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

[GSHamster]

Puzzles like that don't belong in RPGs. For one, the solution has no bearing on the "riddle". One is supposed to learn Hope, Patience, Wrath, and whatever by looking it up in the index? Ridiculous!

Umm. Looking it up in the index gets you a biblical verse that deals with Hope, Patience, Wrath, or Justice. To me that seems like a very big connection to the riddle.

Edit: For example, given the word Murder, a good answer would be 20:13 (some crazy 24hr clock ). Why? Because Exodus 20:13 is "Thou shall not kill". 20:13 is intimately connected to the clue Murder.

 

[Dirigible]

Some time ago, I seem to recall creating a thread about making Open Ended Puzzles, which look like riddles and puzzles with a set answer, but are actually an excuse/trick to get the players and/or PCs to expound on their beliefs and develop ideas, either on the personal scale or in a abstract sense.

Maybe someone with the Power Of Search can find it. Seems relevantish.

 

[wingsandsword]

Hmmm. Out of curiosity, is this OWoD or NWoD?

It doesn't sound like my cup of tea, personally, but I hope the ship rights itself and you guys all end up having fun. It's certainly off to a rocky start.

New World of Darkness. I hope it rights itself too, as I like the GM as a friend, and I like the gaming group a lot. The GM is very new at GMing though, she's got lots of vampire larp experience, and a modest amount of tabletop experience, but it's her first time running a game.

Heck, I interpret adding the Book of Mormon as an attempt to keep from being overly pushing-religion-on-you. (Unless the DM is a Mormon, and then I'm not sure.)

The DM isn't a mormon, not even Christian actually (the entire family is Wiccan). She told me at the end that the only reason that the Book of Mormon was included was that my character made a sarcastic comment when they arrived at the manor for the reading of the will, when they saw walls full of family trees, and were shown incredibly detailed geneologies dating back for many centuries, including every relative throughout the world, descendants and ancestors, in an impossibly comprehensive library, that the "rich uncle" had to be a Mormon, since they are well known for their elaborate geneologies.

 

[delericho]

Now that I think about it, I never would have gotten it myself, because I didn't realize the Bible even had an index.

Yeah, none of my copies do. Of course, there are printings that do, but I wouldn't have thought to look for one. Besides, there isn't any one iconic text about Wrath or Justice in the Bible, they tend to crop up quite often, especially in the Old Testament. (I can't speak about the contents of the Book of Mormon as I haven't read it.)

Funnily enough, this is almost a good puzzle. It's tied appropriately to the PC's abilities, it has a reason for being (assuming the theory about the Ventrue testing his descendants is correct), and it provides all the information needed to solve it.

Where it goes wrong is that it admits only a single method of solving it (okay, there are four possibilities, but they're all versions of the same solution), it stops the game in its tracks until solved, and it doesn't provide sufficient clues. After an hour of trying (or probably less), the Storyteller should have recognised that there was a problem, and had the character solve the riddle, and moved on. Just dragging it out was pointless.

But worst of all was that the puzzle killed the players character before the campaign proper even got started! Frankly, at that point I would have declined to roll up a new PC, and considered myself fortunate to have avoided this Storyteller's notion of 'fun'.

 

[IceFractal]

It's an interesting puzzle, but I agree - the index thing may be obvious to the DM, but for everyone else, it's not at all apparent (and I wasn't aware the Bible had an index either). Any complex puzzle that relies on a single solution is tricky - at best, the DM should playtest it beforehand (with somebody else), and at worst, it's just not going to work.

And while I'm all for players solving puzzles by themselves, I think that after an hour has passed and the player is getting frustrated - that is definitely the time to just roll a skill check.

 

[Hawken]

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.

And everyone should know that? The type of puzzle is separate from the fact that it was a situation that the player had to deal with who may or may not know puzzles and it is the character that suffers the consequences. That's not a good mix for the game, even worse when its a matter of life and death.

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.

Actually, it could be way out of line. Religion is touchy at best and forcing someone to look up material in any religious text as a crucial part of a game is seriously out of line unless the DM and Player both have discussed it ahead of time. If the Player doesn't mind and likes a Sunday School lesson thrown in with an rpg, that's about the only exception to it not being out of line.

Or you can role-play it, but if you're not clever enough to see the answer, your character dies.

That's not roleplaying. There's no interaction between the character and anything at that point. For that puzzle it was the Player having to solve it (or not, in this case) and the DM killing off the character because the Player--not the character--failed to solve it. The character was well trained on the subject of Religion and should have had no problems solving the puzzle, the Player, not so similarly trained, failed. Ability/Skill checks should have provided signifigant clues about solving it and the DM should have known that the Player does not have the same training as the character and cannot do the things that the character in game could do. Clues could have been provided and hints given to lead the player to the correct answer. That would have demonstrated some value in the character's religious training (as well as allowing the Player the chance to use that skill with meaningful results), and would have been more satisfying helping him along so he could come to the answer himself; rather than just giving the answer for a good roll, or outright denying it because the Player did not have the character's knowledge.

The DM's complaint about whining is way out of line. What did she expect after putting her Player through hours of an obviously opposite-of-fun time? She should consider herself lucky that 'whining' was all there was, and be happy if her Player gives her a second chance at running a game.

In my opinion you just lost patience too quickly...The riddle did make sense

That is easy to say in hindsight. Maybe you would have done better in his shoes, maybe not. But the point is, he did not, and there's no excuse for the DM not picking up on that and moving forward. Player's rarely possess character knowledge and when they don't it's up to the DM to be that knowledge and provide clues/answers that the character, not the Player, would know. In D20, I read somewhere that 4 ranks in a skill is about the equivalent of a Bachelor's Degree. If that is true, and based on the stakes involved in the game, the character should likely have been one of the foremost experts in his field if he had around a +10 modifier or whatever. The character would have been able to solve that puzzle in minutes, if not sooner!

 

[cthulhu_duck]

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)...

Would you consider yourself knowledgable about the Christian Religion? I suspect the problem with puzzles like this is that the GM really needs to make the puzzles fit the players, rather than the puzzles fit the characters, unless they plan to let the players roll some dice and have their characters come up with the solution etc.

 

[Zander]

I got it immediately but I still think the GM did a poor job.

The GM should always anticipate the possibility that a puzzle won't be solved without the outcome being fatal. Sure, if the player(s) fail(s) to solve a problem, there should be negative consequences but not terminal ones.

Bad GMing. Not your fault.

 

[Danzauker]

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.

That's a mistake, because while "caput" is correct latin for "head", "therianthropos" is actually GREEK (from "therion", "wild animal", and "anthropos", "man")!!

The fact that "therianthropos" is even inflected to "therianthropi" for the plural, in the latin way, adds a mistake over a mistake.

 

[Maggan]

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.

I suck at puzzles, I would never have figured this one out.

Actually, I have a confession to make. I don't get the solution either.

What's the "on prisoners" thing you're supposed to look to? And what's that go to do with "Wrath" or "Justice"?

Honest to god, I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything. I just don't get it.

/M