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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3525904" data-attributes="member: 16574">The first thing is just purely arbitrary Gygaxian metagaming -- he wants to reward clever players without encouraging excessive greed. If this offends your sensibilities it's easy enough to either assign in advance which mouth has the 1000 g.p. gem, or to make all the gems worth 250 g.p. apiece (so the total value remains the same).The second point is a matter of "old-school" playstyle: 1) testing the players' knowledge (tell them the gem types and leave it up to them to remember which types of gems are worth what) and 2) assumed knowledge -- if there's a gnome, or a dwarf, or a thief, or someone with an appropriate secondary skill (jeweler/lapidary, trader/barterer, miner, gambler) in the party the DM will probably just tell the players how much the gems or worth with no roll or skill-check required. Yes it's inexact and the experience will vary widely from player-group to player-group depending on the DM. That's just the way the game worked then, love it or hate it.The question here is "will my players find this fun, boring, frustrating, annoying, etc.?" Some players (myself included) like little puzzles like this, and consider solving them pretty much their own reward -- I'd much rather spend 20 minutes trying to figure out the tricks in this room than fighting a boring combat or chit-chatting with a boring NPC. That said, I also like to keep the game moving, and if I can't figure out the puzzle after a reasonable effort (probably about 20 minutes of trying, like I said above) I won't let the game grind to a halt over it, I'll move on (if I can). I find stuff like this fun. I don't care if it's realistic in-milieu, or what the rationale is, I just like tricks and puzzles and anything that gives me the opportunity to deal with them I like. If your players share this attitude then you should include rooms like this. If they don't -- if they find stuff like this boring, or frustrating, or it interferes with their suspension of disbelief and spoils their fun -- then you probably shouldn't.</blockquote>

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