Defeated by puzzle - campaign over: Here is the offending puzzle!

[Quickbeam]

Someone needs to revoke his subscription to GAMES magazine.

LOL. I used to subscribe to that magazine when I was in the 4th or 5th grade.

 

[Quickbeam]

"Fill in the proper symbols into the blanks"


If you deconstruct the above sentence, you do indeed get 35 letters. Moreover, there ARE 35 blank spaces.

I'd say this is the right path to pursue, but only because the decreasing pattern appears to fall apart. For my part though, I'd almost be tempted to just stick each of the 35 letters in the blank spaces in the order they appear in the sentence.

That doesn't seem to do much good either, but I've only invested then minutes on the puzzle to this point.

One other thing -- I agree with the sentiment that allowing an entire campaign to end on a puzzle with only one solution is rather weak. The players/characters should have been given other means of overcoming this obstacle, although perhaps they were and we (they) aren't aware that's the case.

 

[maggot]

So you always give a reason why your Fighter with a really high attack roll managed to hit the creature with the really high AC, or why your monk managed to jump across a huge chasm?

Going the other direction, if you have all puzzles in game decided by INT checks and all negotiations decided by Diplomacy rolls alone, why not have all tactical decisions decided by Knowledge:Tactics rolls. "You don't think to tumble over there Mr. Half-Orc rogue, because you don't have the tactical knowledge to do such a thing." I think not. Some decisions must be made by the players or the game is just a bunch of die rolling. Apparently some players like rolling INT to solve puzzles, but for me that defeats the purpose of having puzzles in the game.

And to reiterate, I think having the game end on a puzzle is pretty lame.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I think it's a tactical map of the Battle of Endor, 25:34 minutes before the Death Star exploded. Now we just have to figure out which symbol represents which type of starfighter (I think that <-> is a tie fighter, that's pretty easy).

No, seriously:
Roman: I want you to ask the DM for the solution, and what he was thinking when he did that to you. Then, you post that. If said DM won't cooperate, force him at gunpoint.

EDIT: Oh, by the way, did I mention that one of the players who's PC got kidnapped was my wife? Yeah, she made sure I felt really bad about what I had done.

Did she pull a sneak attack? (Sneak Attack = attack where it hurts?).

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Are we sure this isn't a simple answer hidden in pretty packaging? I mean, a really evil villain might just make sure that all the blanks removed were the same symbol to make it easier for the henchmen, but lay it out in a complicated manner to fool intruders.

This is my favorite really evil answer of the thread.

 

[D+1]

Voted "extremely difficult" only because with the information we have at hand it cannot be proven to be impossible.

Occams Razor - all things being equal the simplest solution is usually the correct solution. 35 letters in the instructions, 35 blank boxes that the instructions tell you to fill. The rest of the puzzle is then irrelevant, serving only as a distraction for the actual, rock-simple solution. That's assuming of course that those instructions are written verbatim and that there isn't a mistake in drawing up the "puzzle".

But, I must agree with everyone - why hinge the completion of an entire campaign upon a puzzle? Why, when the players failed in due course to SOLVE the puzzle did the DM not provide additional clues to it's solution - especially given its be-all END-all significance to the campaign? Why, when the players gave up on the CAMPAIGN for having given up on the PUZZLE did the DM not provide the players the solution? Why did the players not ASK for the solution rather than just give up on the campaign in toto and start over? And we have a DM who has given his players a TOTAL GAMESTOPPER of a puzzle and after more than a full session working on it lets the whole campaign to THIS point just... end? No puzzle solution. No alternate resolution to the campaign. No additional clues.

I REALLY gotta know what the DM was thinking here and why the PLAYERS let an otherwise good DM kill his own campaign with something so freaking lame. If all there is to this story is what we're seeing here on the surface there are more people than the DM who need to be shot twice with clue hammers. If that's all there is to this then the indication to me is that the DM was bored with the game and/or had no idea where to go, so either threw in this puzzle intentionally or took the opportunity of it going unsolved to just end the game. But it still doesn't explain why the players let it all go.

 

[Mark]

Voted "extremely difficult" only because with the information we have at hand it cannot be proven to be impossible.

I don't know why anyone is voting at all. Without knowing the actual answer, no one can verify that the puzzle is legitimate and, of course, if we have the answer we know it is not impossible. Furthermore, if we get the answer and find out the puzzle wasn't properly presented, then we know the current answer to the poll is that it had been impossible. The jury is still out on the 15 x 15 puzzle, but the poll is currently, by default, impossible to answer.

 

[LeifVignirsson]

Maybet his is one of the JUMBLE word puzzles on crack? Perhaps, when the letters of the sentence are rearranged, it might spell out the name of a god, a group of high powered people, a nation... something... That also might narrow down the focus of the letters a bit. "This is a two letter word, this is a four letter word" and so on... I think the symbols are there to distract and confuse more than anything else. Black them out and see if you can arrange words in the blank spots.

 

[Zappo]

I haven't voted, because I haven't even tried to solve it... but, knowing the kind of feats which the collective brainpower of Enworld has pulled out in less than three pages in other cases, I'm leaning towards "extremely difficult" or "impossible".

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

I think it's a tactical map of the Battle of Endor, 25:34 minutes before the Death Star exploded. Now we just have to figure out which symbol represents which type of starfighter (I think that <-> is a tie fighter, that's pretty easy).

Ha! I'm not the only person who looked at those <-> and thought Tie-Fighter!

I'd like to vote "I suck at puzzles" but it is not an option.