ScaredofScissors
First Post
So I just got back from a 3e game - old school dungeon. Part of Reynard's "Abyscor" world-in-development, if you're following that thread. Anyway, the dungeon had a puzzle in it that you had to answer in order to open a door, and the way that you got to the answer was through clues based on your knowledge of the Planes.
I myself am GMing a new group of players (and by new, I mean that two of them haven't played D&D before), and on my drive home I was thinking about this puzzle. What a neat way to get new players to learn more about D&D, its universe, and its rules! One of the hints, for instance, was about the # of schools of magic, and we kept getting the answer wrong initially because we'd forgotten about Universal. My point here is that we had to be flipping through the rulebook to help us find the answers to the puzzle. It seems to me that you could use this technique to "teach" new players about other aspects of the game or any set of players about your world's trivia.
The further idea struck me this morning, after I read a thread where someone mentioned "Cloud Kingdom Games" books of puzzles and riddles, that if you had, say, a Puzzle God or a wizard who liked to make puzzle-dungeons to reward those clever enough to figure them out, you'd have a perfect narrative context for why you'd have puzzles in lots of places. Not all of them would be "learning" puzzles, of course. Maybe they'd be there to give "easter eggs" to clever players. I suppose you could even make a whole campaign around a "National Treasure" / "DaVinci Code" knowledge puzzler.
Obviously all of this hinges on your players like/dislike of puzzles, so you wouldn't want to use it to guard -essential- items or plot devices unless the group specifically wanted that, but I still think it's an idea worth thinking about.
I myself am GMing a new group of players (and by new, I mean that two of them haven't played D&D before), and on my drive home I was thinking about this puzzle. What a neat way to get new players to learn more about D&D, its universe, and its rules! One of the hints, for instance, was about the # of schools of magic, and we kept getting the answer wrong initially because we'd forgotten about Universal. My point here is that we had to be flipping through the rulebook to help us find the answers to the puzzle. It seems to me that you could use this technique to "teach" new players about other aspects of the game or any set of players about your world's trivia.
The further idea struck me this morning, after I read a thread where someone mentioned "Cloud Kingdom Games" books of puzzles and riddles, that if you had, say, a Puzzle God or a wizard who liked to make puzzle-dungeons to reward those clever enough to figure them out, you'd have a perfect narrative context for why you'd have puzzles in lots of places. Not all of them would be "learning" puzzles, of course. Maybe they'd be there to give "easter eggs" to clever players. I suppose you could even make a whole campaign around a "National Treasure" / "DaVinci Code" knowledge puzzler.
Obviously all of this hinges on your players like/dislike of puzzles, so you wouldn't want to use it to guard -essential- items or plot devices unless the group specifically wanted that, but I still think it's an idea worth thinking about.
