Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
Hi there, guys:
I am running Lost Mine of Phandelver and some of my players have asked me to add riddles and puzzles. The campaign doesn't really have any, so my question is: what 5e modules have really good riddles/puzzles that I can use in my campaign?
Thanks in advance.
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has a chapter full of puzzles you can drop in if you pick it up.
Tome of Annihilation has quite a few in the final dungeon, but it starts at level one and goes up to 12 I believe, so it may take some work to drop in.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
Honestly, I've yet to come across any really good puzzles or riddles in official adventures or modules by WotC. It's honestly one of their weak areas.
Personally, I get my inspirations from one-shots. I'll look at the reputable 3rd party publishers (the ones who can field editors, testers and the like) and use those puzzles or riddles. Kobold Press campaign builder books and one shots are my favourite both as a player and to run as a GM. There's also The Game Master's Book of Traps, Puzzles, and Dungeons. One of 16 books in the series and their pretty darn good supplementary materials for a GM.
One that I've recently used is actually ripped off of the TV show Warehouse 13. To open a lock there is a chess puzzle, the only way to defeat the puzzle is to cheat, to move the pieces in a way they can't ordinarily move. I modified this by having a board set out with tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses), though it was called 'Light and Dark' with black and white pebbles instead of X and O. The concept was the same, the solution was to cheat. I scattered the designer's notebook elsewhere in the dungeon in which he described being very pleased with himself that no-one would suspect how well this modified child's game works to protect a vault. An earlier room had a plaque that stated 'when the rules don't agree with one, one must change those rules'. The thought was that by putting together log, and the plaque, the party would be easily able to work it all out.
Three sessions later I'm 75% confident that the players know the solution, but are going with their character knowledge. There's nothing terribly important in the vault, just some extra goodies if they wanna go and get 'em later...so I think the lock puzzle works!
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Wow! What an amazing material! I'm certainly going to buy those books in order to create cool riddles and puzzles for my players.
Could you recommend me more third party publishers?
Thank you for your help!
I've got both books but I haven't read them yet! Thank you very much! I'll check them right now.
Thank you for your help!
+1 to the Game Master's Book. It is AMAZING. The traps are ridiculously evil, and there are a lot of puzzles, ranging from simple puzzles that won't take too long to solve but should be pretty fun to very complicated ones.
Honestly, I've become a bit of a shill for Kobold Press, I just love their one-shots. Paizo, although they write for Pathfinder do some incredible adventure paths that sometimes contain really good puzzles. Sadly, they take a bit of work to alter from PF to D&D.
Frog God Games are an older name in the space, but definitely well respected by many. I've also got a few modules by Gamehole Publishing that were fun to run.
I know someone else will mention it if I don't, there is of course DriveThruRPG, but it really is a mixed bag of stuff there. Most of the things I got there were quite disappointing if I'm honest...they were equivalent to the things I could have designed for my own group.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
If you're looking for riddles and puzzles, unless they specifically have to do with D&D, there's no reason to limit your search to D&D products, or even RPG products; just go with a general purpose source of riddles (quick search found https://www.riddles.com/, I'm sure there are others if that proves unhelpful).