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

[Malic]

I really should read the whole thread before voting ... I went for 'Very Difficult' (or is it 'Extremely'?) assuming there must be an answer, but having heard that the ex-GM still won't give the answer, I would guess 'Impossible' is more likely.

The ex-GM can't be too bad having run a campaign apparantly enjoyed by all for a year and ended with no ill feeling. It is hard to believe based on this incident though. How could everyone, especially the GM, just let the campaign end like that, unless they were already sick of it?

I'd be interested to hear the answers to Algolei's context questions though, Roman, as well as what actually happened to your characters (ie. did they starve to death?)

I suppose the 'Easy' voters aren't going to enlighten us.

 

[Coredump]

I concur. Just as you can't decide whether this puzzle has an answer based on the information given, you can't decide whether a DM is good at his job based on one event.

I disagree. If someone does a great job as a DM, but then every year or so does a "you picked the wrong door, all characters are dead, there is nothing you can do about it" he is still a bad DM.

The problem isn't the puzzle, the problem is that he made people throw away the entire campaign because of a stupidly hard puzzle to solve.

Hell, throwing it away for an easy puzzle is a bad DM move. Either have a way past the puzzle, or have a way to ignore it and move one. Maybe you don't get to rescue the girl, but that doesn' meant you have to end the campaign.

Yeah, I can say "Bad DM" with pretty high confidence on this one.

 

[Gwaihir]

Players #1 Rule

This whole deal stands on its head my players #1 rule.

Don't waste too much time on a puzzle, because if it really is important the DM will eventually give you enough hints to solve it.

I'm baffled.

 

[jmucchiello]

All right, I have to respond to this.

If I was the dm, and the puzzle was out there in my campaign world, and the pcs failed to solve it- I would not give them the answer. They might go back to that same puzzle some day.

They are locked in a room with no teleport, no passwall allowed. Clerics don't regain spells. They cannot get out of the room except to solve the puzzle. The players decided that they were never solving the puzzle and the GM said, Okay, game over. They will never go back. I'm guessing they starved/dehydrated to death eventually.

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed at the level of vitriol being hurled at Roman's dm.

Actually, just the fact that they are in a dungeon with no teleport and the clerics cannot regain spells sets off my warning signs. Even if the puzzle were simple, the fact that they cannot solve it and not solving it effectively ends the campaign is BAD.

Anyhow, I'd like to echo Roman's request that everyone take it a lil easier on his dm.

And I'd like to echo the request that Roman point his DM at this thread (don't tell him to post though!) so he can see another reaction to his campaign.

 

[billd91]

I disagree. If someone does a great job as a DM, but then every year or so does a "you picked the wrong door, all characters are dead, there is nothing you can do about it" he is still a bad DM.

The problem isn't the puzzle, the problem is that he made people throw away the entire campaign because of a stupidly hard puzzle to solve.

Hell, throwing it away for an easy puzzle is a bad DM move. Either have a way past the puzzle, or have a way to ignore it and move one. Maybe you don't get to rescue the girl, but that doesn' meant you have to end the campaign.

Yeah, I can say "Bad DM" with pretty high confidence on this one.

I don't know that I can say "Bad DM" in general on this one. I can say "stunningly bad DM choice, what the hell was he thinking". I don't think a dumb, stubborn choice every once in a while makes a decent DM be a bad DM in general.
But based on that "stunningly bad DM choice, what the hell was he thinking" ruling of mine, I think the DM has lost any right to keep the puzzle for future use. It's a proven campaign killer. Time to purge it from the DM's set of tools. He should surrender the solution to the players and let them judge whether it was even within their grasp, or correct for that matter. He should explain to them how they might have been able to figure out the key to the puzzle step by step to prove that the puzzle is, in fact, solveable. It's the decent thing to do for both his players and himself.

 

[Seeten]

Perhaps the DM advised the players it would be difficult and dangerous to enter, and they best be advised they might die before they did so, and yet, despite all warnings, they chose to enter the temple of the dark god.

Sometimes, things dont go your way do to player fiat, not DM.

I had a level 1 player willfully attack a lernean hydra. And that attack again after it had left, having just killed the horses. What to do?

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I am completely uncommitted to any discussion of the quality of your DM. I am, however, completely distracted by the puzzle to the point of insanity.

PLEASE get the man to give you the solution. I'm going on vacation soon, and I don't want to have cleared all my work and real life problems from my plate to have this silly thing nagging at me the whole time.

 

[Algolei]

I disagree. If someone does a great job as a DM, but then every year or so does a "you picked the wrong door, all characters are dead, there is nothing you can do about it" he is still a bad DM.

Not if that's what that particular campaign was all about.

If the whole campaign was about getting past this puzzle, and the players somehow ignored all the clues, the characters deserve to die. It's just the end of those characters, not the end of the game of D&D forever.

What's the problem with a campaign involving a realistic impediment to success? If this is some sort of epic dungeon that has defeated every comer unti now, yet the defenses weren't enough to keep anyone out, why haven't others accomplished the goals already? Should such a situation suddenly be easy for the PCs just because they're PCs?

I wouldn't want to play in a campaign where failure was impossible. That's just too masturbatory for me.

(But there has to be an answer to the puzzle, otherwise my entire argument collapses. )

 

[radferth]

I would say the party discovered the correct solution to the puzzle about ten minutes into the second session. There in nothing inheritly wrong with TPK inducing death traps unless they are unavoidable. What seems to me to be jerk-like behavior is to drop the party into a TPK inducing death trap and not tell them for over an entire session.

 

[Lord Judas]

Since he wont give out the answer post-game, lump me into the crowd that thinks he either made a major blunder presenting it (like a few messed up symbols), -or- he plans on using it, or a variant of it, in the future <shudder>.

Regardless of past performance, not fessing up once the books are packed up is pretty cruel.