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

[Thotas]

I would call it a bad puzzle. Each step seemed pretty arbitrary to me.

Generally, I like puzzles. But not in game. If I wanted to do puzzles at that moment, that's what I'd be doing. I do sudoku, and enjoy it. But if one was handed to me in game, I'd just see it as slowing down the plot I was wanting to persue.

 

[Voadam]

I was coming close with "one", add one letter becomes "none". Few works though. Good job.

 

[Perun]

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.

You might as well be correct. It has been quite some time since both that adventure and the last time I had to use any latin, aside from tha occasional phrase. I really can't remember whether that was the exact phrase I used (in fact, it probably wasn't), and I might have really used the Greek version ("kefale tou therianthropou (?)", my Greek was worse than my Latin even back then, I can only imagine how I butchered it now ), or the "Greek" declension... However, the "werebeast" was supposed to be singular, not plural. (In the campaign, there was a cliff called the Head of the Werebeast (because it looked like, well, a head of a werebeast ), right near the village/town where PCs were staying at the time, and the adventure was supposed to take place in the caves accessed through the werebeast's mouth.)

But, even then the actual "solution" to the riddle wasn't dependent on that one player, I actually counted on all of them to recognise the word "therianthrope" (since, like I said, it was used right in the beginning of the Lycanthrope section, explaining how lycanthropy wasn't really the correct term to refer to the werebeasts, since it explicitly refers to werewolves, and that therianthropy would be the correct term), as I knew they all read the MM and were familiar with the monsters.

Regards.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I did some cooperative writing a few years back, and in it I had created a series of cyborgs created to hunt down rogue psions. The cyborgs were called Anti-Psionic Cyborg Interception Devices, or APCID, for short, and of the many experiments, only three succesful cyborgs were created. APCID-Alpha, APCID-Delta and APCID-Omega.

For most of the story (months of real time, pages of text), one of my writing partners was dealing with a character of mine named "Dell."

It seemed so blindingly obvious to me that "Dell" was of course the APCID-Delta cyborg. But talking about it later, I discovered that she hadn't had the slighest inkling, until it was revealed in-story.

Moral of the story, as someone above mentioned, is that it's always obvious, when you know the answer to the riddle.

 

[ThatGuyThere]

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

It being a World of Darkness game, where the characters are, in fact, explicitly descendents of a man cursed by God (Caine) - and not just any ol' God, but specifically the Christian God, from the Bible - objections that the Bible doesn't constitute relevant gaming material should fall on deaf ears. I've certainly used the Bible often enough in Vampire games; I just sort of figured everyone else did, too.

Moreover, I'd also argue that the bible - regardless of it's religious content - could be considered to constitute one of the most relevant literary works ever produced in the western world, just in terms of it's prodigious effects on later works. And would certainly be of recognized value to an elder Ventrue - even one who predates it.

It's hardly religious conversion work to hand out a unique and interesting puzzle (which, honestly, I thought this was). I thought - and continue to think! - the puzzle is unique and ingenious, and I hope to have a use for it at some time.

My only two thoughts are as follows.

1) Much better to have handed over a prop bible and a prop book of mormon. And they better have had an index in them. Describing books would make the "trap" much more difficult. On that point, I agree.

2) Unique Solution my sweet nanny's fanny. The original poster, as several others have pointed out, simply kept counting things in the hope that something counted up to a convenient number. That would have made for a lousy puzzle, even if it had worked; and his solutions had little to do with the clues at hand. And from the clue, "The solution is in one of those two books", he took the suggestion, "Count more things". I'm suprised the DM didn't respond with frustration herself. Once the poster came up with a reasonably good idea - maybe looking up a relevant passage, and including it, or looking up a passage about offering himself up to God, and entering it's chapter:verse into the "clock" - she could have said, "You hear a grinding noise, as the doors start to open...". She just wasn't willing to accept the lackluster, "Didn't work? Then I count something else..."

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.

It was to count things. And when that didn't work, to count some different things, in the hope that might work, instead.

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. The gaming groups in my area have an expression: Only PCs can stand immediately beneath the glowing neon sign that says "GUARANTEED TRAP SOLUTIONS THIS WAY! ==>", and say, "I have no idea about this crazy riddle. I'm completely stumped."

 

[Infiniti2000]

I was coming close with "one", add one letter becomes "none". Few works though. Good job.

Few doesn't work IMO because that's not a specific number of fish (remember that you have to give him that many fish). One/none doesn't work because that's not adding two (either letters or anything else). The Roman numeral answer would work, but that depends on the fantasy setting and whether Roman numerals exist.

As for the topic at hand, I would try to give the GM a break except for the last comment she made. That's an unacceptable response by the GM and you really need to tell her about it. The fact that she made a mistake as a GM is okay because quite frankly we've all made similar mistakes as we were learning to GM, and we still do I'm sure.

Let's also not forget that players need to learn to be players. There's plenty of advice in this thread for players as well. If you are not having fun in the game and you don't foresee any fun, tell the GM and stop playing. The GM's making a major mistake and if you see it (particularly if you also GM), then you need to help her. This is especially true for a one-on-one session.

 

[jasper]

Some one mentioned the riddle in Tolkein. Excuse but I did NOT get any of his riddles. So Golum would have ate me or the thing from the pond.
So all riddles are hard to someone. And dms need to get a clue and help the players out.
Bibles have indexes my didn't. Excuse me my character is six foot six tall and is handsome , fly f 16s and always gets the babes. Me the player does not, I don't know what the climb rate is, or stall angle or the warning bells sound like. So saying I now need to do research on things my pc will know instantly is insane. And a sign the dm needs work.

 

[Kurotowa]

IME, riddles and puzzles are either trivially easy, because the players think like the GM and get it instantly, or game-bustingly hard, because the players don't hit on the one right answer that the GM is thinking of. I'm reminded of the time there was a door that wouldn't open and the elvish word for "up" written on it. We spent a LOT of effort trying to get through the ceiling, before the GM dropped enough extra hit for us to realise that the door had to be lifted up like a garage door.

If there must be puzzles, there should be numerous clues laid that the party has to put together, or generous use of PC skill rolls for cases like the OP. Otherwise you're just asking for the game to end in tears.

 

[Pielorinho]

I hope that NCSUCodemonkey stops by. I've played in two of his games, and he manages to achieve the exact perfect balance of puzzles somehow. I kinda figure that from Piratecat's games I've learned how to say "yes!" to players who want to try something wacky; from Codemonkey's games, I've learned what a good puzzle should look like.

Daniel

 

[Pielorinho]

By the way, I really want an answer to the fish puzzle. Another possible response:

Player: I slap a cod down in front of the wizard.
Wizard: What's this?
Player: Cod. C-O-D. Three letters, you pointy-hatted freak.
Wizard: Ah, but that's only half of it. You must add two more to get fewer.
Player: You don't like it? Fine! [Grabs the fish back] NO COD!

Daniel