What kind of puzzles do you give your players?

[Rune]

The only kind of puzzle which _can_ work, are riddle-rhymes, assuming they're original. But these are very difficult to create.

May I direct you to this thread?

Personally, I find riddles much easier to create than either puzzles or combat encounters (although they all have their rewards). In the case of riddles, all you need to do is pick an answer and then find ways to obfuscate it.

 

[Leatherhead]

The extent of puzzles in my games are (bad) court dramas, and "The princess is locked in a tower, you must get her out."

I hate stuff with only one answer, and I also try to curb metagaming as much as possible.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

I created a puzzle for my players. At the last second, I decided a one major change in the puzzle and it worked great... But the thing is that my players are having huge, unbearable problems with my puzzle...

So... please guys, SOLVE MY PUZZLE!

Wizard has loads of cursed potions of Bulls' Strength.
Wizard needs to know what is the curse, and how it works. He has no access to Analyze Dweomer, and neither do players.
Players drink the potions.
TN Wizard has normal effect from the potion.
TN Roque has normal effect.
CG Cleric has normal effect and while the potion is in effect, his arms shrink.

Is about being a cleric? Another cleric, TN, drinks the potion. Normal effect.
Is about being strong? A very strong peasant drinks the potion. Normal effect.
Is it about being Chaotic? Chaotic peasant drinks the potion. Normal effect.

How to find out, why the potion is effecting the party cleric, and not the others? You still have some potions left, each has effect of 30 second, but while cleric drinks one, his arms shrink by 30%.

 

[Rune]

You've mentioned class, alignment, and one ability score as possible factors--what about race? What about gender?

Also, I'm a little confused about something. Did you create the puzzle without a solution and now want help figuring one out, or did you just want to see if anyone here can solve it?

Edit--I also note, since you include alignment as a (possible) factor, that the affected cleric is the only one specified as good.

 

[Barastrondo]

I don't often use them, because they're the foremost example of how being able to think like the GM can become the primary advantage in the game. My wife and I talk games and world-building all the time when we're together, so even though I try to hold some things back from her and surprise her in-character, she's really good at anticipating my thought process. She'll solve a puzzle or riddle faster than the other players just because she can think the way I did when I created it. Some of the other players have also been playing with me for a long time -- but they also run games, so often they approach puzzles or questions as they would have designed them, rather than how I did.

Being able to think like a GM or designer is really one of the unspoken "player skills" of gaming. Somebody who can think like Gygax will have a much greater advantage in a dungeon he designed. To some extent it worries me to encourage that too much: I like players to think like they do, rather than to try to anticipate my thought processes. It's one of the reasons I move more toward intellectual challenges that have no single anticipated solution: situations rather than puzzles, most of the time.

That said, I'm quite fond of riddles, obscurely worded prophecies and symbolic maps. Symbolism as a whole is probably my favorite trick: this may have something to do with how my wife is able to anticipate me, but there you have it.

 

[kitsune9]

I created a puzzle for my players. At the last second, I decided a one major change in the puzzle and it worked great... But the thing is that my players are having huge, unbearable problems with my puzzle...

So... please guys, SOLVE MY PUZZLE!

Wizard has loads of cursed potions of Bulls' Strength.
Wizard needs to know what is the curse, and how it works. He has no access to Analyze Dweomer, and neither do players.
Players drink the potions.
TN Wizard has normal effect from the potion.
TN Roque has normal effect.
CG Cleric has normal effect and while the potion is in effect, his arms shrink.

Is about being a cleric? Another cleric, TN, drinks the potion. Normal effect.
Is about being strong? A very strong peasant drinks the potion. Normal effect.
Is it about being Chaotic? Chaotic peasant drinks the potion. Normal effect.

How to find out, why the potion is effecting the party cleric, and not the others? You still have some potions left, each has effect of 30 second, but while cleric drinks one, his arms shrink by 30%.

The only element I see here that's different is the cleric that is affected is good.

TN doesn't affect anyone. Having a class is also not an element because a TN cleric drinks one and is fine and the CG cleric drinks one and his arms shrink.
Chaotic is eliminated, so the only thing left our CG cleric affected is being good.

 

[Baveboi]

The only puzzle I faced, once, was a chess-board floor type. We were 7 players and had to take the crown of the king so we could open the door (it was some weird key).

The others went about moving, trying to work around the table as real pieces. I moved around the table, shatter on the kings head, took the crown and went away the same way while everyone looked at me with airs of "fun spoiler".

I think that was why the DM didn't give us another puzzle. xD

 

[Greg K]

I, very rarely, use puzzles. When I do, they need to make sense in terms of the setting and what the characters would know based upon background and/or what can be learned/experienced by the charactersi n game. Then again, there are few things that I dislike more as a player than a DM introducing puzzles based upon the player rather than around the characters and setting.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Kitsune and Rune,

I have a solution to this puzzle, but I'm just seeing if this is too hard.
Unbeknownst to players, one of the peasant who drank the potion was good, but there was no negative effect. However their failure to utilize alignment discerning magic at the time left this fact hidden...

To really solve this problem, I guess a good look at three amigos is need. So here we go:

Roque is a male halfling. He is clean shaven, and dark eyes and dark medium-long hair. He is wearing his full adventure gear, including leather armor and magical gear (light load). Since the potion had no bad effect on him, he did couple of acrobatic stunts, and he seemed ok.

Wizard is a human male. He is clean shaven, has dark eyes and short hair. He is wearing a robe, backpack with adventure gear and some magical gear (light load). Since the potion had no bad effect on him, he did a couple of spells, and he seemed ok.

Cleric is human male. He has beard, dark eyes and long dark hair. He is wearing a robe, backpack with full adventure gear, breastplate, shield and some magical gear (medium load). Since the potion started to shrunk his arms, he threw away his magical bracers, but the effect persisted to shrink his arms.

 

[karlindel]

I have also had my players request more puzzles. Unfortunately, as others have mentioned, puzzles are very hard to work in believably.

Here are some of the more memorable ones I have used:
A wizard had a tiled room with four walls and multiple columns, a gargoyle in the center of each wall with their eyes closed. Each time someone stepped on a tile, the first gargoyle would open its eyes, when someone (which could be the same person) stepped on another tile, the first gargoyle would close its eyes and the second gargoyle would open its eyes, etc. If the gargoyle with its eyes opened saw anyone, it would trigger the room to reach up, grab them, crush them, and throw them out of the room. There is a sequence to get through by stepping on only one tile at a time and hiding behind the pillars that involved some backtracking. Alternately, the PCs could also jump in order to get farther along to avoid being seen. I liked that one quite a bit. After a few tries, though, the wizard decided to bypass it by creating an Arcane Gate to get the party to the other end of the room. I got this one from Riddle Rooms #3, which I've also used for a couple of other puzzles in my campaign.

The party finds a room with a magic mirror that they need to acquire on the roof. There are 9 mirrors in the room with levers next to them, the mirrors giving off light with sufficient heat to prevent the characters from simply going up and removing the mirror. Each mirror has a lever on it that opens and closes shutters to cover that mirror as well as some of the other mirrors. The party has to figure out the sequence to close all of the shutters so that they can get the mirror. Also, the light was a cage for a shadow ooze, so solving the puzzle results in a combat, during which the PCs could re-open the mirrors to damage the creature.