Long time listener, first time caller, as the old saying used to go. 
I've DMed a lot of different games through various systems and have been running my group through Pathfinder lately. Given that at least some of my players were new to roleplaying in general and others had been only playing in a forum based version, I tried a few different things to get them involved, like using the mashup of Blood Bowl with D&D by the Chatty DM to get them using the battlemap as a tactical experience rather than just all focusing on whatever attacks they wished to make so that using their strategy they could score.
Lately, I have been playing a lot of the old school adventure games when I get off work, mostly because my computer can't play a lot of the newer games (as it is an old clunker), but also because I remember playing these games growing up. Like recently, I was just playing The Dig by Lucas Arts and they have various puzzles in there that are about getting alien technology to work like one where you are aligning a beam of light so that it interacts properly with various prisms, sort of like a more complex version of what Gabe did in Penny-Arcade's D&D sessions.
My question becomes, have people tried this sort of thing? If so, how well did it turn out? I remember in the Rules Compendium for D&D 3.5, there was a comment about multi-stage puzzles I liked, so that people could get hints or find the solution to a specific stage with their dice rolls but they couldn't just solve everything with one good roll. To use the prism example, would you just draw something like it on the table and let players fiddle with it, addling the reflecting lights when they turn the various prisms?
It could be simplified into a Legend of Zelda style puzzle where it is reflecting the light with the mirror shield to light a torch or to kill an enemy or to open a door, much like a similar puzzle as part of the temple clearing in Skyrim. However, that one then mostly is just the PCs saying 'I adjust the prism for the light to shine into the sensor' or in the case of LoZ laser eye spinning turrets, 'I wait for the beam and use the shield to reflect it', maybe adding a roll to see where they manage to reflect it in a sort of ranged attack chance.
I used to do a lot of the puzzle books when I was a kid. 'How can you make this image into this image by only moving two matchsticks', 'Solve this Cryptogram', 'How can you move this to here in three moves, by only moving in straight lines', etc. I even bought a puzzle book I had as a child to use against my players, The Usbourne Book of Superpuzzles, and some of them they found challenging but enjoyed, like finding out who lied, who told the truth and who told a mix of lies and truth, and another one about stepping through a section of tiles to get through a trap filled hallway. But something involving a lot more moving parts, I don't know how that could be put on display and am looking for some ideas and suggestions.
I've DMed a lot of different games through various systems and have been running my group through Pathfinder lately. Given that at least some of my players were new to roleplaying in general and others had been only playing in a forum based version, I tried a few different things to get them involved, like using the mashup of Blood Bowl with D&D by the Chatty DM to get them using the battlemap as a tactical experience rather than just all focusing on whatever attacks they wished to make so that using their strategy they could score. Lately, I have been playing a lot of the old school adventure games when I get off work, mostly because my computer can't play a lot of the newer games (as it is an old clunker), but also because I remember playing these games growing up. Like recently, I was just playing The Dig by Lucas Arts and they have various puzzles in there that are about getting alien technology to work like one where you are aligning a beam of light so that it interacts properly with various prisms, sort of like a more complex version of what Gabe did in Penny-Arcade's D&D sessions.
My question becomes, have people tried this sort of thing? If so, how well did it turn out? I remember in the Rules Compendium for D&D 3.5, there was a comment about multi-stage puzzles I liked, so that people could get hints or find the solution to a specific stage with their dice rolls but they couldn't just solve everything with one good roll. To use the prism example, would you just draw something like it on the table and let players fiddle with it, addling the reflecting lights when they turn the various prisms?
It could be simplified into a Legend of Zelda style puzzle where it is reflecting the light with the mirror shield to light a torch or to kill an enemy or to open a door, much like a similar puzzle as part of the temple clearing in Skyrim. However, that one then mostly is just the PCs saying 'I adjust the prism for the light to shine into the sensor' or in the case of LoZ laser eye spinning turrets, 'I wait for the beam and use the shield to reflect it', maybe adding a roll to see where they manage to reflect it in a sort of ranged attack chance.
I used to do a lot of the puzzle books when I was a kid. 'How can you make this image into this image by only moving two matchsticks', 'Solve this Cryptogram', 'How can you move this to here in three moves, by only moving in straight lines', etc. I even bought a puzzle book I had as a child to use against my players, The Usbourne Book of Superpuzzles, and some of them they found challenging but enjoyed, like finding out who lied, who told the truth and who told a mix of lies and truth, and another one about stepping through a section of tiles to get through a trap filled hallway. But something involving a lot more moving parts, I don't know how that could be put on display and am looking for some ideas and suggestions.
