What kind of puzzles do you give your players?

[kitsune9]

So you're DMing and you got your encounters, your villains, your treasure and your traps. But you think and say to yourself, "Hey, I should introduce a couple of puzzles here."

What kind of puzzles do you use and why?

Me personally, as a DM, I like puzzles so long as they make sense, but it's a real challenge at times because when you DM a group of players, you don't know what "challenge level" your players are at or whether they even have the inclination of recognizing the type of puzzle or solving it.

In my old 2e campaign, I had two engineers and two nurses. They were pretty smart people so there was nothing I tossed at them that they didn't have solved in about 5 minutes (one of the only things that they were able to work together on, they fought over just about everything else).

Speed forward 15 years later with my Pathfinder group, I have to be really careful in choosing puzzles, because one guy has no confidence in solving puzzles and won't look at them or refuses to participate, a couple of other guys will give it their best shot, but I can tell it's more random guessing than any logical effort, and one other guy is decent at it, so long as I don't set the puzzle rating to Medium or tougher.

Also, do you test your puzzles to see if they are solvable and come to the same conclusion that your players should come to? For me, I give my puzzles to my non-gaming wife to test my puzzle. She'll solve it about two minutes with the correct solution. If she makes a mistake, I take a look at where she made the mistake and I'll realize that I gave a piece of information that was backwards or something and fix it. Saves me the headache of dealing with it in mid-game session.

 

[Nagol]

I don't include a lot of obvious puzzles simply because most of the time they don't make sense in the environment.

Most of the "puzzle" activity is more subtle as the players try to work out why events are unfolding the way they did from limited information regarding the actors, motivations, and news of the events themselves.

When I do include an overt puzzle, typically it is being used to verify membership in a small cadre of people -- answering the puzzle correctly in the environment is the equivalent of a password and often gives access to more prtected areas. The puzzle is typically something that the cadre would reasonably be interested in but considered esoteric to outsiders.

Typically, the players can work through the puzzle themselves, make a (reasonably) high Knowledge check on the appropriate skill, or have picked up the answer through game play ahead of time.

 

[Piratecat]

I avoid puzzles that take a long time to solve, or which can best be solved by one-two players and which leave the rest of the group bored.

On the other hand, I like mysteries that require the piercing together of disparate clues, and I like puzzle-like traps where the players need to think quickly to figure out the best way past.

 

[kitsune9]

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]--the puzzle for membership verification is something I haven't thought of. Thanks! I'll have to use that.

[MENTION=2]Piratecat[/MENTION]--yeah, that always seems to be the problem with the exception to my old 2e group. Even in RPGA games, I'd be the one person who would work on the puzzles while the players would wait around for me to hurry up. The way I would elicit more participation from the players is that they all get a copy of the handout so they can either work on it on their own or together.

 

[Haltherrion]

I make sparing use of them. I just finished off an arc with a very complicated puzzle but it was for completely "side" purposes. They pursued it simply for greed and revenge. This is my first true puzzle in many years (as opposed to just difficult decisions to make).

I'm leery of them in general. They can be hard to integrate into a game without seeming arbitrary and if in the mainline path, they can bring a game to a screeching halt and take a lot of fun out of a session. Nothing like beating your head against a puzzle for two hours to make you come back for more D&D

But they can have their place.

 

[kitsune9]

Totally see your point there Marcq. When I bring in a puzzle, I do want them to fairly easy that can be solved in about 5 minutes or less, because I find that the more complex the puzzle and with the number of players the time increases exponentially. I had a simple math puzzle for my last puzzle, but it took the players about 20 minutes which I kind of thought was a bit long.

 

[jdrakeh]

In terms of overt puzzles/riddles, I tend to avoid them altogether. Mysteries and such are fine, but as a general rule, things like those riddle traps near the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? NIMBY.

 

[lamia]

My group are puzzle enthusiasts. It seems there are a lot of puzzle haters out there, but when I asked everyone what they'd like to see more/less of in the game, they all said more puzzles and less combat. Which is proving to be a bit tricky for me since making a puzzle takes me about twice as long as a combat scenario at best.

So I've been playing old adventure games for inspiration. (Poor me, playing video games for the sake of my group!) I have to be careful because a lot of the gals play tons of video games and I don't want to lift puzzles out of something they've played before, but it seems to be going nicely.

The really nice thing about stealing from adventure games is that it's easier to gauge difficulty because they ramp up as the game goes on. So I'm only using variations of puzzles that come up early on.

I also always let them use skills when they are hopelessly stuck for hints. Knowledge Nature ended up saving the day last session!

 

[Rune]

I lean toward logic, but it kind of depends on the situation and what I feel like.

As an example of a logic puzzle I ran, the PCs were in the "Grasping Woods" and had to figure out all of the political alliances and rivalries of the trees by going around and talking to them--and then working out the logical implications of these clues. Once they had done that, they were able to get one faction's help to proceed out of the Woods and on with their quest.

An assembly puzzle I once ran involved a little prep, but was well-worth it. I made a bunch of tiles with symbols on them which, when assembled correctly, formed the image of a stylized spider and (in the game) opened a gateway to the Spider-plane. Meanwhile, the PCs not involved in solving the riddle were in a fight for their lives on said plane (in a parallel combat).

In any event, I have learned that it is usually better to make simple puzzles that are quickly solved, or to drop the puzzle on them as a cliff-hanger, of sorts, so the players can work on it outside of the game.

 

[Rune]

Also, I just found a set-up I used for a Sudoku puzzle, once:

Through me lies the only path;
these gemstones are the keys.
Nine by nine and nine again,
place them with consideration,
for neither line nor box of nine
has room for two the same.​

A note about the sudoku puzzle, though. In play, only one player engaged it (the others had a combat to deal with, at least) and he mixed himself up, somewhere along the line. In the end (after the combat), they just smashed the door. If I do another sudoku puzzle, I'll probably use it as a cliff-hanger in between sessions (and I'll probably make it one of a handful of puzzles, to give them something more to think about.