I use a technique from my work as a history teacher. Students usually learn more when they come to the conclusion by themselves than if you straight out tell them, for example why hunter gatherers lived in such small groups. But usually students, especially the younger ones, don't have the background to figure it out alone. So I guide them to the right conclusion by asking them questions. In this example: What do you think limits population size? Food. How do they obtain their food? hunting and gathering. Do they have a lot of control over the availability of the food in their surroundings compared to us? And so on. Since the students are giving all the answers the sensation of accomplishment is a lot greater and the lesson learned is more meaningful. The situation is very similar in ttrpg since the players lack the background knowledge of their characters. In my 2d10 +skill and roll over 20 system, for every number they roll over 20 in the appropriate skill check I ask the players one question of which the answer guides them closer to the solution or gives them a better understanding of the situation. Especially for experienced player it only takes one or two clues to come to the right conclusion. So the skill of the character played an equal part to the player´s smarts.
Nice. Teaching how to think builds brain muscle/skills. Well done! I had a PoliSci professor that taught us an approach when we were stumped. When asked to describe soemthing, and were found it hard or unsure of a starting point, we would describe it by what it was NOT. Changed my life forever in one lesson. Offers a way to increasingly descrive something more acurately by tightening the circle, rather than trying to push the boundaries outward.
Great advice, and I see this being a video I link to often on forums. The whole "but my character is smarter than me and also I hate riddles" argument comes up a lot. One technique I use is to allow players to swap information. So the smart player with a dumb barbarian knows the answer to the riddle that has stumped the wizard's player? The barbarian player can tell the wizard player the answer out-of-character, and within the narrative it is the wizard who solves it. having a "group discussion" phase helps with this, and this also solves the reverse problem of low-intelligence PCs solving difficult puzzles.
I have played a character, far more intelligent than myself. Boy, it's hard work. But you never stop. When it's not your turn, you're planning for your turn. Worth every minute.
A good resource for something like this is point-and-click adventure games. There are often guides made by fans or the game developers that give clues to their puzzle. The best ones, however, give multiple clues in order of small-to-large. Maybe they suggest a location that may yield something, or maybe they all but give away the solution. If you look them up, they made give helpful examples
I bought your book, but I must say I'm very glad to have found your UA-cam channel because video advice tends to be easier for me to access. I also think that multi part puzzles can give the illusion of complexity, while being more easily solvable by your players. For my group, that works well, and the triumph is just as real as slaying the dragon.
Multi-part puzzles are a great tip. There's less frustration if you can succeed at a bunch of a smaller steps compared to getting stuck on one big leap.
1:30 My favorite line: “You want to engage the players through the characters.” I am also a teacher and I have learned that engagement comes from giving students a chance to interact with the subject. The trick is finding a method of engagement that catches a students interests. Perhaps this is the reason that some players enjoy solving riddles and others just want to roll. We have found the engaging piece for group one, so don’t spoil it by having a roll. However, we also need to consider the second group who will be unengaged during the riddle encounter. Perhaps we can come up with an additional challenge that matches their interests. Like a lake monster for group two to battle while group one discovers the answer to the riddle. Have you had any success in having a secondary challenge during a riddle/puzzle encounter? How do you keep the secondary challenge from becoming more important than the riddle?
While I agree with this video in theory, I find that my players creativity shuts down as they enter a spiral of despair when their first plan doesn’t work. For example, I had something very similar to the Moria door scenario, and it took me three hours real time to convince the players to try one of the plethora of alternate solutions that you listed out.
Target fixation can be really painful. And it's really tricky to know whether you're offering them a helping hand or stepping on their toes. I sympathize!
I let my players roll for puzzles and riddles so long as there's a consequence for failing it, usually in the form of a trap or monster. It may or may not include failing forward if they fail the roll but overcome the consequence, such as failing to open Moria eventually attracting the Watcher, but maybe he'll break the door during the fight. Figuring it out without a roll would let them bypass an unnecessary fight.
I like the advice, but I despise riddles in RPGs. Most riddles have more than one answer that fits the clues, but only one is allowed as the "right one." Let me use your riddle as an example. A banana, or coconut could also be correct answers given that they must be "broken before used." In a modern day game it could be a glowstick (there's the white an yellow) or an instant hot pack. In D&D it could be a Bead of Force. How about a Molotov cocktail? "Like the sun in a snowstorm" just confuses things because it implies that the sun is what needs to be broken. Taken literally with the egg example, you're going to end up with egg shells in your scrambled eggs. ;-)
Riddles are "language" based and puzzles are physical, I'd say. Physical puzzles may be designed with action/feedback in mind, hence a completely different conception (and challenge type) than riddles, which tend to be based around play on words and associations (even if clues may be found in the game world). As a GM, I'm very careful with riddles (and may accept loosely okay solutions), whereas I like to design puzzles and feel confident in my players solving them without much help from me.
Mostly that is the reason why OSR games don’t include such attribute as Inteligence or Charisma in player character. It’s expected from the player to solve riddles or convince npc to something (breaking the 4th wall). But I generally agree that trpgs are more about doing something in character.
Would you please put up a video of improvisation tips/requests that I can keep iterating on over and over again to build up my improv skills? I'm loving your channel and everything that you cover, but I feel my improv skills could improve. (Badumtish.) Either way, thanks for sharing your knowledge on the Interwebs.
That very premise is something I circumvented by designing my own system so that the rolls are not about the competency of the characters. But I admit, I am not sure if my system is truly a TTRPG still ince I broke a few more paradigm of the hobby more.
Great video! One of my concerns with this as a DM is: if the PC is dumb (low intelligence), but the player guessed the solution of the riddle, should the player do something? Ask for a roll to the DM? Or just.. do nothing?
My general philosophy as a GM is to trust player expertise to activate and trump character expertise, which is something I talk about in The Art of Rulings: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4238/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-rulings The player only has one way of interacting with the game world -- making choices and taking actions as their character -- and so I'm very leery of interfering with that, unless there's a very well-defined structure with a clear, unambiguous purpose (like resolving charm person spell or Sanity mechanics). If I'm playing a dumb character, though, I'll frequently make ad hoc Intelligence checks to see whether or not my character would have thought of the thing that I thought of. I find it fun to mechanically interrogate my character and then use that as a roleplaying prompt. As a GM, you can also use this technique for your NPCs.
When I'm a player playing a low int PC, my go to way of resolving the incongruity of my character coming up with my clever ideas is to offload them to the player of a smarter PC. Like "hey, Bob, my character wouldn't think of this, but I think X is a clever solution, maybe your PC could present this option" But that kind of compromise does need to come from the player. As a GM, having the mechanics and the fiction align perfectly is less important than making sure the players enjoy themselves and feel smart and useful
Personally, playing a low-INT (actually low, not just a 10) PC I'd generally try to proceed as follows: 1. Wait for a moment and give players of high-INT PCs or PCs that for some other reason should have a higher likelihood to to succeed a chance to figure it out. 2. If those players don't figure it out, I'd try to come up with a way in which my low-INT PC finds the solution in a way that is still fitting for that character. Movies, books etc. are full of examples of not-so-smart characters stumbling upon the solutions to puzzles. Ideally, there may even be an opportunity to make other PCs look good by tossing them a softball, e.g. having your character ask them a dumb question that contains the answer. In other words: having low stats in some aspect of the game doesn't mean your character can never contribute to resolving those situations, it may just take a bit of extra work/creativity to have them do it in a way that isn't out of character for them. But that is just the extra-sweet, ideal solution; If no such solution presents itself, I'd not worry about it, everybody at the table should be aware we're playing a game and if we're stuck they should be happy a player helped the game move forward and should just brush past the whole "oh, but would our Barbarian really come up with that solution?!".
I really want to be good at adding puzzles and riddles, but the average INT score of my players and myself is lower than 10 so its a real risk if I dont plan for 3-5 clues to be found/dropped on them. And after ive spent so much time foolproofing it and making sure I havent made glaring problems, its really hard to let the puzzle go if they find a way to circumvent the puzzle🙃
"Give me an intelligence check - 18 - Bob did it" still can lead to interesting play though: What do the players/characters do with that information? Try to prove their case with evidence? Take justice in their own hands? In contrast to "the password is 'friend'" to get through the portal and this information is never relevant again. But good points nevertheless :)
I find I'm leaning more and more into puzzles the older I get. It's just a great way to make it look like I prepared something when all I'm really doing is make up a gibberish poem or describe some disjointed "puzzle objects"(movable items, pressure plates, light beams, etc) and running with whatever the players come up with be the correct answer. They get to beat the encounter by being clever and I get to look good by perfectly balancing my the puzzle difficulty to the players.
This video from Ben Milton talks about an approach where the mechanical rules are "the bits you don't want to focus on in the conversation of the game". Riddles and mysteries and negotiations are precisely the kinds of things we can dwell on in that conversation, so maybe a "roll to resolve" feels like skipping the good stuff? ua-cam.com/video/7UIPeQ6G6hI/v-deo.htmlsi=ha5Mz6kEGpDj4Enz
Hot take: Players only don't mind the disassociation of the attack roll because most rpg players have no experience in a group hand weapon fight, so generically attacking someone feels like what your character is also doing. Cool take: Mysteries are so popular as adventures for players because they basically turn a riddle into an extremely long combat with "I find the clue" replacing an attack roll, and solving the mystery replaces the monster dying.
Interesting. I think within the broader structure of the video -- clues, not solutions -- combat resolution does follow a similar pattern: If you have a system or encounter which just boils combat down to "keep rolling attack rolls," that's generally going to be a boring experience for the players. Combat is interesting when we can make meaningful tactical choices that influence the outcome of the fight.
In my opinion the best way to resolve the mind/body disconnect in TTRPGs is to just do away with Int, Wis, and Cha as abstractions. In a simulationist view, what you're doing in playing an rpg is projecting your real mind into a fictional body. Abstracting out mental faculties just creates a rift between yourself and the simulation. Wis can be used for perception checks (how information do you take in), and Int for knowledge checks (how much have you taken in) because these are external to the thought processes of the player/character. Cha in my opinion should be done away with entirely, since it encourages either the abstraction of conversation (I make a convincing argument *rolls*) or the misalignment of conversation and outcome (I say "bite my ass" *rolls high* The courtier is impressed with your candor), which tramples all over roleplay. This is why is strongly prefer OSR play to the narrative school. I don't want to roleplay a great character by being TOLD how great my character is, I want problems and solutions, and I want my success or failure to hinge on how well I embody the thought processes such a character would actually engage in. I find the whole "I'm a super nimble thief because I rolled 20 dex at character creation" hollow and childish, more like playing pretend and less like playing a game. By the same token, it's much easier to tell a good story when there IS a high degree of abstraction between player and character, like in storytelling games.
3:17 "They could go back and try to cross Caradhras again. They could go south, through the Gap of Rohan. They could even abandon their overland journey entirely, retreat to a western port and sail to Gondor." Or Gandalf could just summon the bloody eagles! Or was the Windlord only on hand when Tolkien couldn't think of any other deus ex machina?
04:09 I've been framed!
I use a technique from my work as a history teacher. Students usually learn more when they come to the conclusion by themselves than if you straight out tell them, for example why hunter gatherers lived in such small groups. But usually students, especially the younger ones, don't have the background to figure it out alone. So I guide them to the right conclusion by asking them questions. In this example: What do you think limits population size? Food. How do they obtain their food? hunting and gathering. Do they have a lot of control over the availability of the food in their surroundings compared to us? And so on. Since the students are giving all the answers the sensation of accomplishment is a lot greater and the lesson learned is more meaningful. The situation is very similar in ttrpg since the players lack the background knowledge of their characters. In my 2d10 +skill and roll over 20 system, for every number they roll over 20 in the appropriate skill check I ask the players one question of which the answer guides them closer to the solution or gives them a better understanding of the situation. Especially for experienced player it only takes one or two clues to come to the right conclusion. So the skill of the character played an equal part to the player´s smarts.
Socratic Clues! I like that a lot!
Nice. Teaching how to think builds brain muscle/skills. Well done!
I had a PoliSci professor that taught us an approach when we were stumped. When asked to describe soemthing, and were found it hard or unsure of a starting point, we would describe it by what it was NOT. Changed my life forever in one lesson. Offers a way to increasingly descrive something more acurately by tightening the circle, rather than trying to push the boundaries outward.
Great advice, and I see this being a video I link to often on forums. The whole "but my character is smarter than me and also I hate riddles" argument comes up a lot.
One technique I use is to allow players to swap information. So the smart player with a dumb barbarian knows the answer to the riddle that has stumped the wizard's player? The barbarian player can tell the wizard player the answer out-of-character, and within the narrative it is the wizard who solves it. having a "group discussion" phase helps with this, and this also solves the reverse problem of low-intelligence PCs solving difficult puzzles.
I have played a character, far more intelligent than myself. Boy, it's hard work. But you never stop. When it's not your turn, you're planning for your turn. Worth every minute.
A good resource for something like this is point-and-click adventure games. There are often guides made by fans or the game developers that give clues to their puzzle. The best ones, however, give multiple clues in order of small-to-large. Maybe they suggest a location that may yield something, or maybe they all but give away the solution. If you look them up, they made give helpful examples
I bought your book, but I must say I'm very glad to have found your UA-cam channel because video advice tends to be easier for me to access.
I also think that multi part puzzles can give the illusion of complexity, while being more easily solvable by your players. For my group, that works well, and the triumph is just as real as slaying the dragon.
Multi-part puzzles are a great tip. There's less frustration if you can succeed at a bunch of a smaller steps compared to getting stuck on one big leap.
Do you mean like the egg puzzle in the video?
1:30
My favorite line: “You want to engage the players through the characters.”
I am also a teacher and I have learned that engagement comes from giving students a chance to interact with the subject. The trick is finding a method of engagement that catches a students interests. Perhaps this is the reason that some players enjoy solving riddles and others just want to roll. We have found the engaging piece for group one, so don’t spoil it by having a roll.
However, we also need to consider the second group who will be unengaged during the riddle encounter. Perhaps we can come up with an additional challenge that matches their interests. Like a lake monster for group two to battle while group one discovers the answer to the riddle.
Have you had any success in having a secondary challenge during a riddle/puzzle encounter? How do you keep the secondary challenge from becoming more important than the riddle?
I love ALL Alexandrian videos. 😉
Thanks!
Very good points. I have struggled with this quandary. I like the non essential idea.
Great video! My character has a “beat the dungeon, kill all monsters, and get all the treasure feat”. I rolled a 20- I win!
While I agree with this video in theory, I find that my players creativity shuts down as they enter a spiral of despair when their first plan doesn’t work. For example, I had something very similar to the Moria door scenario, and it took me three hours real time to convince the players to try one of the plethora of alternate solutions that you listed out.
Target fixation can be really painful. And it's really tricky to know whether you're offering them a helping hand or stepping on their toes. I sympathize!
Oh man i just finished binging 5+ of your videos and i see a new video has been uploaded! Today was a great day
Glad I could make your day a little better!
I love all alexandrian videos
I let my players roll for puzzles and riddles so long as there's a consequence for failing it, usually in the form of a trap or monster. It may or may not include failing forward if they fail the roll but overcome the consequence, such as failing to open Moria eventually attracting the Watcher, but maybe he'll break the door during the fight. Figuring it out without a roll would let them bypass an unnecessary fight.
Perfect timing releasing this videos as alway. I’m running a Cthulhu scenario tonight and it’ll help heaps.
Hope your Cthulhu scenario went great!
Great and helpful riddle advice. I'm in a Pathfinder 2E game though and it has taught me to hate all Lore checks.
I love ALL Alexandrian videos.
Amazing advice as always!
Another really helpful video!
I really enjoyed the video. I appreciate the connecting the momentary challenge to how the total adventure is constructed.
I like the advice, but I despise riddles in RPGs. Most riddles have more than one answer that fits the clues, but only one is allowed as the "right one." Let me use your riddle as an example. A banana, or coconut could also be correct answers given that they must be "broken before used." In a modern day game it could be a glowstick (there's the white an yellow) or an instant hot pack. In D&D it could be a Bead of Force. How about a Molotov cocktail? "Like the sun in a snowstorm" just confuses things because it implies that the sun is what needs to be broken. Taken literally with the egg example, you're going to end up with egg shells in your scrambled eggs. ;-)
Absolutely wonderful! Thank you.
Sincerely,
Alicia
I love all Alexandrian videos !!
Great video! I'm loving your book.
Forgot to hit like, so I"m back for a second viewing.
Great points. Thank you for the content.
Just realized you had a channel after following your DIA Remix! Incredible videos just like your blogs looks like I have a new favorite channel 🤘🏾
Riddles are "language" based and puzzles are physical, I'd say. Physical puzzles may be designed with action/feedback in mind, hence a completely different conception (and challenge type) than riddles, which tend to be based around play on words and associations (even if clues may be found in the game world). As a GM, I'm very careful with riddles (and may accept loosely okay solutions), whereas I like to design puzzles and feel confident in my players solving them without much help from me.
Great video! Thanks!
Glad you liked it!
Mostly that is the reason why OSR games don’t include such attribute as Inteligence or Charisma in player character. It’s expected from the player to solve riddles or convince npc to something (breaking the 4th wall). But I generally agree that trpgs are more about doing something in character.
awesome video, thx for th advice!
Good stuff
great advice. like always.
Not only intelligent, but also wise.
Would you please put up a video of improvisation tips/requests that I can keep iterating on over and over again to build up my improv skills?
I'm loving your channel and everything that you cover, but I feel my improv skills could improve. (Badumtish.) Either way, thanks for sharing your knowledge on the Interwebs.
That very premise is something I circumvented by designing my own system so that the rolls are not about the competency of the characters. But I admit, I am not sure if my system is truly a TTRPG still ince I broke a few more paradigm of the hobby more.
Great video! One of my concerns with this as a DM is: if the PC is dumb (low intelligence), but the player guessed the solution of the riddle, should the player do something? Ask for a roll to the DM? Or just.. do nothing?
My general philosophy as a GM is to trust player expertise to activate and trump character expertise, which is something I talk about in The Art of Rulings: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4238/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-rulings
The player only has one way of interacting with the game world -- making choices and taking actions as their character -- and so I'm very leery of interfering with that, unless there's a very well-defined structure with a clear, unambiguous purpose (like resolving charm person spell or Sanity mechanics).
If I'm playing a dumb character, though, I'll frequently make ad hoc Intelligence checks to see whether or not my character would have thought of the thing that I thought of. I find it fun to mechanically interrogate my character and then use that as a roleplaying prompt. As a GM, you can also use this technique for your NPCs.
When I'm a player playing a low int PC, my go to way of resolving the incongruity of my character coming up with my clever ideas is to offload them to the player of a smarter PC. Like "hey, Bob, my character wouldn't think of this, but I think X is a clever solution, maybe your PC could present this option"
But that kind of compromise does need to come from the player. As a GM, having the mechanics and the fiction align perfectly is less important than making sure the players enjoy themselves and feel smart and useful
Personally, playing a low-INT (actually low, not just a 10) PC I'd generally try to proceed as follows:
1. Wait for a moment and give players of high-INT PCs or PCs that for some other reason should have a higher likelihood to to succeed a chance to figure it out.
2. If those players don't figure it out, I'd try to come up with a way in which my low-INT PC finds the solution in a way that is still fitting for that character. Movies, books etc. are full of examples of not-so-smart characters stumbling upon the solutions to puzzles. Ideally, there may even be an opportunity to make other PCs look good by tossing them a softball, e.g. having your character ask them a dumb question that contains the answer.
In other words: having low stats in some aspect of the game doesn't mean your character can never contribute to resolving those situations, it may just take a bit of extra work/creativity to have them do it in a way that isn't out of character for them. But that is just the extra-sweet, ideal solution; If no such solution presents itself, I'd not worry about it, everybody at the table should be aware we're playing a game and if we're stuck they should be happy a player helped the game move forward and should just brush past the whole "oh, but would our Barbarian really come up with that solution?!".
Another excellent video. :)
Another banger of a video
Thanks!
🤔 You have lots of interesting game able procedures. By chance do you have one for auctions, civil suits, or criminal trials?
I’m horrible with riddles so I always depend on the other players to figure it out.
I really want to be good at adding puzzles and riddles, but the average INT score of my players and myself is lower than 10 so its a real risk if I dont plan for 3-5 clues to be found/dropped on them. And after ive spent so much time foolproofing it and making sure I havent made glaring problems, its really hard to let the puzzle go if they find a way to circumvent the puzzle🙃
Ah... The terrible siren's song of prep.
@@TheAlexandrian it would be rude not to listen to their song
X never, ever marks the spot.
3 7 10
"Give me an intelligence check - 18 - Bob did it" still can lead to interesting play though: What do the players/characters do with that information? Try to prove their case with evidence? Take justice in their own hands? In contrast to "the password is 'friend'" to get through the portal and this information is never relevant again. But good points nevertheless :)
That's a good point!
I find I'm leaning more and more into puzzles the older I get. It's just a great way to make it look like I prepared something when all I'm really doing is make up a gibberish poem or describe some disjointed "puzzle objects"(movable items, pressure plates, light beams, etc) and running with whatever the players come up with be the correct answer.
They get to beat the encounter by being clever and I get to look good by perfectly balancing my the puzzle difficulty to the players.
This video from Ben Milton talks about an approach where the mechanical rules are "the bits you don't want to focus on in the conversation of the game". Riddles and mysteries and negotiations are precisely the kinds of things we can dwell on in that conversation, so maybe a "roll to resolve" feels like skipping the good stuff? ua-cam.com/video/7UIPeQ6G6hI/v-deo.htmlsi=ha5Mz6kEGpDj4Enz
Hot take: Players only don't mind the disassociation of the attack roll because most rpg players have no experience in a group hand weapon fight, so generically attacking someone feels like what your character is also doing.
Cool take: Mysteries are so popular as adventures for players because they basically turn a riddle into an extremely long combat with "I find the clue" replacing an attack roll, and solving the mystery replaces the monster dying.
Interesting. I think within the broader structure of the video -- clues, not solutions -- combat resolution does follow a similar pattern: If you have a system or encounter which just boils combat down to "keep rolling attack rolls," that's generally going to be a boring experience for the players. Combat is interesting when we can make meaningful tactical choices that influence the outcome of the fight.
In my opinion the best way to resolve the mind/body disconnect in TTRPGs is to just do away with Int, Wis, and Cha as abstractions. In a simulationist view, what you're doing in playing an rpg is projecting your real mind into a fictional body. Abstracting out mental faculties just creates a rift between yourself and the simulation. Wis can be used for perception checks (how information do you take in), and Int for knowledge checks (how much have you taken in) because these are external to the thought processes of the player/character. Cha in my opinion should be done away with entirely, since it encourages either the abstraction of conversation (I make a convincing argument *rolls*) or the misalignment of conversation and outcome (I say "bite my ass" *rolls high* The courtier is impressed with your candor), which tramples all over roleplay.
This is why is strongly prefer OSR play to the narrative school. I don't want to roleplay a great character by being TOLD how great my character is, I want problems and solutions, and I want my success or failure to hinge on how well I embody the thought processes such a character would actually engage in. I find the whole "I'm a super nimble thief because I rolled 20 dex at character creation" hollow and childish, more like playing pretend and less like playing a game. By the same token, it's much easier to tell a good story when there IS a high degree of abstraction between player and character, like in storytelling games.
3:17 "They could go back and try to cross Caradhras again. They could go south, through the Gap of Rohan. They could even abandon their overland journey entirely, retreat to a western port and sail to Gondor."
Or Gandalf could just summon the bloody eagles! Or was the Windlord only on hand when Tolkien couldn't think of any other deus ex machina?
You're thinking of Peter Jackson. In the books, Gandalf couldn't summon the eagles.