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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dAlephNull" data-source="post: 5712176" data-attributes="member: 6684269">Many DM's out there might agree with me when I say that creating clear and well matched puzzles for your players to figure out is one of, if not the hardest aspect of DMing, but that no really memorable campaign is complete without them. You can't give a puzzle a CR, unless it has a trap or monster element, and in my opinion, the best puzzles don't. On the other hand, it gets old really quick to run up against a "my blank is blank, but my blanks don't blank, what am I?" carved into a stone door before every boss-battle. I try to include a lot of abstract, character based, or situational puzzles. It helps to have a very broad definition of "puzzle". For example, the most succesful puzzles for me are merely testing the attention of my players by inserting seemingly innocuous information or elements that become significant later. Or just putting two and two together; i.e. in a recent adventure, players had to pull down a chain that cold damage as a chill metal spell. It took them a while to figure out that if they splashed water from the brook several rooms previous onto the chain, it would freeze, and eventually the ice would be heavier enough to pull down the chain, opening the iron door or whatever other mechanism. But that's easy, since its something that I can easily work into my narrative, or into a prop. But something that has always been a really pivotal element of RPG videogames, and of general adventuring canon, is puzzled that are location based, or searching based. For example:Getting a map, and using it to find buried treasure, for example. The problem is, I don't really know how to manage that in a narrative format like DnD without it ending up extremely boring, or extremely lead-by-the-nose, or just a glorified search/perception check. Has anyone out there figured out a good solution to integrating this fairly classic RPG device into a tabletop setting? I'd be eager to hear even half-formed ideas.</blockquote>

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