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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swrushing" data-source="post: 2691117" data-attributes="member: 14140">Several things...First, if your players are taking the time to give you feedback and tell you what they like and don't like, that is NOT the time to argue with them. thats valuable feedback, listen, ponder and consider it carefully. it sounds like they aren't telling you to "do no puzzles" or to "do nothing but combat" but to not center and entrie run around a puzzle and provide some combat.if that will help them enjoy the run... why not do it? it doesn't have to be a big combat, maybe they interrupt a mugging o a rape in order to meet the important NPC. Maybe the NPC then brings them to his/her home for a reward or to stay as guests of honor or to be the guests at a grand party.A little 20 minute combat can spur an entire series of role playing moments without taking an entire session.Second, i tend to view puzzles as something to be used in great moderation and **never**  as the center of a plot. I have just found that they only produce lots of fun once in a great while and never if they run on long, like say requiring multiple gathering of info and such.as for the smarts vs int and such, sounds like not a definition parsing i would take. make the puzzles relative to the campaign world, not the real world. here is the key... i think... if you want the puzzle to be represented by more than just a die roll, then craft a puzzle that requires more than just a die roll but which is still solvable by CHARACTERS. maybe a knowledge nobility check is required to recognize the play off the name of a noble house known for hosting a pumpkin festival and that leads to the pumpkin carving which in turn leads to a knowledge religion check to recognize the sacred symbol which leads to... ideally, all these "clues" (or most of them) have already been introduced, so a player who recalls the significance of the noble house-pumpkin-religion-etc can solve it without rolling but the CHARACTERS might also be able to without one-die-rolling it.Using your combat resolution analogy, you don't require your players to know swordplay to resolve a combayt encounter, neither should you expect your players to be gifted at puzzles to solve your puzzles.</blockquote>

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