New to DMing, looking for a few puzzle/riddle ideas for my campaign

[Christopher Halka]

So my first game was a huge success, and strangely enough the players favorite part was actually a riddle they had to solve to open a door.

So I'm looking for more ideas of puzzles or riddles or anything outside battle really to keep my players entertained and engaged.

 

[Imaculata]

It would help if you already had a location or situation in mind.

 

[Christopher Halka]

Well currently they are in a cave in a mountain retrieving a magical item for a mage. But I'm open to any location or situation, just looking for things I can integrate. I can easily create story and baddies if I get a good puzzle or situation to work around.

 

[wallyd2]

So my first game was a huge success, and strangely enough the players favorite part was actually a riddle they had to solve to open a door.

So I'm looking for more ideas of puzzles or riddles or anything outside battle really to keep my players entertained and engaged.

I can definitely help you out. I have an entire YouTube channel focused on Puzzles for D&D. Each video gives a full demonstration on how the puzzle works and links to handouts if needed for the puzzle. One of the most popular puzzles on the channel for new DMs and as a great introduction to the puzzles is the Room of the Prismatic Owl.

D&D Puzzle ideas on YouTube - Wally DM

Hope this helps and congrats on the success of your first game DMing!

 

[billd91]

There are some good RPG-oriented riddle books out there to use as resources.
https://www.cloudkingdom.com/Products/Cloud-Kingdom-roleplaying-sourcebooks.aspx

 

[Imaculata]

One puzzle that I used last year, was one where the players need to match the quotes of famous characters to their names.

How it works, is that you insert a location early on in the dungeon where the players can find three famous quotations by three famous characters (perhaps in the form of a mural or statues). Then later in the dungeon they can encounter a door that has 6 rotating metal cylinders on it, in three pairs. Each of these pairs has a cylinder with a list of names, and below it a cylinder with quotations. All the players need to do to open the door, is match all three quotes to all three characters.

Now, if you want to make this puzzle more difficult, you can also add more quotes and characters that are not relevant to the door, in other areas of the dungeon. But the important three should definitely stand out (perhaps because depictions of them are larger and more prominent, or because the characters have more importance to the lore). This part is very important, it must be perfectly clear to the players who the three people are that should be matched on the door.

If you want to make the puzzle even more difficult, make one of the quotes that they need unreadable (perhaps because the mural was defaced). A mending spell can restore the text, or a check may allow the player to decipher some of the words. Or maybe the players can find part of the defaced mural elsewhere in the room, or elsewhere in the dungeon.

Lastly, you can add a failure condition to entering the wrong combination. The door may lock permanently (don't do this if opening the door is required for progression), or a trap may activate, or an alarm may sound.

You can flavor this puzzle any way you like. The names of the famous characters could easily be replaced by depictions of deities, that the players must match to a patron animal of the deity, or an object relevant to the deity. The puzzle lends itself well to establish lore in your campaign.

 

[Eltab]

A door with a Magic Mouth on it likes to hear knock-knock jokes. (But using the spell Knock on it is uncouth / offensive.) Make the players bring in the book of jokes.

 

[uzirath]

You wouldn't be able to drop this in right now, but I remember reading a really cool adventure called "The Golden Geniza of Ezkali" by Matt Riggsby. It was published in Pyramid magazine for GURPS, but the premise could be converted to other systems easily enough. The core idea was that a legend had shifted as it was passed down over the centuries. The PCs end up in a dungeon that featured aspects from the legend, but each PC knew a slightly different version of the story. Part of the puzzle was to compare their existing knowledge and try to piece together what the original legend must have included. I thought it was a very clever idea that could be used in a variety of different ways.

 

[uzirath]

Some other more immediate options for possible puzzles or riddles are below. Note that puzzles can sometimes break immersion because they are really about the players rather than the characters. Depending on your group, you may need to provide more in-game explanations to help set the context. (For example, the chess puzzle only makes sense in a world that features chess and where the PCs could be expected to know the rules.)

• Depending on the reading/movie-viewing habits of your players, the classic riddles from The Hobbit can be great. Some are probably too hard, but others are spot on. I've always liked, "A box without hinges, key, or lid, / Yet golden treasure inside is hid." (Riddle answer at the end of this post.)
• There's the old chess-board puzzle from an old AD&D module which basicaly has a checkerboard floor to a room. Depending which square you initially step on, you need to move like that piece in the game. So, if you step onto the board where a bishop would be, you can only move diagonally (or take damage or something like that). I've seen this puzzle more than once. On one version you had to fight opposing "pieces." On another, it was just a puzzle to get across the room.
• Similarly, I read a dungeon a while ago that had a setup kind-of like Minesweeper. Each square had some tick marks on it or something that said how many contiguous squares were dangerous (or had bombs in the video game). You could use logic to figure out which squares were safe and work your way across that way.
• There's the famous puzzle where you have two options, one of which leads to success and the other to failure. You have two sources of information, one always tells the truth, the other always lies, but you don't know which is which. You can ask only one question of either source. This can be reskinned in a variety of ways for a game. Spirits of gods of truth and trickery, talking statues, etc. The doors can be magical portals, teleporters, pits, passages, etc.
• Variations on a river crossing puzzle can be made explicit in the game world, replacing things with world-appropriate creatures. Of course, players will often come up with a solution that doesn't involve logic. ("We teleport across!")
• I've created a number of perception puzzles over the years. Here are a few variations:
  • An object at the end of a corridor appears to recede from the group as they get closer. The solution might be to close their eyes or to approach it backwards or to nab it from a distance (lasso, whip, telekinesis, etc.) You can insert riddles ahead of time with clues.
  • Similarly, an object in a massive round chamber moved away from anyone who approached it. The trick was to spread the party out and approach it from multiple directions. (Make the room a zero-gravity sphere for 3D madness.)
  • An object seems to be illusory: when you reach for it, it is just a mirage. Using another sense, however, can lead you to the real, invisible object. For example, it might produce a dim humming sound, or it might be hot or cold or have a subtle scent.
• The old AD&D module,White Plume Mountain (updated for 5e in Tales from the Yawning Portal), had a variety of old-school tricks and puzzles. There was a sphinx with a riddle at the entrance. There was a passageway that super-heated metal so that PCs had to remove metal armor and weapons; naturally, there is an ambush at the end of the passage. There was a frictionless room with a pit (or multiple pits?). Things like that.

Let us know what you choose to do. Tricks and puzzles can be very memorable in a game.

Riddle answer: an egg.