Suspension of Disbelief

[Psion]

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.

What you are calling a "tiny mental shift" some would call "mental gymnastics".

If a rhyming poem or prophecy in English (presented as an in-game poem) doesn't bother you, neither should puzzles.

It sounds a bit as if you are pronouncing judgement on what people can and cannot accept. It's a personal thing.

I do not see that what you suggest follows. I can handle poems only because I have seen translated potic play scripts that ended up being poetic in English. So I can accept that, because I have seen translators that are good enough armed with synonyms and re-arranging can make something poetic out a translation.

This does not come close to explaining away letter substitution for me. If I see a word puzzle that is so cool I just have to run it, I'll do it in Second World. Otherwise, you stack on the need to picture the excercise as an analog with the already shaky notion that people would be guarding their magical treasures with magic word puzzles, it would push my SOD right over the edge.

 

[Parlan]

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

we had a blast.

I bow in awe before your almighty ubergeekdom!

 

[Rel]

I wish, now, that I hadn't complained. The replacement puzzles were so much worse tonight. One was based on Sun Tzu's art of war. The other, however, required that one read a 424-page work of 19th century military theory (apparently a seminal work) before the game. (He told us we would need to do this but none of us did. I figured 223 pages of Sun Tzu and commentaries was sufficient to indicate my commitment as a player.) The thing is that the game world we're in has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Taoist or Prussian theories of war -- there are no symbolic resonances, no narrative parallels; the world is based on the 15th century Pontic steppe and the creation of Muscovy after the Black Death.

fusangite, if it wasn't YOU who posted this then I'd have sworn that it must be Driddle.

I'm with TB on this one, "Violence is not the answer. Violence is the question.

The answer is 'Yes'."

 

[Desdichado]

Does no one besides me find the fact that someone put a crossword puzzle or a military history/theory question up as something that needs to be solved before passing through a secure gate more of a suspension of disbelief breaker than the fact that it was in English?

I mean, what kind of moron security system is that? If anything, you want to keep potential tactical/strategic geniuses away from your city and its lord unless you're absolutely sure they're on your side. At which point, why would have have him give you such a dumb password to begin with?

 

[painandgreed]

For me it's usually NPC actions that just don't make sence. When uberpowerful NPCs teleport in to resurect or raise a dead lowlevel PC a few round after he dies and then teleport right back out. When "starving and desperate" thieves will fight an known adventuring party to the death while there are much softer and richer targets all around them in the city. Never mind that when given the opportunity to surrender or run away when obviously outclassed, they still shoose to fight to the death.

Puzzles and English don't bug me as far as suspension of disbelief, however they are annoying. Times like that I just state that my character has a higher Int and Wis than I do and want it reduced to a die roll just like combat is reduced to a die roll.

 

[fusangite]

Does no one besides me find the fact that someone put a crossword puzzle or a military history/theory question up as something that needs to be solved before passing through a secure gate more of a suspension of disbelief breaker than the fact that it was in English?

I mean, what kind of moron security system is that? If anything, you want to keep potential tactical/strategic geniuses away from your city and its lord unless you're absolutely sure they're on your side. At which point, why would have have him give you such a dumb password to begin with?

This is a good point I had not considered. It's true that our DM's "puzzles" tend to be awkwardly and inappropriately shoe-horned into an otherwise pretty rational plot. Thanks for adding to my list of reasons for justified annoyance.

 

[Psion]

Does no one besides me find the fact that someone put a crossword puzzle or a military history/theory question up as something that needs to be solved before passing through a secure gate more of a suspension of disbelief breaker than the fact that it was in English?

Well, as I say above:

Otherwise, you stack on the need to picture the excercise as an analog with the already shaky notion that people would be guarding their magical treasures with magic word puzzles, it would push my SOD right over the edge.

So it's sort of an accumulation of elements.

Or as an editor of a famed sci-fi magazine once expressed, I try to limit it to one patent implausibilty per encounter.

 

[Rel]

This is a good point I had not considered. It's true that our DM's "puzzles" tend to be awkwardly and inappropriately shoe-horned into an otherwise pretty rational plot. Thanks for adding to my list of reasons for justified annoyance.

Aw, geez man, I had assumed that as complicated and annoying as the puzzle was that it at least had the decency to fit seamlessly into the circumstances of the plot! That would bug me a hell of a lot worse than it being in English.

This points to one of the things that shatters my SoD and is my biggest beef with one guy who GMs for our group sometimes. It seems like all the NPC's who are allies or patrons for us are complete jerks whose standard MO is "If you do this difficult quest for me for free then I shall allow you to speak to me whereupon I'll ask you for a favor that seems well within my mighty powers but that I haven't done myself for some reason. If you accomplish what I ask then that will earn you the right to speak to me again whereupon I'll ask for an even bigger favor without so much as a please or thank you."

 

[Desdichado]

This points to one of the things that shatters my SoD and is my biggest beef with one guy who GMs for our group sometimes. It seems like all the NPC's who are allies or patrons for us are complete jerks whose standard MO is "If you do this difficult quest for me for free then I shall allow you to speak to me whereupon I'll ask you for a favor that seems well within my mighty powers but that I haven't done myself for some reason. If you accomplish what I ask then that will earn you the right to speak to me again whereupon I'll ask for an even bigger favor without so much as a please or thank you."

Yep, that's my personal biggest SoD breaker--metagame adventure design constraints that clearly serve no purpose other than to facilitate getting the PCs to do something, but which make absolutely no sense internally.

That sounds like a complicated sentence structure, but hopefully it makes sense as I'm not quite sure how else to state it. With just a little thought, the same desired effect can usually be accomplished without having to bend common sense justifications out of the NPCs. And if it can't, maybe the adventure designer (or DM) should take a step back and think of some other way to incorporate his plot hook.

 

[Henry]

...whose standard MO is "If you do this difficult quest for me for free then I shall allow you to speak to me whereupon I'll ask you for a favor that seems well within my mighty powers but that I haven't done myself for some reason. If you accomplish what I ask then that will earn you the right to speak to me again whereupon I'll ask for an even bigger favor without so much as a please or thank you."

And yet, I've seen this in volunteer organizations in real life before.

My suspension of disbelief is hard to break, because I really don't have one in a role-playing game. Even with in-character speeches and the like, I don't lose my sense of where I am the way I would in a story, good book, or movie. Maybe it has to do with the fact that just gaming itself is what I mainly enjoy about RPG's, and storytelling and character immersion comes secondary. A complicated elaborate puzzle doesn't bother me because it's not in a fantasy language, it bothers me if it's not fun to solve it.

I once placed a door with three levers on it, and elsewhere hidden in a book that the solution was the "Fox, Chicken, grain" puzzle. They still had to go through the puzzle, and it was a challenge for some of them because it had been so long since they'd done the puzzle, even if it was a simple one.