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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9702638" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean, was it?I'm guessing "No" because, for my money, that's deeply bizarre and counter-intuitive, not "very simple". It also requires PCs to eat unattended magical food in a magical place which is one the the "Top 10 Fantasy No-Nos" (way worse than splitting the party!) - usually that sort of things ends up with PCs being cursed, poisoned, fey-ensorcelled, told they've failed a test or the like. It's like sticking your face towards some sort of pulsing egg-like object or creepy alien flower in a space horror game!Also they solved the problem in frankly a much more logical and completely reasonable way - "thing moves based on weight, needs more weight, how do we get more weight?". You just didn't like how they did it! Unless the solution is logical and fairly straightforward, we all know PCs aren't going to use it. In my 35 years of experience, most problems/puzzles that aren't hard-key'd get solved in some wild and unexpected way. That's why you need to allow for multiple solutions, which thankfully you did by having the plate that moved be about weight, not food-magic specifically. And let's be very clear, it is not logical or reasonable to just randomly eat weird magic food in a weird magic place and expect anything good at all to happen, so imho, the players were being completely reasonable and sensible, you just had wanted (and for some odd reason expected?) them to do something counter-intuitive and dumb/dangerous (which to be, some PCs absolutely would, I guess none of them were in this party).Yeah, but you set up a situation where magic absolutely was required (I mean, I guess maybe over the course of days they could have hauled boulders in or something too maybe)! That's on you mate!Just not PC magic - they could have, if they were really "living on the edge"-type people, eaten the food. I can tell you that, under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever would I have had a PC of mine be the first eat that food though. Just never. I have played plenty of adventures with "unattended magical food" in them, and in almost all cases, eating it was a Very Bad Thing. The same is true, I note, in fantasy fiction and mythology, all the way down to Goldilocks. Do not eat the unattended food. It's a rule. The only food thing dumber than that is eating food the Fey or a witch are giving you!Whilst this is basically true, I think you picked a really bad example.I very much doubt the players didn't consider the food at all - I strongly suspect they immediately dismissed it because, as we've both pointed out, in other adventures, in fantasy fiction, in mythology, and in folklore, eating unattended food is almost always a Bad Idea in the real Bad Idea caps way!They probably just wanted to exhaust all possible options before taking the insane risk of messing with the food.So yes, communication matters, yes players should think, but this particular puzzle is pretty binary - if you have a Chaotic Barbarian or similar in the party, they'd probably immediately have grabbed a bit of the food and munched, and the puzzle would instantly have been Gordian Knot'd (well as soon as the PCs realized the plate area could move). But it's not something logic could have solved by eating the food, because logic says "DO NOT EAT THAT FOOD FOR GOD'S SAKE"! I guess they could have engaged in animal or henchman testing, but... I dunno that seems a bit off when the gods are testing you!As for:There are rare exceptions, sure, but it's like a 10:1 ratio of "Bad Idea: Good idea" when it comes to eating unattended food. Why take that risk until you've tried absolutely everything else?TLDR: The players did the right thing and the expected thing - because eating unattended food in fantasy fiction is almost always a bad idea, they looked for a solution that didn't involve the food.</blockquote>

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