers on the facets in common, from 1-20. Except for their sizes, the crystals were identical. (I had graphics of all of this, and made a really great map, using a real shell as the background, with a hex grid for movement, spiraling about). One player, who is really into the Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci Sequence, immediately solved the code, placing the crystals in size order into the depressions, with the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 showing. When he did that, the stalactite they were near sprouted filaments and a mouth, pulling them back through to the other side. The draw was there so that the owner could clean out the security shell now and again! The players loved it, thought it made total sense in game. They were not alone in there, had fun having a battle while stuck inside a shell prison.
I once used the 'Countdown/Reset Trap' within a Hidden Drow Crypt/Vault. It took them a while to figure out, despite the few clues I had given, from preception checks that revealed that on press of button, the sound of grinding of gears and stones 'reverses' and a few others. But the player who was playing the Drow that they were in this place for. He had a big stiffing complaint about it all. "This is a dumb trap, a Drow wouldn't have this, no Drow is patient for something like this" and so forth. Basically screaming bloody murder about why the trap was dumb, but the fact was, the very shit he was saying was the exact reason why I felt that this trap was perfect for the location.
I just made a puzzle to determine the morality of my party. I used contronyms to make the players choose between killing someone or making peace (cleave has two meanings, makeing it a fun word). The outcome determined how the next room was handled because the "mini-boss" that they were encountering would use it to determine if they were peaceful (i.e he wont be ready for a fight and open to negotiations) or war-like (i.e. he would be ready to fight).
My first pretty mean puzzle I ever ran. Four hallways of any length over 30 feet long, each connected in a square. At the end of each hall is "A plaque written in several different languages, including braille, the words 'Go left' with an arrow pointing left." The answer is to go right at the first plaque. There is an illusory wall that leads to the exit of the puzzle trap. Sadly only one of the players got to experience it. Took a bit but through some clever sleuthing through the use of tremor sense, they found the void made by the illusion.
A puzzle I got good feedback for was once I gave my players a sort of small jigsaw puzzle (using stone square pieces with simple etchings that matched up when fit together properly) to actually solve in order to open a hidden passage. Playing online via Roll20, I made player-controllable tokens with images of the pieces that they could arrange, but if I were to do the same in-person then drawing some runes on a piece of construction paper then cutting it up would be effective. It was really basic and only took a minute or two to solve, but the tactile experience of actually putting pieces in their correct spots was something that they enjoyed.
I use simple nanograms and i thought of a game "100 tiles for a knight" //10x10 square, players write numbers 1,2... within a reach of a knight in chess, never stepping on a same tile. 75 - easy 85 is a moderate difficulty; 100 is close to impossible. (dc for entering the library = 100 - d20 - int modifier. thus you give advantage for intelligent character and as in any exam, you have some luck in it ;) )
I LOVE puzzles! I try to put regularly one of them in my games. It change the pace of the door-monster-loot pattern. As I'm in love of the 5 rooms dungeon technique, I tend to make puzzle for the first or second "room" because it let some players a place where they can be the star of the scene this time ^^ In fact, I have a campaign in some sort of pirate setting and I wanted to make my player feel like if they were in a treasure hunt, I ask them if they liked puzzle before hand and they answer that they LOVE them so my campaign is very puzzle heavy. Sometime with hand-out (I made a pirate dairy full of codes and some important item where hidden in puzzle box or custom rubik's cube) sometime just with description (one of my puzzle was with some bird sound I made with my mouth xD) but they absolutely LOVE all of them! If they don't figure out how to solve them, an intelligent check granted them some clues (it was with on of that roll that my player figured out how to complete the rubik's cube thing!) Making some puzzle part of your campaign could be the best thing ever, because players will want to solve them on the long term, find NPC who maybe know much about the object, maybe make their character to be awake all the night and suffer one exhaustion point just to be able to solve the puzzle (I ruled that 1min in real world were 1h in the game, so one night would be 8min) And now they have a new object, a rune carved dragon scale (another hand-out), which interact with another object, and they get really exited by that because their treasure hunt is not over yet^^ So yes... I REALLY LOVE puzzle and you all should too ^^
Would you share your puzzles and solutions? Even rough notes in a Google Doc or Dropbox would be a big help. I'm also running a pirate campaign and I want to stump a group of wizards.
I occasionally use playing cards as props for my puzzles. They are accessible, cheap, versatile and familiar. The fact that they are cheap allows me to tear them as a punishment for players, or have several identical cards for the uncanny effect. I once used cards as favor currency in "Alice in Wonderland" and later those favors were applied to gateways, showing examples of different deeds.
The Bell button invokes the Viking chorus! "Spam Spam Spam Spam …" I like a sprinkle of clues around the environment, and there is a reward-less exit when 'they don't get it'.
I gotta say the shift from thumbnail to the first frame of the video was very jarring, although I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'm glad you don't clickbait whatever that's worth
holy crap. I watched the whole video and didn't even noticed, that the background is animated. Still, i love it. looks great. Standing for the video is interesting. It gives a more "presentation" like feel to your, well..presentation ;)
I tend to use puzzles for 2 things: hidden passageways/rooms that lead to treasure but tend to be miss-able, or something that isn't obscure and miss-able, but leads to an optional plot device, like a lich's hidden phylactery. So rather than having to fight the lich, you can merely destroy the phylactery that was hidden by a puzzle device. I never make my puzzles mandatory to the progression of the plot.
Puzzels, the great adversary for gms and pcs alike. How difficult is a good difficult, how to get even the "no I don't do puzzels" player engaged... sometimes they can be frustrating for everybody.... But I guess with some of your tipps there may be some gold to find within them... rp-wise and literally for the pcs ^^ By the way I like the new layout, looks so much more vivid.
Sometimes puzzles show the difference between player intelligence vs character intelligence. I can solve a lot of things out of character. My barbarian with Int as his dump stat? 😬 Also, I remember this cool movie with a puzzle box called, "Hellraiser" where solving the puzzle kinda led to more trouble. As a GM, I find it amusing. Love the new video style!
i just created a riddle for my players myself. I made a piece of paper with various symbols of magic for them which they could interpret. and best thing is, the riddle is actually 3 riddles in one. it is supposed to lead them to an old temple. first the paper shows them where the temple is. then it shows them how to get to it. and then it helps them to enter it in the correct way. but they have to look at the same riddle more than once, while the third time, and only the third time, will be deadly if they miss it out.
I like puzzles which doesn't seem to be a puzzle. I DM-ed a campaign where the PCs followed a guide through the Underdark, but that guide was a host of an intellect devourer, who wanted to lead them to a trap set by mind flayers. Once the guide has died during a combat against a banshee and the devourer had to teleport out from the host. They could just see that beside the banshee there were a brain-like creature which had no contact with their dead guide. Fortunately they could solve this puzzle, so they turned back. However I don't know if we can call this a puzzle, but it was a great delight to see their faces when they figured out the situation :)
I have one channel that I get notifications for. This is it. This channel has helped me in so many ways becoming a better player and DM. So much insight and detail into why and why not do certain things. These videos always seem to come up in an order that goes with where I am stuck atm in trying to make my campaign better or more intricate.
I play a live role playing game based on the Parsely text adventure role playing system. When running games, I rely heavily on improvising humor responses to anything the players might try. So when I write my games, I plan only one definite solution to each puzzle, then double check my settings and items and so on to make sure there’s no easy way to accidentally cut through a final roadblock and skip the majority of the other puzzles. Otherwise I love letting them be creative and repurposing things, safe in the knowledge that I have one real solution and know the game breaking pitfalls to avoid.
Great video! But I would add that there are more uses of puzzles. Puzzles are kind of a "bouncer-mechanic". If you can solve them, you show that you belong in the "I'm allowed to do that"-group. So you can use puzzles also to (de)activate the superweapon (using the evil emperors love for a certain artist), or to give the players weapons in a prison break (the weapons of the guards have all the same numbercode on the casing), or to deactivate the golems patrouling in the temple the party searches through
Christopher Schröder Good point. The insiders would know or have the info/thing needed, outsiders would not. I think Dael Kingsmith made a very similar point about puzzles.
Probably the best way to learn how good puzzle-making is done is to learn how escape rooms work. In addition to the actual rooms, there are card game versions of the same thing. "Unlock!" has good games, for example.
I once gave the players a giant labyrinth. They could not go backwards or walk paths they have gone down in the past. They needed a key that is at a dead end and there was a portal there that links to the end but only works going from the end to there. in the end, it was a huge headache for 4 of my players, but 3 of them put their heads together and they managed to draw out a map and got the correct solution on their first attempt. I love these people so much. They were so happy to do the absurdly unfair and difficult maze that I decided not to make them do it again.
I know this isnt the newest of videos, but people surely will still watch it and maybe guy reads through the comments out of boredom, so here is what i like to do: I love making simple puzzles...With Red Herrings. There is something fun and silly about the party being a little confused with the seemingly difficult puzzle, only to discover that the solution was actually quite easy. It allows trial and error and it's not too upsetting if you have the right group of people (And if you have a group of people that just wants to murder things, dont bother with putting much thought into puzzles, or atleast make it combat puzzles where they have to figure out how to deactivate a deadly golem or find the weakness of a guardian monster) One of my most recent riddles: The Basilisk and The Hero The Basilisk and The Hero uses some of my old Blunders: Statues, A simple lure that leads to a false trail, and a solution involving eyes. Basically: The Party walks into a relativly small, 60x60x60 room, with a few statues scattered around...Goal was to escape the room so they could return outside: In the middle of the room was the stone statue of a noble knight, holding a sword in the air, eyes focused angrily on the statue of a ravenous basilisk, staring the man down, seated atop a boulder like, large pedestal that was about 4 feet high. There was other statues in the room: A scared maiden, a dwarvish warrior, an elvish archer and a barking dog, all facing the Basilisk Scattered on the pedastal of the basilisk where 10 tokens, that looked like palm sized stone coins. Each of the tokens had a image on it: A Doghead, A Maiden, A Dwarf, A Knights Helmet, A Bow and Arrow, A Sword, an Axe, A Bone, A Tree and an Eye. With some investigation, the party found that all the statues in the room, except of the basilisk, had a circular socket on their back - and the tokens would fit in those. The party obviously went with that, and they realized it did nothing....They tried pushing the statues around....And thats when they realized something. The Statues werent connected to any mechanism. They were just statues. This is when the caster used Detect Magic to discover the statues werent magical either...Well, all statues, except the basilisk, and the knight...Specifically, at the heads. Our Monk climbed up to the statue of the knight, and tried to figure what was up. There he noticed that the eyes of the knight where made out of a different material...specifically some sort of magical pearls, and he noticed a very subtle light connecting his eyes to the eyes of the basilisk. He decided to try to cover the Knights eyes - and it worked! The Knight statues stone cover crumbled, the Statue becoming Brass and raising its sword high up, and the Basilisk statue shattered into pieces -Revealing the key to exit the room.
I love puzzles, but I don't like the idea of using dice to solve them. I gave my players an item called "The Owls of Rude Advice." It's just a string with three carved owls, but if they break one off, it will turn into a spiritual owl which will give them a piece of useful advice in a rude manner. That way if they ever get stumped to the point where it's not fun, they can ask for a hint in universe.
Yea, I wish I'd watched this before I did my first dungeon puzzle. It was a room with four levers and a giant bronze bust of a dragon that spat a fireball out every time the input was wrong. Except, I didn't really give any hints or clues on which combination might be right, or even the first lever or two. Que the one HOUR montage of trying different combos, getting confused on which they'd tried before, etc. Haven't done a puzzle since and the memory haunts me
Sometimes i give all the explanations of the room and read whatever text exists in the room (or have them ready in text), give them handouts of the room so they can see everything and they can solve the puzzle without any further assistance. And once they initiate the puzzle by activating some kind of mechanism, then something deals damage to them (poison filling the room, psionic pulses damaging their brains, anti-life object leaching their life-force, flames heat the room so much that they start to burn, you get the point.) The damage they receive is activated every-minute in REAL TIME.... Yes.. i put a timer on my phone that beeps every minute. First real-time minute the characters receive 1 point of damage. Second minute they recieve 2 points of damage, and so on and so on. That makes them be ok taking 3-8 minutes but staying beyond 10-15 minutes could kill them. (Depending on level). That creates real-time pressure so make sure people have gone to the toilet or whatever real-life activity anyone needs to do.
I'm running a kinda short campaign right now with a school buildiing full with puzzles. Put a lot of effort in it, but sadly, not all of the players like it. I still want to finish it. Feels like a lot of wasted time if we stop now...
The only problem with Guy’s Stargate explanations is that there are SEVEN symbols on the original gate... 6 for the destination and then you need the point of origin. Atlantis added the 8th symbol.
Hmm... would this count as a puzzle or a riddle: Players find a door with two levers either side. Above the door is a dwarven inscription that reads "Panic is your enemy". Anyone that speaks dwarven can read it. If someone tries to go through the doorway, they tread on a pressure plate and doors in front and behind close, trapping them. If the party pulls the L lever, the exit opens and the trapped person can now safely open both doors. If they instead pull the R lever, the ceiling over the doorway starts coming down, and will crush them in, say, 6 turns. The solution is to push the R lever back and then pull the L lever. If they instead panic and pull the L lever without pushing the R lever first, the mechanism speeds up and now they'll be crushed in 3 turns. Continued panic leads to a very messy end to their friend, while reversing the sequence resets the mechanism.
I'm a fan of always leaving yourself a backdoor in case your players get stuck. Is the place the party is trying to get into a stronghold of some kind that is still seeing use? One of the denizens of the stronghold comes back from a patrol and encounters the party in the puzzle room. The party can hide and have him open the door, capture him and interrogate him to get the combination... or If the party gets overzealous and kills him, he's actually had the combination for the door in a note or tattooed to his arm so he doesn't forget it. If this is a long-abandoned tomb, then the ancient machinery fails from centuries of disuse. Maybe the mechanism that sprays the dais with poison gas if you make a mistake gets clogged and causes the storage tank to burst, flooding the entire room with a cloud of poison gas but leaving a giant hole in the wall the party can exit the chamber in... or leaving the mechanisms exposed for the rogue to get at. Sometimes the best solutions to a puzzle are the ones that don't play by the puzzle's rules. Just don't get your players *too* used to you letting them bypass your puzzles. If you've got to rescue your party from your puzzles, maybe tone the next one down a bit.
I love puzzles in games. One of my favourites that I did was a bunch of different shape stones on a table and a plaque that said (word to the effect of as I can't remember the actual wording) 'To progress on your quest, make sense of all the stones. A simple perception check revealed that there were embossed shapes on these stones and that some seemed to fit together. Yes, these shapes turned out to be letters. They had to arrange the stones so the letters spelled out the word 'SENSE'..... see they literally were told to make sense.... lmao :P
Through the archway is a sqare room, this one slightly smaller. Unlike the last room, there is no rotting wood or sticks lying around, however a few chunks of stone from the ceiling and roof do scatter the floor. From what you see left of the roof, there was once a circular opening centered on the centre of the room. Through this hole you can see the clear sky above, the canopy no intruding above the room, letting the sunlight filter down through the dust raised by your movements. In the centre of the room is a pedestal, about chest height, and propped up on said pedestal is a gleaming sword. Around this pedestal the floor is patterned with concentric circles of tiles. Upon trying to lift the sword. The floor beneath you disappears. You try to leap to avoid falling. Everyone else in the room who is standing on the circular section of tiles, as opposed to the corners of the room, must also attempt to not fall into the pit that has opened up below them. If you did not avoid falling, you take a small amount of damage as you hit the bottom. Around you falls the rocks and dust that was lying on the floor, including the damage roof pieces. There is a short but loud rumble as everything hits the bottom, ending with the last clattering bounce of a stick. The dust settles into silence. You are in a pit deeper than your ability to jump and slightly deeper than your confidence to climb, but it doesn't matter because the sides of the pit are too smooth for you to find a handhold. In the centre of the pit, directly underneath the pedestal that held the sword, and going al the way to the top of the pit, is a central column, again, too smooth for you to find purchase to climb. How do you escape the pit?
There have been several Escape Room movies. The best one I saw was an independent movie of a guy's birthday party and everyone knows each other. The big budget one had some leaps in logic, and the made for TV one was a cheesy ghost movie.
My favorite puzzle was the bone organ from Goonies. They had to play a sequence of music notes on the piano made of bones. The notes were literally written on the back of the treasure map the whole time. Every time they screwed up a note, part of the floor fell into a pit. When they did it correctly the door opens. This is basically exactly what you were describing.
I don't like puzzles that require player intelligence. Most of my friends are "dumb jock" types. Even if I had smart guys at the table, I'd still set it up based on rolls because the player's intelligence isn't what is being tested, their characters are.
My favorite puzzle was inspired by the game Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. One player had her hand locked into a panel that required her to enter colors into a sequence, and on the other side of the machine was a display revealing what colors to enter. I had flash cards with different shapes on them, and each shape was a different color. I flashed two sequences that the second player would recite whilst the other player (who couldn't see the cards) wrote down. The third sequence, however, had red, blue, and green *WORDS.* The word "GREEN" would be blue, the word "BLUE" would be red, and the word "RED" would be green. When I flashed this sequence the player hesitated for a second, but was able to successfully call out the *color,* and not the word. I've since done other puzzles like this, usually with great approval from my players. The reason I design my dungeons like escape room puzzles is because we don't have a player-character rogue. It's far more entertaining to get the players involved this way than having the NPC rogue just roll to see if opens the door.
5th element puzzle with different elemental damage is something i did, also pressure plates with some sequence of symbols in the room also was nicely taken
My friend is our last dm, and his character has a +8 to hit and a +8 initiative, so since he can 2 shot every monster I throw at him, I'm gonna try and make a puzzle cave. Hes in for a goddamn treat 😇
(sorry, must correct) For stargate as a puzzle, there's 7 symbols, 8 for atlantis. You need the 6 for a destination, one for the origin point, in Atlantis's case, there was one extra for galaxy swap.
This is an older video so maybe it's been updated but here are my 2 cents. Constructed puzzles are there to stop the unwary. It makes little sense to have a puzzle that anyone can just guess. They should target otherwise normal behavior and have a way to avoid them if you know a secret. For example walking down the middle or left side of the hall triggers the trap, but walking down the right side is safe. How do you figure out who triggers the trap? You can't ask "how do you walk down the hall" or you signal a problem and the players will lawyer the thing to death. Have them roll a d6 and if they roll a 1 or 2, they're safe. Did you give clues that the right side is safe? Are they supposed to just stumble through the trap? That depends on how mean you want to be.
Recently I finished mastering Storm King's Thunder. The only proper puzzle in the game seemed quite easy to guess to me when I read it but it had the players stumped for a while and activating the room's traps on failed attempts. Nice vid!
I like the "polite door" on which you have to knock in order to open it or otherwise it will do something weird to the players. technically not a puzzle but still
I did something similar once where there was a door with an unbreakable locking enchantment on it. If anyone tried to break down the door the guard on the inside would run for reinforcements, but if someone knocked he would answer. The players had met some of the cultists that owned the place and knew that they were polite but not very brave.
I feel like puzzles work better when made optional. Forcing puzzles on players can be fun if the players are all interested in that type of gameplay. But, like real puzzles, they can become frustrating if the players have trouble figuring it out. If it's optional, they can spend as much time on it as possible then either get it or move on if they can't get it.
Currently working on a puzzle themed around sounds. Players will encounter a room with something in it that they want (have to figure out what), from which they can hear a low hum. Entering the room and inspecting the thing, the players find themselves locked in, as 4 holes in the ceilings open up, and start emitting a shrill sound. This sound will require the players to make a CON save every turn to avoid taking 1d6 thunder damage. Their ways out would be to perceive a message saying "listen to the bats", prompting them to use speak with animals and hear the solution of the puzzle. The solution would be a simple puzzle underneath the chest containing the thing. If they are too slow, they'd also notice the door starting to take damage from the sounds, making it easier to break through in a panic situation. Sorry for my English, just woke up. The puzzle is made for 6 lvl 2 PCs
I had a DM did a puzzle for our party. Our party's biggest issue was that there was no visual. My DM insisted that the description was enough. We didn't need a visual and we weren't allowed any dice rolls to give us any clues to which statue to put in next. So we were left to blindly guess. If my character can see something and I'm not allowed to see it allow me to roll to get some sort of clue
That's a problem DM issue. Your game master has made the assumption that the visuals aren't necessary (making it too easy) or that you should be able to figure it out (they did, so you can). Both are short sighted. Some people are visual learners. Some are verbal/auditory learners and others are hands on. A helpful GM will take that into account. Just because she or he figures something out one way, doesn't mean others will do it the same.
Only puzzle I used was the pipes to flow sand or liquid, basic connect a to z and collecting undiscribed items that could form a key, obv in special metal, so the party won't miss or instantly discard it, if they sell they buy it back for 5x their selling prices. And currently they own 1 of 3 parts and sold 2 parts which was bought by a mysterious figure
I really think that the puzzles in Skyrim's draugr ruins are done well. Every solution is available to view, if you look carefully, and they can also be solved by guessing, though that will usually result in being shot, stabbed, or swarmed by awoken draugr. - I'm talking about the "whale-bird-snake" pylons here.
My general philosophy with puzzles are to make them not mandatory for progression. Have them be the key to an extra encounter or reward or a way to remove an optional challenge from a boss fight.
The way I do puzzles is; if they solve it they don't have to fight the nasty monster. If they can't figure the puzzle out, then swords and spells will have to come out. Give them the same XP either way, but some sort of extra (boon, item, information, etc.) if they solve the puzzle.
So for this puzzle, we fit gems into the proper slots. But it's strange, almost as if there aren't enough pieces here... wait.
*slaps the rogue*
Rogue: I would never do such a thing, and you should be ashamed of yourself for subscribing to stereotypes.
Paladin: Or, is there a chance, no matter how small, that the person we hired to be a sneak-thief, who then proceeded to be a sneak-thief that had no qualms about sneak-thieving from his employers until Alarm spells were implemented, has once again been a sneak-thief?
Rogue: :(
Read this and actually laughed out loud 😂
@@autumnwind5819 Ditto
@@matthewturner5178 :) 😂
My favourite puzzle experience came with my first time running a campaign. I was introducing new players to D & D 3.5 and wanted them to experience all the fun stuff. So they are tracking down a necromancer baddie. As they fight off various types of undead they find on their vanquished foes slips of paper with a series of holes in them. They come to the doors to the inner sanctum where the baddie is hiding out and find a wall with words randomly inscribed on it. Opposite the wall is a shimmering rod. A few quick checks reveal it is a rod of light. There is a slot in front of the rod which I described as exactly perfect for holding slips of paper. Then a few INT and WIS rolls later they slid one of the slips of paper into the slot. The paper blocked the light from the rod except for the spots where there were holes in the paper. Light shone through the holes. Each beam of light fell on a different word on the opposite wall. The first sentence made this way was "An awful bard boisterously belted ballads.". There were a series of 6 switches near the door. Switch up was A, switch center was OFF, switch down was B. All switches were currently in the OFF position. The newbs got it in three tries. AABBBB. The gate in front of the door opened revealing a second set of switches. They switched out the first paper for the second and got "A brave barbarian always battles boisterously". At this point the guy who was helping me with the campaign came in with coffees. We asked him to try solving the riddle\puzzle to open the door. His character was a very clever rogue\thief. Several rolls later he still couldn't get it. The newbs were leaping out of their skins (figuratively). They were proud to show him how the riddle\puzzle worked. Once the doors opened, combat with the baddie began. The baddie lost, of course. The newbs got the loot and returned to town. They were heros. They were hooked. They have been gaming ever since. They never realized my mentor dm was faking his inability to solve the puzzle
iddle.
Im probably insanely late for this but anyway
You guys are realy good personne, in the way you're able to purposedly look dumb / not show off your ability to do this and that, just for the sake of making your players feel proud, this is rare enough to notice it, good job lads.
I'm a big fan of what I call the Natural Puzzle. It's seen in a lot of platforming video games or exploration games. The obstacle is not an obvious puzzle meant to be a lock. I don't like puzzle locks. The best way to keep someone out is a key. Puzzles don't keep bad people out. They keep stupid people out.
However, in the case of a Natural Puzzle, the problem isn't man made. Or rather, it's not intentional. It's a collapsed bridge, or a room without light, or a disconnected power source or something.
In my dungeon design I ask three questions: What was it's original purpose? What went wrong? What's changed?
This helps inform puzzle design. Here is an example:
The party is searching for an ancient research facility. The facility long ago was above ground, but a great disaster buried it beneath the ground.
The doors that gave access to this facility can only be seen in daylight, but having been buried underground (what went wrong) there appears to be no entrances.
When the party arrive, they find a series of camps from an excavation that came before them (what's changed). The camps are empty and abandoned, and carry some clues (including several large mirrors, some broken, some not fully set up), before leading them through dark underground tunnels and to the walls of this facility.
Investigation could lead to notes about the security of the hidden doors, and some thinking will bring them to think of the mirrors and after that they should realise that the mirrors can be used to bring daylight down to the buried facility, allowing them to reveal the entrance. Inside they'll discover the original purpose of the facility, which is hinted at by the nature of its security up to this point.
I always hate making puzzles precisely because the notion of a puzzle to keep someone out, in MOST situations, is pretty stupid. Just use a damn key (or magical key). Of course, you could design a dungeon that was made with the purpose of testing whoever went inside of it, so, in that case, it would make sense. Or maybe if all magic that can lock things also involves a puzzle in your setting, so there is no "aboslute" locking magic. But I really like this idea of natural puzzles, I will try to think of it in the future. Thanks for your perspective! :D
@@son_guhun Yes, those types of puzzles I categorize as Trials. Riddles fall under those, as well. They can still be fun, as long as it's purpose is a test. Or even a transformation. I did a thing one campaign where when the players reached level 15 they were at a threshold they needed help to get past, in their growth. The Wizard had reached the limits of what a mortal could do on their own (it was a setting of low power level similar to Eberron) and had to go through this magical labyrinth created by the goddess of magic herself that was mostly a lot of puzzles.
@@dm_ex_machina3395 Another use of trials-type puzzles that I enjoy is the lesson/warning puzzles where you have to use a bit of lore gleaned from the environment to progress through the dungeon -> e.g. a powerful artefact is sealed away unless someone enters a sequence of symbols found in a poem that laments those killed by a villain who used the artefact for evil in the past; or a castle infected by a plague is sealed unless they correctly mix the antidote.
> "They keep stupid people out"
I agree that no one would ever use puzzles like that. But such puzzles are still fun for players and therefore worth having, so with a little extra worldbuilding they can make sense. First, always pair them with actual security like a key; the players need the key and also to solve the problem. Second, make the solution to the puzzle thematic: for example, a religion or cult may leave a puzzle with a theme that forces people to think about their doctrines. An individual may leave a puzzle as a memento based on details from that person's life, such as the name of a loved one. Wizards may have left a logical puzzle to ensure that an important book didn't fall into stupid hands. And so on.
selylidne Exactly! In my current campaign, the BBEG is a long-term strategist. He’s been a war general, & built up a wealthy trading company. He also happens to be a vampire. The city his family was given by the king (for vanquishing a brood/coven of vampires, actually) is split into 3 by a river. A river he can’t cross as a vampire, technically. His solution is a tunnel that goes under the river, & a special bridge rebuilt so that its interior includes soil from his home all the way across the length.
Anyway, he solves problems & does not harbor idiots well. His tunnel includes a puzzle of stone guardians that form a triangle blocking a constructed entrance to/from his keep.
It’s the triangle & pegs game from Cracker Barrel restaurant.
My players couldn’t figure out how it worked. I let them all roll INT & WIS, and it was the child NPC with them that got the roll! “It’s a game! It’s a game! We play to jump over each other.”
Suddenly all the players did facepalm - duhhhh, they got it, and we progressed quickly.
Result was any remaining “pegs”, the guardians, not eliminated became animated and guarded the entrance in full phalanx defense & attack mode.
Interestingly, players decided NOT to continue forward because they had burned their spells & HP. So when they return, the “game” will have changed! It’s magic is coded to up the strategic challenge each time.
Still thinking about what the next challenge will be - maybe checkers or GO, with the players themselves being the pieces in one side.
*Party member enters wrong combination*
"A trap door opens above you, and several snake skeletons rain down upon your character. Someone seems to have forgotten that snakes need water."
Love these videos by the way, beginning the steps to writing my first short campaign and they have been a TREMENDOUS help.
I always avoid puzzles because I feel I would make them too easy. This video made me want to give 'em a shot
Do it! I had the same problem, but I just ramped up the difficulty. I had to learn the hard way (by having very frustrated players) that it was only easy, because I myself designed the puzzle in the first place
Ask any DM who has run puzzles; there's no such thing as a puzzle that's too easy.
you gotta learn the group. I have had people struggle with a basic scale and weights (where the door starts opening everytime the scale swings over balanced) for hours (the solution was to balance the scales) and figure out full scale cryptography (heh CRYPT) in a matter of minutes
Because people all think differently DMs think we are making easy puzzles when we are actually not. If the solution is not obvious to you, It will be almost impossible for a player. If the solution is obvious, the players will find the puzzle difficult. If the solution is blatantly obvious, it will be about the right difficulty for most players. A good way to check the functionality of a puzzle is to grab a friend (preferably not from the group) and run them through the puzzle. It can really help you sort it out and streamline it. Often something that makes sense in your head doesn't translate well, or you will forget something/notice a problem, and you will need to adjust the puzzle or the clues.
@@Amehdion Great advice, thank you
Dice a great if players need hints. Intelligence and wisdom rolls to see if the characters can figure out what they might figure out.
I as a player have not lived an hour in your head, but my character has lived his entire life in your world. Knowledge rolls to make me the player aware of something that my character would know is also helpful.
This is how I do puzzle solving in my games. If the character has a 19 intelligence, I would expect them to work out clues to a puzzle even if the player themselves can't.
I find that the "idea roll" mechanic from call of cthulhu is great for any rpg, if the players are stuck you get them to roll an int check to provide a clue or help them to figure out what their character is starting to piece together, should be a staple in all games imo, even if it's purely used for puzzles
Nope. If they can't figure the puzzles out, they don't deserve the treasure. They don't get "hints".
horrible advice thanks@@Aaron-mj9ie
Just thought I'd share a puzzle I ran for a group of players a while back.
Some dungeon, party (no darkvision in the group members bar a single frontliner PC) comes into a barely lit room, and almost immediately get attacked by cave-dwelling creatures that do not seem hindered by the lack of light.
After they defeat the creatures, the party notices a door on the far end of the room. Shut. Next to it is a brasero with smoldering embers, and on the door is a (poorly written) riddle, for which the obvious riddle is "darkness".
One member of the party speaks the word, but of course nothing happens. Once they snuff the embers of the brasero, the room goes dark, no-one can see anything anymore, and they hear rumbling.
The door starts opening. Slowly. Veeery slowly. And the noise attracts more creatures, leaving the one PC that can see in the dark alone to face them.
Being used to fighting in the dark in this dungeon, the wizard casts Light. Door slams shut immediately. They fight off the creatures, and start again.
Only this time they know they'll have to bear the complete darkness for a bit, in order to pass through the door, while the frontliner tanks the creatures.
Was quite a fun night, and got the players mighty afraid of turning on any light before having all crossed the door.
YOOOOOOO I LOVE THIS.
I'm stealing it.
I'd like to appropriate and change this for my own purposes as well. Need a puzzle for tonight and this sounds entertaining. Teases the brain but isn't too difficult to figure out.
I had a similar one where doors are either solid wall or doorways depending on if there is light or not. This means, doors might be one-way only if the room on one side of the doorway has light and the other doesn't.
I like that you could technically grind the hell out of this and just lure hoards of the creatures into the dark, turn on the lights, wipe them out, and eventually (because no species is infinite) kill enough or all of them that you no longer get attacked in the dark.
I have my first real puzzle coming up in our campaign. An escape room situation. I decided to give multiple solutions, as we have a large group and I know different people go at things differently, so this is a good test to see how they do it, and different methods will apply to different characters better. And I put it on a timer. And then, as a safety measure, the door has a strength check of 50, wide enough for three to press against it, so worse comes to worse, they just knock down the door.
Thats my kind of GM: if all else fails break the bastard down :D Though I think solving the puzzle should offer a greater reward.
I’d be careful about creating too many solutions. Sometimes rather than feeling empowered they feel confused by the multiple options.
While I applaud having a few different solutions I'll caution you this, if its possible to skip the puzzle by breaking down the door, the party will. Assume they will always break whatever you put in front of them unless it can't be broken. I once put a cave-in in front of them, with the dead end only supposed to be a clue and they used the spell shape earth to go THROUGH it.
I guess it depends on the players if they first try to solve the puzzle or to break things down. If it's the latter maybe give them a fear bonus once they triggered enough traps. So if they try to break the door down initially they are unable, but once the characters realize their lives depend on it, the get a burst of strength. Though like people above me said: it's good to give them some disadvantage like alerting enemies through the noise caused by breaking the door.
I recently made a custom dungeon for my party, they're currently playing Curse of Strahd and they asked for something that's a little less... dreading.
So now there's a temple below lake Zarovich. Obviously there's a treasure chamber. I thought about who put that stuff there and since it's Vedalken Mages, it figured they'd have the most intelligent solution.
So they made this impenetrable forcefield that can be accessed solely by playing through a ridiculous text-adventure book that is able to put you to sleep for 3 hours, or fill your mouth with dirt.
But since the guards are dead, the alarm doesn't work anymore, which means my party has infinite retries. It's a funny little thing and doesn't fit the campaign theme at all, i imagine it like a little mini-game. But hey, they get a bunch of gold to boot if they beat it and the temple they clear could be their new base of operation.
I've test-run the thing with 3 people, most gave up. It's the perfect security system.
I like the idea of puzzles as an alternative to combat; put an encounter with a monster/enemy the PC's know they aren't capable of fighting, but set it up so that the environment can be used to weaken or defeat the enemy. Like breaking a sluice to flood a tunnel and wash away a lethal swarm of some kind.
Totally right on players loving props. The group I run found a contract written in Abysal which none spoke. I simply used an online legal contract software filling in blanks then cut and pasted into google translate and changed the language to Basque. Sprinkle food coloring on it and tie it with a piece of leather cord. They went crazy.
Some great tips there, makes me want to create something new for next week's session! I ran fun puzzle for my players recently, feel free to steal it. You know the kids memory game where you have an array of cards face down on the table, turn over two at a time, and if they match you keep the pair? Basically that. With zombies.
They'd been through a dungeon crawl, and every room featured carvings of the same motif - somebody blasting an ancient tree with lightning, and a glowing gem arising from the tree. This is part of the lore which is central to our campaign, adjust as necessary. In the penultimate room, they were faced with a 4 by 4 grid of pressure plates on the floor. No markings, nothing like that. No obvious mechanism, although faint magic could be detected.
On stepping on a plate, it would be illuminated with one of 8 symbols (16 plates, 8 pairs). If a second plate was activated, its rune would light up, but with additional effects. If it revealed a 'correct' matching pair (tree, lightning, or gem) then that symbol would appear above the door at the end of the chamber. Illuminating all three symbols would open it. If it was another pair, nothing would happen. If it was two different symbols, two holes would open at random spots on the ceiling, and a zombie would drop from each. Every fourth 'fail' would release a zombie ogre.
The players had a lot of fun with this, especially as one of them is a rather enthusiastic Kobold who kept mashing buttons and releasing zombies without thinking. And then they figured out that zombies (especially ogres) walking over plates would trigger them. I did give them an out in that I was rolling behind the scenes to see if the mechanism jammed, which it did after about 6 releases. That gave them breathing room, although I was then rolling to see if it un-jammed!
I think it worked well because the players had been primed enough with the motifs on the walls of the preceding chambers, even though they didn't realise it at the time, that as soon as the relevant symbols were triggered on the floor they knew what to aim for. Although there was no way to know which plate would contain which rune until it was activated so there was still chaos in the trial and error stage. Obviously you can make it easier with fewer plates and symbols.
This is a great puzzle, thank you!
Especially don't forget to highlight the puzzle elements when you'll be adding the sand/water/acid of doom. Without the clues, it can end up feeling like just a particularly nasty and vindictive trap.
I made a puzzle once that doubled as a trap. A flooding room witha couple corpses. Soon as the door closed on one side the room starts to fill. The trick is that its an illusion. Fail the per eption and you'll hold your breath til you suffocate. But the perceptive would realise that the water didn't affect the corpses. Once the room was full, if you survived, the other door unlocked. In a party of five, only one person needed to realise it was an illusion and convince the rest of the party, but the panic it created before they realised it was fun.
I've got a color code puzzle planned but it's in a dark room, where the words "Red" "Yellow" etc are actually colored differently, and it's the actual color of them that is the real code. I will be using this on a party of everyone who has Darkvision, so will be interesting to see if they pick it up that they will actually need light for this one.
How did it go?
potato
@@ruipena4945 Nietzsche was wrong. It is not the abyss that stars back, but the eye of the potato that glimmers back from those apocryphal depths.
Quite possibnly my favourite puzzle comes from Island of the Lizard King.
Hobgoblin bridge guard "What is the password."
Player "What?"
Hobgoblin bridge guard "..... Yeah... That's right. What IS the password. Pass friend."
:D
Next, you must tell me Who is on first . . .
i read that 4 times before understanding
I'm stealing that.
You can thank Ian Livingstone for that, one of the co founders of Games Workshop and founder of Eidos.
Thank you Ian Livingstone.
had fun with a simple puzzle in my last session- there is a treasure chest 40ft up on the ceiling and a switch on the wall when the players pull the switch gravity gently reverses in this room they get the treasure, but now they have to figure out how to get back down.
If you specifically want the puzzle it's the second paragraph, though there's build up to it. Cheers :)
Made a puzzle recently centered around an old cult that mummified their participants and worshiped the dawn (specifically the god Amaunator). A group of intellectuals knew about an old city and they wanted it's knowledge so they hired the PCs and gave them a treasure map that showed the way to an old outpost with a compass on it that pointed at the dawn instead of north. It also said
"In the desert the city awaits with open gates.
Monstrous towers and beautiful city streets.
The dawn of a new day will show you the way.
Looking towards the dawn, the watchers wait."
Following the map and the hints on it (x marks the spot) they traveled through a magically darkened area of desert to an old outpost on the map that showed them where the invisible city of the cult was, similar to the Mummy movie (at dawn with a beam of light through the giant statue worshipping the dawn at the outpost). After reaching the city and avoiding the sand worm for the second time they ran into a trap that activated runes that were 'mostly' covered with sand and activated a bunch of "sand dunes" (hidden skeletons all facing the dawn as though in worship) with the same compass symbol with the dawn part a different color and they found that if they faced the dawn the skeletons would stop attacking them.
Finally the puzzle was in a small round room that had 5 dais's 4 of them had four different symbols on them that looked constellations and the final one in the middle had 5 dials, and there was a small plaque that said "Remember our faith, and we don't ever repeat ourselves." So long story short the constellations were points on the map compass I designed and you had to pick the 4 correct symbols and rotate them on the last Dias correctly so they made the compass without overlapping their lines, and then point the whole thing in the direction of the dawn to open the door to the next room. However every time they failed to get the correct answer the roof would open the first time and then multiple magical lens would shift above them and start amplifying the sunlight and slowly do more and more radiant damage with each wrong answer. Then they fought a mummy lord which my bard tried to convince the he worshipped the same god, and the mummy lord after being convinced asked him to become "immortal" ( mummified lol) and he wasn't so keen about that lol. There was one other trap room before the puzzle that had a pressure plate that released snakes. This whole thing was a one shot for lvl 7 characters and a new player that went over fairly well if anyone else would like to use. I obviously modified a few things, and also thank you if you've actually read this whole thing. I'm not the best DM always but I certainly do my best if this helps anyone else great.
All my players are residents of Japan with different levels of Japanese. I gave them a readable passages on stone walls pertaining to some tomes than all had kanji based on the elements on the covers. It was super meta-game, but man did it work. They were all excited to remember what those symbols meant. Don't underestimate the meta/cultural aspect of puzzles. If it's fun, it's good enough.
I recently made a wizards tower for my stepkids to play through with lots of puzzles, they seemed to love it and ended up being quite fun to build and put the puzzles together.
I do damn hard puzzles for the players because they always exceed my expectations. :D
But just in case, the rules are always: You can either make a guess, or you can make an Int roll to get a clue (and better roll = better clue). Go around the table giving each player a shot at it.
Most players will roll when they're stumped and guess when they have an idea to test. So every player can always contribute meaningfully to solving the puzzle.
selylidne Good rules!
I liked the count down from 20 room that did nothing. Featured in a Zee Bashaw video
I stole that idea and modified it. Fountain in the middle of the room, when the timer gets to zero, any weapon submerged in the water gets Magic Weapon effect for 1 hour. The cultists were using it to make sure they could fight the devils they were summoning if anything went wrong. I.E. it was never meant for the players.
One of the best pieces of advice I've heard for making puzzles is to not come up with a solution - maybe have something in mind but be willing to change it.
Let the players squirm for a while and when one of them things of something cool, it works, because you're the GM and you say so.
Guaranteed success for your players, less work for you. The only exception I can think of is if your puzzle is acting as a barrier for some powerful gear or wealth and you genuinely want your players to earn them.
I was about to comment something like this as well. Sometimes the players start making these crazy connections with information you've given them in one of the previous sessions that you never could've have come up with yourself. The satisfaction on their faces when you say that one of their far-fetched ideas actually works is one of the most beautiful things you can see as a GM :D
Joey DK Completely agree! That makes them feel like geniuses, & you’re like, “yup, planned it that way aaallllllll along.”
Sometimes I space out from listening to what Guy is saying because Im in "Aww" of his gift of presenting. He does so in a manner that is so well done, it's hypnotic, and you are forced to take a moment to appreciate it.
Guy, I have "Sorting Your Sock Drawer" Game as well. Do you have the "Sweaty Sporty Summer" Expansion? If you don't, you should get it. They add the cup and the shinguard pieces, and it totally transforms the game in ways you won't believe.
I got the Hoarder DLC.
It adds an entire new drawer and over 150 items of random crap to sort out of the sock drawer and put in the new drawer.
@@bionicdragon5 Haven't gotten around to that one yet. Still stuck on the "Feminine Delicates" from the Valentine DLC. Who would have guessed that something with two cups could be so challenging?
Hold up, Stargate has 7 symbols, 8 for intergalactic travel. You're forgetting the point of origin, which is critically important on at least a couple of occasions where a stargate isn't working because the characters haven't realized that it's not where they think it is, so they're getting the point of origin wrong.
Good ol' episode 1 of SG-1.
@@Killercreek I was thinking of the one where O'Neil and Carter are at the Antarctica gate and can't dial out because it's silly to try the Earth origin point because obviously we're not on Earth, right? I'd forgotten episode 1 had that issue as well.
@@Killercreek Indeed.
@@Killercreek Good ol' Star Gate, the movie.
I know its a petty point as it relates to the vid, but deffinitly something I kept thinking each time he mentioned it lol
I tend to use puzzles as optional extras - succeed and it opens up into a secret area, usually with some kind of treasure but not needed to progress the story. "Failure" often just means they won't get this treasure, plus an arbitrary amout of damage to create tension and put a limit on the amount of attempts they have.
I sometimes use vague puzzles open to interpretation (kind of puzzle/riddle hybrids) just to get the players thinking and give them a sense of accomplishment when they "solve" it. I once had a puzzle where all 3 players simply had to simultaneously interact with an object in SOME way that I felt was interesting and creative enough
I always try to leave my puzzles at least a little open ended so that if the players come up with a solution that's thematically more cool than what I had, it works, and makes them feel super smart for figuring it out. That has to be used sparingly though.
Did have one puzzle of cubes where the solution was'nto put them in a specific order but to remove them -
Yep. Im stealing this
Bring a lover of Myst, I should probably be banned from ever trying to make these...
That game drove me crazy. I started thinking about it from the start of this video.
Randy Myer Same here! I never finished it, but some of those puzzles were interesting.
I did a puzzle ones for my party that involved a computer and a shotgun. Basically a shotgun was aimed where it would hit a person who types the wrong code into a computer. The funny part was if you type the right code it also shoots you. The trick was as they went into the room I explain to them that the room was filled with books and bookshelves laying all over the floor. So many books that you couldn’t even see the floor underneath them. I was hoping the party would use the books and the bookshelves to form a barrier between them in the shotgun. Instead they just took turns punching in codes and getting shot in the back. I love my party.
I typically tab away when the outros start, but the Like/Sub/Bell skit at the very end cracked me up. Thanks for this.
I used to play with some GMs who really did those handouts well. Really well hidden codes in a whole page of hieroglyphs for example. Some rolls told us that the solution of the puzzle would likely be on a certain piece of wall above the door. And the gm really designed that well. That made all the difference! We sat around the table thinking about what to do exactly. Because it WAS a death riddle we had to solve and only as much tries as player characters. We lost 2 out of 5 and made it on the third try. But after the first we took it seriously! And I still remember that as one of my greatest role playing experiences.
I like to have my puzzles make sense from the perspective of those that design them, in game. The clues I try to embed in the story, or as part of the experience of the place they are in.
In one adventure, the players were in a mansion owned by a giant snail. After a roper-like security system swallowed them all, they found themselves inside a slick spiraling surface, with Ocher Jellies floating about. They soon realized they were inside a massive shell (or were shrunken down within a normal sized shell!) A mass of tentacles also patrolled the shell. The topology of the shell was looped, so that the top of the shell connected to the base in a continuous circuit. There seemed to be no way out. Skeletal remains of past trespassers who had been digested by the jellies were found.
There were some stalactite and stalagmite blemishes on the nacre surface. They noticed one of these was atypically on a wall. Checking that out, they found a draw. Pulling it out, they found engraved a spiraling surface (like a nautilus shell), divided into 7 depressions. In an 8th depression were gathered 7 faceted crystals. The two smallest crystals were of the same size. The other crystals grew in size gradually. Each was inscribed with numbers on the facets in common, from 1-20. Except for their sizes, the crystals were identical. (I had graphics of all of this, and made a really great map, using a real shell as the background, with a hex grid for movement, spiraling about).
One player, who is really into the Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci Sequence, immediately solved the code, placing the crystals in size order into the depressions, with the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 showing. When he did that, the stalactite they were near sprouted filaments and a mouth, pulling them back through to the other side. The draw was there so that the owner could clean out the security shell now and again!
The players loved it, thought it made total sense in game. They were not alone in there, had fun having a battle while stuck inside a shell prison.
A Great GM video on puzzles just as I'm designing a puzzle for my party? Perfect timing :D
This whole video made me remember the doors in the tombs in Skyrim.
I once used the 'Countdown/Reset Trap' within a Hidden Drow Crypt/Vault.
It took them a while to figure out, despite the few clues I had given, from preception checks that revealed that on press of button, the sound of grinding of gears and stones 'reverses' and a few others.
But the player who was playing the Drow that they were in this place for. He had a big stiffing complaint about it all. "This is a dumb trap, a Drow wouldn't have this, no Drow is patient for something like this" and so forth.
Basically screaming bloody murder about why the trap was dumb, but the fact was, the very shit he was saying was the exact reason why I felt that this trap was perfect for the location.
I just made a puzzle to determine the morality of my party. I used contronyms to make the players choose between killing someone or making peace (cleave has two meanings, makeing it a fun word). The outcome determined how the next room was handled because the "mini-boss" that they were encountering would use it to determine if they were peaceful (i.e he wont be ready for a fight and open to negotiations) or war-like (i.e. he would be ready to fight).
I love making or buying physical puzzles to throw in front of my players. Its so much fun to watch them mess with them for a while.
I actually needed this
Same
So great that this came up today. I'm currently designing some puzzles. I'll post some of them here when I'm done watching the video.
Nice
My first pretty mean puzzle I ever ran. Four hallways of any length over 30 feet long, each connected in a square. At the end of each hall is "A plaque written in several different languages, including braille, the words 'Go left' with an arrow pointing left." The answer is to go right at the first plaque. There is an illusory wall that leads to the exit of the puzzle trap. Sadly only one of the players got to experience it. Took a bit but through some clever sleuthing through the use of tremor sense, they found the void made by the illusion.
I actually followed the steps of liking and subscribing as he was saying them. You made it fun. Well done.
I truly love the beginnings of these videos, always makes me laugh.
A puzzle I got good feedback for was once I gave my players a sort of small jigsaw puzzle (using stone square pieces with simple etchings that matched up when fit together properly) to actually solve in order to open a hidden passage.
Playing online via Roll20, I made player-controllable tokens with images of the pieces that they could arrange, but if I were to do the same in-person then drawing some runes on a piece of construction paper then cutting it up would be effective. It was really basic and only took a minute or two to solve, but the tactile experience of actually putting pieces in their correct spots was something that they enjoyed.
I use simple nanograms and i thought of a game "100 tiles for a knight" //10x10 square, players write numbers 1,2... within a reach of a knight in chess, never stepping on a same tile. 75 - easy 85 is a moderate difficulty; 100 is close to impossible.
(dc for entering the library = 100 - d20 - int modifier. thus you give advantage for intelligent character and as in any exam, you have some luck in it ;) )
I LOVE puzzles!
I try to put regularly one of them in my games. It change the pace of the door-monster-loot pattern.
As I'm in love of the 5 rooms dungeon technique, I tend to make puzzle for the first or second "room" because it let some players a place where they can be the star of the scene this time ^^
In fact, I have a campaign in some sort of pirate setting and I wanted to make my player feel like if they were in a treasure hunt, I ask them if they liked puzzle before hand and they answer that they LOVE them so my campaign is very puzzle heavy.
Sometime with hand-out (I made a pirate dairy full of codes and some important item where hidden in puzzle box or custom rubik's cube) sometime just with description (one of my puzzle was with some bird sound I made with my mouth xD) but they absolutely LOVE all of them!
If they don't figure out how to solve them, an intelligent check granted them some clues (it was with on of that roll that my player figured out how to complete the rubik's cube thing!)
Making some puzzle part of your campaign could be the best thing ever, because players will want to solve them on the long term, find NPC who maybe know much about the object, maybe make their character to be awake all the night and suffer one exhaustion point just to be able to solve the puzzle (I ruled that 1min in real world were 1h in the game, so one night would be 8min)
And now they have a new object, a rune carved dragon scale (another hand-out), which interact with another object, and they get really exited by that because their treasure hunt is not over yet^^
So yes... I REALLY LOVE puzzle and you all should too ^^
Would you share your puzzles and solutions? Even rough notes in a Google Doc or Dropbox would be a big help. I'm also running a pirate campaign and I want to stump a group of wizards.
Perfectly practical percussive points!
I occasionally use playing cards as props for my puzzles. They are accessible, cheap, versatile and familiar.
The fact that they are cheap allows me to tear them as a punishment for players, or have several identical cards for the uncanny effect. I once used cards as favor currency in "Alice in Wonderland" and later those favors were applied to gateways, showing examples of different deeds.
The Bell button invokes the Viking chorus! "Spam Spam Spam Spam …"
I like a sprinkle of clues around the environment, and there is a reward-less exit when 'they don't get it'.
I gotta say the shift from thumbnail to the first frame of the video was very jarring, although I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'm glad you don't clickbait whatever that's worth
holy crap. I watched the whole video and didn't even noticed, that the background is animated. Still, i love it. looks great.
Standing for the video is interesting. It gives a more "presentation" like feel to your, well..presentation ;)
The ending sold me... I have now liked and subscribed...
I tend to use puzzles for 2 things: hidden passageways/rooms that lead to treasure but tend to be miss-able, or something that isn't obscure and miss-able, but leads to an optional plot device, like a lich's hidden phylactery. So rather than having to fight the lich, you can merely destroy the phylactery that was hidden by a puzzle device. I never make my puzzles mandatory to the progression of the plot.
Puzzels, the great adversary for gms and pcs alike. How difficult is a good difficult, how to get even the "no I don't do puzzels" player engaged... sometimes they can be frustrating for everybody.... But I guess with some of your tipps there may be some gold to find within them... rp-wise and literally for the pcs ^^
By the way I like the new layout, looks so much more vivid.
Sometimes puzzles show the difference between player intelligence vs character intelligence. I can solve a lot of things out of character. My barbarian with Int as his dump stat? 😬
Also, I remember this cool movie with a puzzle box called, "Hellraiser" where solving the puzzle kinda led to more trouble. As a GM, I find it amusing.
Love the new video style!
i just created a riddle for my players myself. I made a piece of paper with various symbols of magic for them which they could interpret. and best thing is, the riddle is actually 3 riddles in one. it is supposed to lead them to an old temple. first the paper shows them where the temple is. then it shows them how to get to it. and then it helps them to enter it in the correct way. but they have to look at the same riddle more than once, while the third time, and only the third time, will be deadly if they miss it out.
I like puzzles which doesn't seem to be a puzzle. I DM-ed a campaign where the PCs followed a guide through the Underdark, but that guide was a host of an intellect devourer, who wanted to lead them to a trap set by mind flayers. Once the guide has died during a combat against a banshee and the devourer had to teleport out from the host. They could just see that beside the banshee there were a brain-like creature which had no contact with their dead guide. Fortunately they could solve this puzzle, so they turned back. However I don't know if we can call this a puzzle, but it was a great delight to see their faces when they figured out the situation :)
I have one channel that I get notifications for. This is it. This channel has helped me in so many ways becoming a better player and DM. So much insight and detail into why and why not do certain things. These videos always seem to come up in an order that goes with where I am stuck atm in trying to make my campaign better or more intricate.
I play a live role playing game based on the Parsely text adventure role playing system. When running games, I rely heavily on improvising humor responses to anything the players might try. So when I write my games, I plan only one definite solution to each puzzle, then double check my settings and items and so on to make sure there’s no easy way to accidentally cut through a final roadblock and skip the majority of the other puzzles. Otherwise I love letting them be creative and repurposing things, safe in the knowledge that I have one real solution and know the game breaking pitfalls to avoid.
Really been enjoying your videos lately. Thanks!
You had me at 'a walrus and the letter 3'
Great video! But I would add that there are more uses of puzzles. Puzzles are kind of a "bouncer-mechanic". If you can solve them, you show that you belong in the "I'm allowed to do that"-group. So you can use puzzles also to (de)activate the superweapon (using the evil emperors love for a certain artist), or to give the players weapons in a prison break (the weapons of the guards have all the same numbercode on the casing), or to deactivate the golems patrouling in the temple the party searches through
Christopher Schröder Good point. The insiders would know or have the info/thing needed, outsiders would not. I think Dael Kingsmith made a very similar point about puzzles.
Probably the best way to learn how good puzzle-making is done is to learn how escape rooms work. In addition to the actual rooms, there are card game versions of the same thing. "Unlock!" has good games, for example.
I once gave the players a giant labyrinth. They could not go backwards or walk paths they have gone down in the past. They needed a key that is at a dead end and there was a portal there that links to the end but only works going from the end to there. in the end, it was a huge headache for 4 of my players, but 3 of them put their heads together and they managed to draw out a map and got the correct solution on their first attempt. I love these people so much. They were so happy to do the absurdly unfair and difficult maze that I decided not to make them do it again.
I know this isnt the newest of videos, but people surely will still watch it and maybe guy reads through the comments out of boredom, so here is what i like to do:
I love making simple puzzles...With Red Herrings. There is something fun and silly about the party being a little confused with the seemingly difficult puzzle, only to discover that the solution was actually quite easy. It allows trial and error and it's not too upsetting if you have the right group of people (And if you have a group of people that just wants to murder things, dont bother with putting much thought into puzzles, or atleast make it combat puzzles where they have to figure out how to deactivate a deadly golem or find the weakness of a guardian monster)
One of my most recent riddles: The Basilisk and The Hero
The Basilisk and The Hero uses some of my old Blunders: Statues, A simple lure that leads to a false trail, and a solution involving eyes.
Basically:
The Party walks into a relativly small, 60x60x60 room, with a few statues scattered around...Goal was to escape the room so they could return outside:
In the middle of the room was the stone statue of a noble knight, holding a sword in the air, eyes focused angrily on the statue of a ravenous basilisk, staring the man down, seated atop a boulder like, large pedestal that was about 4 feet high.
There was other statues in the room: A scared maiden, a dwarvish warrior, an elvish archer and a barking dog, all facing the Basilisk Scattered on the pedastal of the basilisk where 10 tokens, that looked like palm sized stone coins. Each of the tokens had a image on it: A Doghead, A Maiden, A Dwarf, A Knights Helmet, A Bow and Arrow, A Sword, an Axe, A Bone, A Tree and an Eye.
With some investigation, the party found that all the statues in the room, except of the basilisk, had a circular socket on their back - and the tokens would fit in those.
The party obviously went with that, and they realized it did nothing....They tried pushing the statues around....And thats when they realized something.
The Statues werent connected to any mechanism. They were just statues. This is when the caster used Detect Magic to discover the statues werent magical either...Well, all statues, except the basilisk, and the knight...Specifically, at the heads.
Our Monk climbed up to the statue of the knight, and tried to figure what was up. There he noticed that the eyes of the knight where made out of a different material...specifically some sort of magical pearls, and he noticed a very subtle light connecting his eyes to the eyes of the basilisk. He decided to try to cover the Knights eyes - and it worked! The Knight statues stone cover crumbled, the Statue becoming Brass and raising its sword high up, and the Basilisk statue shattered into pieces -Revealing the key to exit the room.
Thank you so much for sharing this video and steps to create puzzles. I had fun watching it and it was very helpful!
I love puzzles, but I don't like the idea of using dice to solve them. I gave my players an item called "The Owls of Rude Advice." It's just a string with three carved owls, but if they break one off, it will turn into a spiritual owl which will give them a piece of useful advice in a rude manner. That way if they ever get stumped to the point where it's not fun, they can ask for a hint in universe.
Yea, I wish I'd watched this before I did my first dungeon puzzle. It was a room with four levers and a giant bronze bust of a dragon that spat a fireball out every time the input was wrong. Except, I didn't really give any hints or clues on which combination might be right, or even the first lever or two. Que the one HOUR montage of trying different combos, getting confused on which they'd tried before, etc. Haven't done a puzzle since and the memory haunts me
Sometimes i give all the explanations of the room and read whatever text exists in the room (or have them ready in text), give them handouts of the room so they can see everything and they can solve the puzzle without any further assistance. And once they initiate the puzzle by activating some kind of mechanism, then something deals damage to them (poison filling the room, psionic pulses damaging their brains, anti-life object leaching their life-force, flames heat the room so much that they start to burn, you get the point.)
The damage they receive is activated every-minute in REAL TIME.... Yes.. i put a timer on my phone that beeps every minute. First real-time minute the characters receive 1 point of damage. Second minute they recieve 2 points of damage, and so on and so on. That makes them be ok taking 3-8 minutes but staying beyond 10-15 minutes could kill them. (Depending on level). That creates real-time pressure so make sure people have gone to the toilet or whatever real-life activity anyone needs to do.
I'm running a kinda short campaign right now with a school buildiing full with puzzles. Put a lot of effort in it, but sadly, not all of the players like it. I still want to finish it. Feels like a lot of wasted time if we stop now...
I love that Guy points out the difference of SG1 and Atlantis star gate dials.
The only problem with Guy’s Stargate explanations is that there are SEVEN symbols on the original gate... 6 for the destination and then you need the point of origin. Atlantis added the 8th symbol.
@@FizbinEntertainent I really need to go back and watch the series! I used to be such a huge fan.
@@artimasblackmour4638 Me too... SG-1 that is... I kinda lost interest in Atlantis. The Movie was (and still is) PHENOMENAL!!!!!!!
Hmm... would this count as a puzzle or a riddle:
Players find a door with two levers either side. Above the door is a dwarven inscription that reads "Panic is your enemy". Anyone that speaks dwarven can read it. If someone tries to go through the doorway, they tread on a pressure plate and doors in front and behind close, trapping them. If the party pulls the L lever, the exit opens and the trapped person can now safely open both doors. If they instead pull the R lever, the ceiling over the doorway starts coming down, and will crush them in, say, 6 turns. The solution is to push the R lever back and then pull the L lever. If they instead panic and pull the L lever without pushing the R lever first, the mechanism speeds up and now they'll be crushed in 3 turns. Continued panic leads to a very messy end to their friend, while reversing the sequence resets the mechanism.
How did you NOT get triangle triangle triangle man? That was SO the obviously the answer. 😂😂😂😂
I think you mean the answer is Triangle Man, Triangle Man, doing the things a Triangle can...
I'm a fan of always leaving yourself a backdoor in case your players get stuck. Is the place the party is trying to get into a stronghold of some kind that is still seeing use? One of the denizens of the stronghold comes back from a patrol and encounters the party in the puzzle room. The party can hide and have him open the door, capture him and interrogate him to get the combination... or If the party gets overzealous and kills him, he's actually had the combination for the door in a note or tattooed to his arm so he doesn't forget it. If this is a long-abandoned tomb, then the ancient machinery fails from centuries of disuse. Maybe the mechanism that sprays the dais with poison gas if you make a mistake gets clogged and causes the storage tank to burst, flooding the entire room with a cloud of poison gas but leaving a giant hole in the wall the party can exit the chamber in... or leaving the mechanisms exposed for the rogue to get at.
Sometimes the best solutions to a puzzle are the ones that don't play by the puzzle's rules. Just don't get your players *too* used to you letting them bypass your puzzles. If you've got to rescue your party from your puzzles, maybe tone the next one down a bit.
I love puzzles in games. One of my favourites that I did was a bunch of different shape stones on a table and a plaque that said (word to the effect of as I can't remember the actual wording) 'To progress on your quest, make sense of all the stones. A simple perception check revealed that there were embossed shapes on these stones and that some seemed to fit together. Yes, these shapes turned out to be letters. They had to arrange the stones so the letters spelled out the word 'SENSE'..... see they literally were told to make sense.... lmao :P
Great video! Thank you.
Through the archway is a sqare room, this one slightly smaller. Unlike the last room, there is no rotting wood or sticks lying around, however a few chunks of stone from the ceiling and roof do scatter the floor. From what you see left of the roof, there was once a circular opening centered on the centre of the room. Through this hole you can see the clear sky above, the canopy no intruding above the room, letting the sunlight filter down through the dust raised by your movements. In the centre of the room is a pedestal, about chest height, and propped up on said pedestal is a gleaming sword. Around this pedestal the floor is patterned with concentric circles of tiles.
Upon trying to lift the sword. The floor beneath you disappears. You try to leap to avoid falling. Everyone else in the room who is standing on the circular section of tiles, as opposed to the corners of the room, must also attempt to not fall into the pit that has opened up below them. If you did not avoid falling, you take a small amount of damage as you hit the bottom. Around you falls the rocks and dust that was lying on the floor, including the damage roof pieces. There is a short but loud rumble as everything hits the bottom, ending with the last clattering bounce of a stick. The dust settles into silence.
You are in a pit deeper than your ability to jump and slightly deeper than your confidence to climb, but it doesn't matter because the sides of the pit are too smooth for you to find a handhold. In the centre of the pit, directly underneath the pedestal that held the sword, and going al the way to the top of the pit, is a central column, again, too smooth for you to find purchase to climb.
How do you escape the pit?
Sir, your insight into these projects is invaluable. I'm joining your following. Thank you!
Great video! I'm building my first escape room style one-shot and this video was very helpful!
There have been several Escape Room movies. The best one I saw was an independent movie of a guy's birthday party and everyone knows each other. The big budget one had some leaps in logic, and the made for TV one was a cheesy ghost movie.
My favorite puzzle was the bone organ from Goonies.
They had to play a sequence of music notes on the piano made of bones. The notes were literally written on the back of the treasure map the whole time.
Every time they screwed up a note, part of the floor fell into a pit.
When they did it correctly the door opens.
This is basically exactly what you were describing.
I really like the new feel of these videos, and the standing up too.
I don't like puzzles that require player intelligence. Most of my friends are "dumb jock" types. Even if I had smart guys at the table, I'd still set it up based on rolls because the player's intelligence isn't what is being tested, their characters are.
I love the new format, Guy! Standing really gives you a relaxed and chill demeanor 🙃 keep it up!
My favorite puzzle was inspired by the game Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. One player had her hand locked into a panel that required her to enter colors into a sequence, and on the other side of the machine was a display revealing what colors to enter.
I had flash cards with different shapes on them, and each shape was a different color. I flashed two sequences that the second player would recite whilst the other player (who couldn't see the cards) wrote down. The third sequence, however, had red, blue, and green *WORDS.* The word "GREEN" would be blue, the word "BLUE" would be red, and the word "RED" would be green. When I flashed this sequence the player hesitated for a second, but was able to successfully call out the *color,* and not the word.
I've since done other puzzles like this, usually with great approval from my players.
The reason I design my dungeons like escape room puzzles is because we don't have a player-character rogue. It's far more entertaining to get the players involved this way than having the NPC rogue just roll to see if opens the door.
5th element puzzle with different elemental damage is something i did, also pressure plates with some sequence of symbols in the room also was nicely taken
My friend is our last dm, and his character has a +8 to hit and a +8 initiative, so since he can 2 shot every monster I throw at him, I'm gonna try and make a puzzle cave. Hes in for a goddamn treat 😇
Most creative way ever of asking for alike, I'm getting to love your videos more and more Sir :-)
(sorry, must correct)
For stargate as a puzzle, there's 7 symbols, 8 for atlantis. You need the 6 for a destination, one for the origin point, in Atlantis's case, there was one extra for galaxy swap.
This is an older video so maybe it's been updated but here are my 2 cents. Constructed puzzles are there to stop the unwary. It makes little sense to have a puzzle that anyone can just guess. They should target otherwise normal behavior and have a way to avoid them if you know a secret. For example walking down the middle or left side of the hall triggers the trap, but walking down the right side is safe. How do you figure out who triggers the trap? You can't ask "how do you walk down the hall" or you signal a problem and the players will lawyer the thing to death. Have them roll a d6 and if they roll a 1 or 2, they're safe. Did you give clues that the right side is safe? Are they supposed to just stumble through the trap? That depends on how mean you want to be.
Recently I finished mastering Storm King's Thunder. The only proper puzzle in the game seemed quite easy to guess to me when I read it but it had the players stumped for a while and activating the room's traps on failed attempts. Nice vid!
I like the "polite door" on which you have to knock in order to open it or otherwise it will do something weird to the players. technically not a puzzle but still
I did something similar once where there was a door with an unbreakable locking enchantment on it. If anyone tried to break down the door the guard on the inside would run for reinforcements, but if someone knocked he would answer. The players had met some of the cultists that owned the place and knew that they were polite but not very brave.
I feel like puzzles work better when made optional. Forcing puzzles on players can be fun if the players are all interested in that type of gameplay. But, like real puzzles, they can become frustrating if the players have trouble figuring it out. If it's optional, they can spend as much time on it as possible then either get it or move on if they can't get it.
Currently working on a puzzle themed around sounds.
Players will encounter a room with something in it that they want (have to figure out what), from which they can hear a low hum. Entering the room and inspecting the thing, the players find themselves locked in, as 4 holes in the ceilings open up, and start emitting a shrill sound. This sound will require the players to make a CON save every turn to avoid taking 1d6 thunder damage. Their ways out would be to perceive a message saying "listen to the bats", prompting them to use speak with animals and hear the solution of the puzzle.
The solution would be a simple puzzle underneath the chest containing the thing. If they are too slow, they'd also notice the door starting to take damage from the sounds, making it easier to break through in a panic situation.
Sorry for my English, just woke up. The puzzle is made for 6 lvl 2 PCs
I had a DM did a puzzle for our party. Our party's biggest issue was that there was no visual. My DM insisted that the description was enough. We didn't need a visual and we weren't allowed any dice rolls to give us any clues to which statue to put in next. So we were left to blindly guess. If my character can see something and I'm not allowed to see it allow me to roll to get some sort of clue
That's a problem DM issue. Your game master has made the assumption that the visuals aren't necessary (making it too easy) or that you should be able to figure it out (they did, so you can). Both are short sighted. Some people are visual learners. Some are verbal/auditory learners and others are hands on. A helpful GM will take that into account. Just because she or he figures something out one way, doesn't mean others will do it the same.
Only puzzle I used was the pipes to flow sand or liquid, basic connect a to z and collecting undiscribed items that could form a key, obv in special metal, so the party won't miss or instantly discard it, if they sell they buy it back for 5x their selling prices. And currently they own 1 of 3 parts and sold 2 parts which was bought by a mysterious figure
Love the OUTSTANDING suit!!!
I'm a bit late to this video, but this is GREAT advice. Thank you.
I really think that the puzzles in Skyrim's draugr ruins are done well. Every solution is available to view, if you look carefully, and they can also be solved by guessing, though that will usually result in being shot, stabbed, or swarmed by awoken draugr. - I'm talking about the "whale-bird-snake" pylons here.
Pretty nice vid, wanted to make a puzzle and didn't know where to start.
My general philosophy with puzzles are to make them not mandatory for progression. Have them be the key to an extra encounter or reward or a way to remove an optional challenge from a boss fight.
The way I do puzzles is; if they solve it they don't have to fight the nasty monster. If they can't figure the puzzle out, then swords and spells will have to come out. Give them the same XP either way, but some sort of extra (boon, item, information, etc.) if they solve the puzzle.