I wouldn't use (at least unaltered) what you find here - your players may be reading these forums. :p
I can try my hand with some advice, though.
First and foremost, do not overthink it. It's easy to get carried away from any kind of inspiration (video games, books, comics) and devise a puzzle that overwhelms your players. If you're uncertain, err to the side of caution to prevent a situation where everyone in the table sits around frustrated and you have to give them a roll or something to progress. And that brings me to another thought: have a means to "bail the party out". Don't let them know there's such a bail out, but it's a good idea to have such in mind.
For more tangible ideas, think on what people consider a "puzzle".
- Sometimes just the choice of two doors is puzzling enough. Make them three, paint them blue, red and green, and you have a good basis.
- Other times the whole process is just a matter of limited time. Will you push the lever with the eagle's head carving or the bear's head carving? Hurry it up, the room is flooding. Who paid attention to the short story about the eagle and the bear scribbled on the wall of the second room of the dungeon?
- For more immersion, consider the environment and circumstances too: the goblin warrens may have a three-bolt door and consider it a marvel of deviousness. The Transmuter's tower will likely have something more complex than that, perhaps requiring a pair of crystals in a receptacle - but he jotted it down because he's forgetful. Gnomish engineers could have a 39-gear, 21-lever door, but the rogue may notice the "exhaust port" is large enough to crawl through, bypassing the door entirely.
At least in the beginning, consider any kind of non-combat choice that makes your players ponder and say "Hmm. Now what?", even for thirty seconds, a successful puzzle.
What I always try to do is just give the party a situation and let them figure out how to solve it. If you come up with "the solution" and stick to that one solution then everyone gets frustrated. You do because the party can't see what you have in mind and the party gets frustrated that their brilliant solution didn't work.
One time they just fought and defeated a powerful enemy who then opened a portal to another plane. It was sucking everyone in so they had to escape. They had to get over a gap that had appeared in their path. I didn't have a plan for how they would get over because I knew that whatever they came up with would be better than what I did. The most dexterous and strong one jumped across and caught the other party members as they jumped/were thrown. One of the party members fell (crit fail) and the party scrambled to let out a rope for him to grab onto. He did (crit success) and lived another day. I still distinctly remember that interaction.
One more traditional puzzle I was a part of was a room with a mirror but the mirror reflected things that weren't in the real room we were in, revealing a secret door.
A secret room inside a puzzle is always interesting, or even a monster with some clues. I like to think the best puzzles are usually the simplest ones. Also, there is an older edition (3.5) book called the Book of Challenges. It had a lot of good plans, traps, and puzzles in it. You can buy it on Amazon for under $30 or possibly find a PDF for it by searching 3.5 d&D puzzle book in Google. I suggest having a hard copy, though.
I'll give an example of a puzzle I created long ago that worked great. The heroes were trying to get into a vault inside an old abandoned castle. Throughout the castle was artwork, some depicting battles and others depicting heroic feats. Outside the vault room were six statues that would need 2-3 characters to lift them up and put them on their pedestals. Well, the statues were designed after scenes in 3 of the 10 or so paintings that were in the castle. One was a queen knighting her son's squire, one was an owlbear and a fighter engaging in combat and the last was two wizards dueling. If they paid attention, then they would see the answer was there for them. Something as simple as that can leave your players thumping their heads trying to figure it out I mean, in all honesty, player's overthink puzzles all the time. It's rare to have that one player that breaks your puzzle every time. (It has happened to me but he was a good sport and would let the other player's figure it out while he dropped clues.)
Hope this information helps you, and good luck DMing!
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"...Debts must always be paid, sometimes in more than blood and gold. But this is Ordo Ursa," Ren places his hand on Erakas's chest, right where the Dragonborn's heart is. "Right here. And it always has been and always will be. Don't ever forget that. Because I won't."
Serandis Mendaen (Aereni Elven Rogue/maybe one day Wizard)- Project Point Playtest
I love putting puzzles in my dungeons. However, I don't follow the "makes sense" restriction as "realism" is the very very bottom of the list of things I care about when designing a dungeon ("fun" would rank first). Things I've found were hits with my players:
Repeated puzzles with consistent mechanics throughout a dungeon. The first or second room may have a very simple puzzle that takes one step to solve and is impossible to mess up. The entire point of it is to introduce the basic mechanic behind the puzzle. Subsequent rooms that feature puzzles will use this same basic mechanic, and build on it in some way, up to a culmination that brings everything together into something actually challenging.
Clues. A large issue with puzzles is that you're testing the player's wit and knowledge rather than their PC's abilities. As such, if their PC is supposed to be super smart but the player can't figure out the puzzle to save their life, throw that player a bone and let them in on something their PC would have been able to figure out. If the entire party is stumped, gauge their interest in the puzzle. If they seem invested, give a clue. If they seem bored or very annoyed, have them roll an ability check to just solve it on the spot.
Embrace the break. Sometimes your players will come up with a solution or bypass to your puzzle that you didn't expect which trivializes it. Embrace instead of forbid that, and reward them for their ingenuity rather than forcing them to do it the way you originally thought.
Things I've found were misses with my players:
Complicated sequences of maneuvers that have to all be correct to succeed. Think of your grand solution, now make it twice as obvious. Then cut down the size of it and make the solution even more obvious. What is obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to the players, as they don't know those wall murals they found a few rooms ago literally traced out exactly what they need to do in order to succeed (or whatever). If a solution isn't obvious to you as the puzzle designer, your players will have no hope of ever solving it.
Lore-based solutions. This is something specific to my playgroup, so it may be totally fine for yours. My players pay zero attention to the setting they are playing in, even if it is a published and official setting for the game. As such, any puzzle that requires knowledge of the setting is completely out for me, as I'd have to cluebat them with the relevant knowledge beforehand (and "since I said that particular thing and not anything else, it must be important!").
Puzzles in the wrong medium. If your campaign is primarily carried out via the spoken word, then puzzles that deal with how things are spelled or similar writing-based puzzles is likely a bad idea. Similarly, if your campaign is primarily carried out via text, then puzzles that deal with phonetics or how things are sounded out is likely a bad idea.
Non-euclidean mazes. I once had a puzzle where there were a mess of rooms connected via teleporters, and they had to navigate those to find their way to the next area. Because the teleporters could go anywhere, and many of the rooms looked similar, fun times were NOT had by anyone as they frustratedly tried to map it out.
Some puzzle ideas that would fit your criteria:
A very attentive guard has a key to a locked door the party must pass through. Attempting to pickpocket him will likely end in failure (although there's a slight chance of it working). The party is able to gather clues from a diary left in the guard barracks by said guard about his likes and dislikes, or the names of his superiors. To get the key, the party could give the guard a chalice of his favorite drink laced with some sort of nonlethal sleeping agent, or impersonate a superior he's only met once or twice to reassign him (with a "new guard" in his place that the "superior" brought along). Attempting a combat-based solution would also end badly one way or another (probably due to the guard sounding the alarm).
The party walks into what appears to be a torture chamber, with a small amount of light filtering in from high above. The way forward is locked and barred from the other side, and going backward is a bad idea for some reason or another. To escape, the party must fashion a makeshift ladder from the torture equipment to get through the skylight, taking care to not seriously injure themselves in the process. To make this work, emphasize the skylight when describing the room, and make an explicit note that it is pretty darn wide.
A dropshaft which casts feather fall on anyone who enters it (convenience for the wizard who owns the place to quickly get to the ground floor). The party must make their way to the top of the dropshaft. The walls are smooth to make climbing difficult, but there are torch sconces spaced evenly up the tower. The party can lasso or use a grappling hook to attach to a sconce and climb up a bit with a rope, then jump into midair as they try to lasso/grapple the next sconce up to eventually make their way to the top.
Repeated puzzles with consistent mechanics throughout a dungeon. The first or second room may have a very simple puzzle that takes one step to solve and is impossible to mess up. The entire point of it is to introduce the basic mechanic behind the puzzle. Subsequent rooms that feature puzzles will use this same basic mechanic, and build on it in some way, up to a culmination that brings everything together into something actually challenging.
That's a great point. It's the same thought process behind many successful puzzle video games as well. Personally, I've found inspiration by playing the DOOORS apps on mobile and reading a lot of logic puzzle books. The apps are good for getting an idea of how to help players solve something with virtually no instruction and mostly describing details in a room. Logic puzzles are all about learning new information from information you already have (if that makes any sense).
I have a tiny puzzle I read online somewhere when I was running a game for a few first timers.
There's a magical door who can speak common. Above the door is a phrase written in common, etched into the stone. The only way the door will open is if the door speaks the phrase written above him.
It felt very 2nd edition which is why I decided to use it. !:)
The manor contains a different puzzle for each room, some of which may spark ideas for your stories. Well worth the read. Enjoy!
^ I was just about to suggest the Mad Manor. There are some really rad puzzles in there.
I would also suggest integrating puzzles into battles! It's a way of making the encounters harder, without just throwing in more monsters. It also adds a sense of urgency to the puzzle, and it freaks your players out.
So, I'm a relatively new DM. I've run two short campaigns in the last year, learning as I go. But one of the big things I consistently have trouble coming up with are puzzles. Ones that makes some degree of sense at any rate. So, what puzzles have you guys used successfully in the past? Where do you get your ideas and what do you tend to avoid?
You can get a lot of mileage out of adapting physical object-based puzzles and placing them in a in-game context. These are common enough that at least one of your players may have that moment of recognition when they twig to what's going on, and then they can solve the puzzle swiftly (which is good, you want a puzzle to be interesting and fun, but never a real barrier - not unless what's behind it is 100% optional). They also have the benefit of usually being fairly straightforward to work out from first principles even if the players have never played the puzzle before. Also, you can use physical props to increase understanding of the puzzle and player engagement with the puzzle.
I once had my players play a find the pair game (I'd printed out a bunch of icons and arranged them on the table). This represented a keypad in the ruins of an ancient, advanced precursor race. They needed to find the right pairs in the right order in a set number of turns to unlock a door. Essentially, they were figuring out a passcode. Obviously you need to carefully consider the amount of pairs you use, how many pairs the characters need to find, and set an appropriate number of turns to give them a good chance of success if they remember the emerging pattern.
Another successful puzzle in the same dungeon replicated a Tower of Hanoi. I presented the characters with an impassable chasm. On their side were four floating discs (one for each PC present), ordered from left to right: smallest, next smallest, second largest, largest. When one PC stepped onto a disc, they were trapped by a forcefield. They couldn't figure out how to get him out, but after an arcana check I told them that the forcefield seemed harmless and would likely drop once some predetermined conditions were met.
For the record: Those conditions were a magical command word to disable the device (which the PCs obviously didn't know), or by successfully navigating the discs to the other side. The first step of the solution was therefore for each PC to step on a disc, trapping themselves.
Once all the discs were activated, a control mechanism appeared on each. The PC on the leftmost and smallest disc would discover they could move their disc to one of two other positions: the middle of the chasm, or the far side. Either way, the disc would move as far as it needed to across the chasm and then all the way to the right (in a line with the largest disc). The character on the second smallest disc could now move theirs, but only to the position not currently occupied by the smaller disc. And so on. The party needed to navigate their discs back and forth from these three positions and following the rule that a larger disc could never end up on the left of a smaller one, until all four discs ended up on the far side of the chasm. Only then would the forcefields drop and allow them to proceed.
The same thing would happen if they stepped onto a disc looking to come back across, but obviously after solving the first time we just handwaved past that on the return journey.
Like the pairs game I represented this puzzle physically at the table. I drew the chasm on my chessex mat, and also drew a dotted line across the middle. I cut four discs of increasing size from card and arranged them with the smallest to the left and the largest to the right along one side of the chasm. And we put each of the PC's minis on one of the discs. As they figured their way through the puzzle they could move the discs between the three positions as long as they did so legally: aligned to the near side of the chasm, along the dotted line in the middle, or aligned to the far side; always moving the disc as far to the right as it could go before reaching another disc; and never able to put a larger disc to the left of a smaller one.
This explanation may be a little unclear without reference to the original Tower of Hanoi puzzle linked above, but reading through how that works will hopefully clear it up.
Ooh, puzzle battles sound awesome! What kind of puzzles work best in these scenarios?
I think puzzles where the players need to figure out a specific action and then *do* said action work well. That seems pretty vague, so I'll give you an example.
As part of a test, my players found themselves in the middle of a small room with a fire elemental. On the walls were two torches, and in the middle of the room was an empty bowl of stone on top of a column 15 feet tall. Every 1d4 rounds, the room would turn, and switch to a different elemental's room. The rooms were essentially the same (except the torches were replaced by waterfalls, etc.), and it always went in the same order (Fire, Air, Water, Earth.) To solve the puzzle, the players had to do a certain amount of damage to the column in the middle, which would cause the column to fall down to only 5 feet tall. Then they had to fill the bowl with that room's element. For the air room, I had them displace a different gas that was inside the bowl.
Some of the players only focused on attacking the elemental, while other players just took the damage and didn't retaliate so they could focus on what they thought the puzzle was. The elemental would try to attack the person who was physically closest to column/bowl, or the person it would think was closest to the answer.
If the players just have to shout the answer aloud, it leads to little teamwork and less fun. The more players you need to have working together to find and complete the answer, the better. The goal of puzzle battles is to have players be forced to use their action for something other than attacks some (or most) of the time.
Matthew Colville have a good talk on puzzles once about how giving them a puzzle or riddle without any predetermined answer can yield really awesome results.
What happens is the players will Co.e up with their own answers, and if it sounds good to you, you just say it is and push the story forward! That way the players feel accomplished, and they're literally molding the narrative for themselves.
Allegedly players will come up with some REALLY cool stuff that maybe the DM never would have thought of! :)
CALI 4-2: Dragon Above, Desert Below - (designed and wrote)
SPEC 5-2: Closer to the Heart - (designed and wrote)
EPIC 5-3: Shadow Storm - (designed puzzles and games)
CORE 5-7: Broken Light - (designed puzzles and games)
Now the puzzles that are in these adventures can be considered more like mini-games than a traditional puzzle. That's because most have physical pieces that require being printed out and manipulated by the Player and DM. Some people like this style of puzzles because they find it entertaining and fun - some don't because they feel they're a distraction. It's all up to you and your players. There are elements of roleplaying and in an attempt to bring the character back into the puzzle moment (it's the character vs player argument), I generally design hints to be skill checks. You can read through the adventures to see how we implemented the puzzles (situations we chose to use puzzles over dice rolls, etc.) All the work has been done for you in regards to the graphics and mechanics of the puzzles. Just print them out and insert/play where it makes sense in your game! (keep in mind these were based on 4E rules so some tweaking may be needed). Anyway, if you choose to check them out, I hope you like them. Game on!
As a DM I feel that a dungeon shouldn't just be about battling monster. So i was wondering what type of puzzles and riddles people use in dungeons to make it not just fighting monster related
Highly suggest grabbing something like Grimtooth's trap's. It was a series of traps and puzzles put out in the '80s, but was revamped a couple of years ago. Here's a link to it on RPGNOW, its really good for mining ideas for traps and puzzles https://goo.gl/ORfpr5
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Host of the Pocket Mimic Podcast, a D&D 5e Show! Join us and listen in as we build a new world step by step! (http://Pocketmimic.com) DMs vs PCs! All DMs are evil | ENnie Award Winner | OSR style in a 5e world |1000+ character souls taken | 25+ yrs exp Remember to hit the thanks button, if you feel my info was useful, it helps me know I've provided helpful information and know I'm on the right track.
Hello everyone! I love puzzles in games, but not like riddles, I like those that put the players to think what they must do to open some door or passage for example. The thing is I can't imagine how to put this at the presencial adventures. Good demonstration about what I'm talking about is the puzzles you have to do in DDO (dungeons and dragons online) like reading runes in the right order, turn many squares of a floor to build a drawing or to conect a point to another and things like this. What do you do at your table to make this things and what more puzzles you use?
Thanks!
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Edu Vancsek
Professional Dungeon Master
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I wouldn't use (at least unaltered) what you find here - your players may be reading these forums. :p
I can try my hand with some advice, though.
First and foremost, do not overthink it. It's easy to get carried away from any kind of inspiration (video games, books, comics) and devise a puzzle that overwhelms your players. If you're uncertain, err to the side of caution to prevent a situation where everyone in the table sits around frustrated and you have to give them a roll or something to progress. And that brings me to another thought: have a means to "bail the party out". Don't let them know there's such a bail out, but it's a good idea to have such in mind.
For more tangible ideas, think on what people consider a "puzzle".
- Sometimes just the choice of two doors is puzzling enough. Make them three, paint them blue, red and green, and you have a good basis.
- Other times the whole process is just a matter of limited time. Will you push the lever with the eagle's head carving or the bear's head carving? Hurry it up, the room is flooding. Who paid attention to the short story about the eagle and the bear scribbled on the wall of the second room of the dungeon?
- For more immersion, consider the environment and circumstances too: the goblin warrens may have a three-bolt door and consider it a marvel of deviousness. The Transmuter's tower will likely have something more complex than that, perhaps requiring a pair of crystals in a receptacle - but he jotted it down because he's forgetful. Gnomish engineers could have a 39-gear, 21-lever door, but the rogue may notice the "exhaust port" is large enough to crawl through, bypassing the door entirely.
At least in the beginning, consider any kind of non-combat choice that makes your players ponder and say "Hmm. Now what?", even for thirty seconds, a successful puzzle.
The rest will come with experience. :)
What I always try to do is just give the party a situation and let them figure out how to solve it. If you come up with "the solution" and stick to that one solution then everyone gets frustrated. You do because the party can't see what you have in mind and the party gets frustrated that their brilliant solution didn't work.
One time they just fought and defeated a powerful enemy who then opened a portal to another plane. It was sucking everyone in so they had to escape. They had to get over a gap that had appeared in their path. I didn't have a plan for how they would get over because I knew that whatever they came up with would be better than what I did. The most dexterous and strong one jumped across and caught the other party members as they jumped/were thrown. One of the party members fell (crit fail) and the party scrambled to let out a rope for him to grab onto. He did (crit success) and lived another day. I still distinctly remember that interaction.
One more traditional puzzle I was a part of was a room with a mirror but the mirror reflected things that weren't in the real room we were in, revealing a secret door.
A secret room inside a puzzle is always interesting, or even a monster with some clues. I like to think the best puzzles are usually the simplest ones. Also, there is an older edition (3.5) book called the Book of Challenges. It had a lot of good plans, traps, and puzzles in it. You can buy it on Amazon for under $30 or possibly find a PDF for it by searching 3.5 d&D puzzle book in Google. I suggest having a hard copy, though.
I'll give an example of a puzzle I created long ago that worked great. The heroes were trying to get into a vault inside an old abandoned castle. Throughout the castle was artwork, some depicting battles and others depicting heroic feats. Outside the vault room were six statues that would need 2-3 characters to lift them up and put them on their pedestals. Well, the statues were designed after scenes in 3 of the 10 or so paintings that were in the castle. One was a queen knighting her son's squire, one was an owlbear and a fighter engaging in combat and the last was two wizards dueling. If they paid attention, then they would see the answer was there for them. Something as simple as that can leave your players thumping their heads trying to figure it out I mean, in all honesty, player's overthink puzzles all the time. It's rare to have that one player that breaks your puzzle every time. (It has happened to me but he was a good sport and would let the other player's figure it out while he dropped clues.)
Hope this information helps you, and good luck DMing!
"...Debts must always be paid, sometimes in more than blood and gold. But this is Ordo Ursa," Ren places his hand on Erakas's chest, right where the Dragonborn's heart is. "Right here. And it always has been and always will be. Don't ever forget that. Because I won't."
Serandis Mendaen (Aereni Elven Rogue/maybe one day Wizard)- Project Point Playtest
I would heavily suggest reading through the PDF of this side-campaign: http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1011
The manor contains a different puzzle for each room, some of which may spark ideas for your stories. Well worth the read. Enjoy!
[ Site Rules & Guidelines ] --- [ Homebrew Rules & Guidelines ]
Send me a message with any questions or concerns
I love putting puzzles in my dungeons. However, I don't follow the "makes sense" restriction as "realism" is the very very bottom of the list of things I care about when designing a dungeon ("fun" would rank first). Things I've found were hits with my players:
Things I've found were misses with my players:
Some puzzle ideas that would fit your criteria:
I have a tiny puzzle I read online somewhere when I was running a game for a few first timers.
There's a magical door who can speak common. Above the door is a phrase written in common, etched into the stone. The only way the door will open is if the door speaks the phrase written above him.
It felt very 2nd edition which is why I decided to use it. !:)
PBP: DM of Titans of Tomorrow
PBP: Lera Zahuv in Whispers of Dissent
PBP: Evaine Brae in Innistrad: Dark Ascension
PBP: Cor'avin in Tomb of Annihilation
Ooh, puzzle battles sound awesome! What kind of puzzles work best in these scenarios?
PBP: DM of Titans of Tomorrow
PBP: Lera Zahuv in Whispers of Dissent
PBP: Evaine Brae in Innistrad: Dark Ascension
PBP: Cor'avin in Tomb of Annihilation
Matthew Colville have a good talk on puzzles once about how giving them a puzzle or riddle without any predetermined answer can yield really awesome results.
What happens is the players will Co.e up with their own answers, and if it sounds good to you, you just say it is and push the story forward! That way the players feel accomplished, and they're literally molding the narrative for themselves.
Allegedly players will come up with some REALLY cool stuff that maybe the DM never would have thought of! :)
That's a really clever way to challenge players! It will be fun to come up with some of my own now that I understand how they work.
Back in the 4E days, I wrote a couple of Living Forgotten Realms adventures that have some puzzles. You can download them from the LFR website (http://www.livingforgottenrealms.com/).
Here's a list of the adventures:
Now the puzzles that are in these adventures can be considered more like mini-games than a traditional puzzle. That's because most have physical pieces that require being printed out and manipulated by the Player and DM. Some people like this style of puzzles because they find it entertaining and fun - some don't because they feel they're a distraction. It's all up to you and your players. There are elements of roleplaying and in an attempt to bring the character back into the puzzle moment (it's the character vs player argument), I generally design hints to be skill checks. You can read through the adventures to see how we implemented the puzzles (situations we chose to use puzzles over dice rolls, etc.) All the work has been done for you in regards to the graphics and mechanics of the puzzles. Just print them out and insert/play where it makes sense in your game! (keep in mind these were based on 4E rules so some tweaking may be needed). Anyway, if you choose to check them out, I hope you like them. Game on!
As a DM I feel that a dungeon shouldn't just be about battling monster. So i was wondering what type of puzzles and riddles people use in dungeons to make it not just fighting monster related
Highly suggest grabbing something like Grimtooth's trap's. It was a series of traps and puzzles put out in the '80s, but was revamped a couple of years ago. Here's a link to it on RPGNOW, its really good for mining ideas for traps and puzzles https://goo.gl/ORfpr5
Host of the Pocket Mimic Podcast, a D&D 5e Show! Join us and listen in as we build a new world step by step! (http://Pocketmimic.com)
DMs vs PCs! All DMs are evil | ENnie Award Winner | OSR style in a 5e world |1000+ character souls taken | 25+ yrs exp
Remember to hit the thanks button, if you feel my info was useful, it helps me know I've provided helpful information and know I'm on the right track.
Try to make the players have to choose something quickly, or make a lot of options for them.
Bards... The character meant only for half-breeds.
Hello everyone! I love puzzles in games, but not like riddles, I like those that put the players to think what they must do to open some door or passage for example. The thing is I can't imagine how to put this at the presencial adventures. Good demonstration about what I'm talking about is the puzzles you have to do in DDO (dungeons and dragons online) like reading runes in the right order, turn many squares of a floor to build a drawing or to conect a point to another and things like this. What do you do at your table to make this things and what more puzzles you use?
Thanks!
---
Edu Vancsek
Professional Dungeon Master