A personal favorite puzzle of mine that I created was a puzzle that messed with their overthinking. A gargoyle appears before a big stone door and hands the players a rock. He says “You must answer my riddle! Answer wrong, and you die!! What... is this?” The answer is: a rock. But my players immediately shot to overthinking the puzzle, casting Identify and trying to get good History checks on the rock. They think and think and think and then finally one of them said, “What could it be?? This is just a rock!” And with that, the gargoyle said, “Correct!” and then disappears and the door swings open.
I doubt every player around that table enjoyed waiting around for what must have been a bit of an underwhelming solution. It's more of a meta game joke on the players than an actual challenge
@@Jeppezzzful They all tend to enjoy well placed puzzles, but they know that they will sometimes overanalyze things. So when I revealed the answer, we all got a good laugh out of it.
Yesterday, my player: I love everything we're doing but would love some more puzzles! Yesterday, me: I'll do my best, but not sure how to do them right! Today, the Dudes:
Newer DM here, I had one room that was basically a sealed off square (60’ x 60') with an entrance in one corner and a treasure chest in the opposite corner. Burning torches lined the perimeter of the room and the floor was obviously tiled (2ft or 3ft tiles). The tiles were trick tiles of course, place pressure on a bad tile and it would fall away into the endless pit below. Place pressure on a 'safe' tile and it would support the player's weight. My players were still relatively low level at the time, so they had to traverse it by foot. There were 3 paths that were ‘safe’ but 2 were dead ends with the 3rd leading to the chest. I realized quickly that all my players had to do was just methodically test each tile as they went and that they were going to just work through the puzzle in a rather slow and boring way (Should have seen that coming). I then had one of those awesome on the spot DM moments… I decided to make the first torch by the entrance snuff out on its own. “Pufft” The players were like, “What did that?” as they mulled it over for a minute questioning potential reasons, “Pufft” the next torch extinguished. My players looked at each other with the startled realization that this boring puzzle had suddenly become timed. It got them engaged real quick and their rising panic as they worked across the room while I occasionally tutted “Pufft” was one of the most delicious moments I have had so far as a DM.
Nice! I have a similar puzzle set up for my next dungeon. It's a 5 x 5 set of rooms with doors on every wall. When they enter, they get locked in and have to go through one of the 3 doors presented to them. However, every room they leave gets flooded, so they have to keep moving and can't backtrack. One of the rooms is the exit. It's not difficult at all, just stressful.
Same. Spend hours researching mechanics and proper tactics for challenging encounters just for players to get some good rolls and be done in 10 minutes like "Next?"
One of the best puzzles that I ever made as a DM was the lair of a Pirate. The lair was subjected to tidal flooding and was strategical and purposely located in an area similar to the Bay of Fundy. The party had to negotiate the tunnels with the aid of an escaped mining slave guide (who was a hunchback from having been forced to stoop as a mine slave since he was a child. He was thrown down a mine shaft by the Pirates and presumed dead but managed to escape. He is not an invalid and has lots of knowledge and skill but he has physical limitations and can't be allowed to die. If he does, it's a virtual certainty that the rest of the party will likewise die). The party had to negotiate this maze and all it's traps as that was their only way into the fortress. The flood waters rose and fell periodically covering passageways, revealing others presenting physical, chemical and biological and radiological hazards. Falls, drowning, collapse, lacerations, anoxic, explosive and toxic gas etc. Pirate traps, Presenting and preventing access to air, land and waterborne monsters etc. Chances to separate the party and be swept away. There were mechanisms to drain or flood areas, ventilation shafts. Boats, diving gear etc. Pirate riddles and ciphers etc. Players solved it eventually but asked to play it again a few months later and after that they wanted to play it again a year later. There are several ways to win and lots of ways to lose and die.
I improvised a puzzle for my players once because I ran out of time in planning. I had a sentient door tell the party to make him laugh. The Sorcerer made a door related pun on the spot and it opened.
A great one for this is have the sentient door say "knock knock" then "*** who" when the players interact with it. If the players respond with a knock-knock joke then the door opens, otherwise it responds with "boo" or "not funny".
One of my favorite moments was having an early-campaign BBEG write a nonsense "riddle" over a door in order to buy herself time. I'd set up her character well enough that the players were pissed off at her rather than me, and felt all the more satisfied when they finally took her down.
I had a classic “speak friend and enter” type puzzle but way easier Even gave them hints that, if they didn’t mind leaving a trail, they could break through the door easily My players were completely stumped, took them 20 minutes of their own insistence to accidentally get the answer But a combination locked based on tangentially related NPC names meant to be hard and optional? They got it in 5 seconds
One of my favourite puzzles here, I was a player. This is my favourite less because of the puzzle itself, but more for how my DM handled an idea I had, which still made me feel smart without completely bypassing the puzzle: We were in a dungeon, and came across a big stone door. The door had 4 divots in it, which were clearly meant to hold some sort of maguffin that'd allow the door to unlock. My DM forgot that he'd given me a very specific - and, honestly, kinda strong - homebrew magic ring: a Thief's Masterkey ring. It contained a set of Thieve's Tools, but more importantly, it contained a SILENT version of the Knock spell. So I, of course, tried it on the door. Here's why my DM is a goddamned genius: It would've been so easy for him to say "Mm, doesn't work. Next." But he didn't. He let it work - to an extent. As soon as I used the ring to cast knock, one of the slots became filled with a glowing magical energy. We still had to find the other 3 items, but hoo boy, we shaved a quarter of the time of that puzzle off. I felt super smart for finding a cool workaround, and my DM still got to use most of his puzzle! I think he just got rid of the most "boring" of the 4 item rooms, so we still got to enjoy the other 3 (one of which involved one of our party members almost being replaced by a doppelganger lmao).Good fuckin' times.
I mean the knock spell does say that if a door has more than one lock, it unlocks one of them. If you treat these notches as locks, then knock would unlock one
My friends have long wondered where I get all my “octopus clothes” as they were always unique to me. I fear my players may learn my secrets as Kelly so often wears the same brand as me 😂
@@raivoturpa the brand is Hi My Name is Mark, a clothing brand of blink-182’s Mark Hoppus. Tips: the clothes are both fitted and shrink (especially the women’s), I’ve found I typically need a size larger than normal. I’ve only ever bought clothes that are discounted/on sale, as they become fairly cheap/affordable
@@BradNeff *****SPOILER ALERT***** - - - - - - - I remember "Nothing" being the answer to that riddle. So the proper action would have been to "drink" from an empty cup. The choices (milk, beer, water, etc) were all red herrings.
I remember thinking that nothing was the answer when watching it but I thought I read a comment from monte saying that wasn't it. Maybe I'm mistaken though.
What was off to the right side of the camera? Monty was thoroughly distracted during much of this. in particular, during the Challenge the Players and characters segment where Kelly was speaking, Monty absolutely could not stop looking at something off to his right (viewers left). Is this a puzzle for us to solve? I rolled 14 investigation.
My brother designed a battle puzzle where the party needed to defeat two elementals in separate rooms within the same turn. If one was defeated, but the other survived, the first would respawn with half its hp.
My favorite puzzles are very subtle and straightforward and tend to promote simple problem solving. Often, I don’t even have a solution myself planned out. A 60ft wide ravine that has a bridge that is hanging from only one side, the puzzle is, the bridge is out, that’s it. They are trying to get directions of where the tower is, but the local guy at the tavern gives them directions based on local landmarks and local terms, despite the road signs indicating directions to cities, it helps to take notes. For complex caves and dungeons, I load in multiple copies of the same map in Roll20 but rotate them 90 to 270 degrees, when they try and leave, unless they brought chalk, they tend to get themselves lost. Sometimes the passageway is just blocked by rubble, they have to figure out a way passed it. Or, previous adventures tried to smoke out the goblins, but now the cave is filled with smoke. The spike pit has already been tripped and adventurers hang impaled, in the dead adventures pocket is a list of all their notes of all the traps, but no map is found. Hints at the puzzles are provided, but which is which. Simple things like, how to navigate through a corn field might present themselves as straight forward initially but can often lead to ingenious problem solving. The other thing is, my players don’t groan at these situations, instead they are familiar with these issues and tend to all jump in. Also, they often don’t take a whole lot of prep, and I don’t need to have the answer planned.
Wasn't it XP to level 3 who said "for puzzles, use whatever you find on the back of a cereal box, you'd be surprised how many players will still struggle."
I recently built a "maze" I'm quite proud of. They were essentially walking around the surface of a d20. Had to obscure it by making the rooms hexagons, and inky black doorways between rooms. The rooms were then fill with various monsters correlated to numbers, eg. Nothic=1, Ettin=2, Roving Mauler=5, ect. Players had to walk through the rooms in a certain order after they figured out the numbering.
As a puzzle fan who has problems seeing why a boss would use a puzzle a part of their defences, you have inspired me. That sewer grate thing at the beginning. It's not a puzzle, just specialised knowledge. One would learn how the levers and sluices would interact on their first week of sewer worker training, but... Without a mentor... or a handbook... in a hurry... IT'S A PUZZLE!
OMG! I just realized the simplest puzzle that actually would make sense in "real life." A filing system! Your PCs have a limited amount of time to find the Macguffin, and they have broken into the storage chamber, where they know it is (along with a bunch of stuff that has no value to them), and they have to figure out the owner's filing system, because it's not standard alphabetic, numeric, or chronological. The "hint" they get would be, "My new assistant organized the place, but then died in mysterious circumstances, and I can't FIND anything! I used to have it all in the order I collected the items, but she came along and said how that was so inefficient, and she had a much better system, so I let her reorganize it, but she never did teach me her system." As to whether or not the new system actually is more efficient, that's up to you. It could be organized by size, by color, by "author" (or creator), by subject matter, such as an alphabetical list not of the names of the objects but of what they do. So, the scroll for Rary's Telepathic Bond would be under C, for "Communication." It should be fairly obvious, once you figure out the connection, and you should have some clues, such as how the assistant organized her own desk. As a former temp worker, I can tell you, I have encountered some real doozies of organization systems, but I had the benefit of being taught the system before I was allowed to file anything. In one place, only the secretary was allowed to put anything away, for fear people would put it in the wrong spot, and it would never be found again. So, the collector needs his thing? Or the lawyer needs his case file? Maybe your players need information on some ancient plans for the layout of a sewer system, and the plans are kept at city hall, but the archivist in charge can't find it, because of the new filing system, and says, "If you can find it, you're welcome to it." Of course, you have to go through some social shenanigans for him to even admit the reason he's being so unhelpful is because he's overwhelmed, and can't find it, and he's breaking all kinds of rules to let you in there, but it's the only way, and he's about ready to just walk out of the job. Maybe he DOES walk out, but he allows you into the file/storage room to retrieve whatever it is you want, if you can find it. And if your players give up in disgust and just burn all the records, well, they'll have to deal with the consequences.
7:15 Now I am thinking of an eccentric wizard who locked his McGuffin behind a door that can only open when 4 characters sing "I believe in miracles" with a coreographed dance. (He can open it using Mirror Image, and does so because he is crazy and loves the song)
I had a powerful, chaotic (neutral) wizard who created a tower of wonders. Almost every room had a puzzle, and the players finally figured out that even the most illogical, silly action could solve each puzzle. That was the point. He was subtly teaching lessons (teamwork, thinking outside the box, etc.)
My Magnum Opus is often used for hot-starts, breaking into the dungeon, while "pre-heating" player communication. A *"lockpicking map"* team game; a printed maze of 1-inch lines and multiple, easily-seen paths. 1 Player draws a path with their eyes closed; their party says/shouts which directions to go or stop. They have to figure out their own method. 7Mins(!) violin-tension later and they finally made it into that first room, all cooperating and **communicating** 🥲 The same puzzle backwards took 6m 😂 still with shouting. Absolutely steal this idea, especially if your players drink beer.
One of the best combat puzzles I have come across for new players is what I sum up as the "all actions" puzzle. Basically to teach new players all the actions they can actually take in combat you add some clues in a dungeon saying something cryptic like "Battles conclude with satisfaction to those that have taken every action" and then you lock them in a room with skeletons that continue to rise or something until the party has taken every possible combat action. Fill the place with levers and switches to traps and fun stuff and as the DM keep checking off your list until conclusion. I've rewarded players who took the most variety with a boon or item sometimes.
A good way around puzzle skipping is to make the puzzle open a secret door, while the obvious locked door that can be broken through leads the wrong way, to a combat, a hint, or a cursed version of the item they are looking for
Gate of wisdom, a door that only opens when the correct answer is given. "To ventute forth beyond this door, you must answer this riddle of yore, don't worry, the answer is easy. How do you divide 100 silver among 3 people?"
in their defense, I'm not playing a character in dnd right now, im listening to the guy who kept repeating "there are several empty cups" talk about puzzle, I'm in the right mindset to pick apart your exact words :P
So much legitimate praise in the comments but no-one ever mentions your language! Thank you both for caring enough to use language that accurately describes what you want to convey and takes measures to avoid misconfusion. When you've experienced how frustrating it is when people don't do this, videos like this are a godsend
I am running a side quest in my groups campaign to give our DM a small break and the puzzle I made locked the party in a dimensional room that was on the fritz, it was located in the fire plane so the party was taking 1d4 fire dmg every minute or two. there was writing on the door out that said show me only wealth and you may pass, across from the door was a large statue of a skull looking at the door, also in the room was pedestals with red herrings like a gold bar, a spherical stone, a goblet with jewels and an empty pedestal. Covering all the words except wealth would allow the party to exit. my whole party exclaimed after they wasted their time on the red herrings and solved the puzzle, YOU LORD OF THE RINGSD US!
My favorite puzzle to throw at players actually comes from Resident Evil 4. Or at least, the poem is. "In front of you is a large stone door. There are 4 holes in it that look like they can hold something. On the door is an inscription: Bread begins the meal of life, Meat allows us to savor the time at hand, one more Drink before the glass breaks, Returning us to Dust from whence we came." The solution for this in my games is that each hole needs to hold a certain type of item. From left to right, the players are to put Bread, any kind of meat, something that can be drank, and finally, some dust.
"steal portal levels" you say. Back in my Barracks D&D 3.5 game, I joked about doing that. "You wake up on a bed in a strange featureless room. A disembodied voice says, 'Welcome to Aperture Alchemy. We hope you've enjoyed your...'" was as far as I got before one of the other Marines went "AAAAAAA thecakeisalie! thecakeisalie! thecakeisalie!!!!"
One of my favorite dungeons I've made was built by a Warlock of the great old one who went insane and, like his own mind, the tower has too much in it for what's possible. It uses various noneuclidian geometry to create a maze of reality bending puzzles.
creating great puzzles: 1: make them as easy as possible, kindergarten level at most 2: watch your party fumble and overanalyse it 3: after an hour, give up and let whatever they come up with solve the puzzle to get on with the rest of the session
Just started watching you dudes after a couple months playing a family D&D session with my cousins. Been fun adding some info from your videos to our sessions!
Best puzzle was the drinks 🍸 and how your players fell for It on a live stream. I'm not good at puzzles and the idea of doing them on a live play would be brutal.
@@3nertia Watch there 1st live play season. Look at there play list. It's a great season with good players who know how to play the game and a fantastic DM
Could you give a quick run down on the drink puzzle? I'm not likely to have time to go chase it down in a live play video - unless someone would kindly link to the video (and the time stamp). Thanks!
@@carold.8782 Episode 22, Down the Hatch, around 2:32:00 Spoilers . . . . . . PCs had to choose the correct drink from a lineup in order to open a secret door. There was a riddle which gave the correct answer (“nothing”, or the empty glass) and the PCs all incorrectly drank from flasks which wound up being secretly filled with sleeping potions. They paid dearly for this failure.
I ran a puzzle for my D&D group. It was a "maze" that was colored or decorated with one particular element (air, earth, fire, and water). There were 4 keys (silver, adamantine, gold, and mithril) and the rings were placed on an altar signifying north, south, east and west. Each room had fours doors. Depending on what color or decoration of the room determined which key and door to use it on. If they chose the wrong key or wrong door, then it triggered the trap on the door that resembled the element of the room in which they should be going. The party were pretty paranoid and surprisingly looked like they weren't going to make it, until they discovered the pattern involved. The further they went through the maze, they found themselves in bigger rooms, which provides more than the standard 4 doors (but if one side of the room was supposed to be used, they would discover that either door used would be safe). Also I had some rooms decorated with volcanoes (fire or earth?) or colored purple (fire or water?). I didn't want the maze to be too easy.
One that I liked in my previous dungeon was a door at the end of a hallway lit with torches. On the door, it said: "I open for those who follow the path of darkness." The solution was simply to put out the torches.
Watching this sounded to me like where I include a puzzle I should make the solution require creativity on the part of the player and play to the character's strengths.
I've also found that it is good to have two or more viable solutions to a given puzzle, as it reduces the likelihood of getting srump due to one clue or missed info.
Challenging the player vs the character is tricky ... there is a similar issue with persuasion where the player in question tend to matter more than charisma or skill proficiency just like your example with the suduko savvy barbarian player.
I saw yesterday a video of a 3d printed clock that has a center piece that rotates in a circle and flip's end over end. It was very geary and ornate. I thought it would be great for a party to find and assemble the core components and assemble the clock because it's a mechanical key to a locked tomb.
I made a really clever puzzle for my season finale. It was great. Put about 3 hours into designing it. One of my players just vibed with it and solved it in under 30 seconds. I was gutted, he was ecstatic, the other 3 players were just amazed. Be prepared for this. Also, it's totally fine to build puzzles which can easily be solved by a skill on the character sheet. It makes that player feel good about the skill they took. But be aware of this and don't spend too long on creating the actual puzzle.
Here it is Google draconic font. Or DnD 5e Dwarven Font. Then, using the font, I wrote four words; SHADOW EARTH FIRE LIGHT I described 4 clear orbs in front of a dragon statue and gave them the handout describing it as the engraving under the statue. When the players asked about the inscription I said "You don't understand the language but you seem to recall it from a tome you own" There's actually a conversion chart in the PHB. Each time the players touched the orbs coloured light appeared inside in this order, red, gold, black, green, blue. When they set the orbs to black (shadow), green (earth) red (fire) gold (light), left to right, the puzzle is solved. If at any point all 4 orbs are the same colour, the dragon statue would breathe on them to match the colour. Eg necrotic for black, lightning for blue, acid for green.
Lay out 3 random items for example. Dragon scale Orcs toe Crabs claw The room has a table with 3 shelves each 1 holds one of the 3 items on the other side is a door design above it is a few runes that say something like "He who overthinks, often fails the obvious" The way you solve this is Is just push/open the door. Watch your players try to use all these useless items to open a unlocked door
I don't have a lot of experience with puzzles. As a player, my favorite was when a DM split the party into two rooms with a barrier we could see through, but nothing material could pass. We had to arrange the statues in the rooms to match, including using a scroll of Enlarge/Reduce on one, but we had to figure out which side it needed to be used on. My favorite as the DM was using a piece of the environment I had previously described 5 times or so as the key to a basic puzzle on a door. The player who solved it liked it to, as I basically rewarded him for paying attention to the description of the castle they were in.
You can always do the lazy option: Come up with puzzles that is ambiguous, don’t have a solution for it yourself, but let the players come up with the solution, and if you like their answer, make it the correct one at the spot 😜
IMHO every problem the players must solve is a puzzle. FREX: How to get inside the stronghold when there are 40 guards divided among 3 shifts covering the walls and stout metal gates etc etc etc?
I used a puzzle for my party to fix an icecream machine. I was expecting someone to whip out a spell but they decided to open it up and I made the puzzle up in the spot 😬 they loved it
1998 the DM asked us “I am darker than a balor’s desire. I am more beautiful than the Goddess of Love. Dead men eat of me And living men who eat of me die. What is my name?” Monty knows the answer.
The most fun puzzle we got played by was a locked room scenario. We found a room, the rogue was scouting and darted in without thinking. The door closed, leaving the party outside. The only thing in the room was a lever and a voice started to count down, "Ten, nine, eight, seven....". Our rogue tried the lever and restarted the count down. We were trying to open the lock or break down this massive door, while she reset the count down over and over. Finally, when we were partway through, she gave up and let the countdown continue. When it hit zero, the door opened! All that stress and frantic puzzle solving and it was simple and there was no danger! It was a great memorable puzzle!
Actually had a DM run almost that exact same puzzle, except instead of a vocal count down there was a floating hourglass iirc and they kept turning the hourglass. I think the room kept losing light as it ran out, the circle of darkness closing in, and it reset when they just flipped it over? It's been many years so I can't remember exactly, but of course just waiting it out lead to the doors opening.
I'm planning an even more stressful version of this puzzle. I made an underwater dungeon and one of the room is going to close on them like this and start filling up with water. The lever in the middle will drain it, but the door will only open when there's enough pressure from the water. I'm throwing in a combat encounter as well so they have to juggle between combat and handling the lever.
One method to test "the character" and mot the player is to give the player either a different puzzle based on their character's intelligence give them the same puzzle but more hints. So you hand the int level 20 wizard "what is 2+2" and you hand your barbarian a recipe for orange chicken written in Mandarin. Or for the same-puzzle route, where the extra hints make things obvious - and the opposite of what no hints gestures vaguely at - and watch the fun diegetic arguments unfold.
Just a thought, but you could combine PC checks with player challenge. To use the sudoku example, any characters who want to attempt to solve it make an intelligence check, and the DM uses that to determine the difficulty of the sudoku given to the player. Players have to solve the one given to them for their character to succeed.
We once had a puzzle we had to solve to get into the next room in a dungeon. The center of the room we were in had a raised dais with a pile of over 2 dozen tiles on it. Each tile had unique emblem on it. One of the walls in the room was decorated with a mural that had all the same emblems at various heights along the length. We eventually settled on the strategy of using the combination of Polymorphing one character into an octopus and Animate Objects to place each tile over the matching emblem, which successfully caused the mural wall to split open and allow us access to that next room. Afterwards, the DM told us all we had to do was place the tiles on the floor touching the wall underneath the matching emblem. But at least our sorceror now had an ample supply of items for to use Animate Objects on later.
If you want an easy math based puzzle, use the elephant fountain puzzle from Die Hard With A Vengence, they never actually solve it on screen, and it only requires simple arithmetic and sound logic. The movie uses a 3 gallon jug and a 5 gallon jug to get 4 gallons, but you can use 4 and 7 to get 6, or 5 and 9 to get 8. You can further hide this puzzle by multiplying all values by the same multiple of 10.
The best puzzles are made when you set up every piece of information into places the players will find and have to decipher. Then throw away 1d6 pieces of the puzzle and grab the popcorn
Idk how you do it, but all your content is always super useful and really quite well put together. Thank you guys for the reliable quality, and expertise:)
My favorite puzzle advice: ALWAYS HAVE A BYPASS. I designed what I thought would be a fairly easy button pressing puzzle based on lore I had repeated multiple times through the session. I had pieces of that lore be keys to other puzzles, such as the "silent hall" where you take psychic echo damage except when you speak the names of the gods, and the "hall of the gods" where the only safe paths spell the name of two gods to which the dungeon was dedicated. (Thank you Indiana Jones) There were plaques in each area giving clues and a giant mural in the entranceway showing daily life with the influence of the gods. The final puzzle was essentially a bank vault with "press the logo for each god in the order their names appear above the engraved door, then press the center icon." My players basically said "this is too hard" and walked away from it. Thankfully I had already designed a secondary door with options to smash it or pick the lock. The DCs for each option were very difficult, but doable. Now I design EVERY encounter with multiple solutions.
Great job, Dudes! Thanks for this topic which can be a really rewarding aspect of a D&D game. One of my favorite series of modules, The Prophecy of Brie series, was published in Polyhedron in the 80's, and I had to wait for my kids to grow up and start playing D&D to actually run it. So. . . 30 years later I finally got my chance, and it was amazing, even to the horrible puns in the wizard's tower. It starts out with a prophecy which the players keep as a handout, and becomes more pertinent as the campaign progresses. There were some challenging points, but if you leave multiple clues it seems to work out well. Missing a clue typically resulted in a tougher or unnecessary combat encounter, not instant death.
Dangit, I JUST had my first puzzle heavy session for my home game 2 days ago! Luckily it was a big success, until they ran into the demilich at the end and 4 out of 5 failed their con save against the howl...
I made a puzzle room with a piano, inspired by Batman the animated series. There is a piano, and a sheet that says '"Play dead or die. Do (Red D) it wrong and you'll be (red E) flat. If you're sharp(red A), you will live another day (red d).' If they play the chords, D flat, E flat, A Sharp, and D Sharp, in that order the door opens. If they play the wrong notes, depending if its a flat or a sharp, they have to dodge either a crushing pillar or a sharp blade.
That's great IF they know musical notation, what chords are, and the difference between flats and sharps. So, my niece would know, but I don't know about the rest of my players. I know I don't.
I never force the players to solve my puzzles, but more often than not it is in their best interest. For instance solving the puzzle might reveal treasure or disarm traps in the area up ahead making it the safer route, but not the required one.
yes, good point about the red herrings and about other things to avoid. puzzles can be so much fun as parts of exploration or solving problems toward advancing the campaign
I've found that even the best GMs often don't possesses the completely separate skill set that is puzzle design. I've also noticed that many puzzles don't fit well within a world's fiction, as often whoever built the puzzle would be better served by not providing a way for randos to access the thing they put behind a puzzle. Not to say it's impossible to make a good puzzle that fits in the world, just that it's a lot harder than many people realize.
I think having a temple to a god of Wisdom or a god of Intelligence makes perfect sense to have people "prove their worth" through a series of repeatable puzzles. However, in most cases of "Get through the puzzle to access the MacGuffin," security system, you're absolutely right. I haven't yet decided which MacGuffin security system it will be, but there will definitely be a receptionist, demanding to see their "Identicards," or place their faces in the magical scanner. Clearly, they puzzle will be "How do we bamboozle the receptionist?" instead of "what buttons do we push to get past the scanner?" I think it's my decades of office work, but there are real-life "puzzles" to be solved. Heck, look at "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix," for a WONDERFUL solution to the age-old puzzle of "How do you get the approval stamp on this form from 'The Building That Makes People Go Mad'?" A wonderful case of role-play, if I've ever seen one, and at least one of my party has read/seen that particular episode of Asterix and Obelix, so I think they'll manage with this. I'm also thinking of using a real-life puzzle box to hold some hand-out object, and that was being used to transport a message in game. Opening the puzzle box is representative of the PCs decrypting the message. Or you know what? We used to play around with cryptography. I might just let them deal with an actual "Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine," message. Hahahahaha! BUT, that message will actually be a CODE, which they will remember, and when they find out the actual code, they'll say, "I remember that message. But Drink stands for X and Ovaltine stands for Y, so the message was really, 'Be sure to X your Y,' all along!" Now, I just need an anagram of Ovaltine. Valitone? Some poor schmuck is the victim of an assassination contract, and Drink stands for Kill.
Loved this, I think a solid thing to also keep in mind is that, just like combat encounters, remember the number of players. Your puzzle might be cool and even have a collaborative element, but if you have a larger group and the puzzle only requires input from two of them, you may want to at least make sure that you're keeping things moving. Players should respect that not every moment is about them, but no one likes to feel unincluded for a long time. When you buy the board game/at home variant of puzzle rooms or Cold Case Files type games, the game itself may say it's for 3+ people but only actually has enough manipulatables to keep just those 3 people occupied at once.
Had my players solve a 5 piece tower of Hanoi puzzle to open a door while in the middle of a combat encounter. It was interesting watching them take turns solving the puzzle and yelling what the next move is while fighting off golems. Watching them try and decide in the heat of it if it's more important to solve the puzzle or win the fight was a ton of fun.
The video game Sunless Sea has something like a 10 tower Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Though the player doesn't have to do any direct thinking, the meter that is filled by clicking "keep working on it" takes like 10,000 clicks, if not more. ...This is a not-so-subtle hint that you should leave the area, go to another part of the dungeon, find the item "stick of dynamite" and blow the door open. Which is, in fact, the intended solution.
One of the places I get ideas for puzzles are actually some of the people that solve puzzles on YT. I don't try for the really crazy puzzles, but ideas like sequential discovery really makes for satisfying puzzles.
If I was ever going to put dollar store math puzzles in a campaign, it would be because the "dungeon" is an abandoned wizard college still inhabited by the ghost of a teacher driven insane by his students' idiocy. Only those smart enough to solve the fox/chicken/grain river puzzle can be permitted to get to the treasure... or the exit.
Regarding spells: from 3e's Book of Challenges(a puzzle guide): "This book requires significant adaptability on the players’ part. A key component of that is their spell selection. Walking into these atypical environs armed with nothing but fireballs and lightning bolts may make for frequent trips to the local purveyor of raise dead spells. Whether prepared or set into magic items, the spells that follow are must-haves for dealing with the brain-bending challenges in this book. You shouldn’t be disappointed when players use these spells to thwart the challenges herein. Instead, you should take magnanimous pride that your players are sharp enough to use resources so efficiently."
When I sent my players into a dungeon I knew there would be puzzles. And I suck and making and solving puzzles. I was scared they would get stuck and things would stagnate. So I had an idea I had them team up with a former enemy that they have beef with. Both parties have every reason to hate each other. I told them if they took too long to find a solution their hated enemy would and THEY got the experience points. That got things moving. One way or the other
16:57 well said.... Rant starts. My DM holds a west marches campaign, so multiple player can create expedition in his world. One day, my expedition goals is find out and explore area behind a big door. And found out the door need "password" to open. Just like normal adventurer, we tried detect magic to see what is behind the door (not literally). But the doo is too thick for detect magic to pass thru, fair enough. Next step we try shape stone the floor to make small passage for familiar to check pass thru behind the door. But nope, caster get shocked and must roll CON saves or be silence. Out of character I asked the DM, do we know the clue of the "password" ?. He replied, yes, I give you all the clue. And by "you", he means all player that played the west marches in his world. So we must depends on other player notes & journals. Two and half hour later we just saying random word that we found in other people journal, still no progress. I even cast divination spell to know which expedition is related to the clue, but the DM insisting he already told us, and its our fault not to write it down. I know at this point we should end the session and call it a day. But somehow we tried to dispel magic, and puff the door opens revealing nothing behind the door. At the end of session the DM told us there is nothing behind the door, because you dispelled the magic. So 3.5 hour of session no exp no loot at all. In my defense why we still playing his campaign is, because the DM is so good at anything but puzzle. Rant ends.
Something to note: While Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has puzzles you can use, they are heavily inspired by actual puzzle competitions where people look at the clues given, try to decode it, and then use the decode to get the answer. Most of these puzzles for competitions also have visual aids because they don't work in an abstract medium...yet they are added without the aids in the book. For people who are heavily into puzzles, they will get them easily. For the layman playing DnD, they are going to hop onto the struggle bus. There's a lot of cool concepts in those puzzles that you can take out and use, but if you copy one of the puzzles make sure you help the player out a lot. Also the game It Takes Two, which was recently released, has a LOT of great co-op puzzles. It's worth playing and borrowing from.
One of my all time favorite puzzles involves a mirror on one wall of the room. With like objects that can be moved around. The solution is to move the objects in the room are a mirror image of each other.
I built a “slide the boulder” maze using gelatinous cubes and narrow hallways. The cubes, which had blind sight and were blind beyond, had to be lured (aka slid) in to different positions to allow safe passage. There were ways to get trapped, and situations where you might have to split the party to advance. Cue one of my PCs with Animate Dead. She noted how I described the stairs descending into the room as having been littered with bones, but the floors and walls of the room it’s self being unusually clean. She used her stair-skeletons to lure the Cubes, and it still required a lot of thoughtfulness and deliberate coordination of the team. They never had to split the party. I thought it was really clever.
Just got done writing some puzzles for my party’s last session a week ago and found this information to be so encouraging and informative. Thank you guys!
I have a bunch of fighters in my dungeon so just gave them an easy puzzle to get 4 keys. However the keys were in glass balls with pure energy inside so if they broke then there would be an explosion. Such a fun puzzle and no one had to act smart out of character
Fav puzzle created was definitely an escape room. All-wizard one-shot. Four keys, four elements, ticking clock, elemental spell effects and even a surprise Private Sanctum. They beat it with only a few minutes to spare. It was such a rush.
You could allow the Barbarian's player to consult with the Wizard's to better represent the 20 INT. That way the puzzle gets solved, and the Wizard seams as smart as they should be.
When you said the three gods example it gave me an idea, classic elemental temples thing where along the way they get nice and acquainted with which god has which element and on the final temple there's something like three statues, one to each god or whatevs with the inscription reading something like "Only those who give a fitting offering may pass." I refuse to believe that any group could fail that when the final bosses of every story arc has been called something like "Champion of such and such"
I made a hollow map tube in the shape of a Xorn(earthglide creature that sniffs out precious metals and gems) each claw(three) ends in circular coin slots. With the top being the mouth and base the three feet. Players needed three different coins(Identical coins fall out) of any value for claws, any single gem for mouth(coins pass through) and placed in the dirt to unlock tube. Consuming the valuables. Simple puzzle for a small prize that saved me fog of war later on.
I actually just finished creating the puzzle for one of my upcoming games. I struggled a lot to find something I could deem reasonable for unlocking a vault which was used by highly intelligent people to store away important things. Firstly because my #1 rule for puzzles (for my own games at least, everyone can do what they think is fun for their table): a puzzle may never block progress. I think of them as a way for the party to gain extra rewards. Naturally this means that puzzles also can't be too simple to solve because they should feel like they were rewarded by coming up with clever ideas as well as playing out their characters. And if you can just guess the solution or know it because it's so apparent, it just doesn't feel rewarding. Secondly the puzzle is located in a dungeon thats rather interconnected, so depending on which turns they take, they mind find the puzzle very early on. And I wanted to give some additional incentive to exploring more of said dungeon. So I ended up with a puzzle whose solution is soley based on finding hints in the important rooms. They might not find every clue, because of failed skilled checks or combat encounters in the rooms running risk of destroying hints. But there are a lot of little hints to help you figure out the mechanism which unlocks the vault. And they might not actually need most of them if even one sparks the correct idea. I am really curious how well they are gonna do on this, because I have mostly used riddles or actual puzzles on very few occasions to give them minor rewards, but I myself am actually content with this locking mechanism being realistic for its environment
Guard Riddle: One of us lies while one of us speaks of truth... DM: You'll need to use critical thinking and creativity to solve this puzzle. Barbarian: Has a Mace named _Critical Thinking_ Fighter: Has a Longsword named _Creativity_
My favorite puzzle I did was a book that wouldn't open with three riddles on the cover. The answers were darkness, silence and lantern. And those were the required conditions for the book to open.
I remember my wife made a puzzle when DMing our game, my barbarian had to push shite around with strength checks God Of War style while the other guy did a riddle like quardination on a set of tracks... it was fun
A personal favorite puzzle of mine that I created was a puzzle that messed with their overthinking. A gargoyle appears before a big stone door and hands the players a rock. He says “You must answer my riddle! Answer wrong, and you die!! What... is this?” The answer is: a rock. But my players immediately shot to overthinking the puzzle, casting Identify and trying to get good History checks on the rock. They think and think and think and then finally one of them said, “What could it be?? This is just a rock!” And with that, the gargoyle said, “Correct!” and then disappears and the door swings open.
I like this very much!
I doubt every player around that table enjoyed waiting around for what must have been a bit of an underwhelming solution.
It's more of a meta game joke on the players than an actual challenge
@@Jeppezzzful They all tend to enjoy well placed puzzles, but they know that they will sometimes overanalyze things. So when I revealed the answer, we all got a good laugh out of it.
This is art. I can imagine doing this in our all Goblin campaign.
Stealing this :D
Yesterday, my player: I love everything we're doing but would love some more puzzles!
Yesterday, me: I'll do my best, but not sure how to do them right!
Today, the Dudes:
From your speakers: Greetings! I’m Marty Martin.
From behind you: and I’m Kelly McLauglin
From in your head: and we are inside your head
Newer DM here, I had one room that was basically a sealed off square (60’ x 60') with an entrance in one corner and a treasure chest in the opposite corner. Burning torches lined the perimeter of the room and the floor was obviously tiled (2ft or 3ft tiles). The tiles were trick tiles of course, place pressure on a bad tile and it would fall away into the endless pit below. Place pressure on a 'safe' tile and it would support the player's weight. My players were still relatively low level at the time, so they had to traverse it by foot. There were 3 paths that were ‘safe’ but 2 were dead ends with the 3rd leading to the chest.
I realized quickly that all my players had to do was just methodically test each tile as they went and that they were going to just work through the puzzle in a rather slow and boring way (Should have seen that coming). I then had one of those awesome on the spot DM moments… I decided to make the first torch by the entrance snuff out on its own. “Pufft”
The players were like, “What did that?” as they mulled it over for a minute questioning potential reasons, “Pufft” the next torch extinguished. My players looked at each other with the startled realization that this boring puzzle had suddenly become timed. It got them engaged real quick and their rising panic as they worked across the room while I occasionally tutted “Pufft” was one of the most delicious moments I have had so far as a DM.
Good adjustment on the fly!
Nice! I have a similar puzzle set up for my next dungeon. It's a 5 x 5 set of rooms with doors on every wall. When they enter, they get locked in and have to go through one of the 3 doors presented to them. However, every room they leave gets flooded, so they have to keep moving and can't backtrack. One of the rooms is the exit. It's not difficult at all, just stressful.
You sir are an evil genius.
Time pressure is always a good idea.
I've prepared 3 hours for things that have lasted a lot less than 5 minutes.
I can feel you Snake from mgs
F
Same. Spend hours researching mechanics and proper tactics for challenging encounters just for players to get some good rolls and be done in 10 minutes like "Next?"
You can tell this is a dnd channel because this should have thousands of likes but people didn't get it because they just don't get it
One of the best puzzles that I ever made as a DM was the lair of a Pirate. The lair was subjected to tidal flooding and was strategical and purposely located in an area similar to the Bay of Fundy. The party had to negotiate the tunnels with the aid of an escaped mining slave guide (who was a hunchback from having been forced to stoop as a mine slave since he was a child. He was thrown down a mine shaft by the Pirates and presumed dead but managed to escape. He is not an invalid and has lots of knowledge and skill but he has physical limitations and can't be allowed to die. If he does, it's a virtual certainty that the rest of the party will likewise die). The party had to negotiate this maze and all it's traps as that was their only way into the fortress. The flood waters rose and fell periodically covering passageways, revealing others presenting physical, chemical and biological and radiological hazards. Falls, drowning, collapse, lacerations, anoxic, explosive and toxic gas etc. Pirate traps, Presenting and preventing access to air, land and waterborne monsters etc. Chances to separate the party and be swept away. There were mechanisms to drain or flood areas, ventilation shafts. Boats, diving gear etc. Pirate riddles and ciphers etc. Players solved it eventually but asked to play it again a few months later and after that they wanted to play it again a year later. There are several ways to win and lots of ways to lose and die.
I improvised a puzzle for my players once because I ran out of time in planning. I had a sentient door tell the party to make him laugh. The Sorcerer made a door related pun on the spot and it opened.
A great one for this is have the sentient door say "knock knock" then "*** who" when the players interact with it. If the players respond with a knock-knock joke then the door opens, otherwise it responds with "boo" or "not funny".
One of my favorite moments was having an early-campaign BBEG write a nonsense "riddle" over a door in order to buy herself time. I'd set up her character well enough that the players were pissed off at her rather than me, and felt all the more satisfied when they finally took her down.
PLEASE tell me more about her
I had a classic “speak friend and enter” type puzzle but way easier
Even gave them hints that, if they didn’t mind leaving a trail, they could break through the door easily
My players were completely stumped, took them 20 minutes of their own insistence to accidentally get the answer
But a combination locked based on tangentially related NPC names meant to be hard and optional?
They got it in 5 seconds
They had to step off the trail to find the tool to break through the door, right?
Yeah, you have to understand that your players will not think the way you do.
D&D players man, that's how they be.
It’s the classic overthink something simple.
I was wondering when someone would mention "Speak friend and enter" in a puzzle vid. ^_^
One of my favourite puzzles here, I was a player. This is my favourite less because of the puzzle itself, but more for how my DM handled an idea I had, which still made me feel smart without completely bypassing the puzzle:
We were in a dungeon, and came across a big stone door. The door had 4 divots in it, which were clearly meant to hold some sort of maguffin that'd allow the door to unlock. My DM forgot that he'd given me a very specific - and, honestly, kinda strong - homebrew magic ring: a Thief's Masterkey ring. It contained a set of Thieve's Tools, but more importantly, it contained a SILENT version of the Knock spell. So I, of course, tried it on the door.
Here's why my DM is a goddamned genius:
It would've been so easy for him to say "Mm, doesn't work. Next." But he didn't. He let it work - to an extent. As soon as I used the ring to cast knock, one of the slots became filled with a glowing magical energy. We still had to find the other 3 items, but hoo boy, we shaved a quarter of the time of that puzzle off. I felt super smart for finding a cool workaround, and my DM still got to use most of his puzzle! I think he just got rid of the most "boring" of the 4 item rooms, so we still got to enjoy the other 3 (one of which involved one of our party members almost being replaced by a doppelganger lmao).Good fuckin' times.
I mean the knock spell does say that if a door has more than one lock, it unlocks one of them. If you treat these notches as locks, then knock would unlock one
My friends have long wondered where I get all my “octopus clothes” as they were always unique to me. I fear my players may learn my secrets as Kelly so often wears the same brand as me 😂
I’m so happy to find another fan. I’m also the only one I know who wears it.
@@DungeonDudes are you a Truth fan? DDD gang?
I would really like to have some as well! Where can I get one, please?
@@raivoturpa the brand is Hi My Name is Mark, a clothing brand of blink-182’s Mark Hoppus. Tips: the clothes are both fitted and shrink (especially the women’s), I’ve found I typically need a size larger than normal. I’ve only ever bought clothes that are discounted/on sale, as they become fairly cheap/affordable
@@GramGramAnimations Thanks a lot!
I fondly recall screaming the answer to the drinks puzzle at the screen. These things are so much easier to see from the outside.
What’s the answer to that one?! I never figured it out lol
@@BradNeff *****SPOILER ALERT*****
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I remember "Nothing" being the answer to that riddle. So the proper action would have been to "drink" from an empty cup. The choices (milk, beer, water, etc) were all red herrings.
What was the puzzle though?
@@MrGarlan1 Go to the Dungeon Dude's channel and find Dungeons of Drakkenheim Episode 22: Down The Hatch the riddle is around 2:32:00.
I remember thinking that nothing was the answer when watching it but I thought I read a comment from monte saying that wasn't it. Maybe I'm mistaken though.
What was off to the right side of the camera? Monty was thoroughly distracted during much of this. in particular, during the Challenge the Players and characters segment where Kelly was speaking, Monty absolutely could not stop looking at something off to his right (viewers left). Is this a puzzle for us to solve?
I rolled 14 investigation.
I rolled a 12 so I'm pretty sure it's just a tick that he has during recording
My brother designed a battle puzzle where the party needed to defeat two elementals in separate rooms within the same turn. If one was defeated, but the other survived, the first would respawn with half its hp.
When I need a quick puzzle, I usually result to a puzzle from a Professor Layton game xD
A holy relic or powerful magic item could believably be protected by the “plug two holes” puzzle
Workers of the world, unite! 🛠✊
@@DangerDurians some of the puzzles from Professor Layton still haunt me to this day xD
@@ganymedemlem6119 🛠✊
Layton for the win!
My favorite puzzles are very subtle and straightforward and tend to promote simple problem solving. Often, I don’t even have a solution myself planned out. A 60ft wide ravine that has a bridge that is hanging from only one side, the puzzle is, the bridge is out, that’s it. They are trying to get directions of where the tower is, but the local guy at the tavern gives them directions based on local landmarks and local terms, despite the road signs indicating directions to cities, it helps to take notes. For complex caves and dungeons, I load in multiple copies of the same map in Roll20 but rotate them 90 to 270 degrees, when they try and leave, unless they brought chalk, they tend to get themselves lost. Sometimes the passageway is just blocked by rubble, they have to figure out a way passed it. Or, previous adventures tried to smoke out the goblins, but now the cave is filled with smoke. The spike pit has already been tripped and adventurers hang impaled, in the dead adventures pocket is a list of all their notes of all the traps, but no map is found. Hints at the puzzles are provided, but which is which. Simple things like, how to navigate through a corn field might present themselves as straight forward initially but can often lead to ingenious problem solving. The other thing is, my players don’t groan at these situations, instead they are familiar with these issues and tend to all jump in. Also, they often don’t take a whole lot of prep, and I don’t need to have the answer planned.
God I wish there was an official D&D book with a section dedicated to puzzles.
1:14 puzzles can be puzzling.
*Monty looks about to lose his shit*
You guys are great. And hilarious.
POV: ur here because ur players dominate in combat and u need something to challenge them
If they get by it with spells, let them. They'll be stoked and grin like an idiot for the next 30 minutes.
And they used up a spell slot without you having to run a combat encounter!
The best advice Iv gotten on puzzles is ignore any official advice on puzzles cause wizards doesn’t know how to make them
Wasn't it XP to level 3 who said "for puzzles, use whatever you find on the back of a cereal box, you'd be surprised how many players will still struggle."
I recently built a "maze" I'm quite proud of. They were essentially walking around the surface of a d20. Had to obscure it by making the rooms hexagons, and inky black doorways between rooms. The rooms were then fill with various monsters correlated to numbers, eg. Nothic=1, Ettin=2, Roving Mauler=5, ect. Players had to walk through the rooms in a certain order after they figured out the numbering.
As a puzzle fan who has problems seeing why a boss would use a puzzle a part of their defences, you have inspired me. That sewer grate thing at the beginning. It's not a puzzle, just specialised knowledge. One would learn how the levers and sluices would interact on their first week of sewer worker training, but...
Without a mentor... or a handbook... in a hurry...
IT'S A PUZZLE!
OMG! I just realized the simplest puzzle that actually would make sense in "real life."
A filing system!
Your PCs have a limited amount of time to find the Macguffin, and they have broken into the storage chamber, where they know it is (along with a bunch of stuff that has no value to them), and they have to figure out the owner's filing system, because it's not standard alphabetic, numeric, or chronological.
The "hint" they get would be, "My new assistant organized the place, but then died in mysterious circumstances, and I can't FIND anything! I used to have it all in the order I collected the items, but she came along and said how that was so inefficient, and she had a much better system, so I let her reorganize it, but she never did teach me her system."
As to whether or not the new system actually is more efficient, that's up to you. It could be organized by size, by color, by "author" (or creator), by subject matter, such as an alphabetical list not of the names of the objects but of what they do. So, the scroll for Rary's Telepathic Bond would be under C, for "Communication."
It should be fairly obvious, once you figure out the connection, and you should have some clues, such as how the assistant organized her own desk.
As a former temp worker, I can tell you, I have encountered some real doozies of organization systems, but I had the benefit of being taught the system before I was allowed to file anything. In one place, only the secretary was allowed to put anything away, for fear people would put it in the wrong spot, and it would never be found again.
So, the collector needs his thing? Or the lawyer needs his case file? Maybe your players need information on some ancient plans for the layout of a sewer system, and the plans are kept at city hall, but the archivist in charge can't find it, because of the new filing system, and says, "If you can find it, you're welcome to it." Of course, you have to go through some social shenanigans for him to even admit the reason he's being so unhelpful is because he's overwhelmed, and can't find it, and he's breaking all kinds of rules to let you in there, but it's the only way, and he's about ready to just walk out of the job. Maybe he DOES walk out, but he allows you into the file/storage room to retrieve whatever it is you want, if you can find it.
And if your players give up in disgust and just burn all the records, well, they'll have to deal with the consequences.
As a character in RE 8 said "It's only a riddle if you don't know the answer."
7:15 Now I am thinking of an eccentric wizard who locked his McGuffin behind a door that can only open when 4 characters sing "I believe in miracles" with a coreographed dance. (He can open it using Mirror Image, and does so because he is crazy and loves the song)
I had a powerful, chaotic (neutral) wizard who created a tower of wonders. Almost every room had a puzzle, and the players finally figured out that even the most illogical, silly action could solve each puzzle. That was the point. He was subtly teaching lessons (teamwork, thinking outside the box, etc.)
My Magnum Opus is often used for hot-starts, breaking into the dungeon, while "pre-heating" player communication.
A *"lockpicking map"* team game; a printed maze of 1-inch lines and multiple, easily-seen paths.
1 Player draws a path with their eyes closed; their party says/shouts which directions to go or stop. They have to figure out their own method.
7Mins(!) violin-tension later and they finally made it into that first room, all cooperating and **communicating** 🥲 The same puzzle backwards took 6m 😂 still with shouting.
Absolutely steal this idea, especially if your players drink beer.
One of the best combat puzzles I have come across for new players is what I sum up as the "all actions" puzzle. Basically to teach new players all the actions they can actually take in combat you add some clues in a dungeon saying something cryptic like "Battles conclude with satisfaction to those that have taken every action" and then you lock them in a room with skeletons that continue to rise or something until the party has taken every possible combat action. Fill the place with levers and switches to traps and fun stuff and as the DM keep checking off your list until conclusion. I've rewarded players who took the most variety with a boon or item sometimes.
A good way around puzzle skipping is to make the puzzle open a secret door, while the obvious locked door that can be broken through leads the wrong way, to a combat, a hint, or a cursed version of the item they are looking for
Gate of wisdom, a door that only opens when the correct answer is given.
"To ventute forth beyond this door, you must answer this riddle of yore, don't worry, the answer is easy. How do you divide 100 silver among 3 people?"
easy?
@@AlleyFang I'm amazed someone got it so fast. my players spent an hour.
in their defense, I'm not playing a character in dnd right now, im listening to the guy who kept repeating "there are several empty cups" talk about puzzle, I'm in the right mindset to pick apart your exact words :P
@@AlleyFang I did swipe it from a story I read, but I had no idea it would work for an hour, I thought at most 10 minutes.
Since I'm not your PC, and might want to use it, please provide the answer? Because I'm stumped.
So much legitimate praise in the comments but no-one ever mentions your language! Thank you both for caring enough to use language that accurately describes what you want to convey and takes measures to avoid misconfusion. When you've experienced how frustrating it is when people don't do this, videos like this are a godsend
I am running a side quest in my groups campaign to give our DM a small break and the puzzle I made locked the party in a dimensional room that was on the fritz, it was located in the fire plane so the party was taking 1d4 fire dmg every minute or two. there was writing on the door out that said show me only wealth and you may pass, across from the door was a large statue of a skull looking at the door, also in the room was pedestals with red herrings like a gold bar, a spherical stone, a goblet with jewels and an empty pedestal. Covering all the words except wealth would allow the party to exit. my whole party exclaimed after they wasted their time on the red herrings and solved the puzzle, YOU LORD OF THE RINGSD US!
My favorite puzzle to throw at players actually comes from Resident Evil 4. Or at least, the poem is.
"In front of you is a large stone door. There are 4 holes in it that look like they can hold something. On the door is an inscription: Bread begins the meal of life, Meat allows us to savor the time at hand, one more Drink before the glass breaks, Returning us to Dust from whence we came."
The solution for this in my games is that each hole needs to hold a certain type of item. From left to right, the players are to put Bread, any kind of meat, something that can be drank, and finally, some dust.
I'm curious how often that slows down players; it seems insanely obvious to me
"steal portal levels" you say.
Back in my Barracks D&D 3.5 game, I joked about doing that. "You wake up on a bed in a strange featureless room. A disembodied voice says, 'Welcome to Aperture Alchemy. We hope you've enjoyed your...'" was as far as I got before one of the other Marines went "AAAAAAA thecakeisalie! thecakeisalie! thecakeisalie!!!!"
One of my favorite dungeons I've made was built by a Warlock of the great old one who went insane and, like his own mind, the tower has too much in it for what's possible. It uses various noneuclidian geometry to create a maze of reality bending puzzles.
creating great puzzles:
1: make them as easy as possible, kindergarten level at most
2: watch your party fumble and overanalyse it
3: after an hour, give up and let whatever they come up with solve the puzzle to get on with the rest of the session
Just started watching you dudes after a couple months playing a family D&D session with my cousins. Been fun adding some info from your videos to our sessions!
Best puzzle was the drinks 🍸 and how your players fell for It on a live stream. I'm not good at puzzles and the idea of doing them on a live play would be brutal.
Could you please tell me more about this drink puzzle?
@@3nertia Watch there 1st live play season. Look at there play list. It's a great season with good players who know how to play the game and a fantastic DM
@@MrBiloxifireman Eh, thanks but I'm kind of burnt out on *watching* people play heh
Could you give a quick run down on the drink puzzle? I'm not likely to have time to go chase it down in a live play video - unless someone would kindly link to the video (and the time stamp). Thanks!
@@carold.8782 Episode 22, Down the Hatch, around 2:32:00
Spoilers
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PCs had to choose the correct drink from a lineup in order to open a secret door. There was a riddle which gave the correct answer (“nothing”, or the empty glass) and the PCs all incorrectly drank from flasks which wound up being secretly filled with sleeping potions.
They paid dearly for this failure.
Puzzles are encounters. Encounters are for depleating resources. If my players want to cast 2-3 Dimension Doors to bypass a door, I'm all for it.
I've modified a lot of Nancy Drew computer game puzzles.
I ran a puzzle for my D&D group. It was a "maze" that was colored or decorated with one particular element (air, earth, fire, and water). There were 4 keys (silver, adamantine, gold, and mithril) and the rings were placed on an altar signifying north, south, east and west. Each room had fours doors. Depending on what color or decoration of the room determined which key and door to use it on. If they chose the wrong key or wrong door, then it triggered the trap on the door that resembled the element of the room in which they should be going. The party were pretty paranoid and surprisingly looked like they weren't going to make it, until they discovered the pattern involved. The further they went through the maze, they found themselves in bigger rooms, which provides more than the standard 4 doors (but if one side of the room was supposed to be used, they would discover that either door used would be safe). Also I had some rooms decorated with volcanoes (fire or earth?) or colored purple (fire or water?). I didn't want the maze to be too easy.
One that I liked in my previous dungeon was a door at the end of a hallway lit with torches. On the door, it said: "I open for those who follow the path of darkness."
The solution was simply to put out the torches.
8:38 "suh-duko" had me crackin' up WAIT 8:46 you just said it again lmao 8:53 STOP, I CAN'T TAKE MUCH MORE
I love your videos, guys! Thank you so much! Regards from Brazil.
We don't use puzzles normally... i end up using things like sewer gates and traps in tombs for puzzles
Watching this sounded to me like where I include a puzzle I should make the solution require creativity on the part of the player and play to the character's strengths.
I've also found that it is good to have two or more viable solutions to a given puzzle, as it reduces the likelihood of getting srump due to one clue or missed info.
Challenging the player vs the character is tricky ... there is a similar issue with persuasion where the player in question tend to matter more than charisma or skill proficiency just like your example with the suduko savvy barbarian player.
I saw yesterday a video of a 3d printed clock that has a center piece that rotates in a circle and flip's end over end. It was very geary and ornate. I thought it would be great for a party to find and assemble the core components and assemble the clock because it's a mechanical key to a locked tomb.
I made a really clever puzzle for my season finale. It was great. Put about 3 hours into designing it. One of my players just vibed with it and solved it in under 30 seconds. I was gutted, he was ecstatic, the other 3 players were just amazed. Be prepared for this.
Also, it's totally fine to build puzzles which can easily be solved by a skill on the character sheet. It makes that player feel good about the skill they took. But be aware of this and don't spend too long on creating the actual puzzle.
Here it is
Google draconic font. Or DnD 5e Dwarven Font. Then, using the font, I wrote four words;
SHADOW EARTH FIRE LIGHT
I described 4 clear orbs in front of a dragon statue and gave them the handout describing it as the engraving under the statue.
When the players asked about the inscription I said "You don't understand the language but you seem to recall it from a tome you own"
There's actually a conversion chart in the PHB.
Each time the players touched the orbs coloured light appeared inside in this order, red, gold, black, green, blue.
When they set the orbs to black (shadow), green (earth) red (fire) gold (light), left to right, the puzzle is solved. If at any point all 4 orbs are the same colour, the dragon statue would breathe on them to match the colour. Eg necrotic for black, lightning for blue, acid for green.
Lay out 3 random items for example.
Dragon scale
Orcs toe
Crabs claw
The room has a table with 3 shelves each 1 holds one of the 3 items on the other side is a door design above it is a few runes that say something like
"He who overthinks, often fails the obvious"
The way you solve this is Is just push/open the door.
Watch your players try to use all these useless items to open a unlocked door
I love this, too!
I don't have a lot of experience with puzzles.
As a player, my favorite was when a DM split the party into two rooms with a barrier we could see through, but nothing material could pass. We had to arrange the statues in the rooms to match, including using a scroll of Enlarge/Reduce on one, but we had to figure out which side it needed to be used on.
My favorite as the DM was using a piece of the environment I had previously described 5 times or so as the key to a basic puzzle on a door. The player who solved it liked it to, as I basically rewarded him for paying attention to the description of the castle they were in.
Hints and repetition is the key.
the best puzzle dungeon i've read. is in harry potter and the philosopher's stone
You can always do the lazy option: Come up with puzzles that is ambiguous, don’t have a solution for it yourself, but let the players come up with the solution, and if you like their answer, make it the correct one at the spot 😜
IMHO every problem the players must solve is a puzzle. FREX: How to get inside the stronghold when there are 40 guards divided among 3 shifts covering the walls and stout metal gates etc etc etc?
I used a puzzle for my party to fix an icecream machine. I was expecting someone to whip out a spell but they decided to open it up and I made the puzzle up in the spot 😬 they loved it
1998 the DM asked us
“I am darker than a balor’s desire.
I am more beautiful than the Goddess of Love.
Dead men eat of me
And living men who eat of me die.
What is my name?”
Monty knows the answer.
Maybe spoiler? Solution attempt below.
Is it nothing? I think I read a similar riddle before.
@@iododendron3416 I think there's a similar "nothing" riddle in the hobbit?
@@stephenhancock3383 oh, yes, you might be right.
@@iododendron3416 ✔️
The most fun puzzle we got played by was a locked room scenario.
We found a room, the rogue was scouting and darted in without thinking. The door closed, leaving the party outside. The only thing in the room was a lever and a voice started to count down, "Ten, nine, eight, seven....". Our rogue tried the lever and restarted the count down. We were trying to open the lock or break down this massive door, while she reset the count down over and over. Finally, when we were partway through, she gave up and let the countdown continue. When it hit zero, the door opened!
All that stress and frantic puzzle solving and it was simple and there was no danger! It was a great memorable puzzle!
Actually had a DM run almost that exact same puzzle, except instead of a vocal count down there was a floating hourglass iirc and they kept turning the hourglass. I think the room kept losing light as it ran out, the circle of darkness closing in, and it reset when they just flipped it over? It's been many years so I can't remember exactly, but of course just waiting it out lead to the doors opening.
I'm planning an even more stressful version of this puzzle. I made an underwater dungeon and one of the room is going to close on them like this and start filling up with water. The lever in the middle will drain it, but the door will only open when there's enough pressure from the water. I'm throwing in a combat encounter as well so they have to juggle between combat and handling the lever.
One method to test "the character" and mot the player is to give the player either a different puzzle based on their character's intelligence give them the same puzzle but more hints.
So you hand the int level 20 wizard "what is 2+2" and you hand your barbarian a recipe for orange chicken written in Mandarin.
Or for the same-puzzle route, where the extra hints make things obvious - and the opposite of what no hints gestures vaguely at - and watch the fun diegetic arguments unfold.
Just a thought, but you could combine PC checks with player challenge.
To use the sudoku example, any characters who want to attempt to solve it make an intelligence check, and the DM uses that to determine the difficulty of the sudoku given to the player. Players have to solve the one given to them for their character to succeed.
We once had a puzzle we had to solve to get into the next room in a dungeon. The center of the room we were in had a raised dais with a pile of over 2 dozen tiles on it. Each tile had unique emblem on it. One of the walls in the room was decorated with a mural that had all the same emblems at various heights along the length. We eventually settled on the strategy of using the combination of Polymorphing one character into an octopus and Animate Objects to place each tile over the matching emblem, which successfully caused the mural wall to split open and allow us access to that next room.
Afterwards, the DM told us all we had to do was place the tiles on the floor touching the wall underneath the matching emblem.
But at least our sorceror now had an ample supply of items for to use Animate Objects on later.
I was just reading the Book of Challenges 😈
That is an oldie but a goodie! I have a copy, too.
One of my favorites is still picking the correct flesh golem in White Plume Mountain.
The greatest DnD puzzle for me is how someone cannot like DnD.
If you want an easy math based puzzle, use the elephant fountain puzzle from Die Hard With A Vengence, they never actually solve it on screen, and it only requires simple arithmetic and sound logic. The movie uses a 3 gallon jug and a 5 gallon jug to get 4 gallons, but you can use 4 and 7 to get 6, or 5 and 9 to get 8. You can further hide this puzzle by multiplying all values by the same multiple of 10.
The best puzzles are made when you set up every piece of information into places the players will find and have to decipher.
Then throw away 1d6 pieces of the puzzle and grab the popcorn
Idk how you do it, but all your content is always super useful and really quite well put together. Thank you guys for the reliable quality, and expertise:)
My favorite puzzle advice: ALWAYS HAVE A BYPASS. I designed what I thought would be a fairly easy button pressing puzzle based on lore I had repeated multiple times through the session. I had pieces of that lore be keys to other puzzles, such as the "silent hall" where you take psychic echo damage except when you speak the names of the gods, and the "hall of the gods" where the only safe paths spell the name of two gods to which the dungeon was dedicated. (Thank you Indiana Jones) There were plaques in each area giving clues and a giant mural in the entranceway showing daily life with the influence of the gods.
The final puzzle was essentially a bank vault with "press the logo for each god in the order their names appear above the engraved door, then press the center icon." My players basically said "this is too hard" and walked away from it. Thankfully I had already designed a secondary door with options to smash it or pick the lock. The DCs for each option were very difficult, but doable. Now I design EVERY encounter with multiple solutions.
Great job, Dudes! Thanks for this topic which can be a really rewarding aspect of a D&D game.
One of my favorite series of modules, The Prophecy of Brie series, was published in Polyhedron in the 80's, and I had to wait for my kids to grow up and start playing D&D to actually run it. So. . . 30 years later I finally got my chance, and it was amazing, even to the horrible puns in the wizard's tower.
It starts out with a prophecy which the players keep as a handout, and becomes more pertinent as the campaign progresses. There were some challenging points, but if you leave multiple clues it seems to work out well. Missing a clue typically resulted in a tougher or unnecessary combat encounter, not instant death.
Dangit, I JUST had my first puzzle heavy session for my home game 2 days ago! Luckily it was a big success, until they ran into the demilich at the end and 4 out of 5 failed their con save against the howl...
Your videos always come at the best times... I was literally just about to start puzzle design for my players next dungeon!
I made a puzzle room with a piano, inspired by Batman the animated series. There is a piano, and a sheet that says
'"Play dead or die.
Do (Red D) it wrong and you'll be (red E) flat.
If you're sharp(red A), you will live another day (red d).'
If they play the chords, D flat, E flat, A Sharp, and D Sharp, in that order the door opens.
If they play the wrong notes, depending if its a flat or a sharp, they have to dodge either a crushing pillar or a sharp blade.
That's great IF they know musical notation, what chords are, and the difference between flats and sharps. So, my niece would know, but I don't know about the rest of my players.
I know I don't.
I never force the players to solve my puzzles, but more often than not it is in their best interest. For instance solving the puzzle might reveal treasure or disarm traps in the area up ahead making it the safer route, but not the required one.
yes, good point about the red herrings and about other things to avoid. puzzles can be so much fun as parts of exploration or solving problems toward advancing the campaign
I've found that even the best GMs often don't possesses the completely separate skill set that is puzzle design. I've also noticed that many puzzles don't fit well within a world's fiction, as often whoever built the puzzle would be better served by not providing a way for randos to access the thing they put behind a puzzle.
Not to say it's impossible to make a good puzzle that fits in the world, just that it's a lot harder than many people realize.
I think having a temple to a god of Wisdom or a god of Intelligence makes perfect sense to have people "prove their worth" through a series of repeatable puzzles.
However, in most cases of "Get through the puzzle to access the MacGuffin," security system, you're absolutely right.
I haven't yet decided which MacGuffin security system it will be, but there will definitely be a receptionist, demanding to see their "Identicards," or place their faces in the magical scanner. Clearly, they puzzle will be "How do we bamboozle the receptionist?" instead of "what buttons do we push to get past the scanner?"
I think it's my decades of office work, but there are real-life "puzzles" to be solved. Heck, look at "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix," for a WONDERFUL solution to the age-old puzzle of "How do you get the approval stamp on this form from 'The Building That Makes People Go Mad'?" A wonderful case of role-play, if I've ever seen one, and at least one of my party has read/seen that particular episode of Asterix and Obelix, so I think they'll manage with this.
I'm also thinking of using a real-life puzzle box to hold some hand-out object, and that was being used to transport a message in game. Opening the puzzle box is representative of the PCs decrypting the message.
Or you know what? We used to play around with cryptography. I might just let them deal with an actual "Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine," message. Hahahahaha! BUT, that message will actually be a CODE, which they will remember, and when they find out the actual code, they'll say, "I remember that message. But Drink stands for X and Ovaltine stands for Y, so the message was really, 'Be sure to X your Y,' all along!"
Now, I just need an anagram of Ovaltine. Valitone? Some poor schmuck is the victim of an assassination contract, and Drink stands for Kill.
I like small hint clues to hand to the players, that I can give multiple sessions ahead of time, and creating puzzles with multiple solutions.
Loved this, I think a solid thing to also keep in mind is that, just like combat encounters, remember the number of players. Your puzzle might be cool and even have a collaborative element, but if you have a larger group and the puzzle only requires input from two of them, you may want to at least make sure that you're keeping things moving. Players should respect that not every moment is about them, but no one likes to feel unincluded for a long time. When you buy the board game/at home variant of puzzle rooms or Cold Case Files type games, the game itself may say it's for 3+ people but only actually has enough manipulatables to keep just those 3 people occupied at once.
Had my players solve a 5 piece tower of Hanoi puzzle to open a door while in the middle of a combat encounter. It was interesting watching them take turns solving the puzzle and yelling what the next move is while fighting off golems. Watching them try and decide in the heat of it if it's more important to solve the puzzle or win the fight was a ton of fun.
The video game Sunless Sea has something like a 10 tower Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Though the player doesn't have to do any direct thinking, the meter that is filled by clicking "keep working on it" takes like 10,000 clicks, if not more.
...This is a not-so-subtle hint that you should leave the area, go to another part of the dungeon, find the item "stick of dynamite" and blow the door open. Which is, in fact, the intended solution.
One of the places I get ideas for puzzles are actually some of the people that solve puzzles on YT. I don't try for the really crazy puzzles, but ideas like sequential discovery really makes for satisfying puzzles.
If I was ever going to put dollar store math puzzles in a campaign, it would be because the "dungeon" is an abandoned wizard college still inhabited by the ghost of a teacher driven insane by his students' idiocy. Only those smart enough to solve the fox/chicken/grain river puzzle can be permitted to get to the treasure... or the exit.
LOVE THIS!
Everytime Monty says suduko I lose enamel on my teeth.
Regarding spells: from 3e's Book of Challenges(a puzzle guide):
"This book requires significant adaptability on the
players’ part. A key component of that is their spell
selection. Walking into these atypical environs
armed with nothing but fireballs and lightning bolts
may make for frequent trips to the local purveyor of
raise dead spells.
Whether prepared or set into magic items, the
spells that follow are must-haves for dealing with the
brain-bending challenges in this book. You shouldn’t
be disappointed when players use these spells to
thwart the challenges herein. Instead, you should
take magnanimous pride that your players are sharp
enough to use resources so efficiently."
Superb advice as always Dudes.
Thanks for making us better
When I sent my players into a dungeon I knew there would be puzzles. And I suck and making and solving puzzles. I was scared they would get stuck and things would stagnate.
So I had an idea
I had them team up with a former enemy that they have beef with. Both parties have every reason to hate each other. I told them if they took too long to find a solution their hated enemy would and THEY got the experience points.
That got things moving. One way or the other
16:57 well said....
Rant starts.
My DM holds a west marches campaign, so multiple player can create expedition in his world.
One day, my expedition goals is find out and explore area behind a big door. And found out the door need "password" to open. Just like normal adventurer, we tried detect magic to see what is behind the door (not literally). But the doo is too thick for detect magic to pass thru, fair enough. Next step we try shape stone the floor to make small passage for familiar to check pass thru behind the door. But nope, caster get shocked and must roll CON saves or be silence.
Out of character I asked the DM, do we know the clue of the "password" ?. He replied, yes, I give you all the clue.
And by "you", he means all player that played the west marches in his world. So we must depends on other player notes & journals. Two and half hour later we just saying random word that we found in other people journal, still no progress. I even cast divination spell to know which expedition is related to the clue, but the DM insisting he already told us, and its our fault not to write it down. I know at this point we should end the session and call it a day. But somehow we tried to dispel magic, and puff the door opens revealing nothing behind the door.
At the end of session the DM told us there is nothing behind the door, because you dispelled the magic. So 3.5 hour of session no exp no loot at all.
In my defense why we still playing his campaign is, because the DM is so good at anything but puzzle.
Rant ends.
Something to note: While Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has puzzles you can use, they are heavily inspired by actual puzzle competitions where people look at the clues given, try to decode it, and then use the decode to get the answer. Most of these puzzles for competitions also have visual aids because they don't work in an abstract medium...yet they are added without the aids in the book.
For people who are heavily into puzzles, they will get them easily. For the layman playing DnD, they are going to hop onto the struggle bus. There's a lot of cool concepts in those puzzles that you can take out and use, but if you copy one of the puzzles make sure you help the player out a lot.
Also the game It Takes Two, which was recently released, has a LOT of great co-op puzzles. It's worth playing and borrowing from.
One of my all time favorite puzzles involves a mirror on one wall of the room. With like objects that can be moved around. The solution is to move the objects in the room are a mirror image of each other.
1:55 why is that? can someone please create that, I want that
I built a “slide the boulder” maze using gelatinous cubes and narrow hallways. The cubes, which had blind sight and were blind beyond, had to be lured (aka slid) in to different positions to allow safe passage. There were ways to get trapped, and situations where you might have to split the party to advance.
Cue one of my PCs with Animate Dead. She noted how I described the stairs descending into the room as having been littered with bones, but the floors and walls of the room it’s self being unusually clean. She used her stair-skeletons to lure the Cubes, and it still required a lot of thoughtfulness and deliberate coordination of the team. They never had to split the party. I thought it was really clever.
Just got done writing some puzzles for my party’s last session a week ago and found this information to be so encouraging and informative. Thank you guys!
I have a bunch of fighters in my dungeon so just gave them an easy puzzle to get 4 keys. However the keys were in glass balls with pure energy inside so if they broke then there would be an explosion. Such a fun puzzle and no one had to act smart out of character
Fav puzzle created was definitely an escape room. All-wizard one-shot. Four keys, four elements, ticking clock, elemental spell effects and even a surprise Private Sanctum. They beat it with only a few minutes to spare. It was such a rush.
You could allow the Barbarian's player to consult with the Wizard's to better represent the 20 INT. That way the puzzle gets solved, and the Wizard seams as smart as they should be.
I think a puzzle like the one that almost drowned kratos in the newer god of war Is a really good one in my opinion.
“Soduko” 🤣🤣🤣
When you said the three gods example it gave me an idea, classic elemental temples thing where along the way they get nice and acquainted with which god has which element and on the final temple there's something like three statues, one to each god or whatevs with the inscription reading something like "Only those who give a fitting offering may pass." I refuse to believe that any group could fail that when the final bosses of every story arc has been called something like "Champion of such and such"
Hey mr soduko, the puzzle is called sudoku. It is the same with cocoa you English speaking people, it is spelled cacao.
YES, I NEEDED THIS! Puzzles are so fun but difficult to write. this helped a lot!
I just did a dungeon with puzzles in it. My players where extremely suspicious of everything.
Solid advice and clear layout, thanks! This will be very helpful to share out or use myself!
I made a hollow map tube in the shape of a Xorn(earthglide creature that sniffs out precious metals and gems) each claw(three) ends in circular coin slots. With the top being the mouth and base the three feet. Players needed three different coins(Identical coins fall out) of any value for claws, any single gem for mouth(coins pass through) and placed in the dirt to unlock tube. Consuming the valuables. Simple puzzle for a small prize that saved me fog of war later on.
I actually just finished creating the puzzle for one of my upcoming games. I struggled a lot to find something I could deem reasonable for unlocking a vault which was used by highly intelligent people to store away important things. Firstly because my #1 rule for puzzles (for my own games at least, everyone can do what they think is fun for their table): a puzzle may never block progress. I think of them as a way for the party to gain extra rewards. Naturally this means that puzzles also can't be too simple to solve because they should feel like they were rewarded by coming up with clever ideas as well as playing out their characters. And if you can just guess the solution or know it because it's so apparent, it just doesn't feel rewarding.
Secondly the puzzle is located in a dungeon thats rather interconnected, so depending on which turns they take, they mind find the puzzle very early on. And I wanted to give some additional incentive to exploring more of said dungeon. So I ended up with a puzzle whose solution is soley based on finding hints in the important rooms. They might not find every clue, because of failed skilled checks or combat encounters in the rooms running risk of destroying hints. But there are a lot of little hints to help you figure out the mechanism which unlocks the vault. And they might not actually need most of them if even one sparks the correct idea. I am really curious how well they are gonna do on this, because I have mostly used riddles or actual puzzles on very few occasions to give them minor rewards, but I myself am actually content with this locking mechanism being realistic for its environment
Guard Riddle: One of us lies while one of us speaks of truth...
DM: You'll need to use critical thinking and creativity to solve this puzzle.
Barbarian: Has a Mace named _Critical Thinking_
Fighter: Has a Longsword named _Creativity_
My favorite puzzle I did was a book that wouldn't open with three riddles on the cover. The answers were darkness, silence and lantern. And those were the required conditions for the book to open.
I remember my wife made a puzzle when DMing our game, my barbarian had to push shite around with strength checks God Of War style while the other guy did a riddle like quardination on a set of tracks... it was fun