Book of Challenges preview

[Nightfall]

Well I always thought it was fun to watch others suffer.

 

[Rahkan]

Whats the Point...

Whats the point of a logic puzzle? Do you really want to put a little sign in front of the place that guards all your treasure "Must be this smart to enter?". I wouldn't want a room that weeds out stupid people, I'd want one that weeds out smart people.

I'd think that if you had a dungeon full of traps and craps you'd want a bunch of stupid people to die in it so that everyone else would stop bothering you. You wouldn't want to have the stupid people be killed at the front gate, that just means that you get less dead adventurers per interior trap (which is where all the fun is).

The best kind of trap is the kind that can't be disarmed by anyone but the people you want to get it. Why then institute a trap that can be disarmed by anyone with three wits jingling around in their pockets? I agree with the above posters, someone (an NPC, not a DM) would have to be really insane to use this one in their keep (no matter how interesting it might look) as is. The easiest way for an actual person to use this would be just to remove the scroll and make it the entrance to their inner sanctum. Obviously anyone who forgets the combination isn't the kind of person you want in your inner sanctum. Or perhaps the wizard gives each of his subordinates "the scroll" and if they can't make it across then...they aren't his subordinates anymore. Then the PCs could question some of the dead "ex-lackeys" with Speak with Dead and get the scroll.

 

[rounser]

Whats the point of a logic puzzle? Do you really want to put a little sign in front of the place that guards all your treasure "Must be this smart to enter?". I wouldn't want a room that weeds out stupid people, I'd want one that weeds out smart people.

Indeed.

Better yet, why bother with a dungeon at all? Monsters don't pay rent, and dungeons are damn expensive to build. Why not just put your treasure in a single room vault?

Why? Because this is D&D, and silly logic puzzles in tombs made by long-dead wizards who like playing games with intruders are in-genre, making them forgivable.

Soon, other questions might occur, such as: How do those little villages survive with 1d6 trolls and worse horrors regularly wandering around the landscape?, or, Why do wizards want for money after they master invisibility and silence spells?, and, Why don't kings employ single 20th level fighters to take on armies of orcs instead of 100s of 1st level warriors? I'm sure you can think of more, the list goes on and on....

I seem to be the only one to think that example was pretty silly. I can't imagine why such a structure might exist. I guess it would help if D&D magic had insanity as a side effect. It certainly fits the old-school White Plume Mountain mold though.

You say this like it's a bad thing. Frankly, I'm sick of new-school "cabinet contents" dungeons, with their empty rooms and their barracks and their bedrooms and their boredom and their two copper pieces and a dead rat in the rubble, and their precious verisimilitude. Forget the "v" word, give me the "f" word! ("Fun", that is.)

If you really want to have your cake and eat it, you can take a leaf from Richards and come up with a justification for throwing logic puzzles around...

But on to more important matters; such as how good Mialee's looking in that illustration.

 

[mmadsen]

Better yet, why bother with a dungeon at all? Monsters don't pay rent, and dungeons are damn expensive to build. Why not just put your treasure in a single room vault?

If we start with the idea that there are subterranean intelligent races (dwarves, goblins, etc.), then "dungeons" naturally flow from that.

If we accept that ancient magical races called down the wrath of the gods, then buried ruins naturally flow from that too.

Why? Because this is D&D, and silly logic puzzles in tombs made by long-dead wizards who like playing games with intruders are in-genre, making them forgivable.

If we have a plausible explanation for the silly logic puzzles though, they're a lot more fun. Madness as a side effect of magic goes a long, long way. Winding corridors confusing evil spirits can also go a long, long way. But many of us do want some kind of explanation. Just a little one.

 

[Nightfall]

I may not understand ALL the logic puzzles, but I know what I like.

 

[Richards]

Originally posted by rounser:

If you really want to have your cake and eat it, you can take a leaf from Richards and come up with a justification for throwing logic puzzles around...

You do me honor, rounser. *bows*

Johnathan

 

[rounser]

You're welcome mate.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Why don't kings employ single 20th level fighters to take on armies of orcs instead of 100s of 1st level warriors?

I for one loved that discussion. I was on the side of employing the single 20th level warrior. I can't remember who won.

 

[mmadsen]

Do we know anything else about the product? It's not all logic puzzles, I'd assume...

 

[rounser]

I for one loved that discussion. I was on the side of employing the single 20th level warrior. I can't remember who won.

I didn't realise it was a past discussion - just plucked that one out of the air as something that had seemed odd in the past.

Apparently Arneson's Marfeldt the Barbarian (from Blackmoor) fought entire armies single-handedly back when the game was a wargame/RPG hybrid, so it's not unprecedented...