In my campaign, my players are going through a dungeon-like part with lots of different puzzle rooms. But partway through, a monster will break free and wreck through some of the puzzle rooms. Any idea how to make a good puzzle out of one that seems broken?
Well, a simple idea is to have the broken pieces too heavy to lift (including magic they may have), but light enough to push (perhaps as a group or pair), and overlap a bit. Basically, they have to figure out how to push the pieces around so they can get through.
I actually got a good idea from this. There can be columns lying on the ground that can be rolled along one axis, but can't be pushed in a different direction. So it's kind of like one of those puzzles where you need to move the rectangles to get your piece free.
It could be a literal, physical puzzle. The monster breaks a stained glass window that would have shone the perfect pattern on the mechanism to open the door, but now the monster has broken the window and you have to put all the pieces together.
Or the monster smudges/ruins the instructions for the puzzle. As in, they had "Put the blue orb in the green slot" but now it's "P__ the b___ _r_ in the _r_e_n slo_" Make it a fun hangman/ wheel of fortune kind of game. Every wrong letter they guess brings them closer to death and destruction.
Have you considered the monster smashing through a room might create a puzzle where the wasn't one before?
For example, if a large door was supposed to be opened by simply pulling a lever that activated a series of gears and pulleys, then perhaps the monster could have broken some of the peices. Now the players have to come up with a solution to repair or replace the parts. Might be fun to see what they use to reconnect some of the mechanisms. A sword for a lever handle. A rope for a snapped pulley. A spell to kick start the motion. Etc.
This leaves the solution up to the players - which gives them more agency to be creative.
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In my campaign, my players are going through a dungeon-like part with lots of different puzzle rooms. But partway through, a monster will break free and wreck through some of the puzzle rooms. Any idea how to make a good puzzle out of one that seems broken?
Well, a simple idea is to have the broken pieces too heavy to lift (including magic they may have), but light enough to push (perhaps as a group or pair), and overlap a bit. Basically, they have to figure out how to push the pieces around so they can get through.
I actually got a good idea from this. There can be columns lying on the ground that can be rolled along one axis, but can't be pushed in a different direction. So it's kind of like one of those puzzles where you need to move the rectangles to get your piece free.
It could be a literal, physical puzzle. The monster breaks a stained glass window that would have shone the perfect pattern on the mechanism to open the door, but now the monster has broken the window and you have to put all the pieces together.
Or the monster smudges/ruins the instructions for the puzzle. As in, they had "Put the blue orb in the green slot" but now it's "P__ the b___ _r_ in the _r_e_n slo_" Make it a fun hangman/ wheel of fortune kind of game. Every wrong letter they guess brings them closer to death and destruction.
Have you considered the monster smashing through a room might create a puzzle where the wasn't one before?
For example, if a large door was supposed to be opened by simply pulling a lever that activated a series of gears and pulleys, then perhaps the monster could have broken some of the peices. Now the players have to come up with a solution to repair or replace the parts. Might be fun to see what they use to reconnect some of the mechanisms. A sword for a lever handle. A rope for a snapped pulley. A spell to kick start the motion. Etc.
This leaves the solution up to the players - which gives them more agency to be creative.