Disclaimer: No Elsewhere/Moon players, please! (Just in case.)
So! My players have just stumbled upon a good ol fashioned "ancient technology was superior to modern technology" ruins-dungeon. They're Dwarven purely by accident, not that that has to mean anything (homebrew campaign/setting; the most well-known dwarves in my world are actually seafaring folk instead). They have already encountered mysterious pipes (waterflow control system, as they'll later learn), an easy pressure plate puzzle they already bested, and metalworked flooring/stairs. They'll be entering the ruins proper on Saturday.
My players are pretty clever with puzzles and their characters are too, they've generally enjoyed puzzles when presented with them, and they have been great so far about bridging the awkward "player-versus-character intelligence" thing, and I'm well aware to allow them to roll if they start to get stuck.
I'm looking for some ideas for steam-based or waterflow-pipe-control-based puzzles - without going full OoT Water Temple. I can make simple visuals, if any ideas come up that would warrant them, but this is an online game so nothing 3D. I've already done a puzzle-dungeon involving rotating rooms, so nothing like that, please.
Maybe try a variation on the nine dots puzzle, where the characters have four lengths of pipe they have to use to continuously connect nine steam vents to activate a machine.
very interesting question I've been wondering about how to best convey puzzles to my online group particularly pictorial puzzles and I'm thinking you can't be making puzzles that require a out of the norm input method to solve ie if your online group are on mic a mic answers must be sufficient so I cant send a pic that the players have to puzzle over draw things on and send back...
number series lend themself to this ie The party has come across three pentagon shaped chambers which seem to be the control rooms of this ancient "steam pipe" device, there are large levers and dials in the corners of the rooms... but in one the dial is on the floor
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
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Disclaimer: No Elsewhere/Moon players, please! (Just in case.)
So! My players have just stumbled upon a good ol fashioned "ancient technology was superior to modern technology" ruins-dungeon. They're Dwarven purely by accident, not that that has to mean anything (homebrew campaign/setting; the most well-known dwarves in my world are actually seafaring folk instead). They have already encountered mysterious pipes (waterflow control system, as they'll later learn), an easy pressure plate puzzle they already bested, and metalworked flooring/stairs. They'll be entering the ruins proper on Saturday.
My players are pretty clever with puzzles and their characters are too, they've generally enjoyed puzzles when presented with them, and they have been great so far about bridging the awkward "player-versus-character intelligence" thing, and I'm well aware to allow them to roll if they start to get stuck.
I'm looking for some ideas for steam-based or waterflow-pipe-control-based puzzles - without going full OoT Water Temple. I can make simple visuals, if any ideas come up that would warrant them, but this is an online game so nothing 3D. I've already done a puzzle-dungeon involving rotating rooms, so nothing like that, please.
Maybe try a variation on the nine dots puzzle, where the characters have four lengths of pipe they have to use to continuously connect nine steam vents to activate a machine.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
very interesting question I've been wondering about how to best convey puzzles to my online group particularly pictorial puzzles and I'm thinking you can't be making puzzles that require a out of the norm input method to solve ie if your online group are on mic a mic answers must be sufficient so I cant send a pic that the players have to puzzle over draw things on and send back...
number series lend themself to this ie
The party has come across three pentagon shaped chambers which seem to be the control rooms of this ancient "steam pipe" device, there are large levers and dials in the corners of the rooms... but in one the dial is on the floor
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again