What kind of puzzles do you give your players?

[Umbran]

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.

I tend to avoid the standard, "and here's a room with a puzzle" construction, largely because they seem pretty hokey. Why did the magician go through the effort of making an entire magical room with a chessboard floor puzzle? That's pretty ridiculous. And, as you note, they're usually best attacked by just a couple of the players.

However, some players like puzzles. And, RPGs have this typically construction that's a little odd, assuming that there's only one thing going on at a given time that everyone can/must concentrate on.

So, I take a cue from some of the live-action games I play - if there's a puzzle, it is getting solved while something else important is also going on. For example, you might have to work on the puzzle-lock that will stop the evil wizard's doomsday spell, but you have to fight off his minions while you do that.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

A puzzle can have multiple aspects, too, each of which can play to the strengths of the various party members and player interests. The first challenge (for the puzzle people) is figuring out the puzzle, while other challenges might be involved in actually implementing it through combat, skill checks, role-play or whatnot.

For example, a puzzle lock might have four keys and four locks. First problem is to figure out which key goes in which lock. But the party also must figure out how to simultaneously work all the locks-- which are in different corners of the room. And might be trapped. In the middle of combat.

An easy puzzle might be simply to win a game of tic-tac-toe against a grumpy magical door. But actually placing the X's and O's-- which happen to be inscribed on the foreheads of 10 enormous statues (which may or not be stone golems)-- is a separate challenge that could involve combat, magic or telekinesis, riddles, stone craft, mad hevvy lifting skillz, persuasion, and so on.

 

[Haltherrion]

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.

I like that sort of puzzle. It can take a lot of time to setup but it seems a "softer" puzzle to me, where they could potentially go back for more information and the puzzle aspects are tightly integrated into story. Much less jarring than some of the more classic puzzles and some players might not even really think of it as a puzzle.

 

[jcayer]

I DM for a group of 5 players. Two, are die hard hack n slashers. They don't get puzzles, but will usually make an attempt. The third guy enjoys the puzzles, but is usually overshadowed by my puzzle lovers. I won't deny it, every puzzle I've thrown at these guys has been solved in under 5 minutes, except for one.

With a puzzle, if applicable, I will have multiple copies of handouts and even better, physical objects to interact with.

Some examples:
I found a neat little geometric puzzle online that is hard for a 2nd grader to put back into a square. I took 4 of them, mixed the pieces up and had a much larger square. To make it more interesting, I drew it out and cut it out on my bandsaw, so they had all the pieces to play with. They were reassembling a control panel.

I once tied 2 of them together. Take a 2-3 foot section of rope and connect one players wrists together with it, leaving plenty of slack in the middle. Take the second rope and tie it to the wrist of player 2. Now run it between the first rope and player, and then tie the other end of the second rope to player 2's other wrist. If they step back, it should resemble an 8. It is possible to separate yourselves without untying the rope. This was very amusing to watch.

I've also done the filling the room with water, solve a lock type puzzle and some other ones like that.

This one I just ran last session and was a huge hit as it had something for everyone. I actually took a picture, which I'll post here. It was a 6 by 6 grid with a couple walls in it. The players had to place 8 marbles on it, none of them adjacent or able to "see" each other vertically or horizontally. To complicate matters, there were a pair of beholders(I made them medium sized), there to annoy them, and at the start of every turn, each marble(which grew to fill a square when placed on one), had a Burst one force attack.
I also required the players to tell me what they were doing within 10 seconds of their turn starting or they automatically delayed, with the potential to miss their turn entirely. Otherwise, there would have been too much table talk.
Anyway, it was a great encounter as the fighter(one of my hackers) soaked up more damage than I ever imagined he could. The rogue, my other hacker was enlisted to aid the other puzzle solvers since he had a great movement rate.
Everyone really enjoyed it and I hope to use the format again. Mixing the puzzle into combat and putting a time limit on turns really forced them to think on their feet instead of over analyze.
Image link(hopefully it works):
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9...liMjAtYzViOWViOTg3MTM5&hl=en&authkey=CLnjkfwN

I love puzzles as do my players, but coming up with them is much harder than throwing together an encounter.

For the record, the one that took over an hour was placing 8 queens on a chessboard with none of them able to take each other. In their defense, we started that one around 11:30pm, so they weren't particularly fresh.

 

[Presto2112]

I've only evr thrown two puzzles at my group in the two + years I GMed. The last one was a Sudoku Lock, as in the huge metal door would not open until the sudoku puzzle was solved. That was combined with the sand from the surrounding desert pouring into the chamber after a predesignated time interval or the group making a mistake, and ouring in faster as time or mistakes accumulated.

 

[The_Gneech]

I love puzzles but they're hard to pull off convincingly without the old "mad wizard is testing you" routine. What puzzles I tend to use are more situational -- i.e., figuring out that the Gem of MacGuffin is on the boss's henchman rather than on the boss himself and taking the henchman out separately to bypass the much tougher henchman+boss fight, that kind of thing.

I did manage to find a way to use the "Let's Write Some Riddles!" thread -- a gynosphinx who is normally an ally of the players has been bespelled and can't recognize them, so they're going to have to best her in a riddle game in order to regain her trust.

-The Gneech

 

[Korgoth]

when I asked everyone what they'd like to see more/less of in the game, they all said more puzzles and less combat.

Gamers after my own heart! You are richly blessed.

I'm curious as to what their gaming background is. I'm also a wargamer, and if I want pure tactics I can get that aplenty in a variety of more interesting (to me) venues than D&D. I want different things out of D&D.

 

[Krensky]

Typically, I don't.

Very simple puzzles, to the point I really wouldn't call them puzzles, like lining up carvings or word games can work. Riddles usually don't, and frankly most logic puzzles are out. Part of this is I have a computer programmer and logician at one of my tables. He's seen all the classic logic puzzles and most of the variations already. The only 'effective' logic puzzle I could use would be the Tower of Hanoi with a decent number of discs. Not because he couldn't solve it, he could without thinking, but because of the time it would take him to move the discs. At which point I'm just as much a jerk as a video game designer who adds a puzzle filled maze to the main quest in a video game just to make the game play longer.

Typically, they're way too much work for no pay-off.

 

[lamia]

Korgoth, I'm definitely feeling like the luckiest lady!
The three ladies in the group have never played pen and paper, but they do enjoy video game RPGs. My boyfriend has been playing for quite awhile, mostly D and D and Warhammer 40k. And the other guy played in one session once upon a time, but that is the extent of pen and paper for him. He also rather enjoys Magic.
With this sort of luck, I kind of want to run around converting everyone to the hobby!

 

[Jhaelen]

Myself, I enjoy puzzles a lot. But none of my players do. So I don't use them anymore.

Part of the problem also lies in judging the difficulty level. I've found that my players are struggling with puzzles I consider to be almost trivially easy.

As a player, if I'm presented with a puzzle it's most often a more or less well disguised variation of a well-known puzzle, hence I have little difficulty to solve it. Messages written in code, number series, etc. are usually (too) obvious to provide a challenge for someone who regularly solves these things for fun.

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