Rogue: I would never do such a thing, and you should be ashamed of yourself for subscribing to stereotypes. Paladin: Or, is there a chance, no matter how small, that the person we hired to be a sneak-thief, who then proceeded to be a sneak-thief that had no qualms about sneak-thieving from his employers until Alarm spells were implemented, has once again been a sneak-thief? Rogue: :(
Just thought I'd share a puzzle I ran for a group of players a while back. Some dungeon, party (no darkvision in the group members bar a single frontliner PC) comes into a barely lit room, and almost immediately get attacked by cave-dwelling creatures that do not seem hindered by the lack of light. After they defeat the creatures, the party notices a door on the far end of the room. Shut. Next to it is a brasero with smoldering embers, and on the door is a (poorly written) riddle, for which the obvious riddle is "darkness". One member of the party speaks the word, but of course nothing happens. Once they snuff the embers of the brasero, the room goes dark, no-one can see anything anymore, and they hear rumbling. The door starts opening. Slowly. Veeery slowly. And the noise attracts more creatures, leaving the one PC that can see in the dark alone to face them. Being used to fighting in the dark in this dungeon, the wizard casts Light. Door slams shut immediately. They fight off the creatures, and start again. Only this time they know they'll have to bear the complete darkness for a bit, in order to pass through the door, while the frontliner tanks the creatures. Was quite a fun night, and got the players mighty afraid of turning on any light before having all crossed the door.
I'd like to appropriate and change this for my own purposes as well. Need a puzzle for tonight and this sounds entertaining. Teases the brain but isn't too difficult to figure out.
I had a similar one where doors are either solid wall or doorways depending on if there is light or not. This means, doors might be one-way only if the room on one side of the doorway has light and the other doesn't.
Do it! I had the same problem, but I just ramped up the difficulty. I had to learn the hard way (by having very frustrated players) that it was only easy, because I myself designed the puzzle in the first place
you gotta learn the group. I have had people struggle with a basic scale and weights (where the door starts opening everytime the scale swings over balanced) for hours (the solution was to balance the scales) and figure out full scale cryptography (heh CRYPT) in a matter of minutes
Because people all think differently DMs think we are making easy puzzles when we are actually not. If the solution is not obvious to you, It will be almost impossible for a player. If the solution is obvious, the players will find the puzzle difficult. If the solution is blatantly obvious, it will be about the right difficulty for most players. A good way to check the functionality of a puzzle is to grab a friend (preferably not from the group) and run them through the puzzle. It can really help you sort it out and streamline it. Often something that makes sense in your head doesn't translate well, or you will forget something/notice a problem, and you will need to adjust the puzzle or the clues.
Especially don't forget to highlight the puzzle elements when you'll be adding the sand/water/acid of doom. Without the clues, it can end up feeling like just a particularly nasty and vindictive trap.
I made a puzzle once that doubled as a trap. A flooding room witha couple corpses. Soon as the door closed on one side the room starts to fill. The trick is that its an illusion. Fail the per eption and you'll hold your breath til you suffocate. But the perceptive would realise that the water didn't affect the corpses. Once the room was full, if you survived, the other door unlocked. In a party of five, only one person needed to realise it was an illusion and convince the rest of the party, but the panic it created before they realised it was fun.
had fun with a simple puzzle in my last session- there is a treasure chest 40ft up on the ceiling and a switch on the wall when the players pull the switch gravity gently reverses in this room they get the treasure, but now they have to figure out how to get back down.
I stole that idea and modified it. Fountain in the middle of the room, when the timer gets to zero, any weapon submerged in the water gets Magic Weapon effect for 1 hour. The cultists were using it to make sure they could fight the devils they were summoning if anything went wrong. I.E. it was never meant for the players.
If you specifically want the puzzle it's the second paragraph, though there's build up to it. Cheers :) Made a puzzle recently centered around an old cult that mummified their participants and worshiped the dawn (specifically the god Amaunator). A group of intellectuals knew about an old city and they wanted it's knowledge so they hired the PCs and gave them a treasure map that showed the way to an old outpost with a compass on it that pointed at the dawn instead of north. It also said "In the desert the city awaits with open gates. Monstrous towers and beautiful city streets. The dawn of a new day will show you the way. Looking towards the dawn, the watchers wait." Following the map and the hints on it (x marks the spot) they traveled through a magically darkened area of desert to an old outpost on the map that showed them where the invisible city of the cult was, similar to the Mummy movie (at dawn with a beam of light through the giant statue worshipping the dawn at the outpost). After reaching the city and avoiding the sand worm for the second time they ran into a trap that activated runes that were 'mostly' covered with sand and activated a bunch of "sand dunes" (hidden skeletons all facing the dawn as though in worship) with the same compass symbol with the dawn part a different color and they found that if they faced the dawn the skeletons would stop attacking them. Finally the puzzle was in a small round room that had 5 dais's 4 of them had four different symbols on them that looked constellations and the final one in the middle had 5 dials, and there was a small plaque that said "Remember our faith, and we don't ever repeat ourselves." So long story short the constellations were points on the map compass I designed and you had to pick the 4 correct symbols and rotate them on the last Dias correctly so they made the compass without overlapping their lines, and then point the whole thing in the direction of the dawn to open the door to the next room. However every time they failed to get the correct answer the roof would open the first time and then multiple magical lens would shift above them and start amplifying the sunlight and slowly do more and more radiant damage with each wrong answer. Then they fought a mummy lord which my bard tried to convince the he worshipped the same god, and the mummy lord after being convinced asked him to become "immortal" ( mummified lol) and he wasn't so keen about that lol. There was one other trap room before the puzzle that had a pressure plate that released snakes. This whole thing was a one shot for lvl 7 characters and a new player that went over fairly well if anyone else would like to use. I obviously modified a few things, and also thank you if you've actually read this whole thing. I'm not the best DM always but I certainly do my best if this helps anyone else great.
I used to play with some GMs who really did those handouts well. Really well hidden codes in a whole page of hieroglyphs for example. Some rolls told us that the solution of the puzzle would likely be on a certain piece of wall above the door. And the gm really designed that well. That made all the difference! We sat around the table thinking about what to do exactly. Because it WAS a death riddle we had to solve and only as much tries as player characters. We lost 2 out of 5 and made it on the third try. But after the first we took it seriously! And I still remember that as one of my greatest role playing experiences.
I did a puzzle ones for my party that involved a computer and a shotgun. Basically a shotgun was aimed where it would hit a person who types the wrong code into a computer. The funny part was if you type the right code it also shoots you. The trick was as they went into the room I explain to them that the room was filled with books and bookshelves laying all over the floor. So many books that you couldn’t even see the floor underneath them. I was hoping the party would use the books and the bookshelves to form a barrier between them in the shotgun. Instead they just took turns punching in codes and getting shot in the back. I love my party.
I like to have my puzzles make sense from the perspective of those that design them, in game. The clues I try to embed in the story, or as part of the experience of the place they are in. In one adventure, the players were in a mansion owned by a giant snail. After a roper-like security system swallowed them all, they found themselves inside a slick spiraling surface, with Ocher Jellies floating about. They soon realized they were inside a massive shell (or were shrunken down within a normal sized shell!) A mass of tentacles also patrolled the shell. The topology of the shell was looped, so that the top of the shell connected to the base in a continuous circuit. There seemed to be no way out. Skeletal remains of past trespassers who had been digested by the jellies were found. There were some stalactite and stalagmite blemishes on the nacre surface. They noticed one of these was atypically on a wall. Checking that out, they found a draw. Pulling it out, they found engraved a spiraling surface (like a nautilus shell), divided into 7 depressions. In an 8th depression were gathered 7 faceted crystals. The two smallest crystals were of the same size. The other crystals grew in size gradually. Each was inscribed with numbers on the facets in common, from 1-20. Except for their sizes, the crystals were identical. (I had graphics of all of this, and made a really great map, using a real shell as the background, with a hex grid for movement, spiraling about). One player, who is really into the Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci Sequence, immediately solved the code, placing the crystals in size order into the depressions, with the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 showing. When he did that, the stalactite they were near sprouted filaments and a mouth, pulling them back through to the other side. The draw was there so that the owner could clean out the security shell now and again! The players loved it, thought it made total sense in game. They were not alone in there, had fun having a battle while stuck inside a shell prison.
Sometimes puzzles show the difference between player intelligence vs character intelligence. I can solve a lot of things out of character. My barbarian with Int as his dump stat? 😬 Also, I remember this cool movie with a puzzle box called, "Hellraiser" where solving the puzzle kinda led to more trouble. As a GM, I find it amusing. Love the new video style!
holy crap. I watched the whole video and didn't even noticed, that the background is animated. Still, i love it. looks great. Standing for the video is interesting. It gives a more "presentation" like feel to your, well..presentation ;)
I have one channel that I get notifications for. This is it. This channel has helped me in so many ways becoming a better player and DM. So much insight and detail into why and why not do certain things. These videos always seem to come up in an order that goes with where I am stuck atm in trying to make my campaign better or more intricate.
A puzzle I got good feedback for was once I gave my players a sort of small jigsaw puzzle (using stone square pieces with simple etchings that matched up when fit together properly) to actually solve in order to open a hidden passage. Playing online via Roll20, I made player-controllable tokens with images of the pieces that they could arrange, but if I were to do the same in-person then drawing some runes on a piece of construction paper then cutting it up would be effective. It was really basic and only took a minute or two to solve, but the tactile experience of actually putting pieces in their correct spots was something that they enjoyed.
I love puzzles in games. One of my favourites that I did was a bunch of different shape stones on a table and a plaque that said (word to the effect of as I can't remember the actual wording) 'To progress on your quest, make sense of all the stones. A simple perception check revealed that there were embossed shapes on these stones and that some seemed to fit together. Yes, these shapes turned out to be letters. They had to arrange the stones so the letters spelled out the word 'SENSE'..... see they literally were told to make sense.... lmao :P
Probably the best way to learn how good puzzle-making is done is to learn how escape rooms work. In addition to the actual rooms, there are card game versions of the same thing. "Unlock!" has good games, for example.
Yea, I wish I'd watched this before I did my first dungeon puzzle. It was a room with four levers and a giant bronze bust of a dragon that spat a fireball out every time the input was wrong. Except, I didn't really give any hints or clues on which combination might be right, or even the first lever or two. Que the one HOUR montage of trying different combos, getting confused on which they'd tried before, etc. Haven't done a puzzle since and the memory haunts me
5th element puzzle with different elemental damage is something i did, also pressure plates with some sequence of symbols in the room also was nicely taken
Oh, the statue with the arms gave me an idea. Have the players find something reasonably valuable earlier in the adventure, and get to the end and have a statue that has a hand that would perfectly hold that item. So they have to have an inner struggle to give up that item - and if they do they get something even better once the statue moves, or room is found, ect. Just make it take a little effort to figure out the "staff" is missing from the statues other hand, ect. Just a thought. :)
I tend to use puzzles for 2 things: hidden passageways/rooms that lead to treasure but tend to be miss-able, or something that isn't obscure and miss-able, but leads to an optional plot device, like a lich's hidden phylactery. So rather than having to fight the lich, you can merely destroy the phylactery that was hidden by a puzzle device. I never make my puzzles mandatory to the progression of the plot.
There have been several Escape Room movies. The best one I saw was an independent movie of a guy's birthday party and everyone knows each other. The big budget one had some leaps in logic, and the made for TV one was a cheesy ghost movie.
I made a home brew dungeon where they all started in separate rooms and in their rooms where a different shaped gem stone. when they eventually got into the central room there was a double door with no handle and a plinth in the middle with holes in it the shape of the gem stones. Of course they immediately found out each stone was to go into a matching hole and as they did so the door went up bit by bit till all gems where in the plinth. 7 players but 4 minimum needed as the door was high enough for the tallest member to crawl through
The way you talk, like your cadence.... it reminds me a lot of Rowan Atkinson during his stand up stuff..... and I love it. It's very nice to listen to while I'm drawing. (:
Currently working on a puzzle themed around sounds. Players will encounter a room with something in it that they want (have to figure out what), from which they can hear a low hum. Entering the room and inspecting the thing, the players find themselves locked in, as 4 holes in the ceilings open up, and start emitting a shrill sound. This sound will require the players to make a CON save every turn to avoid taking 1d6 thunder damage. Their ways out would be to perceive a message saying "listen to the bats", prompting them to use speak with animals and hear the solution of the puzzle. The solution would be a simple puzzle underneath the chest containing the thing. If they are too slow, they'd also notice the door starting to take damage from the sounds, making it easier to break through in a panic situation. Sorry for my English, just woke up. The puzzle is made for 6 lvl 2 PCs
My favorite puzzle was inspired by the game Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. One player had her hand locked into a panel that required her to enter colors into a sequence, and on the other side of the machine was a display revealing what colors to enter. I had flash cards with different shapes on them, and each shape was a different color. I flashed two sequences that the second player would recite whilst the other player (who couldn't see the cards) wrote down. The third sequence, however, had red, blue, and green *WORDS.* The word "GREEN" would be blue, the word "BLUE" would be red, and the word "RED" would be green. When I flashed this sequence the player hesitated for a second, but was able to successfully call out the *color,* and not the word. I've since done other puzzles like this, usually with great approval from my players. The reason I design my dungeons like escape room puzzles is because we don't have a player-character rogue. It's far more entertaining to get the players involved this way than having the NPC rogue just roll to see if opens the door.
Hmm... would this count as a puzzle or a riddle: Players find a door with two levers either side. Above the door is a dwarven inscription that reads "Panic is your enemy". Anyone that speaks dwarven can read it. If someone tries to go through the doorway, they tread on a pressure plate and doors in front and behind close, trapping them. If the party pulls the L lever, the exit opens and the trapped person can now safely open both doors. If they instead pull the R lever, the ceiling over the doorway starts coming down, and will crush them in, say, 6 turns. The solution is to push the R lever back and then pull the L lever. If they instead panic and pull the L lever without pushing the R lever first, the mechanism speeds up and now they'll be crushed in 3 turns. Continued panic leads to a very messy end to their friend, while reversing the sequence resets the mechanism.
I had a DM did a puzzle for our party. Our party's biggest issue was that there was no visual. My DM insisted that the description was enough. We didn't need a visual and we weren't allowed any dice rolls to give us any clues to which statue to put in next. So we were left to blindly guess. If my character can see something and I'm not allowed to see it allow me to roll to get some sort of clue
That's a problem DM issue. Your game master has made the assumption that the visuals aren't necessary (making it too easy) or that you should be able to figure it out (they did, so you can). Both are short sighted. Some people are visual learners. Some are verbal/auditory learners and others are hands on. A helpful GM will take that into account. Just because she or he figures something out one way, doesn't mean others will do it the same.
I really think that the puzzles in Skyrim's draugr ruins are done well. Every solution is available to view, if you look carefully, and they can also be solved by guessing, though that will usually result in being shot, stabbed, or swarmed by awoken draugr. - I'm talking about the "whale-bird-snake" pylons here.
Sometimes i give all the explanations of the room and read whatever text exists in the room (or have them ready in text), give them handouts of the room so they can see everything and they can solve the puzzle without any further assistance. And once they initiate the puzzle by activating some kind of mechanism, then something deals damage to them (poison filling the room, psionic pulses damaging their brains, anti-life object leaching their life-force, flames heat the room so much that they start to burn, you get the point.) The damage they receive is activated every-minute in REAL TIME.... Yes.. i put a timer on my phone that beeps every minute. First real-time minute the characters receive 1 point of damage. Second minute they recieve 2 points of damage, and so on and so on. That makes them be ok taking 3-8 minutes but staying beyond 10-15 minutes could kill them. (Depending on level). That creates real-time pressure so make sure people have gone to the toilet or whatever real-life activity anyone needs to do.
This is an older video so maybe it's been updated but here are my 2 cents. Constructed puzzles are there to stop the unwary. It makes little sense to have a puzzle that anyone can just guess. They should target otherwise normal behavior and have a way to avoid them if you know a secret. For example walking down the middle or left side of the hall triggers the trap, but walking down the right side is safe. How do you figure out who triggers the trap? You can't ask "how do you walk down the hall" or you signal a problem and the players will lawyer the thing to death. Have them roll a d6 and if they roll a 1 or 2, they're safe. Did you give clues that the right side is safe? Are they supposed to just stumble through the trap? That depends on how mean you want to be.
I will say, a riddle always seems easier when you are the one to set it up. In addition, I have found some of the simplest puzzles to be the hardest for players to solve.
I like to remain flexible in my solutions. I'll usually have a vague idea of how the puzzle is solved, but if the PCs come up with an answer that makes sense (or is even better than what I had), I give it to them and make it seem like that was the answer all along.
Most hilarious puzzle I ever made was on accident. I was introducing my players to how magic "magic'd" in my universe via a session 1/0.5 dream sequence. The solution was "use school X to will the orb to change to blue." the party did everything except that. This includes using the correct school of magic, but not willing any particular colour, so it just changed to a random colour. After 45min, I had them roll a check and they moved swiftly onward. Moral: Your players may overthink any given puzzle, if given the chance.
Always have multiple outs for different methods of solving. Intelligence, dexterity/sneaky, and/or brute. How is the room on the other side different if they smash the puzzle door? What if they “pick” the lock in the puzzle?
One thing I like to do is to design multiple small, thematic puzzles, maybe building on one another, and then decide which is the hardest one and make it optional, perhaps opening the Vault or something.
I like to run puzzle "themes" wherein the puzzles get more complicated but share a core function. I also like to throw in visual math, because I'm a nerd. Traveling through a temple for a merchant god, they see two statues of a man stacking coins on a checkered table, flanking the door to a small treasure room. Later, they find a statue with a checkered table, and a bunch of sandstone disks strewn about the floor; if they stack the disks on the table in the correct manner, a secret door opens up. They also find hint-y proverbs carved into various holy relics (things like "Sometimes in order to take away, one must first give" and "The wealthiest man is one whose wealth, when multiplied, remains the same"). Farther down, they find two statues with tables flanking a solid stone door, sandstone disks, and a checkered table in the middle of the room which is surrounded by a magic shield and has a bunch of loose sand around its base. The table in the center of the room transforms the sand into disks equal to the total number of disks in each corresponding checkered spot on the two statues; when the center table is arranged correctly, the door opens. The complication is that the middle table operates on sandpile addition; if a stack gets too tall, it "falls over" and spreads to the stacks around it. The third puzzle has four statues and one table in the middle, shielded and with sand like the second puzzle. In order to get the final reward, all of the statues and the table in the middle must have the same arrangement of stacks. Only the first puzzle is necessary to solve the quest, but they can get some really cool stuff if they solve all of them.
How does this sound for twist? There's a huge massive door with a puzzle on it, they solve the puzzle and the door doesn't open, but they hear a rumbling and a smaller door to the left opens and lets them in.
I have been lazy before and purchased actual puzzle boxes and put a note inside with the contents of the box written on them. I have had these as a loot drop. It was annoying at first because the players would get focused on opening the box at the table to mixed success.
I think if I ever do run a campaign I will borrow the puzzles from the old DOS games I played as a kid like Indiana Jones and the Secret of Atlantis or Full Throttle.
The way I do puzzles is; if they solve it they don't have to fight the nasty monster. If they can't figure the puzzle out, then swords and spells will have to come out. Give them the same XP either way, but some sort of extra (boon, item, information, etc.) if they solve the puzzle.
Puzzles do not test the mental capacity of the characters at all. If you are not using dice in statistics to resolve this then it is clearly only designed for the players. Which is okay if that's what you want to occur but we do not expect a barbarian to show up do a session and bench press 300 lb to prove that they could force open a stuck door so I don't know why we expect players to show up and "be clever" to progress.
They can have some problems and/or suck. Players coming off a long shift may not be able to do it. Hints may be easily missed or not unlocked by appropriate skill checks. Puzzling is its own skill like code-breaking. Many problems.
"Can I just roll intelligence to figure out this puzzle, DM?" To be fair, the puzzle was supposed to be hard, because the reward at the end was supposed to be immeasurable. No one else at the table was contributing, either, because I don't know why. It was supposed to be a proximity trap, because the dungeon was alive, so being next to certain things would make certain areas open up. So, rather than figure out the puzzle manually, they just wanted to figure out the bypass. Okay, but you don't find any of the secret doors, or any of the treasure that was being kept behind those secret doors. You just find the way through. Had a DM that all of his traps are instant death. If you mess it up you die. If the rogue fails to spot it you die. If the rogue fails removing it you die. Which, sure, if you're looking for the most realistic traps imaginable, they're going to all be instant death, but this isn't reality, this is fantasy. It's supposed to be fun and suspenseful. The rogue's body crumpling up on the ground because he touched a panel on the wall isn't that. The rogue's arm getting trapped in the panel as a section of ceiling slowly descends down upon him to both sever his hand and crush his body and the party rolling initiative to try to get the rogue out of danger before he gets squished is.
On my campaign, I don't use puzzles. Just clues to let them discover a person's intentions. They can find belongings, pictures, scribbled notes. If they don't find them, they do go in blind and the person will most likely have them completely fooled.. Still gives the pcs something to solve but much more in a way that flows with my world.
Running a Scifi game and want to try out puzzles. Not a creative guy so forming it is kinda aggrivating. Basically one player is in the control room and needs to direct power as needed to certain systems, allowing the rest to progress to the main server to manually reboot and power the servers to unlock access to the AI core. Control will have 5 points to allocate for the relevant systems, each system needing a certain amount of points, forcing the player to have to change up power direction to allow the party to pass to the next area whilw preserving enough energy to secure a route back
If you want to use a logic puzzle, but you can't make logic puzzles to save your life, try buying a book of logic puzzles (I like Penny Press) and reskinning it to fit your campaign.
I am using the app, Einstein's Riddle Logic Puzzles. I'm looking forward to seeing if they like it. I have the pieces printed out and clues they will hear to solve it. We'll see...
A short warning story - Don't get enamored by your puzzle: I had a (normally quite good) GM who hated party splitting. So, of course, some of the players split the party and I'm working to rejoin those who went off on their own. They go to a major quest goal, an obviously magical tower. One person simply puts his hand on the wall and a doorway appears in the brick wall and lets them in, then seals shut again/disappears. I catch up to the tower. I look around. I find nothing. I rather than jumping to the solution I try a few things my character would jump to 1st. They don't work. Ok, enough playing, I'll do the thing the players have seen work (putting my hand on the wall) - it doesn't work. I try damaging the wall, roll high (and have an applicable skill), no effect. I roll high for an insight check (and have a magic based character), and learn nothing other than the wall is magically protected from damage and that energy seems to have no limit. After 5min of just my character trying (and trying and trying), I still have NO CLUES to get in. He moves on to the players inside the tower. Anytime I or anyone else thinks of anything, I try it. HALF an hour of this goes by. I tell the GM, "Look, you hate party splitting. I've been trying to join the rest of the party. I know you are proud of your puzzle and all... but no one at the table has any clue how solve it. You haven't given enough information. You have denied attempts to access by alternative means. You've denied insight for the single most qualified person on our team for magical knowledge. You know the solution, because either you came up with it or read it. You have that pre-knowledge, - but for all we know the door has a 100year timelock or something. So, my character gives up. Either you bring some external help - or my character walks the 7 day journey back to the town and tells the employer we can't complete the quest because it's locked behind an un-openable magic wall. I'll just grab my stuff and go, because spending the entire game session beating my head into the wall is boring and annoying." He did let my character in after that, but I honestly can't remember how, because what stood out was how frustrating the experience was. *So, remember that and consider the effect on your players. If the solution is stand on your tip-toes while holding a blue object in your left hand - then your players NEED way(s) (
I have definitely been in the ......... wait...... we are trying to solve a puzzle? this was a puzzle??? situation before as a player. It's so frustrating
@How to be a Great Game Master Any recommendations on using text ciphers for ancient tombs and the like? Easy ones like pig pen or a simple ceaser shift?
My puzzle: 3 chests: two are mimics, and 1 is real. There will be a riddle for each chest. This puzzle would be great for a Egyptian tomb in a cursed desert.
I do find it difficult to justify the puzzle's existence, or the fact that it mechanically works. I mean, watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the traps were cool but super unbelievable.
You forgot the most important point, always let the Wookiee win. If a puzzle is unable to be completed then let it be brute forced. Everything can be solved time and time again with copious amounts of brute force in the world of D&D. A pickaxe and a sledgehammer can solve just about anything unless it has to do with fixing something or magic.
Sadly, our group can be easily stymied by a fork in a corridor, two doors, and nothing perceivable beyond them. Almost anything that involves a decision, really. Our GM will often let us use generic WIS/INT rolls to try and figure out what's going on.
i had had parties like that before... just throw them the infamous "Countdown Puzzle". and carefully teach them ;) most times i see indecisive party was because the dm was too serious about everything
@@eliasvernieri there's a couple of us with characters who tend to go 'eh, I'ma opening *this* door - perception roll!' As you might guess, sometimes this goes better than others, but it's always entertaining (rogue/bard crashing a succubus party, fighter & paladin crashing a greater demon summoning, monk crashing an empty room (with an illusory floor!)) xD Our GM is awesome though, and has the patience of a saint (has to be, since we're more of a social group than a dedicated rp group), but yes, he does sometimes play the 'whilst you've been deliberating, xyz has happened...' card.
An example of the look failing is in Indiana Jones and the temple of doom. Tell me how, without some kind of light sensors or lasers, does putting your hand into the light trigger a bamboo spear trap? Crushing walls, pressure plates, bugs, levers, and giant boulders I could buy.... but light sensitive bamboo is just dumb. Also, how did it reset itself with a dead body already on it? These people don't even have plumbing, how do they know mechanical engineering?
They ALWAYS roll a 1 or a 2 or a 3 when I finally say, "ok, roll an intelligence check" to try to get them through when they fail. And if I say that they succeed, they know they are getting charity and don't like it.
@@scarletrose2880 I guess so, since it seems that's the only thing you're able to take away. And perhaps that's what you came here for in the first place.
@@mateusz3844 you serious dude? I watch his channels because I like his videos and this one in particular has a lot of good information. That's why it's so irritating that something like "women's equality is not realistic" which jumps right out of nowhere. Your second comment is bullshit and you know it. If a world, especially one that takes place in an rpg in which all genders can participate has magical casters and mythical races, women in that setting shouldn't be treated as second class citizens only because it is very loosely based on medieval Europe. especially if you have women at the gaming table. Dnd is about having fun and everyone get to be a part of that not just straight white men.
So I guess I just had a big obstacle that was weight balance related... I called it a puzzle, but guess it wasn’t? PC’s in a “whisper cave” (loud noises released poison gas from fungi all around huge cavern) .. there’s an opening (ala Indiana Jones Last Crusade) with a thin loooong stone bridge, that ended up having 1 support in middle like a big teeter-tauter.. long fall into water which lead to secret tunnels that would still get pc’s to end room... but PC’s ‘broke’ it.. never teetered once, or found the secret cave opening that woulda appeared if they all just rode the teeter down on the opposite end... Nope cast spider climb on the heaviest PC (a Tortle) who walked around the cavern on the walls then held the other end as PCs crosses to center, then tied a rope off with a loop around the thin stone bridge I described so when the PCs crossed it couldn’t go down.. I’m glad they solved/broke it, they still had to think to come up with solution and made the session interesting ... but yeah I was prepared with side scrolling online map and a balanced bridge that would go up or down as pcs moved across.. but the bridge never moved. Hahahaha
I'm a big fan of what I call the Natural Puzzle. It's seen in a lot of platforming video games or exploration games. The obstacle is not an obvious puzzle meant to be a lock. I don't like puzzle locks. The best way to keep someone out is a key. Puzzles don't keep bad people out. They keep stupid people out. However, in the case of a Natural Puzzle, the problem isn't man made. Or rather, it's not intentional. It's a collapsed bridge, or a room without light, or a disconnected power source or something. In my dungeon design I ask three questions: What was it's original purpose? What went wrong? What's changed? This helps inform puzzle design. Here is an example: The party is searching for an ancient research facility. The facility long ago was above ground, but a great disaster buried it beneath the ground. The doors that gave access to this facility can only be seen in daylight, but having been buried underground (what went wrong) there appears to be no entrances. When the party arrive, they find a series of camps from an excavation that came before them (what's changed). The camps are empty and abandoned, and carry some clues (including several large mirrors, some broken, some not fully set up), before leading them through dark underground tunnels and to the walls of this facility. Investigation could lead to notes about the security of the hidden doors, and some thinking will bring them to think of the mirrors and after that they should realise that the mirrors can be used to bring daylight down to the buried facility, allowing them to reveal the entrance. Inside they'll discover the original purpose of the facility, which is hinted at by the nature of its security up to this point.
I always hate making puzzles precisely because the notion of a puzzle to keep someone out, in MOST situations, is pretty stupid. Just use a damn key (or magical key). Of course, you could design a dungeon that was made with the purpose of testing whoever went inside of it, so, in that case, it would make sense. Or maybe if all magic that can lock things also involves a puzzle in your setting, so there is no "aboslute" locking magic. But I really like this idea of natural puzzles, I will try to think of it in the future. Thanks for your perspective! :D
@@son_guhun Yes, those types of puzzles I categorize as Trials. Riddles fall under those, as well. They can still be fun, as long as it's purpose is a test. Or even a transformation. I did a thing one campaign where when the players reached level 15 they were at a threshold they needed help to get past, in their growth. The Wizard had reached the limits of what a mortal could do on their own (it was a setting of low power level similar to Eberron) and had to go through this magical labyrinth created by the goddess of magic herself that was mostly a lot of puzzles.
@@dm_ex_machina3395 Another use of trials-type puzzles that I enjoy is the lesson/warning puzzles where you have to use a bit of lore gleaned from the environment to progress through the dungeon -> e.g. a powerful artefact is sealed away unless someone enters a sequence of symbols found in a poem that laments those killed by a villain who used the artefact for evil in the past; or a castle infected by a plague is sealed unless they correctly mix the antidote.
> "They keep stupid people out" I agree that no one would ever use puzzles like that. But such puzzles are still fun for players and therefore worth having, so with a little extra worldbuilding they can make sense. First, always pair them with actual security like a key; the players need the key and also to solve the problem. Second, make the solution to the puzzle thematic: for example, a religion or cult may leave a puzzle with a theme that forces people to think about their doctrines. An individual may leave a puzzle as a memento based on details from that person's life, such as the name of a loved one. Wizards may have left a logical puzzle to ensure that an important book didn't fall into stupid hands. And so on.
selylidne Exactly! In my current campaign, the BBEG is a long-term strategist. He’s been a war general, & built up a wealthy trading company. He also happens to be a vampire. The city his family was given by the king (for vanquishing a brood/coven of vampires, actually) is split into 3 by a river. A river he can’t cross as a vampire, technically. His solution is a tunnel that goes under the river, & a special bridge rebuilt so that its interior includes soil from his home all the way across the length. Anyway, he solves problems & does not harbor idiots well. His tunnel includes a puzzle of stone guardians that form a triangle blocking a constructed entrance to/from his keep. It’s the triangle & pegs game from Cracker Barrel restaurant. My players couldn’t figure out how it worked. I let them all roll INT & WIS, and it was the child NPC with them that got the roll! “It’s a game! It’s a game! We play to jump over each other.” Suddenly all the players did facepalm - duhhhh, they got it, and we progressed quickly. Result was any remaining “pegs”, the guardians, not eliminated became animated and guarded the entrance in full phalanx defense & attack mode. Interestingly, players decided NOT to continue forward because they had burned their spells & HP. So when they return, the “game” will have changed! It’s magic is coded to up the strategic challenge each time. Still thinking about what the next challenge will be - maybe checkers or GO, with the players themselves being the pieces in one side.
My favourite puzzle experience came with my first time running a campaign. I was introducing new players to D & D 3.5 and wanted them to experience all the fun stuff. So they are tracking down a necromancer baddie. As they fight off various types of undead they find on their vanquished foes slips of paper with a series of holes in them. They come to the doors to the inner sanctum where the baddie is hiding out and find a wall with words randomly inscribed on it. Opposite the wall is a shimmering rod. A few quick checks reveal it is a rod of light. There is a slot in front of the rod which I described as exactly perfect for holding slips of paper. Then a few INT and WIS rolls later they slid one of the slips of paper into the slot. The paper blocked the light from the rod except for the spots where there were holes in the paper. Light shone through the holes. Each beam of light fell on a different word on the opposite wall. The first sentence made this way was "An awful bard boisterously belted ballads.". There were a series of 6 switches near the door. Switch up was A, switch center was OFF, switch down was B. All switches were currently in the OFF position. The newbs got it in three tries. AABBBB. The gate in front of the door opened revealing a second set of switches. They switched out the first paper for the second and got "A brave barbarian always battles boisterously". At this point the guy who was helping me with the campaign came in with coffees. We asked him to try solving the riddle\puzzle to open the door. His character was a very clever rogue\thief. Several rolls later he still couldn't get it. The newbs were leaping out of their skins (figuratively). They were proud to show him how the riddle\puzzle worked. Once the doors opened, combat with the baddie began. The baddie lost, of course. The newbs got the loot and returned to town. They were heros. They were hooked. They have been gaming ever since. They never realized my mentor dm was faking his inability to solve the puzzle iddle.
Im probably insanely late for this but anyway You guys are realy good personne, in the way you're able to purposedly look dumb / not show off your ability to do this and that, just for the sake of making your players feel proud, this is rare enough to notice it, good job lads.
I as a player have not lived an hour in your head, but my character has lived his entire life in your world. Knowledge rolls to make me the player aware of something that my character would know is also helpful.
This is how I do puzzle solving in my games. If the character has a 19 intelligence, I would expect them to work out clues to a puzzle even if the player themselves can't.
I find that the "idea roll" mechanic from call of cthulhu is great for any rpg, if the players are stuck you get them to roll an int check to provide a clue or help them to figure out what their character is starting to piece together, should be a staple in all games imo, even if it's purely used for puzzles
*Party member enters wrong combination* "A trap door opens above you, and several snake skeletons rain down upon your character. Someone seems to have forgotten that snakes need water." Love these videos by the way, beginning the steps to writing my first short campaign and they have been a TREMENDOUS help.
I like the idea of puzzles as an alternative to combat; put an encounter with a monster/enemy the PC's know they aren't capable of fighting, but set it up so that the environment can be used to weaken or defeat the enemy. Like breaking a sluice to flood a tunnel and wash away a lethal swarm of some kind.
Quite possibnly my favourite puzzle comes from Island of the Lizard King. Hobgoblin bridge guard "What is the password." Player "What?" Hobgoblin bridge guard "..... Yeah... That's right. What IS the password. Pass friend." :D
I have my first real puzzle coming up in our campaign. An escape room situation. I decided to give multiple solutions, as we have a large group and I know different people go at things differently, so this is a good test to see how they do it, and different methods will apply to different characters better. And I put it on a timer. And then, as a safety measure, the door has a strength check of 50, wide enough for three to press against it, so worse comes to worse, they just knock down the door.
While I applaud having a few different solutions I'll caution you this, if its possible to skip the puzzle by breaking down the door, the party will. Assume they will always break whatever you put in front of them unless it can't be broken. I once put a cave-in in front of them, with the dead end only supposed to be a clue and they used the spell shape earth to go THROUGH it.
I guess it depends on the players if they first try to solve the puzzle or to break things down. If it's the latter maybe give them a fear bonus once they triggered enough traps. So if they try to break the door down initially they are unable, but once the characters realize their lives depend on it, the get a burst of strength. Though like people above me said: it's good to give them some disadvantage like alerting enemies through the noise caused by breaking the door.
So for this puzzle, we fit gems into the proper slots. But it's strange, almost as if there aren't enough pieces here... wait.
*slaps the rogue*
Rogue: I would never do such a thing, and you should be ashamed of yourself for subscribing to stereotypes.
Paladin: Or, is there a chance, no matter how small, that the person we hired to be a sneak-thief, who then proceeded to be a sneak-thief that had no qualms about sneak-thieving from his employers until Alarm spells were implemented, has once again been a sneak-thief?
Rogue: :(
Read this and actually laughed out loud 😂
@@autumnwind5819 Ditto
@@matthewturner5178 :) 😂
Just thought I'd share a puzzle I ran for a group of players a while back.
Some dungeon, party (no darkvision in the group members bar a single frontliner PC) comes into a barely lit room, and almost immediately get attacked by cave-dwelling creatures that do not seem hindered by the lack of light.
After they defeat the creatures, the party notices a door on the far end of the room. Shut. Next to it is a brasero with smoldering embers, and on the door is a (poorly written) riddle, for which the obvious riddle is "darkness".
One member of the party speaks the word, but of course nothing happens. Once they snuff the embers of the brasero, the room goes dark, no-one can see anything anymore, and they hear rumbling.
The door starts opening. Slowly. Veeery slowly. And the noise attracts more creatures, leaving the one PC that can see in the dark alone to face them.
Being used to fighting in the dark in this dungeon, the wizard casts Light. Door slams shut immediately. They fight off the creatures, and start again.
Only this time they know they'll have to bear the complete darkness for a bit, in order to pass through the door, while the frontliner tanks the creatures.
Was quite a fun night, and got the players mighty afraid of turning on any light before having all crossed the door.
YOOOOOOO I LOVE THIS.
I'm stealing it.
I'd like to appropriate and change this for my own purposes as well. Need a puzzle for tonight and this sounds entertaining. Teases the brain but isn't too difficult to figure out.
I had a similar one where doors are either solid wall or doorways depending on if there is light or not. This means, doors might be one-way only if the room on one side of the doorway has light and the other doesn't.
I always avoid puzzles because I feel I would make them too easy. This video made me want to give 'em a shot
Do it! I had the same problem, but I just ramped up the difficulty. I had to learn the hard way (by having very frustrated players) that it was only easy, because I myself designed the puzzle in the first place
Ask any DM who has run puzzles; there's no such thing as a puzzle that's too easy.
you gotta learn the group. I have had people struggle with a basic scale and weights (where the door starts opening everytime the scale swings over balanced) for hours (the solution was to balance the scales) and figure out full scale cryptography (heh CRYPT) in a matter of minutes
Because people all think differently DMs think we are making easy puzzles when we are actually not. If the solution is not obvious to you, It will be almost impossible for a player. If the solution is obvious, the players will find the puzzle difficult. If the solution is blatantly obvious, it will be about the right difficulty for most players. A good way to check the functionality of a puzzle is to grab a friend (preferably not from the group) and run them through the puzzle. It can really help you sort it out and streamline it. Often something that makes sense in your head doesn't translate well, or you will forget something/notice a problem, and you will need to adjust the puzzle or the clues.
@@Amehdion Great advice, thank you
Especially don't forget to highlight the puzzle elements when you'll be adding the sand/water/acid of doom. Without the clues, it can end up feeling like just a particularly nasty and vindictive trap.
I made a puzzle once that doubled as a trap. A flooding room witha couple corpses. Soon as the door closed on one side the room starts to fill. The trick is that its an illusion. Fail the per eption and you'll hold your breath til you suffocate. But the perceptive would realise that the water didn't affect the corpses. Once the room was full, if you survived, the other door unlocked. In a party of five, only one person needed to realise it was an illusion and convince the rest of the party, but the panic it created before they realised it was fun.
had fun with a simple puzzle in my last session- there is a treasure chest 40ft up on the ceiling and a switch on the wall when the players pull the switch gravity gently reverses in this room they get the treasure, but now they have to figure out how to get back down.
I liked the count down from 20 room that did nothing. Featured in a Zee Bashaw video
I stole that idea and modified it. Fountain in the middle of the room, when the timer gets to zero, any weapon submerged in the water gets Magic Weapon effect for 1 hour. The cultists were using it to make sure they could fight the devils they were summoning if anything went wrong. I.E. it was never meant for the players.
If you specifically want the puzzle it's the second paragraph, though there's build up to it. Cheers :)
Made a puzzle recently centered around an old cult that mummified their participants and worshiped the dawn (specifically the god Amaunator). A group of intellectuals knew about an old city and they wanted it's knowledge so they hired the PCs and gave them a treasure map that showed the way to an old outpost with a compass on it that pointed at the dawn instead of north. It also said
"In the desert the city awaits with open gates.
Monstrous towers and beautiful city streets.
The dawn of a new day will show you the way.
Looking towards the dawn, the watchers wait."
Following the map and the hints on it (x marks the spot) they traveled through a magically darkened area of desert to an old outpost on the map that showed them where the invisible city of the cult was, similar to the Mummy movie (at dawn with a beam of light through the giant statue worshipping the dawn at the outpost). After reaching the city and avoiding the sand worm for the second time they ran into a trap that activated runes that were 'mostly' covered with sand and activated a bunch of "sand dunes" (hidden skeletons all facing the dawn as though in worship) with the same compass symbol with the dawn part a different color and they found that if they faced the dawn the skeletons would stop attacking them.
Finally the puzzle was in a small round room that had 5 dais's 4 of them had four different symbols on them that looked constellations and the final one in the middle had 5 dials, and there was a small plaque that said "Remember our faith, and we don't ever repeat ourselves." So long story short the constellations were points on the map compass I designed and you had to pick the 4 correct symbols and rotate them on the last Dias correctly so they made the compass without overlapping their lines, and then point the whole thing in the direction of the dawn to open the door to the next room. However every time they failed to get the correct answer the roof would open the first time and then multiple magical lens would shift above them and start amplifying the sunlight and slowly do more and more radiant damage with each wrong answer. Then they fought a mummy lord which my bard tried to convince the he worshipped the same god, and the mummy lord after being convinced asked him to become "immortal" ( mummified lol) and he wasn't so keen about that lol. There was one other trap room before the puzzle that had a pressure plate that released snakes. This whole thing was a one shot for lvl 7 characters and a new player that went over fairly well if anyone else would like to use. I obviously modified a few things, and also thank you if you've actually read this whole thing. I'm not the best DM always but I certainly do my best if this helps anyone else great.
I used to play with some GMs who really did those handouts well. Really well hidden codes in a whole page of hieroglyphs for example. Some rolls told us that the solution of the puzzle would likely be on a certain piece of wall above the door. And the gm really designed that well. That made all the difference! We sat around the table thinking about what to do exactly. Because it WAS a death riddle we had to solve and only as much tries as player characters. We lost 2 out of 5 and made it on the third try. But after the first we took it seriously! And I still remember that as one of my greatest role playing experiences.
Bring a lover of Myst, I should probably be banned from ever trying to make these...
That game drove me crazy. I started thinking about it from the start of this video.
Randy Myer Same here! I never finished it, but some of those puzzles were interesting.
I did a puzzle ones for my party that involved a computer and a shotgun. Basically a shotgun was aimed where it would hit a person who types the wrong code into a computer. The funny part was if you type the right code it also shoots you. The trick was as they went into the room I explain to them that the room was filled with books and bookshelves laying all over the floor. So many books that you couldn’t even see the floor underneath them. I was hoping the party would use the books and the bookshelves to form a barrier between them in the shotgun. Instead they just took turns punching in codes and getting shot in the back. I love my party.
I like to have my puzzles make sense from the perspective of those that design them, in game. The clues I try to embed in the story, or as part of the experience of the place they are in.
In one adventure, the players were in a mansion owned by a giant snail. After a roper-like security system swallowed them all, they found themselves inside a slick spiraling surface, with Ocher Jellies floating about. They soon realized they were inside a massive shell (or were shrunken down within a normal sized shell!) A mass of tentacles also patrolled the shell. The topology of the shell was looped, so that the top of the shell connected to the base in a continuous circuit. There seemed to be no way out. Skeletal remains of past trespassers who had been digested by the jellies were found.
There were some stalactite and stalagmite blemishes on the nacre surface. They noticed one of these was atypically on a wall. Checking that out, they found a draw. Pulling it out, they found engraved a spiraling surface (like a nautilus shell), divided into 7 depressions. In an 8th depression were gathered 7 faceted crystals. The two smallest crystals were of the same size. The other crystals grew in size gradually. Each was inscribed with numbers on the facets in common, from 1-20. Except for their sizes, the crystals were identical. (I had graphics of all of this, and made a really great map, using a real shell as the background, with a hex grid for movement, spiraling about).
One player, who is really into the Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci Sequence, immediately solved the code, placing the crystals in size order into the depressions, with the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 showing. When he did that, the stalactite they were near sprouted filaments and a mouth, pulling them back through to the other side. The draw was there so that the owner could clean out the security shell now and again!
The players loved it, thought it made total sense in game. They were not alone in there, had fun having a battle while stuck inside a shell prison.
I actually followed the steps of liking and subscribing as he was saying them. You made it fun. Well done.
So great that this came up today. I'm currently designing some puzzles. I'll post some of them here when I'm done watching the video.
Nice
Sometimes puzzles show the difference between player intelligence vs character intelligence. I can solve a lot of things out of character. My barbarian with Int as his dump stat? 😬
Also, I remember this cool movie with a puzzle box called, "Hellraiser" where solving the puzzle kinda led to more trouble. As a GM, I find it amusing.
Love the new video style!
holy crap. I watched the whole video and didn't even noticed, that the background is animated. Still, i love it. looks great.
Standing for the video is interesting. It gives a more "presentation" like feel to your, well..presentation ;)
I have one channel that I get notifications for. This is it. This channel has helped me in so many ways becoming a better player and DM. So much insight and detail into why and why not do certain things. These videos always seem to come up in an order that goes with where I am stuck atm in trying to make my campaign better or more intricate.
A puzzle I got good feedback for was once I gave my players a sort of small jigsaw puzzle (using stone square pieces with simple etchings that matched up when fit together properly) to actually solve in order to open a hidden passage.
Playing online via Roll20, I made player-controllable tokens with images of the pieces that they could arrange, but if I were to do the same in-person then drawing some runes on a piece of construction paper then cutting it up would be effective. It was really basic and only took a minute or two to solve, but the tactile experience of actually putting pieces in their correct spots was something that they enjoyed.
I truly love the beginnings of these videos, always makes me laugh.
The ending sold me... I have now liked and subscribed...
Perfectly practical percussive points!
I love puzzles in games. One of my favourites that I did was a bunch of different shape stones on a table and a plaque that said (word to the effect of as I can't remember the actual wording) 'To progress on your quest, make sense of all the stones. A simple perception check revealed that there were embossed shapes on these stones and that some seemed to fit together. Yes, these shapes turned out to be letters. They had to arrange the stones so the letters spelled out the word 'SENSE'..... see they literally were told to make sense.... lmao :P
Thank you so much for sharing this video and steps to create puzzles. I had fun watching it and it was very helpful!
Probably the best way to learn how good puzzle-making is done is to learn how escape rooms work. In addition to the actual rooms, there are card game versions of the same thing. "Unlock!" has good games, for example.
Yea, I wish I'd watched this before I did my first dungeon puzzle. It was a room with four levers and a giant bronze bust of a dragon that spat a fireball out every time the input was wrong. Except, I didn't really give any hints or clues on which combination might be right, or even the first lever or two. Que the one HOUR montage of trying different combos, getting confused on which they'd tried before, etc. Haven't done a puzzle since and the memory haunts me
5th element puzzle with different elemental damage is something i did, also pressure plates with some sequence of symbols in the room also was nicely taken
Really been enjoying your videos lately. Thanks!
Oh, the statue with the arms gave me an idea. Have the players find something reasonably valuable earlier in the adventure, and get to the end and have a statue that has a hand that would perfectly hold that item. So they have to have an inner struggle to give up that item - and if they do they get something even better once the statue moves, or room is found, ect. Just make it take a little effort to figure out the "staff" is missing from the statues other hand, ect. Just a thought. :)
I tend to use puzzles for 2 things: hidden passageways/rooms that lead to treasure but tend to be miss-able, or something that isn't obscure and miss-able, but leads to an optional plot device, like a lich's hidden phylactery. So rather than having to fight the lich, you can merely destroy the phylactery that was hidden by a puzzle device. I never make my puzzles mandatory to the progression of the plot.
Great video! I'm building my first escape room style one-shot and this video was very helpful!
There have been several Escape Room movies. The best one I saw was an independent movie of a guy's birthday party and everyone knows each other. The big budget one had some leaps in logic, and the made for TV one was a cheesy ghost movie.
Most creative way ever of asking for alike, I'm getting to love your videos more and more Sir :-)
I made a home brew dungeon where they all started in separate rooms and in their rooms where a different shaped gem stone.
when they eventually got into the central room there was a double door with no handle and a plinth in the middle with holes in it the shape of the gem stones. Of course they immediately found out each stone was to go into a matching hole and as they did so the door went up bit by bit till all gems where in the plinth. 7 players but 4 minimum needed as the door was high enough for the tallest member to crawl through
Debbie Buckland Simple start that hints that strategy & thinking will be just as important as blades in your world.
Great video! Thank you.
The way you talk, like your cadence.... it reminds me a lot of Rowan Atkinson during his stand up stuff..... and I love it. It's very nice to listen to while I'm drawing. (:
just discoverd your channel...super glad I did.
Currently working on a puzzle themed around sounds.
Players will encounter a room with something in it that they want (have to figure out what), from which they can hear a low hum. Entering the room and inspecting the thing, the players find themselves locked in, as 4 holes in the ceilings open up, and start emitting a shrill sound. This sound will require the players to make a CON save every turn to avoid taking 1d6 thunder damage. Their ways out would be to perceive a message saying "listen to the bats", prompting them to use speak with animals and hear the solution of the puzzle.
The solution would be a simple puzzle underneath the chest containing the thing. If they are too slow, they'd also notice the door starting to take damage from the sounds, making it easier to break through in a panic situation.
Sorry for my English, just woke up. The puzzle is made for 6 lvl 2 PCs
My favorite puzzle was inspired by the game Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. One player had her hand locked into a panel that required her to enter colors into a sequence, and on the other side of the machine was a display revealing what colors to enter.
I had flash cards with different shapes on them, and each shape was a different color. I flashed two sequences that the second player would recite whilst the other player (who couldn't see the cards) wrote down. The third sequence, however, had red, blue, and green *WORDS.* The word "GREEN" would be blue, the word "BLUE" would be red, and the word "RED" would be green. When I flashed this sequence the player hesitated for a second, but was able to successfully call out the *color,* and not the word.
I've since done other puzzles like this, usually with great approval from my players.
The reason I design my dungeons like escape room puzzles is because we don't have a player-character rogue. It's far more entertaining to get the players involved this way than having the NPC rogue just roll to see if opens the door.
Hmm... would this count as a puzzle or a riddle:
Players find a door with two levers either side. Above the door is a dwarven inscription that reads "Panic is your enemy". Anyone that speaks dwarven can read it. If someone tries to go through the doorway, they tread on a pressure plate and doors in front and behind close, trapping them. If the party pulls the L lever, the exit opens and the trapped person can now safely open both doors. If they instead pull the R lever, the ceiling over the doorway starts coming down, and will crush them in, say, 6 turns. The solution is to push the R lever back and then pull the L lever. If they instead panic and pull the L lever without pushing the R lever first, the mechanism speeds up and now they'll be crushed in 3 turns. Continued panic leads to a very messy end to their friend, while reversing the sequence resets the mechanism.
I had a DM did a puzzle for our party. Our party's biggest issue was that there was no visual. My DM insisted that the description was enough. We didn't need a visual and we weren't allowed any dice rolls to give us any clues to which statue to put in next. So we were left to blindly guess. If my character can see something and I'm not allowed to see it allow me to roll to get some sort of clue
That's a problem DM issue. Your game master has made the assumption that the visuals aren't necessary (making it too easy) or that you should be able to figure it out (they did, so you can). Both are short sighted. Some people are visual learners. Some are verbal/auditory learners and others are hands on. A helpful GM will take that into account. Just because she or he figures something out one way, doesn't mean others will do it the same.
I really think that the puzzles in Skyrim's draugr ruins are done well. Every solution is available to view, if you look carefully, and they can also be solved by guessing, though that will usually result in being shot, stabbed, or swarmed by awoken draugr. - I'm talking about the "whale-bird-snake" pylons here.
Sometimes i give all the explanations of the room and read whatever text exists in the room (or have them ready in text), give them handouts of the room so they can see everything and they can solve the puzzle without any further assistance. And once they initiate the puzzle by activating some kind of mechanism, then something deals damage to them (poison filling the room, psionic pulses damaging their brains, anti-life object leaching their life-force, flames heat the room so much that they start to burn, you get the point.)
The damage they receive is activated every-minute in REAL TIME.... Yes.. i put a timer on my phone that beeps every minute. First real-time minute the characters receive 1 point of damage. Second minute they recieve 2 points of damage, and so on and so on. That makes them be ok taking 3-8 minutes but staying beyond 10-15 minutes could kill them. (Depending on level). That creates real-time pressure so make sure people have gone to the toilet or whatever real-life activity anyone needs to do.
This is an older video so maybe it's been updated but here are my 2 cents. Constructed puzzles are there to stop the unwary. It makes little sense to have a puzzle that anyone can just guess. They should target otherwise normal behavior and have a way to avoid them if you know a secret. For example walking down the middle or left side of the hall triggers the trap, but walking down the right side is safe. How do you figure out who triggers the trap? You can't ask "how do you walk down the hall" or you signal a problem and the players will lawyer the thing to death. Have them roll a d6 and if they roll a 1 or 2, they're safe. Did you give clues that the right side is safe? Are they supposed to just stumble through the trap? That depends on how mean you want to be.
I will say, a riddle always seems easier when you are the one to set it up. In addition, I have found some of the simplest puzzles to be the hardest for players to solve.
I like to remain flexible in my solutions. I'll usually have a vague idea of how the puzzle is solved, but if the PCs come up with an answer that makes sense (or is even better than what I had), I give it to them and make it seem like that was the answer all along.
Most hilarious puzzle I ever made was on accident. I was introducing my players to how magic "magic'd" in my universe via a session 1/0.5 dream sequence. The solution was "use school X to will the orb to change to blue." the party did everything except that. This includes using the correct school of magic, but not willing any particular colour, so it just changed to a random colour. After 45min, I had them roll a check and they moved swiftly onward.
Moral: Your players may overthink any given puzzle, if given the chance.
Always have multiple outs for different methods of solving. Intelligence, dexterity/sneaky, and/or brute.
How is the room on the other side different if they smash the puzzle door? What if they “pick” the lock in the puzzle?
What about logically-based puzzles (like Sudoku) where all the information is in one place? Are outside clues necessary?
DUNGEON OF SUDOKU
love the back ground, love the presentation, would love to have a rythmic beat in the background some music perhaps?
Damn it your sarcastic "puzzle" at the end made me actually do it. You are a Gods Damned witch.
One thing I like to do is to design multiple small, thematic puzzles, maybe building on one another, and then decide which is the hardest one and make it optional, perhaps opening the Vault or something.
I like to run puzzle "themes" wherein the puzzles get more complicated but share a core function. I also like to throw in visual math, because I'm a nerd.
Traveling through a temple for a merchant god, they see two statues of a man stacking coins on a checkered table, flanking the door to a small treasure room. Later, they find a statue with a checkered table, and a bunch of sandstone disks strewn about the floor; if they stack the disks on the table in the correct manner, a secret door opens up. They also find hint-y proverbs carved into various holy relics (things like "Sometimes in order to take away, one must first give" and "The wealthiest man is one whose wealth, when multiplied, remains the same").
Farther down, they find two statues with tables flanking a solid stone door, sandstone disks, and a checkered table in the middle of the room which is surrounded by a magic shield and has a bunch of loose sand around its base. The table in the center of the room transforms the sand into disks equal to the total number of disks in each corresponding checkered spot on the two statues; when the center table is arranged correctly, the door opens. The complication is that the middle table operates on sandpile addition; if a stack gets too tall, it "falls over" and spreads to the stacks around it.
The third puzzle has four statues and one table in the middle, shielded and with sand like the second puzzle. In order to get the final reward, all of the statues and the table in the middle must have the same arrangement of stacks.
Only the first puzzle is necessary to solve the quest, but they can get some really cool stuff if they solve all of them.
How does this sound for twist?
There's a huge massive door with a puzzle on it, they solve the puzzle and the door doesn't open, but they hear a rumbling and a smaller door to the left opens and lets them in.
the classic portal big door is actually tiny door
I have been lazy before and purchased actual puzzle boxes and put a note inside with the contents of the box written on them. I have had these as a loot drop. It was annoying at first because the players would get focused on opening the box at the table to mixed success.
I think if I ever do run a campaign I will borrow the puzzles from the old DOS games I played as a kid like Indiana Jones and the Secret of Atlantis or Full Throttle.
The way I do puzzles is; if they solve it they don't have to fight the nasty monster. If they can't figure the puzzle out, then swords and spells will have to come out. Give them the same XP either way, but some sort of extra (boon, item, information, etc.) if they solve the puzzle.
I was thinking of making a one shot D&D-adventure in a escaperoom fashion. Any tips or anyone who has done this before :-D
There was a decent direct to video movie where a guy and his friends go to one as a birthday gift. The big budget movie had some leaps in logic.
Puzzles do not test the mental capacity of the characters at all. If you are not using dice in statistics to resolve this then it is clearly only designed for the players. Which is okay if that's what you want to occur but we do not expect a barbarian to show up do a session and bench press 300 lb to prove that they could force open a stuck door so I don't know why we expect players to show up and "be clever" to progress.
They can have some problems and/or suck. Players coming off a long shift may not be able to do it. Hints may be easily missed or not unlocked by appropriate skill checks. Puzzling is its own skill like code-breaking. Many problems.
This is really helpful, thank you!
"Can I just roll intelligence to figure out this puzzle, DM?"
To be fair, the puzzle was supposed to be hard, because the reward at the end was supposed to be immeasurable. No one else at the table was contributing, either, because I don't know why. It was supposed to be a proximity trap, because the dungeon was alive, so being next to certain things would make certain areas open up. So, rather than figure out the puzzle manually, they just wanted to figure out the bypass. Okay, but you don't find any of the secret doors, or any of the treasure that was being kept behind those secret doors. You just find the way through.
Had a DM that all of his traps are instant death. If you mess it up you die. If the rogue fails to spot it you die. If the rogue fails removing it you die. Which, sure, if you're looking for the most realistic traps imaginable, they're going to all be instant death, but this isn't reality, this is fantasy. It's supposed to be fun and suspenseful. The rogue's body crumpling up on the ground because he touched a panel on the wall isn't that. The rogue's arm getting trapped in the panel as a section of ceiling slowly descends down upon him to both sever his hand and crush his body and the party rolling initiative to try to get the rogue out of danger before he gets squished is.
On my campaign, I don't use puzzles. Just clues to let them discover a person's intentions. They can find belongings, pictures, scribbled notes. If they don't find them, they do go in blind and the person will most likely have them completely fooled.. Still gives the pcs something to solve but much more in a way that flows with my world.
Great video!
Running a Scifi game and want to try out puzzles. Not a creative guy so forming it is kinda aggrivating. Basically one player is in the control room and needs to direct power as needed to certain systems, allowing the rest to progress to the main server to manually reboot and power the servers to unlock access to the AI core.
Control will have 5 points to allocate for the relevant systems, each system needing a certain amount of points, forcing the player to have to change up power direction to allow the party to pass to the next area whilw preserving enough energy to secure a route back
If you want to use a logic puzzle, but you can't make logic puzzles to save your life, try buying a book of logic puzzles (I like Penny Press) and reskinning it to fit your campaign.
I am using the app, Einstein's Riddle Logic Puzzles. I'm looking forward to seeing if they like it. I have the pieces printed out and clues they will hear to solve it. We'll see...
'OoOh, we got TOYS' 😂
I needed this!! Thank you!!
My husband told me that once their GM threw at them a prop which consisted of a real pork heart with a message inside of it. They had to open it.
A short warning story - Don't get enamored by your puzzle:
I had a (normally quite good) GM who hated party splitting. So, of course, some of the players split the party and I'm working to rejoin those who went off on their own.
They go to a major quest goal, an obviously magical tower. One person simply puts his hand on the wall and a doorway appears in the brick wall and lets them in, then seals shut again/disappears.
I catch up to the tower. I look around. I find nothing. I rather than jumping to the solution I try a few things my character would jump to 1st. They don't work.
Ok, enough playing, I'll do the thing the players have seen work (putting my hand on the wall) - it doesn't work.
I try damaging the wall, roll high (and have an applicable skill), no effect.
I roll high for an insight check (and have a magic based character), and learn nothing other than the wall is magically protected from damage and that energy seems to have no limit.
After 5min of just my character trying (and trying and trying), I still have NO CLUES to get in.
He moves on to the players inside the tower.
Anytime I or anyone else thinks of anything, I try it. HALF an hour of this goes by.
I tell the GM, "Look, you hate party splitting. I've been trying to join the rest of the party.
I know you are proud of your puzzle and all...
but no one at the table has any clue how solve it.
You haven't given enough information.
You have denied attempts to access by alternative means.
You've denied insight for the single most qualified person on our team for magical knowledge.
You know the solution, because either you came up with it or read it. You have that pre-knowledge, - but for all we know the door has a 100year timelock or something.
So, my character gives up.
Either you bring some external help - or my character walks the 7 day journey back to the town and tells the employer we can't complete the quest because it's locked behind an un-openable magic wall.
I'll just grab my stuff and go, because spending the entire game session beating my head into the wall is boring and annoying."
He did let my character in after that, but I honestly can't remember how, because what stood out was how frustrating the experience was.
*So, remember that and consider the effect on your players. If the solution is stand on your tip-toes while holding a blue object in your left hand - then your players NEED way(s) (
This is precisely the point of why I asked if I could contact you.
"What's the combination here?"
"Standing man, sitting man, scroll, standing man."
*Inputs combination*
"My word, I think I've unlocked the... facilities."
this is so helpful thank you
I have definitely been in the ......... wait...... we are trying to solve a puzzle? this was a puzzle??? situation before as a player. It's so frustrating
24.40 matt collville style "doobly doo"
@How to be a Great Game Master Any recommendations on using text ciphers for ancient tombs and the like? Easy ones like pig pen or a simple ceaser shift?
My puzzle: 3 chests: two are mimics, and 1 is real. There will be a riddle for each chest. This puzzle would be great for a Egyptian tomb in a cursed desert.
New background 👍
What is that song in the intro (starting at 1:15)? I swear I've heard several times in TH-cam videos, and it's been bugging me lately.
Rest in peace, DragonKingZero. My boi died waiting for the intro song name
I do find it difficult to justify the puzzle's existence, or the fact that it mechanically works.
I mean, watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the traps were cool but super unbelievable.
His pitfall example:
Pull the lever Kronk!
Very good
I've enjoyed all your vids. Informative and entertaining. You're provocative as well as charming and adorable.
You forgot the most important point, always let the Wookiee win. If a puzzle is unable to be completed then let it be brute forced. Everything can be solved time and time again with copious amounts of brute force in the world of D&D. A pickaxe and a sledgehammer can solve just about anything unless it has to do with fixing something or magic.
Sadly, our group can be easily stymied by a fork in a corridor, two doors, and nothing perceivable beyond them. Almost anything that involves a decision, really.
Our GM will often let us use generic WIS/INT rolls to try and figure out what's going on.
i had had parties like that before... just throw them the infamous "Countdown Puzzle". and carefully teach them ;) most times i see indecisive party was because the dm was too serious about everything
@@eliasvernieri there's a couple of us with characters who tend to go 'eh, I'ma opening *this* door - perception roll!' As you might guess, sometimes this goes better than others, but it's always entertaining (rogue/bard crashing a succubus party, fighter & paladin crashing a greater demon summoning, monk crashing an empty room (with an illusory floor!)) xD Our GM is awesome though, and has the patience of a saint (has to be, since we're more of a social group than a dedicated rp group), but yes, he does sometimes play the 'whilst you've been deliberating, xyz has happened...' card.
Thx
An example of the look failing is in Indiana Jones and the temple of doom.
Tell me how, without some kind of light sensors or lasers, does putting your hand into the light trigger a bamboo spear trap?
Crushing walls, pressure plates, bugs, levers, and giant boulders I could buy.... but light sensitive bamboo is just dumb. Also, how did it reset itself with a dead body already on it?
These people don't even have plumbing, how do they know mechanical engineering?
I would love to have you as a dm. Have or will you ever film yourself dming? I think i could learb alot
They ALWAYS roll a 1 or a 2 or a 3 when I finally say, "ok, roll an intelligence check" to try to get them through when they fail. And if I say that they succeed, they know they are getting charity and don't like it.
Vids look great
If you just want his totally off-topic opinion about gender equality in fantasy role playing games with basically no segue skip to 13:30....
I don't understand how some people think women's equality is not okay in European high fantasy but dragons and wizards are fine.
@@scarletrose2880 I guess so, since it seems that's the only thing you're able to take away. And perhaps that's what you came here for in the first place.
And to answer your first question: because dragons and wizards don't cringe.
@@mateusz3844 you serious dude? I watch his channels because I like his videos and this one in particular has a lot of good information. That's why it's so irritating that something like "women's equality is not realistic" which jumps right out of nowhere. Your second comment is bullshit and you know it. If a world, especially one that takes place in an rpg in which all genders can participate has magical casters and mythical races, women in that setting shouldn't be treated as second class citizens only because it is very loosely based on medieval Europe. especially if you have women at the gaming table. Dnd is about having fun and everyone get to be a part of that not just straight white men.
@@scarletrose2880 Scarlet, I was just teasing you. No harm intended ;)
You won't always have a player at your table that's a career escape room veteran
I’m going to go play sort my sock drawer lol
"Access to exit"
Also known as "egress"
You rolled... four. You.... eeeaaaghhh... passed...
So I guess I just had a big obstacle that was weight balance related... I called it a puzzle, but guess it wasn’t?
PC’s in a “whisper cave” (loud noises released poison gas from fungi all around huge cavern) .. there’s an opening (ala Indiana Jones Last Crusade) with a thin loooong stone bridge, that ended up having 1 support in middle like a big teeter-tauter.. long fall into water which lead to secret tunnels that would still get pc’s to end room...
but PC’s ‘broke’ it.. never teetered once, or found the secret cave opening that woulda appeared if they all just rode the teeter down on the opposite end...
Nope cast spider climb on the heaviest PC (a Tortle) who walked around the cavern on the walls then held the other end as PCs crosses to center, then tied a rope off with a loop around the thin stone bridge I described so when the PCs crossed it couldn’t go down..
I’m glad they solved/broke it, they still had to think to come up with solution and made the session interesting ... but yeah I was prepared with side scrolling online map and a balanced bridge that would go up or down as pcs moved across.. but the bridge never moved. Hahahaha
I'm a big fan of what I call the Natural Puzzle. It's seen in a lot of platforming video games or exploration games. The obstacle is not an obvious puzzle meant to be a lock. I don't like puzzle locks. The best way to keep someone out is a key. Puzzles don't keep bad people out. They keep stupid people out.
However, in the case of a Natural Puzzle, the problem isn't man made. Or rather, it's not intentional. It's a collapsed bridge, or a room without light, or a disconnected power source or something.
In my dungeon design I ask three questions: What was it's original purpose? What went wrong? What's changed?
This helps inform puzzle design. Here is an example:
The party is searching for an ancient research facility. The facility long ago was above ground, but a great disaster buried it beneath the ground.
The doors that gave access to this facility can only be seen in daylight, but having been buried underground (what went wrong) there appears to be no entrances.
When the party arrive, they find a series of camps from an excavation that came before them (what's changed). The camps are empty and abandoned, and carry some clues (including several large mirrors, some broken, some not fully set up), before leading them through dark underground tunnels and to the walls of this facility.
Investigation could lead to notes about the security of the hidden doors, and some thinking will bring them to think of the mirrors and after that they should realise that the mirrors can be used to bring daylight down to the buried facility, allowing them to reveal the entrance. Inside they'll discover the original purpose of the facility, which is hinted at by the nature of its security up to this point.
I always hate making puzzles precisely because the notion of a puzzle to keep someone out, in MOST situations, is pretty stupid. Just use a damn key (or magical key). Of course, you could design a dungeon that was made with the purpose of testing whoever went inside of it, so, in that case, it would make sense. Or maybe if all magic that can lock things also involves a puzzle in your setting, so there is no "aboslute" locking magic. But I really like this idea of natural puzzles, I will try to think of it in the future. Thanks for your perspective! :D
@@son_guhun Yes, those types of puzzles I categorize as Trials. Riddles fall under those, as well. They can still be fun, as long as it's purpose is a test. Or even a transformation. I did a thing one campaign where when the players reached level 15 they were at a threshold they needed help to get past, in their growth. The Wizard had reached the limits of what a mortal could do on their own (it was a setting of low power level similar to Eberron) and had to go through this magical labyrinth created by the goddess of magic herself that was mostly a lot of puzzles.
@@dm_ex_machina3395 Another use of trials-type puzzles that I enjoy is the lesson/warning puzzles where you have to use a bit of lore gleaned from the environment to progress through the dungeon -> e.g. a powerful artefact is sealed away unless someone enters a sequence of symbols found in a poem that laments those killed by a villain who used the artefact for evil in the past; or a castle infected by a plague is sealed unless they correctly mix the antidote.
> "They keep stupid people out"
I agree that no one would ever use puzzles like that. But such puzzles are still fun for players and therefore worth having, so with a little extra worldbuilding they can make sense. First, always pair them with actual security like a key; the players need the key and also to solve the problem. Second, make the solution to the puzzle thematic: for example, a religion or cult may leave a puzzle with a theme that forces people to think about their doctrines. An individual may leave a puzzle as a memento based on details from that person's life, such as the name of a loved one. Wizards may have left a logical puzzle to ensure that an important book didn't fall into stupid hands. And so on.
selylidne Exactly! In my current campaign, the BBEG is a long-term strategist. He’s been a war general, & built up a wealthy trading company. He also happens to be a vampire. The city his family was given by the king (for vanquishing a brood/coven of vampires, actually) is split into 3 by a river. A river he can’t cross as a vampire, technically. His solution is a tunnel that goes under the river, & a special bridge rebuilt so that its interior includes soil from his home all the way across the length.
Anyway, he solves problems & does not harbor idiots well. His tunnel includes a puzzle of stone guardians that form a triangle blocking a constructed entrance to/from his keep.
It’s the triangle & pegs game from Cracker Barrel restaurant.
My players couldn’t figure out how it worked. I let them all roll INT & WIS, and it was the child NPC with them that got the roll! “It’s a game! It’s a game! We play to jump over each other.”
Suddenly all the players did facepalm - duhhhh, they got it, and we progressed quickly.
Result was any remaining “pegs”, the guardians, not eliminated became animated and guarded the entrance in full phalanx defense & attack mode.
Interestingly, players decided NOT to continue forward because they had burned their spells & HP. So when they return, the “game” will have changed! It’s magic is coded to up the strategic challenge each time.
Still thinking about what the next challenge will be - maybe checkers or GO, with the players themselves being the pieces in one side.
My favourite puzzle experience came with my first time running a campaign. I was introducing new players to D & D 3.5 and wanted them to experience all the fun stuff. So they are tracking down a necromancer baddie. As they fight off various types of undead they find on their vanquished foes slips of paper with a series of holes in them. They come to the doors to the inner sanctum where the baddie is hiding out and find a wall with words randomly inscribed on it. Opposite the wall is a shimmering rod. A few quick checks reveal it is a rod of light. There is a slot in front of the rod which I described as exactly perfect for holding slips of paper. Then a few INT and WIS rolls later they slid one of the slips of paper into the slot. The paper blocked the light from the rod except for the spots where there were holes in the paper. Light shone through the holes. Each beam of light fell on a different word on the opposite wall. The first sentence made this way was "An awful bard boisterously belted ballads.". There were a series of 6 switches near the door. Switch up was A, switch center was OFF, switch down was B. All switches were currently in the OFF position. The newbs got it in three tries. AABBBB. The gate in front of the door opened revealing a second set of switches. They switched out the first paper for the second and got "A brave barbarian always battles boisterously". At this point the guy who was helping me with the campaign came in with coffees. We asked him to try solving the riddle\puzzle to open the door. His character was a very clever rogue\thief. Several rolls later he still couldn't get it. The newbs were leaping out of their skins (figuratively). They were proud to show him how the riddle\puzzle worked. Once the doors opened, combat with the baddie began. The baddie lost, of course. The newbs got the loot and returned to town. They were heros. They were hooked. They have been gaming ever since. They never realized my mentor dm was faking his inability to solve the puzzle
iddle.
Im probably insanely late for this but anyway
You guys are realy good personne, in the way you're able to purposedly look dumb / not show off your ability to do this and that, just for the sake of making your players feel proud, this is rare enough to notice it, good job lads.
Dice a great if players need hints. Intelligence and wisdom rolls to see if the characters can figure out what they might figure out.
I as a player have not lived an hour in your head, but my character has lived his entire life in your world. Knowledge rolls to make me the player aware of something that my character would know is also helpful.
This is how I do puzzle solving in my games. If the character has a 19 intelligence, I would expect them to work out clues to a puzzle even if the player themselves can't.
I find that the "idea roll" mechanic from call of cthulhu is great for any rpg, if the players are stuck you get them to roll an int check to provide a clue or help them to figure out what their character is starting to piece together, should be a staple in all games imo, even if it's purely used for puzzles
Nope. If they can't figure the puzzles out, they don't deserve the treasure. They don't get "hints".
horrible advice thanks@@Aaron-mj9ie
*Party member enters wrong combination*
"A trap door opens above you, and several snake skeletons rain down upon your character. Someone seems to have forgotten that snakes need water."
Love these videos by the way, beginning the steps to writing my first short campaign and they have been a TREMENDOUS help.
I like the idea of puzzles as an alternative to combat; put an encounter with a monster/enemy the PC's know they aren't capable of fighting, but set it up so that the environment can be used to weaken or defeat the enemy. Like breaking a sluice to flood a tunnel and wash away a lethal swarm of some kind.
Quite possibnly my favourite puzzle comes from Island of the Lizard King.
Hobgoblin bridge guard "What is the password."
Player "What?"
Hobgoblin bridge guard "..... Yeah... That's right. What IS the password. Pass friend."
:D
Next, you must tell me Who is on first . . .
i read that 4 times before understanding
I'm stealing that.
You can thank Ian Livingstone for that, one of the co founders of Games Workshop and founder of Eidos.
Thank you Ian Livingstone.
I have my first real puzzle coming up in our campaign. An escape room situation. I decided to give multiple solutions, as we have a large group and I know different people go at things differently, so this is a good test to see how they do it, and different methods will apply to different characters better. And I put it on a timer. And then, as a safety measure, the door has a strength check of 50, wide enough for three to press against it, so worse comes to worse, they just knock down the door.
Thats my kind of GM: if all else fails break the bastard down :D Though I think solving the puzzle should offer a greater reward.
I’d be careful about creating too many solutions. Sometimes rather than feeling empowered they feel confused by the multiple options.
While I applaud having a few different solutions I'll caution you this, if its possible to skip the puzzle by breaking down the door, the party will. Assume they will always break whatever you put in front of them unless it can't be broken. I once put a cave-in in front of them, with the dead end only supposed to be a clue and they used the spell shape earth to go THROUGH it.
I guess it depends on the players if they first try to solve the puzzle or to break things down. If it's the latter maybe give them a fear bonus once they triggered enough traps. So if they try to break the door down initially they are unable, but once the characters realize their lives depend on it, the get a burst of strength. Though like people above me said: it's good to give them some disadvantage like alerting enemies through the noise caused by breaking the door.