Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 53 - Using Puzzles In Your RPG

Episode Date: December 27, 2020

You've been playing Skyrim and you'd like to test your players' wits by adding a clever puzzle to baffle them in their bonnets and worry them in their wigs.  How do you add puzzles without making them boring or too deadly?  How do you add puzzles that make sense?  Tune in to find out!  I'd love to hear your feedback or episode ideas to [e-mail].

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 53 of the Taking20 podcast, this time focusing on using puzzles in your RPG. This week's sponsor, Blankets, protecting us from the monsters under our beds since we were kids. If you listened to episode 50, I discussed traps and I promised, well more like threatened, to have an episode dedicated to puzzles. Well, here it is. I'll repeat my statement from that episode. Puzzles have more complex logic behind them, while traps tend to be simpler in nature. I will grant you the difference between them is purely arbitrary. If the party comes

across a 10-foot covered pit in a jungle with sharpened spikes at the bottom, is it a trap or a puzzle? For purposes of this podcast, I would treat that as a trap. Puzzles are more complex encounters that require characters and players to determine the solution. Puzzles can come in so many different forms. I mean, if you watch Lord of the Rings or read the novel, there are a few you can think of, but they were mostly word puzzles. But honestly, that makes sense given J.R.R. Tolkien's skill with languages. Hell, he invented Elvish, Dwarven, Orcish, and other languages and species that have now taken over much of our fantasy genre. Examples of word puzzles would be like Speak, Friend, and Enter, or The Last Light of Durin's Day. Also, the text on a map that can

only be revealed by the light of the moon, for example. So puzzles certainly could be word puzzles. They can also be riddles, a clever question that requires creative thinking or ingenuity to solve. Examples would be, I hold you with my feet and back, though arms sometimes I lack. Another example would be, what is it that you keep when you need it not, but throw out when you do need it? Puzzles could have some sort of logic challenge behind them. For example, you have a large balance scale. You are given one 16-quart pitcher full of water, one empty 9-quart pitcher, and one empty 7-quart pitcher. Using nothing but these three pitchers, you must divide the water evenly so that the 16 and 9-qu quart pitchers each hold exactly 8 quarts of water.

Another example of a logic puzzle would be like a number sequence. Touch the tiles that are the next two numbers in this sequence. 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16, 22. Another type of puzzle that they may run across would be moving objects into certain locations or changing item states. Place stone here, pick up item there, pull lever, place pegs, light certain torches while keeping others dark, do things in a certain order. Puzzles could be more like Sudoku-like puzzles, where every row and column needs to only contain unique items, numbers, symbols, letters, and so forth. Puzzles could look like aligning mirrors. I had a fun one at the bottom of a tomb where if you align the mirrors properly, it made the boss fight against the vampire lord a little easier.

Word of warning, before you drop puzzles in, do you know that your players want puzzles in their game? I mean, don't get me wrong, puzzles are a great variety from combat, combat, combat, combat, combat, but they can be a source of anxiety and frustration for some players. Frankly, a lot of players just don't like them. Some of them tune out during puzzles, or they just don't think they're fun. Before you start dropping them in, make sure you talk to your players. If they don't want puzzles, or if they don't like puzzles, or the general consensus is that they're just distracting and boring, then don't drop them in. Most importantly, puzzles shouldn't be these random things. They should have a purpose. Don't just stick a puzzle in just because you want a puzzle. There needs to be a reason for that puzzle's existence. Random marble

moving puzzle in the middle of a high-tech dungeon? Why? What's the purpose? I mean, are they trying to get in to see the god of marbles? Having a puzzle that doesn't fit with a narrative can absolutely wreck the story and take players out of the game. Players are going to be asking themselves, even subconsciously, why is there a puzzle in the middle of nowhere that doesn't contribute to the story at all? Many times puzzles were used to hide rare treasures that people didn't need to get to very often. I mean, you wouldn't put the only bathroom on the floor behind a sliding block puzzle with a swinging scythe. I really have to pee, but I don't remember the order that the blocks go to avoid the scythe, so fuck it, I'm just using this potted plant. Everybody turn away. I said turn away!

Think about the Indiana Jones movies. That golden idol at the beginning of the first Indiana Jones movie. The Ark of the Covenant. The Holy Grail. Their immense treasures placed in areas where they could be hidden away and people couldn't access them easily. Rife for riddles and puzzles. So if the party's questing for the amulet of conjuring tiger meteors from the sky, which can destroy civilizations, then after they kill the boss, they have to solve a puzzle to get to the riches, that might make sense. By the way, the amulet of conjuring tiger meteors is different than the amulet of conjuring meteor tigers, which is how felines magically get swole. It makes sense to put puzzles in areas and protecting items that are almost lost to time, where either no one has been,

or those that have been, fell prey to the puzzle or trap. If you do want to drop a puzzle in and the players are going to encounter it, you should be able to answer this question. Why hasn't the puzzle been solved before? I mean, why hasn't somebody already shown up, cracked the code, typed the numbers in, the door standing wide open with everything pilfered behind it? Why hasn't that happened yet? Well, there's some possibilities. Maybe it's an exceptionally difficult puzzle, so it's complex, there's lots of moving parts, there's a lot of permutations. The solution requires a part or a key, an item, a sprocket, blood of the descendant of the person who committed treason against the

empire, something that is rare and hard to come by. Maybe the puzzle requires multiple people with specific skills that are kind of rare or who would normally not work together. In the Twins trilogy, Time of the Twins, Test of the Twins, War of the Twins, books by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, one of the puzzles requires an evil wizard and a good cleric to work together to solve it. Not a common pairing. But it would make a great buddy cop movie. The perps have barricaded themselves inside the building. I cast Meteor

Swarm to level the building with rocks from space. Oh you. That music, by the way, is from Kevin McLeod over at incompetech.filmmusic.io. I'll put a link in the resources page. He also made the intro and outro music that I licensed from him. He does great work, puts a lot of it out for free under the Creative Commons license. Go check out his work if you need music for an audio or video production. His tracks are high quality and really inexpensive. Why else might the puzzle not have been solved yet?

Well, maybe the puzzle is lethal, or very nearly so, if you fail it. Maybe people have tried to solve the puzzle, but the puzzle almost killed them, and they've warned others to stay away. Or the puzzle is lethal. Align the cryptics in the wrong order, and spears shoot out of the floor and ceiling. The presence of blood, dead bodies, or other physical trauma will hint to the PCs that they don't want to get this one wrong. The dried husks of those who couldn't solve the puzzle. In the Pathfinder world of Galarian, there's an artifact called the Starstone. It fell from the heavens, wiped out an advanced human civilization, caused most of the elves to nope out to another plane of existence for a while,

was likely summoned from the heavens by ancient alien super-intelligent aquatic creatures called Aboleths. The Starstone killed the moon goddess who sacrificed herself to save most of the planet, was raised from the ocean by the first god of humanity, but there's so much more to the Starstone than we can cover here, so let's move on. You know, maybe I should start a podcast about the world of Galarian too. Sorry, the Starstone. Anyone who touched the star stone achieved godhood, but the stone has tests and trials for anyone who would want to do

so. So far, only three have succeeded. This is a long-ass segue to get to this point. I'd never considered what the star stone looked like and what happens to people who try to achieve godhood and fail until I saw the cover book Pathfinderhood and fail. Until I saw the cover book, Pathfinder Gods and Magic. The skeletons around the star stone, they got so close to godhood but came up short. Make sure the PCs know that the puzzle has severe consequences for failure. Dead bodies, blast marks, blood and viscera. That may be why no one has solved the puzzle yet. Many combinations and failure means it drops your strength to one or you take 10d6 fire damage. Your corpse is left to rot here, or predators periodically come by the area for a free, partially cooked meal.

Maybe the puzzle hasn't been solved yet because it's cleverly hidden. People don't even know it's there. It looks like solid stone or a blank wall. It requires special equipment or capabilities to even see, special goggles, certain light, and so forth. Or it's only revealed at a certain time, at noon on the equinox, for example. Another reason the puzzle may not have been solved yet is that the area is remote, and most people have never been there. It's a lost civilization. Locals, if there are any, try to keep people out because they believe the land to be cursed or haunted.

It's geographically isolated, way far away from civilization. Hard to get to, hard to find. Think of the island in Pirates of the Caribbean that you couldn't find unless you'd already been there. It's not on any of the maps. The lore had been lost to time. Maybe the area is dangerous. It's an area of the world that's plagued by radiation, storms, lava, lack of atmosphere. You know, I set up a bar on the moon. It's a great place to visit, but no atmosphere. Maybe the area has dangerous wildlife, like the island of the lost dinosaurs. Maybe the puzzle automatically resets. So every hour, day, month, year, what have you, the puzzle resets itself and the doors relock. If you're looking for ideas of puzzles that you can drop into your game, they can be found in a ton of places. A cursory search online will find you thousands upon thousands of puzzles you can use.

There are books made on the subject. An example I have on my shelf is Grimtooth's Traps. It's amazing. Riddles and puzzles can be found online. Anything else, you can always use video games, other RPG games, and so forth. Borrow, borrow, borrow, steal, steal, steal. I've talked about that a number of times. If you see something good, put it in your game. One thing I would suggest, consider using handouts so that the players interact with the puzzle like the characters would. See the previous episode where we talked about visual aids.

Make sure if you're designing a trap, you scale the potential negative effects with level. Make sure they're level appropriate. So that the negative effects aren't so strong as to be lethal or so weak as to be inconsequential. are so weak as to be inconsequential. Every game system I've ever read, all the way back to, god, Boot Hill, which was a western RPG that was published in the 70s, has tips for trap damage based on the level or strength of the characters. Just use that as a go-by for your gaming system.

For example, if you play Pathfinder and do a search on the archives of Nethis, which is a great website, by the way, I'll put a link in the resources page, you'll find sample traps in their suggested difficulty class, or DC, for the skills needed to find the trap and disable it, all set by level. That's a good starting point for Pathfinder puzzle DCs. Fifth edition has a great table of save DCs and trap damage severity by level depending on whether you want the puzzle or trap to be setback, dangerous, or deadly. Again, great starting point. puzzle, or trap to be setback, dangerous, or deadly. Again, great starting point. One piece of advice I would give. Work hard to make your puzzles simple, and then work hard to make them even simpler than that. I love my players more than I can possibly say, but doggone it, players can be stupid. By the way, that goes for me too. When I'm playing, I am a moron.

I've DM'd hundreds of puzzles and traps and played probably twice that number. I'll still get the day when the DM gives me a puzzle. I don't know, do we slide things? Do we move things? Lift? Push? What's going on? An actual quote from a recent game. Oh, so we didn't need to stab ourselves with the hanging ritualistic scimitars to open the secret passage? Oh, we just had to move them? Good to know. Another actual quote when we couldn't open a door and there was a glowing purple orb next to it, I stick my finger in it. Cue the rogue being minus one finger for the rest of the campaign.

I may or may not have been that rogue. You know, let's just move on from my stupidity. Alleged stupidity. If you're dropping puzzles and traps in, you need to decide how lethal you want them to be. Do you want them to be a mild annoyance? There probably should only be minor damage and maybe minor or no lingering effects. If you want the puzzle to have more of a challenge, you have multiple options. Crank up the damage or add negative failure effects to it. Pushing the buttons in the wrong order gives the players an electric shock. Moving the lever without turning the valve first causes flame jets to erupt. Misaligned columns

opens a hidden door and the undead pour out. Opening the tomb without the magic key inflicts the curse of the pharaoh on the party. Add in damaging and debilitating effects or monsters to crank up the pressure on the PCs. Also, if you want to crank up the pressure, add a timer. Nothing makes players panic like when you pull out a small hourglass or start a timer right after telling them about a puzzle. Um, what's going to happen when the sand runs out? Don't worry about it. Oh, jeez.

Um, what's going to happen when the sand runs out? Don't worry about it. Oh, geez. Having a time limit to solve a puzzle can take players from calm to full-on panic. Players with anxiety may not take to timed puzzles well, so know your players and what they want. Another tip that I would give, overly describe the puzzle. Describe the scene, provide even more detail about the puzzle area, provide even more detail about the puzzle, and give pictures and drawings if you can. You have a picture in your head of what that puzzle looks like, but unfortunately the players can't see what you see,

or they're not thinking what you're thinking, so you need to be very verbose in your descriptions and give them every opportunity to understand. For every puzzle, have multiple hints ready. Reveal small hints at first and then grow them until they solve the puzzle. Remember, the hints you give are more subtle than you think they are. Hints are always a balancing act. You don't want to give them the answer, but by the same token, you want the hint to help. A great piece of advice I heard a long time ago was to include rarely used skill checks or ability checks as hints. Anyone speak gith or flail snail or erotaki? Give me a sleight of hand or an animal handling check or history check. Have a plan in case the characters can't solve the puzzle. No matter how

obvious you think the answer is, you need to have a plan for the plot to move forward if the characters can't solve the puzzle. An alternate route, an NPC who could help them even if the PCs have to schlep back to town to get her, additional hidden hints. And if all else fails, make an intelligence check or something similar. I mentioned earlier about borrow, borrow, borrow, steal, steal, steal, and I want to reinforce that here. Sliding stone puzzles from games like Breath of the Wild are going all the way back to Zork and NetHack. Switch throwing puzzles and pressure plates from Portal series. Water redirection puzzle from Morrowind. The Talos principle is rife with them. The whole keep talking and nobody explodes game the entire game. Tomb Raider and the Room series of games have more puzzles than I can count. If you like it, use it, or use the idea or theme of it.

Another piece of advice I would have is reward clever solutions. Players are smart and they'll likely think of solutions that you've never even considered. If their solution is remotely plausible, at least give it a chance to work. A skill check, a die roll, reward players who can think on their feet and can cut the Gordian knot as it were. So let's put it all together. What should puzzles look like and what would be a good example puzzle? The dark corridor ends abruptly in a doorway to a wide cylindrical room approximately 60 feet across with no floor.

The ceiling soars 50 feet over your head and looking down from the lip where the corridor ends, over the drop off, you can't see the bottom of this enormous room. A corridor stretches from one end of the room to the other, from your left to your right in the middle of the room, perpendicular to the hallway you're in. On the wall to your left, you see five discolored stones that are raised from the stone wall, each in a different color, red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. So hopefully the players figure out, and if not, you can give them hints, that to solve the puzzle, they need to press the buttons in a certain order

to rotate the perpendicular hallway into place so they can proceed down the hallway. So let's assume I want to make this puzzle more of an annoyance than lethal. If these were level 1 PCs, pressing the buttons out of order causes no problems and the corridor doesn't move until the right order is pressed. It's more of an annoyance than anything else. The hallway would have exactly two positions. It would be a toggle, the way the PCs found it, and rotated 90 degrees so the PCs could use it to cross the room.

If these were level 5 PCs, maybe I'd not give so many hints, make the pit only 30 feet deep, and there's a darkness spell at the bottom of it. 3d6 falling damage is annoying to level 5 PCs, but not lethal. The only annoyance there is how do they get back up to the rest of the party. If these are level 10 PCs, maybe it's a decaying pit that does damage over time,

or ages them. Years ago, I had a pit puzzle for a party. The pit was open, the MacGuffin they needed was at the bottom of the pit. They knew it, could even see it from the lip. The pit was 150 feet deep and magically lit. Bottom was sand with bones sticking out of it, along with a shiny MacGuffin. There was a riddle etched into the stone lip around the pit.

I don't remember exactly what the riddle was, but the clue was that the pit rapidly aged you. There were multiple options. There's extended reach mage hand, they could use an unseen servant, or a dozen other spells could have solved it. Plus, there was a member of the party that was a construct, didn't age. That character could have been lowered into the pit, picked up the MacGuffin, been raised back up, and no problem whatsoever. But what happens? Before even reading the clue or stopping to consider, one of the players said, alright, I cast Fly and jump into the pit. Okay.

The pit aged people 1d20 plus 20 years per round in the pit. Luckily, she was an elf. Six rounds later, she's 170-ish years older. I had clues ready, alternate solutions prepared, but they weren't needed. Be ready for the players to do the unexpected and reward good role players. Clever solutions. But back to the cylinder room with a pivoting hallway. What hints would I have ready for the party? You see scrape marks on the edges of the wall and the lip of the drop-off, where it looks like something scraped against the stone from inside the room. The sides of the colored stone look like they could sink into the wall,

maybe even have scratches on them. A couple of combinations would have been written in the wall with an X through each of them, and these would be button combinations that didn't work. Hopefully that's enough of a hint for the players to be able to solve the puzzle and proceed on with the rest of the adventure. Puzzles should only be used regularly if your players enjoy them. Don't overdo it. Make sure the puzzle has a purpose and isn't just there as a time waster. Have a good reason why the puzzle hasn't been solved yet. Give the puzzles to the players, sit back, drop hints when necessary or when good checks are made, and make sure everyone's having fun doing it.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to episode 53, Using Puzzles in Your RPG. Once again, I want to thank our sponsor, Blankets. Remember, according to rules, they provide concealment, not cover. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.