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

[Andre]

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.

My solution is simplicity itself: Have someone else in the group start a campaign. After character creation, the players are told that their characters are locked in a room. There's no food or water. The only way out is to solve a puzzle...with circles...and double arrows...and upside-down triangles.

Either the ex-GM produces the solution, or the campaign ends. Rinse and repeat until the ex-GM gives the solution or he fesses up and admits there isn't one.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

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

That's bad campaign design, and he's still a bad DM.

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?

Realistic? "nothing you can do except solving this puzzle will ever get you out of here, and if there were clues, you cannot go look for them, because you cannot get out of here." Realism my donkey.

And there is some middle ground between "easy" and "impossible".

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

And what do you call a campaign where success is impossible? To use your analogy, that would probably make you an eunuch

 

[tarchon]

"I cast Prestidigitation and use it to make all 50 quadrillion combinations of symbols appear on the grid, leaving each one a couple femtoseconds."

 

[T. Foster]

Without passing judgment on this particular puzzle (which I certainly can't solve, but then again I never claimed to be good at solving puzzles -- or a particularly good D&D player, for that matter) I really don't see this situation as necessarily indicative of bad DMing. Depending on how much freewill the party exercised in getting themselves into this predicament (whether they chose or were 'forced' to go into this dungeon, various preparations and precautions they possibly could have taken to allow escape/retreat, etc.) it's quite possibly entirely appropriate that the entire party be wiped out and the campaign ended by their failure to solve a puzzle (if not necessarily this particular puzzle). I admire this DM for sticking to his guns and refusing to fudge the result when the party wasn't able to solve the puzzle. He obviously felt that they should have been able to solve it, and assuming he was correct -- that the puzzle is actually solvable -- then it's perfectly appropriate for him to have enforced the predetermined consequences (especially if there were things the party could've done differently to avoid or mitigate them) and to have done otherwise would have been to cheat the players who (presumably) like such puzzle-oriented challenges -- the player did mention that the campaign had been going for a year, and that this was by no means the first such puzzle that they had faced.

If the DM structured the adventure in such a linear fashion that the party truly had no choice but to solve this puzzle or die -- that there was no way other actions by the players could've either avoided this puzzle entirely or allowed them the possibility of escaping after they'd failed to solve it -- then that would definitely be a problem, but the problem would be his having structured the adventure linearly, not his having challenged the players with a puzzle that he expected they'd be able to solve and requiring that it be solved in order to progress further/survive.

This sort of 'player-centric' challenge-based orientation may not be your prefered method of play -- you may prefer that DMs not use puzzles at all, or allow Int checks to solve them, or give out the answer if no one can solve it in x amount of time -- but just because you don't like to play that way doesn't mean it's illegitimate for those of us that do. I know that as a player I prefer situations where I'm expected to stand or fall on the basis of my own abilities and can't rely on the DM to fudge results in my favor if I'm not up to the challenge, because in such situations the stakes (the life of the character) are real. Without the possibility of loss, victory is meaningless, and nothing makes me lose interest in a game faster than realizing that the DM is fudging results and giving the players a free ride, usually for the sake of some predetermined linear 'story arc' about which I couldn't care less. YMMV.

 

[Mark]

This sort of 'player-centric' challenge-based orientation may not be your prefered method of play -- you may prefer that DMs not use puzzles at all, or allow Int checks to solve them, or give out the answer if no one can solve it in x amount of time -- but just because you don't like to play that way doesn't mean it's illegitimate for those of us that do. I know that as a player I prefer situations where I'm expected to stand or fall on the basis of my own abilities and can't rely on the DM to fudge results in my favor if I'm not up to the challenge, because in such situations the stakes (the life of the character) are real. Without the possibility of loss, victory is meaningless, and nothing makes me lose interest in a game faster than realizing that the DM is fudging results and giving the players a free ride, usually for the sake of some predetermined linear 'story arc' about which I couldn't care less. YMMV.

There is a middle ground where there are lesser ways to "end around" the puzzle and not get the full benefit of having solved it. And, certainly, there are ways of people dying in a campaign without it ending. I think that is what most people are finding incredulous.

 

[moritheil]

-ahem-

Since you apparently missed it the first 37 times.

It ended the campaign.

There is no "coming back", there is no "some other day".

And if the GM is planning on using it again after this fiasco, then he does indeed deserve all the derision he's getting. Bad enough he made what is pretty close to the worst possible GMing mistake once; if he hasn't learned his lesson...

Hey, jeffh, I think these folks can help you with the problem you seem to be having:

http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/content/about_index.shtml

You really ought to do something; I'm told that straining to see only makes it worse.

 

[Roman]

Wow, lots of questions to answer. I will get back to them in a couple of hours, now I have to run, but for now let me just say that I have spoken to the former DM again about the puzzle and since the campaign is over, he gave me several powerful clues that I can share with you:

1) Algolei's answer of filling in the letters into the blanks is wrong.
2) The blanks are to be filled with only the three symbols that are present in rest of the grid.
3) The symbols have no significance outside of the puzzle and there is no significance to them being triangles or circles or arrows - you could replace them with any other three symbols and the puzzle would be unaffected.

 

[Mark]

Wow, lots of questions to answer. I will get back to them in a couple of hours, now I have to run, but for now let me just say that I have spoken to the former DM again about the puzzle and since the campaign is over, he gave me several powerful clues that I can share with you:

1) Algolei's answer of filling in the letters into the blanks is wrong.
2) The blanks are to be filled with only the three symbols that are present in rest of the grid.
3) The symbols have no significance outside of the puzzle and there is no significance to them being triangles or circles or arrows - you could replace them with any other three symbols and the puzzle would be unaffected.

I no longer believe that your DM has a solution that is solvable given what you have presented.

 

[T. Foster]

There is a middle ground where there are lesser ways to "end around" the puzzle and not get the full benefit of having solved it. And, certainly, there are ways of people dying in a campaign without it ending. I think that is what most people are finding incredulous.

Oh I certainly agree that this outcome was far from ideal (as, I'm sure, does the DM involved), and as a DM I'd never deliberately set up a situation where the entire party was faced with a puzzle with no option but to solve it or die (and thus effectively end the campaign) but that (at least IMO) comes down more to an aversion to 'linear plotting' and putting all of the campaign's eggs into a single basket than to 'puzzle' situations per se. The impression I've gotten from reading most of the really hostile responses here was not "what a bad move to hinge the entire future of the campaign on succeeding at a single task" but rather "what a bad move to use a player-oriented puzzle in such a situation" -- as if had the DM done the exact same thing except with a combat or skill check instead of a puzzle it would've been perfectly fine.

Yes, the DM undoubtedly blew it here, but the way he blew it was by not allowing any means of retreat/escape (or at least none that the party recognized) and perhaps by making the puzzle too hard/impossible (though I'm still reserving judgment on that), not by including such a puzzle in the first place without allowing the characters to solve it by Int checks or giving them the answer after x amount of time, which is what many of the responses in this thread have been seeming to suggest.

 

[darkelfo]

Yes, the DM undoubtedly blew it here, but the way he blew it was by not allowing any means of retreat/escape (or at least none that the party recognized) and perhaps by making the puzzle too hard/impossible (though I'm still reserving judgment on that), not by including such a puzzle in the first place without allowing the characters to solve it by Int checks or giving them the answer after x amount of time, which is what many of the responses in this thread have been seeming to suggest.

Well, it sucks both ways. In the setup with no escape and in the lack of options to by-pass.