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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2698584" data-attributes="member: 2067">It is. Because making a player solve a puzzle is not playing a role. Putting a puzzle in the game is, for many campaigns "too distractive." Having a player solve a puzzle is not nessecarily easily done. It is only easy for the right types of players, and even when it is easy, it is still disruptive of playing a role. It can take up FAR more time than combat -- entire sessions have been lost to puzzles and mindgames, whereas a combat can be over in a handful of minutes if it is a minor one.Doing a puzzle isn't role playing. It's removed from role playing. It is cerebral and intellectual and helps your LSATs, but it ain't playing a role. D&D doesn't have to be combat oriented, but I think you'll find the core rulebooks support a decent amount of combat, so making it less so would likely involve some new kinds of rules.Most of this is up to interpretation. Maybe Ugh could figure it out with an Int of 6. Maybe he couldn't figure it out with an Int of 600 ("r b and g are obviously codes in the long-forgotten tongue of the ancients to whome color was a foriegn concept, and thus the elimination of all color is the only goal to see here, but because black is the *absorbtion* of all color, obviously all these orbs must be painted white!"). A roll does realistically determine this chance. If, you know, it makes sense for such a thing to exist in the world in the first place (which is quite hard to justify in most campaigns).Sure. If a character spent rescources on being a Sherlock Holmes (levels in bard, specializing in divining magic, skill focus in Knowledge (elementary)) it is completely acceptable to have him make some sort of roll to determine exactly that. This isn't true if the PLAYER has to solve the puzzles. If a player who isn't very good at mind games wants to play a clever halfling who is good at riddles, why should he be limited by what he can actually do? If a player wants to have an Indy type of character by just isn't good at solving those clues, how can he have such a character when he has to figure out those clues himself? If the *character* has to solve the puzzles, that's fine. But then there should be a way for the character to solve the puzzle without nessecarily forcing the player to do the same thing.Puzzles have their place in the mythos, sure. But like I said, the reader never had to figure out the riddle on the door to Moria. The *characters* did. The book would move forward regardless of what the reader did. Because literature (like cinema) is a passive medium.A game, however, is active, and a role-playing game is active in the playing of a role (just like a puzzle-solving game is active in the solving of a puzzle). To play that role, it is quite often nessecary for the character to do something that the player cannot -- including solving a puzzle. And when that abstraction becomes destroyed -- when you demand the player find the answer regardless of what the character can do -- it hurts the playing of a role. You're no longer being a fictional being, but being judged by you own capabilities.In short, the issue isn't the puzzle itself. The issue is making the players solve the puzzle instead of making the characters solve the puzzle.And as a side note, I wouldn't assume you knew how I played, if I were you. I've had combat-less sessions. I am capable of making mind games, diplomacy, and NPC interaction as valuable and rewarding as combat for my players.</blockquote>

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