Riddle/problem to solve
- Thread starter Al'Kelhar
- Start date
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
I'd suggest that you have absolutely no riddle whatsoever. Why would you make something like this and then just tell people where to find the mcguffin?
If the PC's are remotely near the level where they can survive or escape from 36 stone golems, then they should be able to cast divination.
Then you just need to think up a riddle for the divination.
If they don't cast divination, and just pick a random statue, then they should die.
If the PC's are remotely near the level where they can survive or escape from 36 stone golems, then they should be able to cast divination.
Then you just need to think up a riddle for the divination.
If they don't cast divination, and just pick a random statue, then they should die.
Guys,
Many thanks for all your input; it's great! To answer some questions:
I'd planned for each of the statues to be different, although whether subtly or overtly I hadn't yet decided. The chamber is in an ancient yuan-ti temple, wherein a "great evil" had been buried for a millennium. The BBEG in this case is said "great evil" and wishes to escape the temple. The BBEG - a yuan-ti vampire - is bound to the McGuffin and cannot leave the temple unless the McGuffin is carried out of the temple by mortals. The BBEG knows - and has told the PCs - that the McGuffin is in the large toroidal chamber in the bowels of the temple, stashed inside one of 36 stone statues. The BBEG also knows, and has also told the PCs, that every statue has a secret compartment, and if the PCs open the wrong one, the statues will animate and kill the intruders. The whole temple is subject to a forbiddance effect which prevents the use of Conjuration (Teleportation) magic to, from and within the temple. So when the curtains go down, the (10th level) PCs have limited options to escape the rampaging golems and have a good chance of being squished by them. I want the PCs to pick the right statue if they're clever enough to solve the riddle/problem; after all, even if they pick the right statue and get the McGuffin, taking it out of the temple releases the BBEG from his prison to wreak havoc on the world. So a bit of a moral dilemma thrown in there, too.
I need the riddle/problem for this Friday night's game; I might work on some of the ideas you guys have already come up with. But if anyone's so inclined and like a challenge, keep those suggestions coming!
Many thanks again, Al'Kelhar
Many thanks for all your input; it's great! To answer some questions:
I'd planned for each of the statues to be different, although whether subtly or overtly I hadn't yet decided. The chamber is in an ancient yuan-ti temple, wherein a "great evil" had been buried for a millennium. The BBEG in this case is said "great evil" and wishes to escape the temple. The BBEG - a yuan-ti vampire - is bound to the McGuffin and cannot leave the temple unless the McGuffin is carried out of the temple by mortals. The BBEG knows - and has told the PCs - that the McGuffin is in the large toroidal chamber in the bowels of the temple, stashed inside one of 36 stone statues. The BBEG also knows, and has also told the PCs, that every statue has a secret compartment, and if the PCs open the wrong one, the statues will animate and kill the intruders. The whole temple is subject to a forbiddance effect which prevents the use of Conjuration (Teleportation) magic to, from and within the temple. So when the curtains go down, the (10th level) PCs have limited options to escape the rampaging golems and have a good chance of being squished by them. I want the PCs to pick the right statue if they're clever enough to solve the riddle/problem; after all, even if they pick the right statue and get the McGuffin, taking it out of the temple releases the BBEG from his prison to wreak havoc on the world. So a bit of a moral dilemma thrown in there, too.
I need the riddle/problem for this Friday night's game; I might work on some of the ideas you guys have already come up with. But if anyone's so inclined and like a challenge, keep those suggestions coming!
Many thanks again, Al'Kelhar
Herpes Cineplex
First Post
I hope it's not just you. You're cool, I want more people like you around.Pielorinho said:Oh, sure, there will be a riddle--but it'll point to the wrong place. And it'll be an easy riddle, since i want heroes to solve it and die, die die!
I'll keep the actual Big Artifact squirrelled away under some flour sacks in the kitchen.
But maybe that's just me.
Echoing what you (and tarchon and Saeviomagy) said, the best question to ask is not "what riddle can I use", but "why should I use a riddle?"
But hey, say your little heart is set on having the McGuffin be the reward for solving a riddle. So apparently the Riddler decides he can't keep this thing, or maybe he'll die before someone else needs it, so he can't hand it over personally. He won't leave it on a shelf for just anyone to pick up. He won't put it in a secure place (in a vault, sealed in a block of iron, whatever). He wants someone to get it, in other words.
And probably the Riddler wants a specific kind of someone to get it, so if he's not a total dork, he'll make the riddle something that only that specific kind of someone will be able to solve. If it's a religious McGuffin, then the puzzle should hinge on some abstract piece of religious lore that only a true believer would get. If it's a magical McGuffin, then it should call upon some arcane symbology tied into whatever variation of the magical arts is "right" in the Riddler's opinion. If it's a political McGuffin, then you should have to know the politics behind the puzzle before you can solve it.
Otherwise, you're just handing it over to any bozo who's half-bright enough to work out a logic puzzle (which says nothing about their background or their intentions), or worse yet, you're handing it over to a lucky jerk who just happened to randomly choose the right one out of 36 possibilities. And that's raising the bad idea of leaving a valuable and important McGuffin in a readily-accessible place for persons unknown to retrieve later to new and even more irresponsible heights.
Riddles are tough to explain anyway: at some point someone always asks why there isn't just a key or a wall of iron or a trusted immortal servant or whatever looking after the McGuffin instead of an elaborate and often goofy riddle. And really, there's only so many times that you can float the "well, the guy who set this up was kind of crazy" excuse before your players will call BS on it.
In this specific case, I'm just baffled. Who put the McGuffin in this tomb, and if it's the only thing keeping an evil yuan-ti vampire from escaping, WHY WOULD THE GUY WHO HID IT THERE WANT ANYONE TO EVER TAKE IT OUT? For god's sake, seal that thing up forever, and put so many obstacles and deadly traps around it that anyone crazy enough to come after it will either give up or die before they get within fifty yards of putting a finger on it!
But maybe the BBEG was trapped accidentally. (Doubtful, if he's the ancient evil that the temple was built for the express purpose of burying, but whatever.) In which case, if he's been there forever and is a vampire, he should already have done a lot more than just tell his PC dupes about the puzzle; he should have already solved it and given them enough clues that even the 5 Intelligence fighter can guess which statue's got it. Hell, if he's really bright, he'll make it look like a previous treasure hunter already solved the whole thing but got eaten by a snake or something before he could leave. Throw a bunch of money and minor magical treasures on a skeleton with the McGuffin, and trust that the PCs will gleefully snatch it all up and run out of the temple.
I don't know, man. I just can't wrap my brain around why this item would be removable in the first place, let alone why there would be a riddle to solve in order to remove it. Adding in a BBEG who wants the item to be removed from the temple just makes me even more confused.
I'm just going to guess that all (or the majority of) your players really love solving riddles, and so you're looking for any excuse to give them more of what they love. That way, I can say "oh, Al'Kelhar and his players are just weird, so there's no point in trying to explain why they're doing this."
--
mind you, if they don't love solving riddles, you shouldn't inflict this on them
ryan
Tuzenbach
First Post
Hope this helps......
Sorry it took me so long, but here’s what I have for you.
First off, describe to your players the room with several statues in a circle. Then, only if they ask, tell them there are 36 of them. They all have plaques indicating who or what the statue is of. Starting from the top (immediate North) and working clockwise, the plaques are the following:
“Vishnu”, “White Dragon”, “Dionysus”, “Loki”, “Medusa”, “George Washington”,
“Zeus”, “Cerberus”, “Wyvern”, “Nazgul”, “Kali”, “Ponce De Leon”,
“Odysseus”, “Hydra”, “Socrates”, “Bahamut”, “Quetzalcoatl”, “Sir Bernlad De Hautdesert”,
“Onyx Troll”, “Radagast”, “Cyrano De Bergerac”, “Morgan Le Fay”, “Ape”, “Unicorn”,
“Fafhrd”, “Jaguar”, “Tutankhamen”, “Yeenoghu”, “Euripides”, “Father Pencraft Lunettes”,
“Yamamoto Date”, “Geryon”, “Pegasus”, “Kuan Yin”, “Xorn”, “King Arthur Pendragon”
In other words, they appear to be characters or creatures fictitious or factual. The “Onyx Troll” appears to be black stone. “Sir Bernlad De Hautdesert” is a statue of an armoured knight, though the stone is completely green. Could this have been the real name of the fabled ‘Green Knight’? The “White Dragon” statue is more white than the other statues which are mostly gray except where otherwise noted. “Tutankhamen” is more gold than the others. None of the party should recognize the name “Father Pencraft Lunettes”. That’s because it’s a decoy! Said statue appears to be a half-elven monk or priest.
FWIW, most of these names were culled from the 1E Deities And Demigods and/or Monster Manual and their appearance should be described as such, or a reasonable facsimile. Either way, none of the details of the descriptions will actually matter, but don’t tell your players this! Let them believe every minute detail is part of the trap….erm……..puzzle!
If one were to draw a graph of the room, at the point were the vertices of the “Tut” and “Ape” statues intersect, there is a loose stone. Beneath it is a scroll detailing the following:
Fun cattle serpent; Tributary of pain, bolstering of courage
Pencraft Lunettes; What a swine will not require a spade to do
Frenne St, Tut Place; An ale which won’t intoxicate, a hidden plant
Ape scent; Not preffix or suffix, source of the Udo
SOLUTION:
The answer isn’t who or what the statues are or what colour they happen to be. The names are a code for determining which number should be assigned to which statue. It’s mostly A=1 and Z=26 with a couple of hooks thrown in:
1A; Ape
2B; Bahamut
3C; Cerberus
4D; Dionysus
5E; Euripides
6F; Fafhrd
7G; Geryon
8H; Hydra
9I; Cyrano De Bergerac (this is a red herring thingy. The “D” and “C” and “B” add up to 9, so this is the 9th statue.)
10J; Jaguar
11K; Kali
12L; Loki
13M; Medusa
14N; Nazgul
15O; Odysseus
16P; Pegasus
17Q; Quetzalcoatl
18R; Radagast
19S; Socrates
20T; Tutankhamen
21U; Unicorn
22V; Vishnu
23W; Wyvern
24X; Xorn
25Y; Yeenoghu
26Z; Zeus
27 = White Dragon
28 = King Arthur Pendragon
29 = Yamamoto Date
30 = George Washington
31 = Morgan Le Fay
32 = Ponce De Leon
33 = Sir Bernlad De Hautdesert
34 = Father Pencraft Lunettes
35 = Onyx Troll
36 = Kuan Yin
For numbers 27-36, one must add the first letters of all the names to derive the appropriate numbers.
Cyrano De Bergerac is the “I” or “9” statue to throw the players off. More of these distractions could always be substituted in, of course.
However, the players probably won’t go about attempting to codify the statues until they’ve solved the riddle:
Step one should be to separate the halves of the riddle, as indicated by the semi-colon in each line.
Fun cattle serpent;
Pencraft Lunettes;
Frenne St, Tut Place;
Ape scent;
The above is a series of anagrams. Correctly solved, they should look like this:
Ten paces turn left
Ten paces turn left
Ten paces turn left
Ten paces
If this course is mapped out, it should become apparent that the outcome is that of a square. Thus, “square” is the first half of the riddle’s solution.
Tributary of pain, bolstering of courage
What a swine will not require a spade to do
An ale which won’t intoxicate, a hidden plant
Not prefix or suffix, source of the Udo
“Tributary of pain” is a metaphor for “root" canal. One’s courage is bolstered when one is “rooted” for. The act of a pig digging in the dirt with its nose is called “rooting”. A non-intoxicating ale could be “root” beer. Etc., etc……..you get the point. Thus, the second half of the riddle is “root”.
So, “square root” is the riddle’s solution. By itself it means nothing, but in the context of 36 statues….
CORRECT! The McGuffin can be found within the Fafhrd statue.
Wasn’t that fun, everyone?
;~D
PS: Watch with glee as the bastards squirm while trying to figure out whether it's the white dragon or the wyvern who's the "fun cattle serpent". LoL! As always, extraneous details are the key to any good, massively time-consuming riddle.
Sorry it took me so long, but here’s what I have for you.
First off, describe to your players the room with several statues in a circle. Then, only if they ask, tell them there are 36 of them. They all have plaques indicating who or what the statue is of. Starting from the top (immediate North) and working clockwise, the plaques are the following:
“Vishnu”, “White Dragon”, “Dionysus”, “Loki”, “Medusa”, “George Washington”,
“Zeus”, “Cerberus”, “Wyvern”, “Nazgul”, “Kali”, “Ponce De Leon”,
“Odysseus”, “Hydra”, “Socrates”, “Bahamut”, “Quetzalcoatl”, “Sir Bernlad De Hautdesert”,
“Onyx Troll”, “Radagast”, “Cyrano De Bergerac”, “Morgan Le Fay”, “Ape”, “Unicorn”,
“Fafhrd”, “Jaguar”, “Tutankhamen”, “Yeenoghu”, “Euripides”, “Father Pencraft Lunettes”,
“Yamamoto Date”, “Geryon”, “Pegasus”, “Kuan Yin”, “Xorn”, “King Arthur Pendragon”
In other words, they appear to be characters or creatures fictitious or factual. The “Onyx Troll” appears to be black stone. “Sir Bernlad De Hautdesert” is a statue of an armoured knight, though the stone is completely green. Could this have been the real name of the fabled ‘Green Knight’? The “White Dragon” statue is more white than the other statues which are mostly gray except where otherwise noted. “Tutankhamen” is more gold than the others. None of the party should recognize the name “Father Pencraft Lunettes”. That’s because it’s a decoy! Said statue appears to be a half-elven monk or priest.
FWIW, most of these names were culled from the 1E Deities And Demigods and/or Monster Manual and their appearance should be described as such, or a reasonable facsimile. Either way, none of the details of the descriptions will actually matter, but don’t tell your players this! Let them believe every minute detail is part of the trap….erm……..puzzle!
If one were to draw a graph of the room, at the point were the vertices of the “Tut” and “Ape” statues intersect, there is a loose stone. Beneath it is a scroll detailing the following:
Fun cattle serpent; Tributary of pain, bolstering of courage
Pencraft Lunettes; What a swine will not require a spade to do
Frenne St, Tut Place; An ale which won’t intoxicate, a hidden plant
Ape scent; Not preffix or suffix, source of the Udo
SOLUTION:
The answer isn’t who or what the statues are or what colour they happen to be. The names are a code for determining which number should be assigned to which statue. It’s mostly A=1 and Z=26 with a couple of hooks thrown in:
1A; Ape
2B; Bahamut
3C; Cerberus
4D; Dionysus
5E; Euripides
6F; Fafhrd
7G; Geryon
8H; Hydra
9I; Cyrano De Bergerac (this is a red herring thingy. The “D” and “C” and “B” add up to 9, so this is the 9th statue.)
10J; Jaguar
11K; Kali
12L; Loki
13M; Medusa
14N; Nazgul
15O; Odysseus
16P; Pegasus
17Q; Quetzalcoatl
18R; Radagast
19S; Socrates
20T; Tutankhamen
21U; Unicorn
22V; Vishnu
23W; Wyvern
24X; Xorn
25Y; Yeenoghu
26Z; Zeus
27 = White Dragon
28 = King Arthur Pendragon
29 = Yamamoto Date
30 = George Washington
31 = Morgan Le Fay
32 = Ponce De Leon
33 = Sir Bernlad De Hautdesert
34 = Father Pencraft Lunettes
35 = Onyx Troll
36 = Kuan Yin
For numbers 27-36, one must add the first letters of all the names to derive the appropriate numbers.
Cyrano De Bergerac is the “I” or “9” statue to throw the players off. More of these distractions could always be substituted in, of course.
However, the players probably won’t go about attempting to codify the statues until they’ve solved the riddle:
Step one should be to separate the halves of the riddle, as indicated by the semi-colon in each line.
Fun cattle serpent;
Pencraft Lunettes;
Frenne St, Tut Place;
Ape scent;
The above is a series of anagrams. Correctly solved, they should look like this:
Ten paces turn left
Ten paces turn left
Ten paces turn left
Ten paces
If this course is mapped out, it should become apparent that the outcome is that of a square. Thus, “square” is the first half of the riddle’s solution.
Tributary of pain, bolstering of courage
What a swine will not require a spade to do
An ale which won’t intoxicate, a hidden plant
Not prefix or suffix, source of the Udo
“Tributary of pain” is a metaphor for “root" canal. One’s courage is bolstered when one is “rooted” for. The act of a pig digging in the dirt with its nose is called “rooting”. A non-intoxicating ale could be “root” beer. Etc., etc……..you get the point. Thus, the second half of the riddle is “root”.
So, “square root” is the riddle’s solution. By itself it means nothing, but in the context of 36 statues….
CORRECT! The McGuffin can be found within the Fafhrd statue.
Wasn’t that fun, everyone?
;~D
PS: Watch with glee as the bastards squirm while trying to figure out whether it's the white dragon or the wyvern who's the "fun cattle serpent". LoL! As always, extraneous details are the key to any good, massively time-consuming riddle.
Last edited:
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
Immortal servants break down (or get whacked by adventurers). Walls of iron are not a real barrier to the average adventurer. Etc.Herpes Cineplex said:
36 golems are genuinely dangerous. And the only reason there is a riddle is because divination gives you one.
I'm personally totally against riddles just being written on the wall of a dungeon (now - if a previous adventurer did a divination, and then wrote it down, like I'm sure we all would, and died, and it's handily nearby, then that's different).
Herpes Cineplex said:I hope it's not just you. You're cool, I want more people like you around.
Echoing what you (and tarchon and Saeviomagy) said, the best question to ask is not "what riddle can I use", but "why should I use a riddle?"
But hey, say your little heart is set on having the McGuffin be the reward for solving a riddle. So apparently the Riddler decides he can't keep this thing, or maybe he'll die before someone else needs it, so he can't hand it over personally. He won't leave it on a shelf for just anyone to pick up. He won't put it in a secure place (in a vault, sealed in a block of iron, whatever). He wants someone to get it, in other words.
And probably the Riddler wants a specific kind of someone to get it, so if he's not a total dork, he'll make the riddle something that only that specific kind of someone will be able to solve. If it's a religious McGuffin, then the puzzle should hinge on some abstract piece of religious lore that only a true believer would get. If it's a magical McGuffin, then it should call upon some arcane symbology tied into whatever variation of the magical arts is "right" in the Riddler's opinion. If it's a political McGuffin, then you should have to know the politics behind the puzzle before you can solve it.
Otherwise, you're just handing it over to any bozo who's half-bright enough to work out a logic puzzle (which says nothing about their background or their intentions), or worse yet, you're handing it over to a lucky jerk who just happened to randomly choose the right one out of 36 possibilities. And that's raising the bad idea of leaving a valuable and important McGuffin in a readily-accessible place for persons unknown to retrieve later to new and even more irresponsible heights.
Riddles are tough to explain anyway: at some point someone always asks why there isn't just a key or a wall of iron or a trusted immortal servant or whatever looking after the McGuffin instead of an elaborate and often goofy riddle. And really, there's only so many times that you can float the "well, the guy who set this up was kind of crazy" excuse before your players will call BS on it.
In this specific case, I'm just baffled. Who put the McGuffin in this tomb, and if it's the only thing keeping an evil yuan-ti vampire from escaping, WHY WOULD THE GUY WHO HID IT THERE WANT ANYONE TO EVER TAKE IT OUT? For god's sake, seal that thing up forever, and put so many obstacles and deadly traps around it that anyone crazy enough to come after it will either give up or die before they get within fifty yards of putting a finger on it!
But maybe the BBEG was trapped accidentally. (Doubtful, if he's the ancient evil that the temple was built for the express purpose of burying, but whatever.) In which case, if he's been there forever and is a vampire, he should already have done a lot more than just tell his PC dupes about the puzzle; he should have already solved it and given them enough clues that even the 5 Intelligence fighter can guess which statue's got it. Hell, if he's really bright, he'll make it look like a previous treasure hunter already solved the whole thing but got eaten by a snake or something before he could leave. Throw a bunch of money and minor magical treasures on a skeleton with the McGuffin, and trust that the PCs will gleefully snatch it all up and run out of the temple.
I don't know, man. I just can't wrap my brain around why this item would be removable in the first place, let alone why there would be a riddle to solve in order to remove it. Adding in a BBEG who wants the item to be removed from the temple just makes me even more confused.
I'm just going to guess that all (or the majority of) your players really love solving riddles, and so you're looking for any excuse to give them more of what they love. That way, I can say "oh, Al'Kelhar and his players are just weird, so there's no point in trying to explain why they're doing this."
--
mind you, if they don't love solving riddles, you shouldn't inflict this on them
ryan
Good points all, H.C. Another perspective might well be "who knows what the minds of evil genius snake-men have conceived"? Why exactly would a bunch of evil snake-men trap one of their most powerful leaders in a temple as their civilisation declines into chaos, and also provide the means to release him at a later date? There's a little more background to the adventure than I'm letting on in these forums. There is a reason for all this. And sure, the McGuffin could be protected differently and more "logically". But riddles and logic problems have been staples of D&D since the first. You know, when D&D was pretty much going into a dungeon full of traps, and killing all the monsters and taking their stuff? So, using a riddle is lame and cliched. But I didn't actually ask to be told that; I asked for some assistance with an idea for my adventure. Many thanks to all who provided that assistance.
Tuzenbach, that's excellent and very involved work. But, I have to admit I'm kinda attracted to wilder_jw's geometry/geography/time combo. So I'll see what I can make out of that.
Cheers, Al'Kelhar
Tuzenbach
First Post
Al'Kelhar,
I hadn't realized that the time difference between where I am (currently 20 minutes past midnight) was so drastically intense from where you are (currently 16 hours ahead of me!). I hope you'll have enough time to view the riddle, contemplate it, and decide upon it in the meager 24 hours or so you have until your next session. Again, sorry it took so long.
I hadn't realized that the time difference between where I am (currently 20 minutes past midnight) was so drastically intense from where you are (currently 16 hours ahead of me!). I hope you'll have enough time to view the riddle, contemplate it, and decide upon it in the meager 24 hours or so you have until your next session. Again, sorry it took so long.
