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Riddle Mechanic? Suggestion? Advice?
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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8610052" data-attributes="member: 97077"><p>I'm not a huge fan of riddles myself, but sometimes for thematic purposes I might include something like one. What I do is ground the riddle in some kind of knowledge that is relevant to the setting but that the players are unlikely to know (often because I just made it up). It then makes sense to me to resolve that with Intelligence checks, if there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. It saves time on the players noodling over something and potentially killing the pace of the session. The rules also suggest a Wisdom check might resolve getting a gut feeling about what course of action to take, so you might consider using that as well when appropriate.</p><p></p><p>The thing that I don't love about this resolution method though is that it doesn't really change anything. The attempt at the task costs the PCs nothing (time, maybe, if it even matters?) and they're right back at square one if they fail. With no real cost for failure, everyone makes the attempt and so there's no meaningful decision there or trade-offs to consider. With that in mind, you might consider success on the check to be a strong clue and failure to be a weak clue. Or even success on the check to be the answer to the riddle and failure to be a clue. This means they always get <em>something </em>which moves the scene forward in some way, even if it doesn't come with a true cost.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="iserith, post: 8610052, member: 97077"] I'm not a huge fan of riddles myself, but sometimes for thematic purposes I might include something like one. What I do is ground the riddle in some kind of knowledge that is relevant to the setting but that the players are unlikely to know (often because I just made it up). It then makes sense to me to resolve that with Intelligence checks, if there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. It saves time on the players noodling over something and potentially killing the pace of the session. The rules also suggest a Wisdom check might resolve getting a gut feeling about what course of action to take, so you might consider using that as well when appropriate. The thing that I don't love about this resolution method though is that it doesn't really change anything. The attempt at the task costs the PCs nothing (time, maybe, if it even matters?) and they're right back at square one if they fail. With no real cost for failure, everyone makes the attempt and so there's no meaningful decision there or trade-offs to consider. With that in mind, you might consider success on the check to be a strong clue and failure to be a weak clue. Or even success on the check to be the answer to the riddle and failure to be a clue. This means they always get [I]something [/I]which moves the scene forward in some way, even if it doesn't come with a true cost. [/QUOTE]
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