Top 10 Puzzles to Add to a Dungeon in DnD 5E
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- When it comes to puzzles in dungeons, they can don't necessarily have to be dangerous, or even that difficult. Sometimes all you need to make a good puzzle is just to find all the clues, and then solve a very simple riddle and your good to go. And in this video we'll be going over 10 puzzles you can add to your game, that you can also modify easily so the answers are not obvious.
Video edited by Selty and Pumpkinswift
-The List-
Intro: (0:00)
10-Three Slit Door: (0:18)
9- Force Wall Color : (1:40)
8- Lever Room: (2:21)
7- Animal Statue Room: (4:07)
6- Do As I Do Statue : (5:37)
5- Order Of Operations: (7:10)
4- Blood Fountain: (8:20)
3- Build Your Own Number Puzzle: (9:25)
2- Three Steps Ahead Cipher: (10:51)
1- Dragon's Mouth: (12:09)
-Social Media-
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- #DnD #5e #DungeonsAndDragons
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Heard this one from a friend. The Sword in the Mirror. The set up is simple. There is a mirror with a magic sword sticking out of the face. In the example I heard it was a vorpal sword. The mirror is magic and difficult to destroy, and destroying the mirror destoys the sword. Any character can try to pull the sword out of the mirror. The catch is their reflection also pulls on the sword. How to get the sword out?
Solution: Obscure the reflection. Fog the mirror or turn out all the lights so the reflection can not be seen. With no reflection to pull on the sword, it comes free easily.
This puzzle can be used with any item a GM wants, such as keys to unlockable doors or plot trinkets.
I love that idea!
@@kevinbarber2795 Glad that this puzzle will spread.
I have a practical use for this.
Wizards mansion with a mirrored door intended for use by Unseen Servants only. Pull handle or knob instead of Vorpal weapon in this case of course.
Easy peasy. Simply turn out the lights. No light. No reflection. Or paint the mirror.
@@resilientfarmsanddesignstu1702 Correct.
The room of six: There's six statues, six torches, six of whatever you want to describe to players. In the center, there is a lever. Pulling it and letting go does nothing, unless you pull it and keep it pulled for exactly six seconds, in which case a secret is revealed. You can add a ticking noise while the lever is held to get your players to realize something is up with it, or a punishment if it's held for the incorrect amount of time.
Neat
6. Statue with a sword.
Statue do a bunch of harmless poses, where the last one is stabbing himself through the heart. If player attempts this, inform him, that he will die. The solution is to remove the sword from the statue before the event, and then copy it without the sword (no killing himself at the end).
OMG this is a great idea, I love it
I had a dungeon once with a bunch of easier-than-you-think puzzles.
There was a rectangular room with a chasm in the middle and a thin (but stable) stone bridge over to the other side.
On the other side was a wall with a big brasscolored door covered in 20 different keyholes.
In the air over the chasm were bubbles floating, each of them containing a different key.
...
The door was not locked, and the solution was simply to walk up to the door and open it. :)
I also had another room which was cylinder shaped. No features on the wall at all except for the door they came in through, and the door they want to proceed through, plus a 1 meter tall pillar in the middle, about 2 decimeters wide, with a big red button on top of it, and a skeleton in a corner.
The moment they entered the room, the doors slam shut, and a ticking sound is heard, and the roof starts to slowly crawl downwards.
Eventually the players may (or may not) press the button in panic... which does reset the roof to the top again, but it only opens the door they came from.
Eventually they figured out that hey... the pillar is intact, the skeleton is intact, and there is no hole in the roof to accomodate the pillar...... so they just waited, and allowed the roof to go down.
When the roof was JUST about to reach the pillar with the button, it stopped right before.... and the progress-door opened... which they had to crawl too because the roof was now just 1 meter above the ground, but yeah, the solution was simply to do nothing, and wait. :P
I also learned just yesterday that apparently, Tomb of Horrors was a variant of the button room I mentioned, but without the collapsing roof. So apparently I made an upgraded version of that puzzle without even knowing about it. :3
Meaning nothing personal, but as a player, I would absolutely hate you for that first 'puzzle'. That's deliberate misdirection. If the party has no clue, at any point whatsoever, that they were never meant to try the keys, then you're just wasting time with a puzzle that you think is 'clever', but ends up being a disappointment, imo. Again, I don't mean this in a hurtful manner, but that would be really uncool and I would not be pleased if that were to happen to me. I call that wasting people's time for no good reason.
The second one, on the other hand, is absolutely brilliant and I would love that one. It sets up visual clues and solutions just from thinking logically and finding the solution that way. That one would get high praise from me.
So you've got a bit of a mix going here. Did the players you had for the first puzzle enjoy the solution? Did they waste a lot of time on the keys before they figured out they meant nothing? I would be absolutely livid if that happened to me. Pointless misdirection disguised as a clever, but ultimately meaningless puzzle. The second one was much, much better.
I had made a puzzle for my endgame dungeon, it goes like this: in a dark room the party finds 4 books in each corner of the room and in the middle of the room a statue of a woman being stabbed in the chest, with other 4 holes in other parts of her body, each of the 4 books tell a similar stories with diferent endings, in the end of each stories a priest is killed, but the person that did that and with what type of blade and where in her body did they stab is always different, on the other rooms of the dungeon they always found weird daggers and swords somewhere, and each one fit the descriptions of the weapons used to kill the woman, after they had put each dagger and sword in the right place the doors behind the statue is open so they can fight the final boss of the campaign.
6 statues of humans in different poses
One flexing muscles (strength)
One pulling a bow (dexterity)
One drinking poison (constitution)
One thinking (intelligence)
One playing chess (wisdom)
And One talking (charisma)
Each has a bowl in front of it so the players must put an item associated with that ability.
I had a puzzle encounter I made for one of my games.
On an isolated place you found the handle of a weapon on the ground, as if the weapon was buried and only the handle was sticking out. Any character that reached would push all the other characters away about 50' and the triggering character about 10'. Then the handle would raise in the air and a shadowy figure resembling the triggering character would materialize the same kind of weapon that character typically uses and will challenge them to a duel, making the first move (For casters, the weapon is a focus, and the shadow casts the same spells as they do). The shadow imitates their techniques, and is invulnerable to anyone but the triggering character. After the first act of aggression it is expected for the players to retaliate and continue the challenge. If the character leaves the 50' radius area the shadow disappears and the encounter resets.
Here you have two variants, either the shadow is also invulnerable to them, or any damage they deal to the shadow is also dealt to the triggering character. The shadow also mimics the character's stats, so they're effectively fighting themselves.
The solution for the encounter is for them to stop the aggression, by either getting a hold of the opponent's weapon, or stop fighting by either offering their own weapon to the shadow, or gracefully and voluntarily surrendering to the shadow. Doing so would make the shadow to do the same and allow the triggering character to take the handle of the weapon and complete the encounter.
This puzzle could also be used as a test by a powerful magic user, a fae, or even a legendary martial instructor, to see if the characters are all about just blind bloodlust, or they have the capacity to actually think in the middle of battle.
Reminds me of a Final Fantasy game that included the job system, and one of them was "Mime". To best beat the boss who inhabits that job crystal, you're supposed to do nothing, like he does. He will only attack in retaliation.
I've watched four different videos about d&d puzzles, and this is the only one that actually gave me some ideas. Thank you.
I especially like the one where the characters turn into animals to solve a puzzle. That is a step up from the body swapping swimming pool from Jumanji 2.
I would really have expected the button and cooldown one on this list.
There is a button at the center of a room that starts a countdown from 10 to 0. Pushing the button reset the cooldown. Once the countdown ends the door open.
It might not seems much but adventurers tends to push the button a lot of time by fear of the countdown. And it can stay up for a loooooong time.
yeah got fooled by this one. took us around 30 minutes to figure out of not more.
If you really want to trick them further, as the countdown reaches 0, you can hear rumble or noises like everything is about to cave in, and the noises reset as the button is pressed. If you want an explanation, maybe the noises and rumbling are the gears of this old contraption starting to move, but since it's an old dungeon, everything is kinda rusty and makes noise.
My main problem with puzzles is that there often is no in-story reason for them to exist. Thinking up a reason for a puzzle is harder than making a puzzle, to me at least.
In my game, I made something very similar to #3, but with a sequence of abstract animal pictures to represent the numbers. Like spider for 8 (legs), starfish for 5, or even something like a cat for 9 (lives).
And to prevent brute forcing they would get shocked and take lightning damage every time they push a wrong number, but that didn't happen. =)
ImpHax0r
1 month ago (edited)
In my game, I made something very similar to #3, but with a sequence of abstract animal pictures to represent the numbers. Like spider for 8 (legs), starfish for 5, or even something like a cat for 9 (lives).
You see, this is more inventive.
That's some really cool traps! Thanks a lot man, you saved my day!
I've always used the greatest puzzle of them all
A mundane wooden unlocked door
And in second place: a harmless long hallway.
Great video - very nice inspiration to put together something fun for my players. Thank you 🙂
I love the random rosemi bits hidden throughout your videos on your several channels.
Thx for cool puzzles!
Love the animal statue puzzle, especially with player agency as to choosing different animal options ... to me that's a great way to do some trade offs with ability scores or HP... for instance perhaps choosing the spider will be the quickest way to get to the item at the top of X room, but once you become a spider you have to save vs CON or take 5 points of poison damage from the initial change your body went through, etc.
These are great. I like the animal transformation idea and hope to use something like thins in a future campaign.
I have to admit that if I was running the do as I do puzzle the statues would light up in sequence as the statues actions were copied by my players and when the third one lit up the room would fill with poisonous gas.( The actual solution being to just take the key off the third statue)
It doesn't really do anything special, but when I make my puzzles, I like to make the hints to the solution in rhyme form.
For example, my last puzzle was a fairly straightforward one (or so I thought). The party came across a graveyard that had exactly 9 graves in a 3 by 3 pattern. Each gravestone has a button on top. Before the puzzle starts, the party must fight and defeat a grave guard plus some skeletons or whatever else is a fitting threat to the group in question. Upon killing them, they'll find a note that says:
Prowess in battle, you have shown
Now a test for mind, not brawn
Start bottom west for this hoard
Solve this puzzle for your reward
Star that shines brightest at night
Push that button without fright
Then to the east, two stones take
Leave this be, you must forsake
But one step back, is this the one?
Hit that trigger, perhaps you've won.
First line means nothing. It's just fluff to congratulate the group and inform them this is the clue to the puzzle. Second one means the first gravestone button they need to push is the one in the bottom corner on the west side. Third line: 'stars that shines brightest at night' means the north star, meaning the party has to go one grave up to the north and push that button. To aid with this one, I also put the marking of a star on the gravestone. The next one means they have to move two graves over to the east but they can't push that button. And the last line means that they need to step back on gravestone (to the south) and hits its button to reveal the secret treasure.
Sadly, my party did not figure it out from those hints and I ended up having to metagame a tiny bit to push them on their way. They choked on the 'north star' reference, telling me it was 'clever, but too obscure' and that, while they enjoyed the brainteaser, it felt a little bit disjointed, with every other clue being fairly easy to solve, but the north star one being in stark contrast to the others by being overly complicated and difficult. Still, they encouraged me to keep going this way and try to work on consistency, so hopefully I'll get the next one right!
I really like the tree steps ahead puzzle it's unique enough to make you think but still inspired enough to not be overly complicated
It is a simple Ceasar Code, the most basic cipher in existence, accompanied by a rhyme to give you the key.
Neat enough, but far from "inspired".^^
It was a nice rhyme, I give you that.
Hey I seen my cards pop up. Very cool. Also a good video. Nice job
I saw the blood one done differently in a way I liked and made more “sense.” There’s a pool of water blessed in some way and you need to dunk yourself in it to not get hurt by jets of flame in the hallway, that go off no matter what when someone enters. Trickier to see footprints though.
The dungeon was also wickedly set up so that you only got to the water side if you took one path in an early fork, but could easily go the other path and end up on the opposite side, ie, you’d go through and take fire damage, then arrive at the pool and maybe never learn that it protects you. There was no purpose to the trap (blocking, guarding, containing) because you could explore the entire rest of the map without ever needing to go through the hallway! 🤣
Hello D&DL, really appreciate trap videos. They are the curve ball of D&D. I would suggest an old school Trap video. False door (or trapped false door), secret door trap (5x5 room filled with skulls, when opened, skulls come crashing down), green slime (sprayed onto its victim), you get idea.
Thanks D&DL, you have a wonderful day!
Love the DnD Community so much, thanks alot for all the great ideas from the video and from all the Comments! Much love and have fun adventurers!
Super simple mirror statue puzzle every video game uses. Statues or pictures or anything else really. A complete, or partially broken solution side the party can use for clues and the puzzle pieces which has to be placed in the exact same order as the solution side. Part of the solution side can be destroyed or moved in such a way that the party has to find the missing pieces or a missing part of the solution that they need to complete it.
Good list. One of our most stressful episodes had one member needed to do one of those slider style puzzles while the rest of the party was in intense combat. Talk about stress!!
thank you thank you thank you!
One is a real classic. It f any of the players are a big fan of Classic Doctor Who or the movie Labyrinth, they will know it. There are two statues one always is true the other always lies. There are also two levers. The characters get one question to ask one statue.on which lever to pull. The solution is to ask one of the statues (doesn’t matter which one) if I were to ask the other what would the answer be? That converts both to lying and pull the lever not told.
stupid puzzle "are you talking?" or "are you a statue?" works
@@GeoffreyBronson I don’t think it is a stupid puzzle. However, the solution is simple, one can only lie, the other can only tell the truth. So, convert both to liars. Then pick the other option.
You missed the part where they only get 1 question. So if you ask are you a statue, regardless of the answer, you can't also ask which level to pull
@@GeoffreyBronson
So I didn't finish watching BUT I WILL, great video, it got to the animal statue room and I got inspired sssooo...im just going to steal the animal statue puzzle from RE0 because no one in my group but me has played resident evil lol
I am making a simple one where a room is wallpapered with a deck of illusions where they have to "fight" all the monsters in the deck except most are illusions and only some are real. To figure out the one that are real instead of wasting turns hitting illusions, there is a riddle you can use numbers/face card references to point them to the correct cards to fight.
bro has a channel for everything, I wouldn't be surprised to find a top-ten list for events at my high school, or if somebody starts making AI generated The__Logs episodes
I've been working on my first puzzle off which I would love to get feedback. The adventurers havent been to that location yet, so ^^ ... My puzzle is a "Door of worthy" which leads into the Royal Guardroom "hall of knights". The adventurers notice that the doorhandles consist of two overlapping swords creating a cross blocking the door from opening. And a text saying "thy who are worthy may enter". It looks like you need to grab both at the same time to uncross them to open the door. Only the ones who are worthy (in my campaign 1 player is from the royal guards bloodline) on a try to open, will succeed as the door seems to open by itself. The players can make a str check to try to uncross the swords. On any roll they will succeed to open the door, but if its opened by an unworthy it opens with a lot of struggle and when the last one is inside it slams close behind them. A cold fog hovers over the floor as the room sems to become chilly cold. Than all need to make a (charisma/wisdom ?) saving check. They need to succeed on a (18) or a (12) for the worthy, as an unworthy opend it. Who fails will see armored statues animate and attack them. (all dmge is psycological) Who succeeds will just see the party fighting with nothing, as nothing is attacking them. They can try to snap the others out of it by solving the puzzle. As (2 options which i dont know is more fun to go for) 1; the player(s) who succeeded will see the statues change into an attack stance when the door shuts. Whenever they put one in a defensive state that guard disappears from the fight. If you do this on the leader, they all follow into a defensive state. OR 2; Place a sword that lies on the table into the hands of the leaders statue his empty hands. If all players failed, the fight can be canceld by winning or I could tell them the same clues with a perception check.
As for breaking walls, I'd roll it to see if destroying the wall would cause the ceiling to collapse and clearly state that the party would know that most walls hold up whatever is above
However, if a PC is a dwarf or Mason (via the Guild Artisan or some of background), they could identify which walls have supporting beams/pillars/etc.
If the wall by the door just so happens to not be one holding up the roof, then I'd allow them to break the wall instead of use the door
Yo wtf, I didn't know the duel logs had a d&d channel. That sangan video makes more sense now
By The exemples that you Gave, I am worry about your players mind, and thanks for The vídeo
Simple trap/strategy.
Party steps on a pressure plate in a hall and a gate/portculis slams down. 50/50 which side you're on. Bad guys rush out ... divide and conquer.
Yes
For me not so much a puzzle as a lesson in evil a crystal clear gelatinous cube maze with a black marble floor and a path made of black rock salt and with one floor panel that poisoned and one slowly walking skeleton minotaur
that dour thing sounds like a shield to me.
I came up with a puzzle for my game. Have a long room with a staircase going from the entrance to the prize. In front of the entrance is a high platform with a lever on it. The only way to access the platform is to climb or fly. When they pull the lever normally as an action, nothing noticeable happens. Near the prize is a pedestal and a large statue. When they touch the pedestal, they're put under a psuedo-Time Stop effect, basically Time Stop but time is being dilated to the extreme instead of stopped completely but they suffer a level of exhaustion afterwards if they can't cast the spell on their own. Should you try and fly in this room, the statue (which is indestructible) fires rays that mimic the Earthbind spell (or an Anti-Magic Ray if they're only using magical flight). While under the psuedo-Time Stop, it's once per round. If the lever is pulled while under the psuedo-Time Stop, the prize opens. The lever normally opens the prize, but it is going too fast to be noticeable or interactable in real time. Should the psuedo-Time Stop end before getting the prize, it closes like normal. Add flavor text and decorations as you see fit.
One puzzle I made involved an expanded chess board and various black pieces placed in different spots. The black pieces would hurt players and eject them to the starting area of the room if they went into a spot that piece could attack. There were also white knights on the board representing safe spaces that the players could stand on regardless of whether a black piece could attack that space. Players were also restricted to no diagonal movement relative to the board, only the "up down left right" movement.
I could have used other white pieces in addition to knights, but I thought the joke about white knights and safe spaces was too good to be taken out. Although it seemed too subtle for anyone to pick up on.
I spent too long trying to solve that 10 number puzzle myself and during so I noticed the toke on on the left of the door if Valish Gant from rime of the frost maiden. Intentional or just random? If so please tell me, I'm running that book and like to hear other people's experience.
Here are two nasty puzzle traps intended by a wizard to keep smart people out of his lair while he is absent or preoccupied. Pose a riddle that if solved leads to a trap. What I did was to pose a riddle that leads to a trap but only if you continue forward. The riddle was one that a sorcerer would likely know. If they detect the trap disarm it and continue to move forward they will encounter another riddle and another trap and so on. Thus the trap is a trap to any rival sorcerer and his hired thief, etc. that might be attempted to rob the place. Characters that fall for the trap say that it isn’t fair. I disagree. I think that it is just the kind of a trap that a wizard might set. You can similarly set a trap where the clear up trapped way forward leads to the lair of a monster which is the real trap. Again, players might think this is unfair but a relatively immobile monster like a Roper or a spider WOULD likely position themselves at the end of such a funnel, so again, perfectly fair.
Oh that's cool they included a vtuber in the spider image
13:00 It will fill the remove with fire? :D
Ah yes. The moon spider statue.
Wait… I recognise that voice… Yugioh Archetype Lore explainer guy??
5:07 Vtuber Spider spotted
7,3,2
Comic relief ogre traps. (Traps that ogres designed)
👍🏻
One puzzle im going to use soon is having a door with five different colored locks on it and by doing diffrent things the party gets four of the keys. The trick is there are only four keys and they just needed to make a strength check to break down the door. Like I said I have yet to use it so I have no idea how its going to go
"Probably a Terrible One to Throw at metagamers who will have no problem dunking hteir characters head in blood"
(Two towns later)
"How did you get EVERY STD?"
That sounds a lot like punishing your gamers. I prefere just not playing with that type of people. (Keeps my player pool small, but my roleplay enjoyable.)
That said, I once did something like that and it did feel great.
One VtM player begged me to get the merit, where he does not get blood bonded, so he could fuck with the other players, bonding them and pretending it was mutual. That asll desoite his newly made vampire knew nothing about blood bonds, but he insistet his character would think it fun to drink from each other anyway.
He also wanted to play a Malavian, vampires that all have at least one mental ilness. I do not allow them often, despirte being my favourites, because they are hard to play realistically and still group friendly. I allowed it on the base, that I would choose the mental illness to inherit at embrace.
Another player had a genetic illness, that was not pretty. There is a rule of such illnesses to be inherited at 10% probability, when drinking the blood of the sick person.
The illness I had picked for the asshat player was a binge drinking disorder, even bolemic tendencies. He would regularly consume so much blood, kill most of his victims and then barf up half of it not even getting that much nourishment out of it.
Don't fuck with me as a GM. We are supposed to be a group that tells a story. There is no winning in being the most powerful or hated player.
I knew he would ruin the chronicle. I made sure, that it was ruined for him.
Top 10 ways to travel the planes (faerie circles, Alkiliths, Cubic gate, etc...)
What about adding the hardest puzzle type of all time, the Draugr tomb puzzles!
They would actually be really good in a satirical setting tbh
is this hirumaredx?!
These aren't very good puzzles for the most part, if you describe sharp teeth or danger to a party then you are training them to be wary of danger, later when there is actual danger they will remember these "troll" puzzles and walk face first into a trap that an instant KO you and feel cheated
My party took 30min to open the sliding door puzzle
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You can find that video here.
th-cam.com/video/muQiiWr9CNE/w-d-xo.html
I'm pretty much going to steal puzzle ideas from Legends of the Hidden Temple.
A chain puzzle.
There is a metal-reinforced door that players need to get through. The door is held shut by 3 metal bars that prevent players from pulling the door open.
The bars stick out from a mechanism inside the wall, and the walls are too strong to be destroyed by normal means.
From the ceiling, there are several chains with handles at their ends -- dangling from open holes in the ceiling.
Players will obviously try to start pulling on the chains to see what they do.
Some of the chains move the bars, some of the chains activate traps in the room, and some of the chains spawn monsters that attack the players.
The players will think that a combination of pulls will remove all of the bars and free the door so that they can open it.
None of the chains actually move all of the bars. The trick to the puzzle is that the players were always able to push the bars into the mechanism to free the door.
You're just jerkin' their chains! Hahaha, gotta love a puzzle with humor in it.
#1 and #9 are almost the same and are both non-puzzles. Out of these "top 10", I find at least 5 are a waste of time to even set up. Some of the suggestions in the comments, however, are really interesting and worth your time.
It is always in the comments. I am taking notes here.^^
Here's a variation of #2 that makes it much harder to work out if they've already had a couple of easy ones.
Instead of the clue that tells you to shift each letter by a constant amount, the clue is the value of Pi (or square-root or 2, or any other infinite series) to at least as many significant digits as there are letters in the coded message. Each letter is offset by the value of the corresponding digit. As a way to make it more cryptic, the key might have fewer digits than there are letters, so it has to be repeated multiple times with each even-numbered pass shifting the letters in the opposite direction. The beauty of this cypher is that the same letter appearing multiple times in the encoded message will probably translate to different letters in the final version.
I just do a Google search for “easy puzzles for 5 year olds”
Our Dungeon master had the bright idea of using your "Build your own number puzzle". He copied the exact text on the screen which misses a key component you told but didn't write on text. "Equals the numbers created by the middle two digits". What do you mean by middle here? How is digit 6 and 7 the middle when you have 9 digits. It could also be necessary letting people know that there are 9 digits in total. We wasted 2 hours due to the missing clues.Thanks a bunch.
idk these traps an tricks feel like they are just annoying
none of them are a real deterrent
just use real traps
th-cam.com/users/shortsUjXYM-BUIHs
th-cam.com/users/shortsdzs_7YXFUoQ
th-cam.com/video/9MWGhn2u52Q/w-d-xo.html
all of these are simple and fit any dungeon
they don't need to be complex or magical
simple things like an elevator that only goes down
An elevator, that only goes down is a cool variant for a partly reversed dungeon.
Will the group clear each level and then go further down or will they make the boss encounter harder for themselves by going straight down without gaining knowledge about the mechanics or other usebull stuff, but wih full HP? Later they still have to fight through the dungeon when taking the stairs.
@@Haexxchen the elevator can also be disguised as a hallway or room
and activates when more than 500 lb enters the room
so lets say you use goblins
they only weigh 40 lb so you can have 9 of them (a full gang with full equipment) safely in the room
but two or three full grown men with equipment will activate the trap
this allows you to safely populate the dungeon
as well as keep other bigger monsters in the lower levels
like a 700 lb minotaur and 500 lb trolls
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These puzzles are bad. Monsters and NPCs always have sound logical reasons to create puzzles -- typically to keep out, trap, or kill (just the reverse of traps but often paired with them). There are no puzzles in my campaigns that are just there for the hell of it
Man, I love puzzles, but there is seldomly a good reason to use them.
I was so stoked to finally put in some puzzles last week, when my players went through a training facility of the baddies. (They actuall now have keycards for the bunker, because they successfully went through the leadership training course.^^)
What circumstances do you use for your puzzles?
@@Haexxchen I use puzzles (broadly defined) virtually everywhere but here are a few examples. To navigate the sea caves and get into the Pirates lair, you have to understand the navigational and hazard codes painted on the wall of the caves otherwise you will likely get into a trap. The pirate king has a ciphered riddle to open his chest. It is a play on words double meanings and pirate nautical lingo. You need to figure out the cipher and Know the lingo solve the riddle, screw up and you have a trap. Thieves, hobos, rangers, druids, etc. etc. all use symbols. Enchanted areas are puzzles of a sort. There are puzzles everywhere. No one expends resources to make a puzzle or a trap unless there is a reason to do so. Who is being excluded or harmed by the puzzle and trap, who is being helped, how and why?
I've put plenty of puzzles in a room just for the hell of it. 😂
Depends on play style I guess.
Usually though I try to reward the players in some way. Like right now I'm here because they'll need to get a key by solving a puzzle in a room in order to progress, I just have no idea what that puzzle should be.
@@mr_h831 You are correct of course. My world tends to have its own logic, philosophy, even religion. It's about ethics which players learn through play. It is certainly also very interesting, fun and challenging as well so players for the most part don't realize that the game is really a philosophy and ethics lesson. But I can see that if the purpose of play is just entertainment and to have a good time with good friends then you can do whatever you like. It doesn't have to be logical, rational, philosophical or even ethical. It just has to be fun. And that's OK, I'm perfectly fine with that type of game but that isn't my game.
10 is a bad puzzle.
9 isn't a puzzle, just an unfair set-up to trick your players.
8 is a trap, not a puzzle.
7 actually is a puzzle and pretty good one.
6 is a puzzle, but not a challenging one.
5 is a decent puzzle.
4 is an okay puzzle... but what's with the hate on roleplayers in a roleplaying game?
3 is a good logic puzzle.
2 is a good cypher puzzle.
1 is a trap, not a puzzle... again.
A trap is just a puzzle, that hurts you, when you don't solve it.
If you don't make a trap a puzzle, you can just tell the players to decuct HP at random intervals...
But I agree, that there were not many good puzzles, most were very basic unusable stuff. Also to add, 2 was not a good cipher puzzle, it was one that just told you the key and left you with some labor.
No more puzzles please!
The first one with the three slits is from Tomb of Horrors (1978) going into room 24. It even has the antimagic spell on it.
Do you always simply steal these ideas?
"A bunch of levers" isn't a puzzle. A bunch of things to do one after another is also not a puzzle.
None of this is inventive in any way.
You weren't paying attention then. At the start of the video he says that these are from different adventure books, but he wasn't going to say which ones so he doesn't spoil it for anyone.
@@aubroski3962
"You weren't paying attention then."
Apparently I wasn't. LOL!
None of these are even remotely decent puzzles. I played the first one with the three slits many years ago. It added about 2 minutes to the games and was not particularly inventive.
I liked the ne with the animal statues.
But instead of making it easier with choosing the perfect animal, I would limit the choice and also do it in one big intimidating room.@@SamIAm-kz4hg
By definition they are puzzles. Just bad ones.
A puzzle is any obstacle, that requires some thinking to go over. That includes locked doors, riddles, traps, some boss mechanics, ...
If there is a bunch of levers, you have to find out which to use and when. For instance, if there are more levers than players, you gotta figure out how to get to them all in the limited time.
If there are slits in the door, you need to find out what their purpose is.
I have been working on my own "How to create a puzzle" book for a few weeks and you would not believe how much stuff is just a slight variation, yet changes the whole feel of a puzzle and how elaborated some people think, they are making their stuff, without ever leaving the basic concept.
Puzzles are hard. I am happy for anyone out there t bring them to the people
I am also happy for anyone who points out theweaknesses of puzzles and tells others how to make them better.
Think over your definition of puzzle and try not to gatekeep "proper puzzles". Just say you prefere more immersive and complicated ones. It is okay for others to want it easy.