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Puzzle Dungeons!
DVG
No. 1 Honor StudentNether Institute, Evil AcademyRegistered User regular
No. 1 Honor StudentNether Institute, Evil AcademyRegistered User regular
So Gabe has gotten me to thinking about Puzzle Dungeons. The Disgaea Geo-panel style dungeon from awhile ago and his new Laser/Mirror Dungeon both sound awesome, and I'm planning on incorporating them into my campaign. Does anyone else have any cool ideas for Dungeons-as-puzzles?
I had one a couple years back in my Eberron game I thought I'd share to get the ball rolling.
Basically the dungeon consisted of 15 rooms plus an entrance hall. In the entrance hall, there was a console with what appeared to be a basic 15-piece slide puzzle layout, but each piece represented a different room.
To explore the dungeon, the party had to rearrange the tiles, which would rearrange the layout of the entire goddamn dungeon, some places were only accessible in certain configurations, and they had to explore thoroughly to collect four pieces of a key that would open the final chamber that contained the dingus they were after.
I can't remember everything that was in there, but my favorite thing in there was a Warforged Wizard who was trapped in this dungeon for about 10 years, locked in an isolated room with a Living Cause Fear spell. So he basically was trapped in a room and scared out of his mind all day, every day for 10 years. He was quite crazy by the time the PCs found him.
I had one a couple years back in my Eberron game I thought I'd share to get the ball rolling.
Basically the dungeon consisted of 15 rooms plus an entrance hall. In the entrance hall, there was a console with what appeared to be a basic 15-piece slide puzzle layout, but each piece represented a different room.
To explore the dungeon, the party had to rearrange the tiles, which would rearrange the layout of the entire goddamn dungeon, some places were only accessible in certain configurations, and they had to explore thoroughly to collect four pieces of a key that would open the final chamber that contained the dingus they were after.
I can't remember everything that was in there, but my favorite thing in there was a Warforged Wizard who was trapped in this dungeon for about 10 years, locked in an isolated room with a Living Cause Fear spell. So he basically was trapped in a room and scared out of his mind all day, every day for 10 years. He was quite crazy by the time the PCs found him.
Diablo 3 - DVG#1857
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Eh, a lot of people dislike excessive puzzles. Their character with an 18 int should have few problems with most puzzles, but they themselves might really suck at them. It's better to use a few key puzzles that use skill challenges.
I do usually offer an ability to make Int/Wis checks to supplement puzzle/riddle solving abilities of the players, but most gamers in my experience like the mental challenge of solving them.
I'v always found giving high int (possibly wis) characters big hints at the puzzles a good way of doing it, seeing as their characters would have a better chance of figuring them out than their respective players.
If you really want the players to figure out the puzzles, you can do a half-convincing cop-out by saying that the puzzle the players are solving is only an abstract representation of the real puzzle, which is of course superhumanly difficult and it is only through the high Intelligence scores of their characters that they are given the chance to solve it at all.
This is why I very rarely use puzzles and riddles in my games and will outright ignore any excessive use of puzzles or riddles in games I play. I am playing my character. My character is the one solving the riddle/puzzle. If my character is smarter than me, they should be able to solve it. I don't like puzzles or riddles and think they only slow down the game and frustrate players. Well designed puzzles like the laser pointer and mirrors however, are neat and easy enough that they don't detract from the game.
I have turned a group around and left a dungeon when we couldn't solve some obscure riddle/puzzle that the DM thought was so easy. He did everything he could to dissuade us, but we left anyway. My time to game is limited and I don't want to sit around doing fuck all for two hours while others bang their heads against something so retarded and stupid.
My best case scenario would be some sort of in-combat puzzle, with the top-level complexity being Disgaea style tile schemes.
I've actually got several rooms planned of a primarily puzzle dungeon, but our campaign just shifted so I'll have to find a way to work it back in.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Basically as a DM my method of puzzle is this: one bad choice, one neutral choice, one extra good choice. Choosing between bad and neutral should be easy, but being able to choose the extra good choice requires effort, and the difference between bad choice and neutral choice shouldn't be "Instant Death" but rather "Oh gods a fight or something!"
Basically, if you're a Dumb Hero, you should be able to choose randomly and hope for the best, but if you're a Smart Hero, you should be able to get a bonus.
Important Point: The Puzzle never involves language. It never makes sense that way, since the characters don't speak English. It's either pictures/colors or some sort of universal logic/math. Runes can work too, if it's matching or something, but I hate making up runes.
It takes 21 moves to solve a Rubick's cube. All you have to do is start at a center color (I like white as it is really bright) and move it. No matter where the other colors are, you will always solve it. It took me like 4 years to finally find that out. But now its muscle memory for me.
On the deal with puzzles in games, they are cool as they mix things up from the normal "hack n' slash" of playing, however they aren't always good.
In a 3.5 game I played in there were 3 stones with symbols on them and 3 alters with different symbols. Each symbol stood for a deity and their domains. However, we didn't have anyone trained in religion or history in our party. Every time we placed the wrong stones on the wrong alters, something bad happen. I, the wizard, got shrunk down to six inches tall, floating on air and set on fire (not on the same turns). We had one guy grow an extra arm he couldn't control, one person become blind and right before we solved it by blind luck, sand was pouring in the room and we had 6 turns before we drown in sand. It was the worst game I played in. But if someone had be trained in religion or history, we could have came out a lot better.