Suspension of Disbelief

[Psion]

The first three "puzzles" our characters were faced with were word-games in English

I hate that! I can see in particular how your situation makes it even worse.

Second World is the one exception to this particular nit for me, because the language of the puzzle may well be English.

 

[diaglo]

my suspension of disbelief ends when i play d02.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Although I understand what the original poster means when he says he loses suspension of disbelief when facing word-puzzles in English, all it really takes is a tiny mental shift to get past it. Just tell yourself that all languages have examples of linguistic coincidences (the basis of word games, riddles, and puzzles), and by doing one in English, you're simply solving the analog of what your PC is solving in-character.

If a rhyming poem or prophecy in English (presented as an in-game poem) doesn't bother you, neither should puzzles. (At least, not on the basis of language. They bother other people for different reasons, beyond the scope of this response.) And, frankly, if a rhyming poem bothers you, the problem ain't the DM's.

 

[DragonLancer]

We all (ok, not all, but you get my drift) speak, think, and read English. If your DM had turned around and made a word puzzle in the language you would actually be speaking IC then I'd agree, but the puzzle has to be in english or you won't understand it.

 

[gizmo33]

Tolkien is a good example of someone who invented fantasy languages for his world, and yet when it came time to tell a story he fell back on English and Old-English derived equivalents for his world's languages because they would be more accessible to the reader.

You could think of it as if your character were seeing a riddle/puzzle in the language of the campaign world, but in order to translate it into a playing experience that you'll understand, the language and the puzzle have been changed to use it's closest English equivalent.

 

[diaglo]

i ran a whole 8 hour session in Klingon for my group of 10 players.

we had a blast.

 

[Captain NeMo]

If anything, the worst possible thing to kill the mood is directly referencing to the rules. As difficult as that may sound...having a player call out "C'mon use your best 8th level spell to buff me and I'll use my +3 Mithril sword to kill that multi-templated beholder!" is just annoying.

 

[Ozmar]

Soo .. you we're ok with the fact that a crossword puzzle was essential to your groups progress, but not with the fact it was in english?

I mean, having to solve a crossword to do something would have to have a pretty damn good explanation not to ruin my gaming experience. After that, what language the puzzle is in, is pretty moot.

The Duke refuses to help you with military aid until you can help him solve the riddle of 46Down?

 

[fusangite]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I think this may be the most fun (as opposed to my usual abstract and weird) thread I've started in a while.

Clausewitz's On War, right?

You, sir, are correct!

although I'd make an exception for something like interpreting a prophecy or untying the Gordian knot if it felt mythically right _for the setting_.

This is very much where I'm coming from. [/QUOTE]

you we're ok with the fact that a crossword puzzle was essential to your groups progress, but not with the fact it was in english?

LOL! That's why I started this thread. I realize everybody's suspension of disbelief is pretty idiosyncratic and unique. That stated, yeah -- crossword puzzles do hurt my suspension of disbelief period but they don't shatter it.

Male player to male DM love scenes

Ewwwwww. Suspension of disbelief isn't the only thing that harms.

Worlds with a richly detailed history streching back longer than 3,000-4,000 years that still haven't developed past a hodge-podge of dark ages to renissance level technology or social conventions.

I'm only sort of with you here. I don't see how a pre-modern society would keep track of a stable, detailed, objective 3000-4000 year history. But, as others have already pointed out, at any point. The world as it is today is by no means the inevitable outcome of the pre-modern societies leading up to it.

I would kill myself lauhing at the notion that I needed to read 500 pages of soemthing out-of-game to be able to solve one part of the guy's adventure.

And Fusangite, you well know what would happen next: I'd convince the group to try and solve it with violence

I actually got pretty cranky myself. The players did kind of rebel after our solution to the Clausewitz puzzle was found to be incorrect. We were within a hair's breadth of basically walking out of the adventure. We were all, "Screw you. If we need to pass this test to enter a city to warn them they're about to be attacked. They deserve to be slaughtered." So we were going to just nail a note to the door and leave.

But then I took pity on the GM and decided that we should really meet the ruler of the city in order to deliver him our own culturally anachronistic riddle modeled on Season 2 of Trailer Park Boys: "Knock knock! / Who's there? / F*ck off!" (Complete with the double middle finger salute.) The other players liked the suggestion a lot. So we ended up finally meeting the ruler but sort of lost our nerve. So, I got my animal companion to deposit several pounds of excrement on the guy's ornate and valuable rug.

That's just asinine. I don't know what he was smoking, since most of the players I've gamed with can't even be bothered to read 2 or 3 pages on general gampaign background. I don't think any gamer alive would read that for prep, hell the puzzle sounds like more of a test than part of a game.

Well, I have managed to put together a group of players for my fortnightly game, some of whom do outside research because there are in-game rewards for it. But (a) the documents they are reading are directly pertinent to the alternate historical situation they face -- ie. they're Europeans in the Americas in the 13th century and they can reference the three pages of Plutarch about the land on the other side of the Atlantic (b) much more importantly, nobody is expected to do the reading and the game functions perfectly well if nobody does it and (c) I recruited a unique group of players who would find this cool as opposed to inconvenient. The D&D group that got hit with this puzzle, on the other hand is totally unsuited and uninterested in any of this.

...see, this'd be the sort of thing that would be having me go "WTF" and looking elsewhere for a DM.

If this happened every week, that's what I'd do. But it just happens every 13 sessions or so.

Actually, I tend to dislike the level of immersion you seem interested in.

You should check out my comments in the two immersion threads that are going right now. I think you may find you mischaracterized the thing I like.

 

[Desdichado]

Completely unrelated to SoD, but those types of puzzles are very frustrating for me in any case. Especially one that I need to "research" between sessions.

But then I took pity on the GM and decided that we should really meet the ruler of the city in order to deliver him our own culturally anachronistic riddle modeled on Season 2 of Trailer Park Boys: "Knock knock! / Who's there? / F*ck off!" (Complete with the double middle finger salute.) The other players liked the suggestion a lot. So we ended up finally meeting the ruler but sort of lost our nerve. So, I got my animal companion to deposit several pounds of excrement on the guy's ornate and valuable rug.

Bravo! That's a great picture.