Puzzles, challenges, and articles about Magic

[Impeesa]

There's an interesting article up on the official Magic site tonight. They have sort of a puzzle theme going on this week, and Mark Gottlieb is apparently something of a puzzle fiend. The article itself is a good read, particularly if you like using a lot of puzzles in your game (duh). One particular passage caught my eye, though..

This example demonstrates the key tenet to being a puzzlemaker, which is something I figured out early on: A puzzlemaker is creating a challenge—a mental showdown—between himself and the solver. The puzzlemaker must set himself up to lose that battle.

The solver has to win. The puzzle has to fall. Fledgling puzzlemakers often have the attitude that they want to “win”—that they want to stump the solver. But if the solver is stumped, then the puzzle is a failure.

This got me thinking again on something I'd realized earlier. I haven't done much DMing at all in the last couple years, and when I ran a two-night "one shot" over the summer while a friend was visiting, it made me think a lot more about some of my old habits. In particular, things related to challenging the players.

I should preface this by saying that I tend to run a pretty combat-heavy game (as a player I'm an unrepentant powergamer - it's just what I do best, so I run with it ), so that's the context I'm thinking in, but this applies to any challenge you put in front of the players no matter the form. Anyway, I found that I tend to juice enemies up on the fly to make it "more of a challenge." If it looks like it's going to roll over without too much of a fight, I have a bad habit of fudging HP to give it one last round of fightin', things like that. When I'm preparing an opponent important enough to have his own detailed statblock, I tend to think in the same sort of manner as I might while creating a powerful PC. I think to myself, "this should dish out some nice damage," and so on. In those situations where it turns out it doesn't slow them down much at all, I might be a bit disappointed.

But I realize this might be the wrong philosophy for a good game. As has been discussed before, combat doesn't have to be one life-or-death threat after another, of course. But beyond that, the quote above made me think of it another way... in general, anything you throw at the party (aside from encounters where they genuinely aren't intended to succeed) will ultimately flee or be defeated. No exceptions. If it does so with style, then the DM has succeeded.

Obviously, most encounters should still challenge the party in some manner. I suppose what really struck me about this is how my own expectations and mindset in planning affects my satisfaction with how it plays out. In retrospect, that all seems pretty obvious, and perhaps even just a convoluted way of saying "It's not supposed to be DM vs. the players" (which is also obvious). Just wondering if anyone else has ever given this sort of thing any thought.

Plus, I am tired and incoherent. One more report and the semester's over, just keep telling myself that...

--Impeesa--

 

[RangerWickett]

Ooh. That puts into words something I fully agree with, but had not thought of before.

 

[Impeesa]

Apparently we're the only ones. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Magic in the title.

Thinking more on my incoherent ramble there, I realized I have done the same thing with non-combat challenges in the past - stonewalling clever solutions past roleplaying or thinking (puzzle) challenges that I didn't think of while planning it, which would make the encounter way easier than I'd hoped. I am horrible - or at least, I have been in the past. :\

--Impeesa--

 

[RangerWickett]

One thing I like to do is think of what specifically an opponent would do to best defend themselves, then concoct one or two ways to weaken their defenses or give the PCs a way to overcome them. Like having a high-level archmage in his flying monastery on the plane of air, surrounded by bodyguards and bound elementals. But he's an old man who likes poetry, so he goes out every day and sits in a garden in the monastery, making him more vulnerable. It was much more fun to fight in a Zen garden over an endless expanse of clouds than it would've been to fight inside the monastery itself.