Chessboard Puzzle Help

[LogantheBard]

I'm planting a chessboard puzzle in a dungeon I plan on running with the party, and I'm not sure how to punish them for taking too long to figure it out.

The puzzle concerns Queen's Domination on an 8x8 board. Here's a definition from Wikipedia.

Domination:
Given an n×n board, the domination number is the minimum number of queens (or other pieces) needed to attack or occupy every square. For n=8 the queen's domination number is 5.

To solve the puzzle, the party must place themselves as the queens, and dominate the board. There are 2 unique solutions (solutions that differ only because of symmetry or rotation are the same solution). One leads to a treasure vault, one leads further into the dungeon.

My problem is this: My players are very analytical, and will draw out a board and discuss the puzzle until they have a solution. Their players won't budge until they've got a solution. They won't trial and error and risk their players. How do I make the encounter somewhat dangerous? If they activate the trap standing in the wrong place, they will take damage.

I want to instill a sense of urgency on the group, but I don't know how. Do I make the room only the board, and have the damage occur every real life minute? I'm at a loss.

 

[Kingreaper]

Make it a combat encounter.

Make squares that are threatened behave favourably over those that aren't (ie. squares that aren't threatened can spawn minions? Not sure)

Solving it becomes a round by round thing.

Don't let them spend too much time thinking about their actions each round. If they don't act fast, then their turn is delayed until they work out what they're doing.

The "each solution gives a different result" thing seems odd to me, and wouldn't go down well with my group, or any I've played with, so I'd advise being sure it'll go well with yours. You know them, we don't, so use your own judgement.

 

[Smurtis]

i like where you're going with this idea of yours... and i see your problem... sometimes in my game we take too long by discussing the problem out of character... Here's a couple ideas:

1) Use live time. every 1-2 minutes of real time they lose 1 healing surge value (life draining effect on the board). If they have no surges left, they take their surge value in damage... or something like that...

2) Dont allow them to use "out of character" time... tell them everything from this moment on (once the game starts) you speak in game. Once they're on the table as "queens" they cant move together to draw up a map in game... You can also restrict what they say to each other... it's a Free Action to say a few words, but not draw up a battle plan, so dont let them draw one up. You can even go so far as restricting all talk until it's that players turn...

Just examples of course... mabye a combination of the two, or something... But i think it's just a matter of explaining to them that they are being rushed and cant abuse out of character time to solve in character situations ALL the time lol..

 

[LogantheBard]

I like the minion spawning idea. It eliminates the need for there to be a lever at all, when they solve the puzzle, the door opens.

Perhaps the squares that aren't dominated spawn a minion, the squares that are dominated kill any minion thats on it. As I'm typing this I can see the encounter unfolding in my head. I'm really liking this.

As for the 2 solutions thing, I didn't think about being more frustrating than rewarding. I thought it would be a fun extra challenge for them (they would have knowledge of there being 2 outcomes before hand), but I may leave it out for now, and talk to them about it before actually implementing it.

 

[OSEZNO]

I want to instill a sense of urgency on the group, but I don't know how. Do I make the room only the board, and have the damage occur every real life minute? I'm at a loss.

Old school "the wall behind us/walls/ceiling is closing in on us" trap could be one way to instill urgency.

You could treat a real life minute as a round, condition collapses so much every round - setting the amount of rounds/minutes until imminent failure (maybe in such a way that it just closes the opportunity to them though instead of like killing them, i know they deserve to die but leave that to the NPCs lurking in the next room).

Or, you could have someone tail them, after a set amount of rounds/real life minutes of not-solving it, the punishment is a combat encounter - one they wished they had avoided and could have avoided.

Something like that is what I would probably do if I wanted to press urgency on them.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I would not tell them the rules right off.

I'd use an Othello board for the combat in this case. Flipping the black and white tiles over should give the players the idea soon enough. Start them all black and as the character move the tiles change colors. Minions die on white tiles and appear on black tiles at the end of each full turn.


Flipping them all over all the time might be annoying, though.

Good puzzle.

 

[Firebeetle]

Don't tell them the rules. Have the whole board with only one square of space on either end and a flame wall on the opposite side. . The flames do 10 damage to anyone entering, and 5 fire damage to be anywhere else (per square.) The wall is 20 fire damage to cross. Whenever the players step on the board, the flames recede according to how a queen moves. The flame wall on the other side won't go down until all squares are cleared.

The players have to choose quickly or take ongoing damage. If further prompting is needed, have a flame wall appear on the entrance side and move forward until the players are forced onto the board.

 

[fba827]

The room is in total darkness and snuffs out light when no one is standing on the board.

So when the PCs are off the board, it is pitch black, and they hear this low heavy breathing coming from somewhere across the board.

When they all step on the board, the chamber lights up, and any nondominated square spawns a minion. Roll 1d4. That's how many rounds any PC trained in arcana thinks it will take before the minions will get summoned again.
So after that many rounds, use their current positions to determine. Else, if someone steps off the board, the room falls back into blackness and the trap resets.

Thus, you have an incentive to get them on the board (the darkness, and the low heavy breathing -- which is nothing excpet a DM plot device.. or maybe it's the sound of the minions that are waiting to spawn on the board, whatever... clicking insect noies if they're insects, and so on. just going for more atmosphere of the ominous sound in the darkness).
And then when on the board, they have an incentive to keep moving (the 1d4 rounds until respawn). So they won't be thinking about talking it out as much as they are aware of the time limit before things respawn based on their new locations.

 

[Nullzone]

Something else to note is that with two unique solutions to the puzzle that lead to different places, you need to emphasize that somehow if you want them to find the vault. If they solve it and the path leads further into the dungeon, they'll never think twice about finding the other solution.

A riddle of some sort often works well; allude to the idea that there's two ways out, and they might keep trying.

 

[Riastlin]

As mentioned earlier, you obviously know your players better than the rest of us. However, I too would be a bit leery of the two viable solutions but with different results scenario.

If you do want to have different results, you need to a) let them know that there are two solutions, b) that each solution would generate a unique result and c) give them some sort of clue as to which solution would lead to the treasure.

Otherwise, if they pick the "wrong" viable solution, it could very well just seem like DM fiat/meta-gaming. A riddle (as mentioned above) can certainly help with this, but you need to make sure that the PCs have the clues necessary to not only discern that there are two solutions, but that one solution is actually a bit preferable to the other.