A killer puzzle that makes me want to pull my hair out.

Okay, tonight was the second session of a (new) World of Darkness campaign I joined.

The GM wanted to run solo adventures for all the characters, so I came over to her house tonight so she could run mine. The result was a session that had me at the edge of utter frustration.

Here's the scenario: My character is abducted in the night and wakes up alone in a plain white hallway. At the end of the hallway is a door, the door locks back when it closes. The room is hexagonal and in plain white. Each of the six sides has a door on it. Above each door is an analog clock. There is a small pedestal in the middle of the room.

On the pedestal are 28 tiles with letters on them, and a poetic warning that one must learn 4 lessons in due time, or the sands of time will consume you.

On each door there are several slots for tiles. On the one directly opposite the entrance, the slots rotate to reveal the word "PATIENCE". There are sufficient letters to spell patience in the pool of tiles, which fit perfectly on one of the sets of slots on the doors, and when this is done a small key pops out which fits into the door. The key does not open the door, but the clock above starts (only the second hand, the hour and minute hands are fixed at midnight). Going to the three other doors, it quickly spells out "WRATH" "HOPE" and "JUSTICE", with keys that started the clocks above the doors. At this point, a slot in the pedestal opens up and a copy of the Holy Bible and Book of Mormon pop out of the pedestal (and I was handed copies of each), with a poetic note saying that everything I need to know to escape is in those two books, and that the Bible is about Wrath and Justice and the Book of Mormon is about Hope and Patience.

I figured this much out on my own, in about 10 minutes of solo game time. There apparently was a two hour time limit, that I spent the rest of the time on, getting increasingly frustrated.

I was allowed to roll Intelligence several times to see if I could get any clues, which I got many successes, but the "hints" were things I'd already known: "The answer is in the books you have" and other obvious things I'd figured out. I'd figured out that it involved manipulating the time on the clocks to read a specific time, which would unlock the door.

So, I try to go to "Justice" and set it for "10:00" for the ten commandments. Which doesn't open the door and has the room largely filled with sand, and a reminder of the warning that mistakes will mean my character is "lost in the sands of time". I notice that there are 66 books in the bible, which comes out to 1 hour and 6 minutes, 1:06, which is when the hour and minute hands on a clock will be both just past 1, which is where "WRATH" would be in the room if it was a clock face, so I try that, and it fails, coming closer to drowning my character in sand.

Well, afraid to make another mistake, and more than a little frustrated (since the GM is stunned I don't see it, she thinks the answer is screamingly obvious and it incredulous I'm taking the full two hours for what she figured anybody could have solved in 20 minutes, tops. I considered entering the total number of pages in the bible, but it was greater than 1200, so it wouldn't fit on the clock face. Entering the total number of pages in the Book of Mormon into the clock for one of the two doors tied to that book caused it to spew yet more sand. I tried praying in front of the "Hope" door, I tried just sitting and waiting in front of "Patience", I tried kicking down "Wrath", I tried confessing my sins in front of "Justice", all for naught.

Time runs out, and the room slowly fills with sand, eventually killing my character, as he's being drowned, the solution falls from a hole in the ceiling, saying what the answer was.

Apparently, I had to look up either "Wrath" or "Justice" in the index of the bible, look to the section of the index "on prisoners" since I was imprisoned, and turn the clock face of the appropriate clock to that time, which would have opened the door. Or I could have turned to "Patience" or "Hope" in the Book of Mormon and done the same.

That was the only way to survive. She thought the puzzle was childishly simple and was stunned it killed my character.

Personally, I call that a puzzle that was just insane, and way over the top, but I'd like to hear some second opinions.

I like puzzles and I after reading your post I have to say, I wouldn't have gotten it either. THe reason why I don't like puzzles like that is because the characters I usually play would have no way on earth of getting it. I spend my time in the real world trying to solve inane problems, I want my game time to be fun and fast paced. Sorry man.

Puzzles are always childlishly simple for the one that invents them I would not have enjoyed a puzzle that complex without more clues or options.

That's just.... brutal. Wow, I never would have gotten that - and I commend you for getting as far along as you did.

Wow though, that is crazy tough.

At about the end of hour one (or earlier), I would have asked the GM:

"What's your intent with this puzzle?"

and discussed, out of character, the frustration I was feeling since I had no idea what to do, nor any idea where to begin.

Puzzles are always childlishly simple for the one that invents them

Click to expand...

Uch, yeah. Puzzles are like chilli. You can never accurately judge your own. Many a time I've been stuck in game because what is blindingly obvious to the GM is not so to others.

wingsandsword said:

At this point, a slot in the pedestal opens up and a copy of the Holy Bible and Book of Mormon pop out of the pedestal (and I was handed copies of each), with a poetic note saying that everything I need to know to escape is in those two books, and that the Bible is about Wrath and Justice and the Book of Mormon is about Hope and Patience.

Click to expand...

Oddly, I'd have to class this puzzle as simpler than you expected. It's just a variant on "Speak, friend, and enter" from Lord of the Rings.

The critical part you missed was looking up Wrath and Justice in the Bible. Instead you went for unrelated physical characteristics of the book itself. Expecting a player to look up Wrath and Justice (maybe finding an iconic verse about either) is not out of line in the slightest.

This is the other edge of the roll vs. role-playing debate. If you chose to let your character stats decide, you roll an int check and your character solves it. Or you can role-play it, but if you're not clever enough to see the answer, your character dies.

Edit: As well, since you're looking for time, which is "Hour:minute", that matches up really well with the "chapter:verse" structure, which is another clue.

Quite honestly, if this was a real puzzle, there should be no Bible as the makers of the trap would be able to call up the iconic verses from memory. Seriously, if this was a trap in, say, the Vatican, I think the makers would expect that anyone worthy of solving the puzzle should be able to do it from memory.

Though, the circumstances of the puzzle being forced on you warrant giving you the Bible. If the trap was an encountered trap in an old church or something, I wouldn't expect the character to have a Bible (though I'd give one to the player as an aid).

cthulhu_duck said:

At about the end of hour one (or earlier), I would have asked the GM:

"What's your intent with this puzzle?"

and discussed, out of character, the frustration I was feeling since I had no idea what to do, nor any idea where to begin.

Click to expand...

I did. I was telling the abbreviated version to just get the point of the puzzle across. This took all night.

After maybe 20 minutes, I was stumped, and it was clear that each mistake was getting me closer to getting killed. I let her know, in no uncertain terms, I'm not having fun, I'm having large amounts of the opposite of fun, I'm stumped, and this puzzle is insanely difficult, and what was her goal.

She said the goal was just to be a game, for it to be fun, and for this to be a simple challenge for my character. My character had Intelligence **** and Academics **** with a specialization in Religion (which is why she chose a "religion" themed test, apparently each character is getting a similar riddle themed to their highest skill), and even when I rolled piles of successes sometimes (every few minutes she'd let me roll to give me more useless hints), the hints she gave were simple restatements of the facts. Each success I rolled was another useless hint.

After about an hour, we called time so I could step outside, and I ended up going on a ride with the GM's mom to pick up the GM's sister from work. It relaxed my frustration and building anger, but it did nothing for being able to solve the problem, it gave me several more ideas which didn't work.

So I sat for a little over an hour on the floor of her apartment, musing about how to solve the problem. Apparently it was supposed to be some lesson for my character, on how to embrace the value of Patience, Hope, Justice and Wrath. How anybody could learn that from that puzzle, especially with that solution, evades me.

At the end, her comment about it all before she went to her room to go to sleep (and I was packing up to leave, was "I'm sorry you didn't have fun, my only complaint about the night is that you whined about it."

Dirigible said:

Uch, yeah. Puzzles are like chilli. You can never accurately judge your own. Many a time I've been stuck in game because what is blindingly obvious to the GM is not so to others.

Click to expand...

I'll agree with that. I remember once, I used what I though would be a piece-of-cake riddle... a poem, in which reading the first letter of every line gave the phrase caput therianthropi, ("head of the werebeast" in Latin). One of the players went to grammar school with me, and we both had Latin for the whole four years). Besides, this was D&D 2e, and the revised MM mentioned "therianthropes" in the lycanthrope introductory session.

The frustrating bit was, the players almost got the whole phrase, they had "caput therianthr...", or something close, and it didn't ring any bells. Thus, they quit.

But, anyways, regarding the riddle in the original post... looking in the books' index was the first thing that came to my mind. It could be because I'm only passingly familiar with the Bible, and don't know a thing about the Book of Mormon, and any deeper analysis is out of my league

Regards.

I don't know if I would have solved it in two hours (I couldn't try, since you posted the solution ), but it does seem quite easy to figure out.

In my opinion you just lost patience too quickly, when you stubbornly followed the path of "counting stuff" (pages, chapters...) of the whole book, at which point you were not thinking that (1) in a (good) riddle all the information you have is necessary and sufficient [counting pages has nothing to do with Wrath, Hope etc.] and (2) a (good) riddle does is in-character [the answer shouldn't be based on a particular copy of the GM's Bible].

The riddle did make sense, but at this point you were already assuming that it was a lame bad-designed riddle, and you were trying an appropriately lame solution . What did th other players do?

wingsandsword said:

She said the goal was just to be a game, for it to be fun, and for this to be a simple challenge for my character. My character had Intelligence **** and Academics **** with a specialization in Religion (which is why she chose a "religion" themed test, apparently each character is getting a similar riddle themed to their highest skill), and even when I rolled piles of successes sometimes (every few minutes she'd let me roll to give me more useless hints), the hints she gave were simple restatements of the facts. Each success I rolled was another useless hint.

Click to expand...

I think that with your PC abilities, she couldn't have suggested much beyond the fact that Wrath & Justice can be find in the Bible, and Hope & Patience in the other, and then with a good roll she should have said if there is one particular episode about each. Once you knew that there was ONE main place to look for Wrath, it should have then quite obvious to look for that one place in the book (if you didn't think about the index, you probably would have asked for another roll to find the chapter straight away).