Defeated by puzzle - campaign over

[Patman21967]

Look, here is my .02 on the matter. The players should have been given hints along the way, to provide for a possible solution. Funnelling them into a "solve it or it's over" is dumb. They should have 2 options, solve it using the clues that the GM provided, or admit defeat to the powerful Lich/Dm, and continue something else, and let the "players" continue to work on the puzzle. When, and IF they solve it, they can come back kill the Lich and do whatever they like to do with evil temples.

I happen to agree with Auld Grumpy, that things like this should not be solved with the roll of the die...When you have to negotiate with the Dragon to spare your lives, do you just pick up the 20 and roll it? I have a +20 to my diplomacy, so I win...

People can play any way they want, and people will always criticize others modes of play. But really, if all you want to experience from the hobby of RolePlaying is rolling dice to see who gets a better score, then by all means, have fun....but there is a lot more to these games then just being a "powergamer"

I remember years ago a girlfriend used to ask me, when I would see her after our Sunday game, "Who won?" I feel like alot of people veiw this hobby in that regard....Us vs. the DM...

Sorry is I offended anyone
Pat

 

[Falkus]

People can play any way they want, and people will always criticize others modes of play. But really, if all you want to experience from the hobby of RolePlaying is rolling dice to see who gets a better score, then by all means, have fun....but there is a lot more to these games then just being a "powergamer"

I'm not genius, nor am I particually persuasive person. Why should I be penalized for wanting to roleplay somebody like that? There's more to roleplaying than just solving puzzles.

 

[BSF]

Back to the original question: No I have never had a campaign end because of a puzzle that could not be solved. Although, I almost once did that. Not all groups like puzzles, but this one sometimes did enjoy them. Problem was that everyone was having an off night that night. Fortunately, I wasn't having so much of an off night that I didn't recognize the signs of everyone being bored.

The trap wasn't necessary and solving it would just allow the group to continue onward . Otherwise they would die. Fortunately, it was real easy to change the nature of the trap so they could escape in a different manner and we went on with playing the game.

We all play to have fun. That night, a logic puzzle wasn't fun for any of us. Why waste an entire session not having fun just so I could "challenge" the group?

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I'm not genius, nor am I particually persuasive person. Why should I be penalized for wanting to roleplay somebody like that? There's more to roleplaying than just solving puzzles.

I tend to compromise, if the player makes an effort to roleplay the encounter then the DC is lower, if they say, 'yeah, I try to seduce the guard and got a 24' rather than making an attempt then the DC is higher, and the results not as good on a success.

But it is the attempt that matters, not how silver the tongue of the player. Though since I started using this system it seems like the players who do have kissed the Blarney Stone have been putting higher scores in Cha and related skills. But we have one player who though he makes the attempt just does not have the gift of gab, because he sitll tries he still gets the bonus. (The standard +2 rolplay bonus is what I think of it as).

Solving problems I handle in a similar fashion, letting the players handle as much as they can through roleplay, only making it come down to a roll if they get seriously stuck or bored. (Boredom being the worse state.) Though I have not had to do so with my current group at all. Except for one fellow they have created intelligent characters, and are handling them well.

***Warning! - Boring bit about Cyphers Follows - Warning!***

Then again, I don't do puzzles as puzzles, so it is not quite the same thing. I will however give them a cyphered message and, depending on the cypher, a key. I am fond of shifting key cyphers, and you need a set of keys to decode one. A high Knowledge (cryptography) skill roll may tell you what type of cypher it is, and a long, long, long period of slogging through the cyphered message will decode it (gotta love Take 10 or Take 20...), or if the players can figure out the key it will take a lot less time. Finding clues to the key will also help. (Long, long, long refers to game time not real time, it is likely handled by saying - 'it takes you 24 hours to decypher the message'.

My favorite, that the party eventually figured out, was a 26 cypher key being used as a bookmark in the volume that was used to choose the keys. For a long time biblically keyed cyphers were the unbreakable cypher. Using the keys as a bookmark was the result of having a lazy villain.

***Boring Cypher Bit Ends***

Mr. Stephen Fox, yes, keeping an eye out for bored players is important. Almost as important as keeping an eye out for bored Dungeon Masters! Bad things can happen if the DM gets bored... (Though not in my case, I have the patence of a dead man.)

The Auld Grump

 

[darkelfo]

I can't really help. But I just have to chime in to say how much I hate these situations. I despise them. More correctly, I like puzzles, but I can't stand the way they are used in RPGs and fantasy novels.

Puzzles make no freakin' sense in any but the most contrived circumstances, or when insane wizards are involved. They never have any reason at all to be there. They don't test anything that is worth testing ("You solved the 5x5 crosswords and discovered that the secret word is "LOVE"! Clearly you are wise and noble and deserving of the McGuffin of Power!"), they aren't reliable at keeping intruders out while letting friends in, they are typically insanely complex and costly to craft whether they work by magic or mechanical contraptions. 95% of times, they are only there to make the adventure a half hour longer and let the DM bask in his intellectual superiority - or to make the point that "see, our game isn't just hack'n'slashing, it has depth".

If I am an evil overlord and I only want my trusted lieutenants to enter my sanctum, I won't have them solve a stupid puzzle while hoping that the heroes can't solve it. I'll give them a key - or a password if I'm afraid of the key getting stolen. And while we're here, said password won't be my name, or the name of the god I serve, or the name of the lost lover whose refusal drove me to evil, or the name of my secret project. It'll be more on the lines of "ARY7CN1_23LK$Z". It doesn't make for a good story? It does if the PCs have to, I don't know, do something sensible such as capturing said lieutanant or find a back entrance, rather than being able to enter simply because the 32 INT BBEG apparently lost use of the "what is security" areas of his brain.

Hilarious! Yet also sad and true.

I agree completely, though a nice mechanical puzzle or trap can make a game fun. Why not use it for bonus stuff, rather than a bottleneck? You sneak into the wizards tower and steal his stuff, while you're there Mr. Rogue Smartypants figures out that if he [insert some mechanical manipulation], a portrait on the wall shimmers and reveals an extra-dimensionally hidden safe which the PCs must now crack to get the bonus gems.

 

[darkelfo]

Me: "In this temple you cannot rest, you cannot regain spells, you cannot Teleport or Plane Shift out, you cannot cast any divinations, you cannot turn undead, and you cannot proceed any further unless you can solve this puzzle. . ."

Players: You cannot DM. (as they get up and leave)

/agree

This sounds like no fun at all. The occasional limitation on a player can give a game a survival flavor, but the above is too much.

At my last game session I had to roleplay my character as blind because he failed a save on a blindness spell at the previous session. It was still fun -- "don't go in there you fools, it's a bad idea. I can see that and I'm blind!"

The DM in question sounds like a real tight wad. No offense is meant, I just would never personally play in that style of game.

 

[Chimera]

My thanks to darkelfo for quoting this and spurring a thought.

If I am an evil overlord and I only want my trusted lieutenants to enter my sanctum, I won't have them solve a stupid puzzle while hoping that the heroes can't solve it. I'll give them a key - or a password if I'm afraid of the key getting stolen. And while we're here, said password won't be my name, or the name of the god I serve, or the name of the lost lover whose refusal drove me to evil, or the name of my secret project. It'll be more on the lines of "ARY7CN1_23LK$Z". It doesn't make for a good story? It does if the PCs have to, I don't know, do something sensible such as capturing said lieutanant or find a back entrance, rather than being able to enter simply because the 32 INT BBEG apparently lost use of the "what is security" areas of his brain.

Ah, but now you see, my brain lights up and thinks "but what if the puzzle is the security?"

So what if the BBEG puts one in place with magics that cause alarms to go off in other places? The intruders waste all this time "puzzling" over a useless puzzle that's only purpose is to cause them to waste time, being distracted, while the various surviving minions re-organize and prepare the counter-assault?

Either that or it just opens to a death trap.

 

[Hammerhead]

I recall a similar situation where this crazy dude was asking us riddles, and the last one was something like "If you speak truth, I will kill you with a spell; if you speak false, I will kill you with a spell."

Our group actually came up with three "correct" answers to this riddle, but the DM wanted us to use "his" solution to the damn riddle instead of coming up with clever out of the box answers.

I think we came up with three answers that allowed one to get through. Saying nothing (neither truth nor falsehood), saying "This statement is a lie" (a paradox), asking a question (not really either). I think another paradox we came up with "You are lying." And there one player who just pushed for killing the bastard and taking the treasure he was guarding...he probably could have wiped the floor with the dude.

It turns out the answer was "You will kill me with a sword," which seemed like a pretty poor answer since the guy could use Mordekainen's Sword or whatever to fulfill the conditions of his statement either way. I eventually appealed to the DM that my psion with a 26 Intelligence was slightly smarter than I was, and got to make an INT check, where I rolled a natural 20. Ugh. I hate those puzzles with only one solution.

 

[arscott]

I can't really help. But I just have to chime in to say how much I hate these situations. I despise them. More correctly, I like puzzles, but I can't stand the way they are used in RPGs and fantasy novels.

Puzzles make no freakin' sense in any but the most contrived circumstances, or when insane wizards are involved. They never have any reason at all to be there. They don't test anything that is worth testing ("You solved the 5x5 crosswords and discovered that the secret word is "LOVE"! Clearly you are wise and noble and deserving of the McGuffin of Power!"), they aren't reliable at keeping intruders out while letting friends in, they are typically insanely complex and costly to craft whether they work by magic or mechanical contraptions. 95% of times, they are only there to make the adventure a half hour longer and let the DM bask in his intellectual superiority - or to make the point that "see, our game isn't just hack'n'slashing, it has depth".

If I am an evil overlord and I only want my trusted lieutenants to enter my sanctum, I won't have them solve a stupid puzzle while hoping that the heroes can't solve it. I'll give them a key - or a password if I'm afraid of the key getting stolen. And while we're here, said password won't be my name, or the name of the god I serve, or the name of the lost lover whose refusal drove me to evil, or the name of my secret project. It'll be more on the lines of "ARY7CN1_23LK$Z". It doesn't make for a good story? It does if the PCs have to, I don't know, do something sensible such as capturing said lieutanant or find a back entrance, rather than being able to enter simply because the 32 INT BBEG apparently lost use of the "what is security" areas of his brain.

I can see where you're coming from, but most riddles and puzzles (or at least most good ones) aren't set up by the BBEG at all.

You shouldn't need to solve some wonky astrolgy puzzle to get into the BBEG's sanctum sanctorum. But if you're just proving your worth to the spirit guardians in order to retrieve the sacred sword, does it matter whether the challenge is a contrived puzzle or a contrived duel? And is their any harm in entering a riddle contest with the sphinx or dragon rather than getting ripped in half or burnt to a crisp?

And riddles can work fairly well for the front door, even if they aren't a good idea for guarding the jewel safe. The only real point of the Moria door riddle, after all, what to make sure that the entrant could read and speak elvish.

 

[arscott]

I recall a similar situation where this crazy dude was asking us riddles, and the last one was something like "If you speak truth, I will kill you with a spell; if you speak false, I will kill you with a spell."

Our group actually came up with three "correct" answers to this riddle, but the DM wanted us to use "his" solution to the damn riddle instead of coming up with clever out of the box answers.

I think we came up with three answers that allowed one to get through. Saying nothing (neither truth nor falsehood), saying "This statement is a lie" (a paradox), asking a question (not really either). I think another paradox we came up with "You are lying." And there one player who just pushed for killing the bastard and taking the treasure he was guarding...he probably could have wiped the floor with the dude.

It turns out the answer was "You will kill me with a sword," which seemed like a pretty poor answer since the guy could use Mordekainen's Sword or whatever to fulfill the conditions of his statement either way. I eventually appealed to the DM that my psion with a 26 Intelligence was slightly smarter than I was, and got to make an INT check, where I rolled a natural 20. Ugh. I hate those puzzles with only one solution.

What the hell? that doesn't even work. If you say "you will kill me with a sword, then that's a lie, and he can kill you with a spell!" the same goes for "you are lying."

at least he let you have more than one try.

Reading these stories, It's pretty evident that the real problem isn't specifically with the idea of riddles, but with their application. So what are some good ground rules for running riddle or puzze encounters? Hearing this story, we've got an easy number one and two:

1) Make sure that your solution is correct!
2) Allow alternate correct solutions that you didn't think of.