Open-ended riddles

[Dirigible]

The puzzle thread got me thinking. The difficulty I find with riddles and puzzles in game (which, the way we play, are invariably solved by the player and not the character) is that what is obvious to one person may not be so to others, because of the differences in thought-framing and experiences.

Perhaps a better kind of riddle would be an open-ended one, in which you don't have to come up with the same answer the GM did when writing it, but merely something that sounds right based on the context. As long as the player doesn't know before hand that it's a 'freestyle' riddle, what's the difference?

Kings would kill for me
Priests pray for me in vain
Misers have naught of me
While poor men overflow

So, what's the answer? Beats me! Let your players debate and argue about it for a while, and accept whatever answer they finally come up with with a knowing smile and a slight nod.

On the Feast-day of (insert god or festival)
Four men sat on the slopes of a hill under the sun.
Said the Carpenter: "Woe is me, for though my family is healthy, I have a splinter under my flesh."
Said the Clothier "Woe is me, for though I am rich, I have a needle-stick 'pon my finger."
Said the Crofter "Woe is me, for though my fields are abundant, the callouses on my palms ache so."
Said the Leper "Joy, joy is me! For though my body succumbs to the plague and my death draws surely near, I have neither splinter nor needle-stick nor callouses!"
Who, then, was the happiest man?"

What does this even mean? Haven't the foggiest! Steer it into some kind of mild philosophical debate about the nature of happiness, without Conan and his buddies around to derail it with talk about lamentations and such. Again, if they can agree to something, anything, hey presto it was the right/best answer.

It doesn't have to turn into an overly complex debate, either. Use it as an opportunity for roleplaying; make the players get inside the characters' views about happiness. Or, y'know, gloss over it and get back to killing things and taking their stuff.

The wizard finally finishes translating the runes around the walls, and explains what she has discovered. It seems that the massive iron gate at the far end of the hall will only open once the enchanted set of scales have been displaced. However, being magical, no normal weight will suffice; they can only be moved by the crystal spheres you found in the other room.

Yes, those spheres. The ones that each contained the soul of a wicked person, pulled from Gehenna, or a virtuous spirit from Elysium. The souls placed on the scales will be reincarnated.

This means that, to get through the gate, the PCs must choose to let an evil person return to the world, or condemn a good person to lose paradise*.

For variation, maybe the spheres have different weights. The bad souls are laden with leaden evil, and so weight three times as much; thus, the PCs must choose to reincarnate one bad soul or three good souls.

* The, uh, flaw in my logic here being that the good soul, because it's in the sphere, must already have been removed from paradise. Perhaps the imprisoned souls are in limbo, and so are unaware of what they have lost.

This one is less of a riddle and more of a moral dilemma, actually. But it should stir the same kind of thoughts.

Does this seem like a feasible idea? Anyone else have any open-ended riddles they can share?

 

[genshou]

This is very cool!
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Got any more?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I would say this:

open-ended riddles are good and it's even better if they aren't used as logic puzzles but rather tests of character. (I.e. the ancient priests who created the riddle weren't using it to test who could solve a logic puzzle but rather to ensure that their secrets would only be revealed to someone who believed that virtue flows from duty).

However, it's important that you not just toss a series of riddle-sounding statements out there without knowing at least an answer. It's easy to say "sure, the players will come up with something that fits" but if you don't know at least one answer that fits the riddle, it's quite possible that you will have designed something that doesn't have a good answer. A good riddle should, even if open ended, lead people to say "of course that's the answer." If the best answers only approach "well, I guess that could work--it's better than sitting here doing nothing" then the experience is (at least for me) less than satisfying.

With the second kind of riddle--the philosophical question in (a very thin) disguise--I think you would do well to think about some of the actual philosophical positions that people have taken and make some of the answers fit them. If most of your potential answers don't correspond to some philosophy, it's possible that you have discovered a new and exciting perspective on life, but it's more likely that your answers are utter and transparent tripe.