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

[ceratitis]

I once put a puzzle in a dungeon. It wasn't meant to be solved, but rather to delay and damage intruders. There was a tile grid in front of a door. On each 5' tile was a small pictograph. Simple things like a bird, or a bird in the air, the sun, a cloud, etc. Then on the wall beside the grid was a plague that read "The Circle of Life shall open the way."

Every time someone moved over an incorrect square, they were zapped by a lightning bolt. The actual path was a straight line on the right-hand side, with absolutely nothing to do with the pictures. The idea being that the master of the dungeon could walk right across it no problem, and intruders would spend precious minutes trying to think up some kind of reasoning in the pictograms, all the while being blasted by lightning bolts.

thats a pretty good trap for the wizard but did the players have any chance to figure it out? like a spot check to see the dusty pics and a worn trail on the right? or some kind of hint from a hench man they killed? otherwise ,while effective and reasonable, its also frustrating to play and achives nothing. have you guys played betrayel at krondor? great riddles and traps there and all fun to solve. none of the essensial ones were unsolvable, you could always find clues but figering it out on your own was fun and rewarding.
Z

 

[ceratitis]

Hmmph. Of all my guesses, this is the one I liked least. I think "NO COD!" would have been much better.

Daniel

i liked your six fish aswer, very cool
if i was dming not only would i accept it but give you a reward for making me laugh so hard too
Z

 

[wingsandsword]

The follow-up and postscript to this little saga. . .

In the days after this, I had a talk with the GM, I didn't direct her to this thread or board (because as was pointed out, there were some very hostile things said I wouldn't say to a new GM). I pointed out my problems with it. I had even gone to other RL gaming friends and told them about this puzzle, not a one said they would have gotten it, even with having it explained to them after the fact, it was just to arbitrary and obscure.

Apparently she got the idea for the puzzle from a video game I'd never heard of, and just about copied the puzzle verbatim. She had wanted there to be two puzzles, with a second one after the first puzzle. She consulted with her boyfriend, a much more experienced GM, and learned a few lessons and decided to change things around.

She retconned it being a lethal trap, instead the large amount of sand being dumped on my character did several levels of bashing damage, and he was able to take the second challenge.

The second challenge was much more reasonable. It was three statues and a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, each with a small pile of essentially 3D puzzle pieces at them, and my character made several Intelligence+Academia(Religion) and Intelligence+Crafts extended rolls to assemble the items and place them with the correct object: The tablets of the ten commandments in the Ark, the replica of the Holy Lance in the Roman soldier's hands, the Holy Grail in Christ's hand, and a flaming sword in an archangel's hands, and when all four parts were completed, a wall slid aside and opened up. It was mostly some extended rolls, with some very mild puzzle solving.

My hunch was correct, at the end of the second challenge was a note, left by the presumed deceased "rich uncle" that he was responsible for all this, and he would see us in the future. Why? Who knows, but the campaign is now off to a better start.

As a slight aside, it appears that she is not wanting to make the PC's vampires, mages, or werewolves just yet (if ever), but after the mental stress of these events, she's allowing PC's to buy minor powers out of Second Sight (the nWoD version of Sorcerer), so I'll actually see how that book runs in actual play.

 

[Ds Da Man]

The only thing I really don't like that she did is that she allowed a character to die because of what the player did not know. My DM can have a million puzzles and riddles, and I like trying to solve them, but don't kill my 16Int character because Dave the maintenance man is not a 16Int.

 

[pogre]

After 30 minutes of failure I would have asked her a riddle:

"Do you know how to dot an I (eye)?"

Sounds like she got some reasonable advice - now, if she could only give you those two hours of your life back!

 

[Cabled]

Wow. Who'd of thought this would be my first post?

I'm willing to agree that it wasn't a simple puzzle. I'm willing to agree that it was, in fact, quite difficult. I'd never have gotten it. But you wanted to play Intelligence 5, Academics (Religion) 4; your character is One Smart Cookie (and possibly one of the leading religious scholars worldwide). And his solution to a religiously themed puzzle was not to draw upon his own (presumably vast) knowledge of religious iconography or lore; wasn't to consider the usage of the words Wrath, Hope, Patience, etc, in the context of Judeo-Christian theology, and wasn't even to really take a look at the situation of the puzzle.

But that's just it...he attempted to rely on exactly that Intelligence 5, Academics 4...that's what skill checks ARE. But when a successful skill check does not impart information that the player finds useful, that's no different than a failed skill check and you're right back to punishing a player for something the character SHOULD know. The mental stats are always dicey because they're so hard to quantify compared to the physical stats in practice. But when a player has made "oodles" of successful skill checks and the GM can obviously see the clues just aren't making sense to the player, it's time to change the clues a little.

 

[Zustiur]

It sounds a lot like you were killed by what kills nearly every character who encounters riddles or puzzles in game - as soon as anyone (me included; everyone I've ever DMmed included) goes "in character", their IQ drops fifty points.

Sounds just the same as running a 'virtual machine' on a PC...
It takes serious brain power just pretending to be someone else.

Zustiur.

 

[Pielorinho]

The follow-up and postscript to this little saga. . .

That sounds like a very good postscript! Now just hope that she's not expecting you to feel gratitude toward this sadistic insane uncle of yours .

Daniel