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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7324204" data-attributes="member: 29398">Some puzzles are like this, to be sure.  The one I hit most often is the unmappable maze of twisty little passages where there's no functional way to give the players anything to work with on the table (have you ever tried mapping a plate of spaghetti?).Others, however, can still be solved in-character, sometimes via the players actually acting out with more-or-less makeshift props what their PCs are doing as regards the puzzle.A not-so-twisty maze, for example, can be solved by the players (in character) mapping it out.  A code or cipher can be written out on the game board or a piece of paper and solved by the players in character.  A four-lever puzzle can be solved in character by putting four objects on the table and getting the players to use them to show you what their characters are doing with the levers.What this sort of thing does is allows the players to remain in character while in effect bringing the game world into the real world (via the props) for a moment so they can interact with it.  But note that doing this forces you to take the actual real-world time to solve the puzzle (thus real-world and game-world time pass equally during this process), rather than bundling it into a few die rolls.  It's also possible the players will fail to solve the puzzle, in which case their frustration simply mirrors that of their characters.The searching can get tedious sometimes, no doubt there; but put yourself in your character's shoes for a moment: while in a hostile area e.g. a dungeon or enemy territory it's not paranoia, it's reality - the world really is out to get you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />More or less what I also do, in the end.  The only difference (and it may not even be a difference, but you don't mention it) is that I also have a reasonably good idea of what would happen going forward if the PCs weren't around to change it.Lanefan</blockquote>

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