this is apparently in response to The Escapist's mealy-mouthed gamergate apologia, and given the circumstances, I certainly can't blame them for leaving the site
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Man Straightzi that is all super badass
there's just one more thing I need to know
who
is
K-pop
:P
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Quick unscientific survey: say that you're trying to find an entrance to a magical castle. The only clues that you have are a pile of five old stone blocks, each with a word on them. Together, they read SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS. Your characters know enough that this, translated from Latin, means something like, "The sower works for mastery by turning the wheel."
What would you guys try? I'm thinking that it's the type of thing that would either take someone a couple of seconds or several hours if they haven't seen this before, and don't want to risk boring my group.
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
I'd try and see if there's a symbol that looks like or represent a spinning wheel. Also when you say a pile of stone block you mean just like a loose pile or carefully stacked, and are they in order, or would you have to put them in order for them to say that?
Which probably means I'm not going to get it in a few seconds, unless there looks like something you can turn like a spinning wheel
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Hey, that was a great smart arse answer!
My immediate action would be look for a wheel.
My second action is look on the stones for the message.
My third is see if I can piece the stones into a wheel.
The what my party would say is, can we stick a dead goblin in it?
I'd try and see if there's a symbol that looks like or represent a spinning wheel. Also when you say a pile of stone block you mean just like a loose pile or carefully stacked, and are they in order, or would you have to put them in order for them to say that?
Which probably means I'm not going to get it in a few seconds, unless there looks like something you can turn like a spinning wheel
Yeah I would either look for a spinning wheel shape and try to interact with that and/or try to physically turn the stone that said wheel
wait shit is it a clue that the latin is a palindrome? and will they see the latin/translation written down on something? Because both the palindrome and the fact that you mean sower (as in planter) and not sewer (as in person who sews) will probably not come across when spoken if those matter as clues
are the blocks laid out like the rows of a sator square? (also after the session I would google the latin and learn about sator squares (then try and put the blocks together as a sator square))
A collapsed pile, like if you'd emptied out a set of Jenga blocks onto each other. That is the order the words are found in, but Latin sentences don't change their meaning if you move the words around.
Like are they next to the castle at this point or is the castle still to be found? If the latter assume they're a portal and try to assemble the stones into a wheel. If the former look for wheels, sowing related things, possibly digging.
...actually what I'd do is assume no one is dumb enough to leave a passcode on the outside of their castle and think its a trap.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
A collapsed pile, like if you'd emptied out a set of Jenga blocks onto each other. That is the order the words are found in, but Latin sentences don't change their meaning if you move the words around.
There is no spinning wheel.
Hint which might not be very useful:
"Arepo" is a very unusual word in Latin.
Is this based on the Sator-Arepo word square?
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Hmm
Arrange them into an arch with the middle word as the keystone? The latins sure loved their arches
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Like are they next to the castle at this point or is the castle still to be found? If the latter assume they're a portal and try to assemble the stones into a wheel. If the former look for wheels, sowing related things, possibly digging.
...actually what I'd do is assume no one is dumb enough to leave a passcode on the outside of their castle and think its a trap.
It's what's known as a Regio in Ars Magica - they're at the right place, but they need to find a door to get them onto what is basically a higher plane of existence. Every Regio has a way to get through, some are simple, and some are complicated.
Like are they next to the castle at this point or is the castle still to be found? If the latter assume they're a portal and try to assemble the stones into a wheel. If the former look for wheels, sowing related things, possibly digging.
...actually what I'd do is assume no one is dumb enough to leave a passcode on the outside of their castle and think its a trap.
It's what's known as a Regio in Ars Magica - they're at the right place, but they need to find a door to get them onto what is basically a higher plane of existence. Every Regio has a way to get through, some are simple, and some are complicated.
Thomamelas: yep.
Ars Magica so lets assume the Christian Occult use of it to form the Greek Cross spelling out Pater Noster. Are any of your players Latin scholars or students of occult history?
Like are they next to the castle at this point or is the castle still to be found? If the latter assume they're a portal and try to assemble the stones into a wheel. If the former look for wheels, sowing related things, possibly digging.
...actually what I'd do is assume no one is dumb enough to leave a passcode on the outside of their castle and think its a trap.
It's what's known as a Regio in Ars Magica - they're at the right place, but they need to find a door to get them onto what is basically a higher plane of existence. Every Regio has a way to get through, some are simple, and some are complicated.
Thomamelas: yep.
Ars Magica so lets assume the Christian Occult use of it to form the Greek Cross spelling out Pater Noster. Are any of your players Latin scholars or students of occult history?
They're mainly from the sciences, but with plenty of trivia thrown in. I hadn't considered the Pater Noster use (and the blocks are in five letter chunks so they'd have to break them up), but I might give them some bonuses to their rolls if they think of that, as they're going up against an Ifrit which straddles the line between demon and fairy.
Quick unscientific survey: say that you're trying to find an entrance to a magical castle. The only clues that you have are a pile of five old stone blocks, each with a word on them. Together, they read SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS. Your characters know enough that this, translated from Latin, means something like, "The sower works for mastery by turning the wheel."
What would you guys try? I'm thinking that it's the type of thing that would either take someone a couple of seconds or several hours if they haven't seen this before, and don't want to risk boring my group.
My golden rule of puzzles is that if they block progress, they are pretty easy and can be solved by multiple approaches. A magical portal might be battered through, zapped open, or puzzled out. Each with different negative consequences (e.g. the zap might create backlash, sitting around puzzling will give the gnolls time to attack).
For puzzles that are supposed to be thought about while play continues, I like to mix multiple comparatively simple puzzles so that different players can contribute. So there might be a riddle hidden inside a cryptogram that gives hints to the eldritch simultaneous equation that needs to be solved.
That puzzle is something you either know or you don't. If you know it is annoyingly simple. If you don't it's a while to notice the symmetry depending on the smarts of your group. Either way the translation is a red herring.
If I was going to do a Sator Square puzzle then first I'd put it in a different font, like one of the runic ones from here: http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=705
That would make it be about noticing the patterns in the runes rather than latin. I would drop the translation.
I would also have a receptacle where the assembled puzzle must be placed that is somehow protected - perhaps by a locked cover that a thief or Strong Person With Hammer can work at.
I would also have each incorrect attempt punished with an electric shock, or something more thematically appropriate to the castle. That would mean that PCs can argue over who wants to be guinea pig, who is the toughest etc.
I would also add time pressure and stress from monsters/enemies prowling nearby, and perhaps attacking.
I would also have those attacking NPCs know hints to the puzzle, or have hints to the puzzle given through the magical zap that punishes incorrect placing of the blocks, e.g. a psychic attack that involves a vision of life inside the castle or the mind of the puzzle-maker.
I'd also think why there would be such a puzzle there. In my last puzzle-a-thon D&D adventure, the dungeon was the Library of monks who were protecting magical knowledge from the forces of chaos. Long after their death, they wanted only very logical thinkers to be able to access their library.
I'd put that info on the puzzle-maker in as part of the adventure. Try to make it blend in.
No to the rest of the suggestions, but I'll be giving the group the blocks to play with in real life so it's good seeing what their thought processes might be.
Edit: that looks like I'm saying no to poshniallo - I was saying no to the suggested answers
I'd work them into a square to form the sator square. Because it's not just a palindrome, it can be read in any direction, left to right, right to left, up and down, down and up, in alternating directions etc.
But then I'm a major historynerd with a speciality in the absurd and useless...so, probably a statistical outlier.
Most people are not familiar enough with ancient history or mediterranian esotericism.
P.S: If that is the solution, then I highly recommend using props. If you're not familiar with it it's nearly impossible for most to rearrange the words in their head. Using props so that the players can rearrange the words would vastly increase their chances.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Thanks for all the input, guys - I think I'll have to rethink how this plays out. Regio entrances are tricky, and there are spells which can straight up tell the characters how to get in - I might just drop it and focus on the rest of the encounter, or have the blocks be an Easter egg that will provide some bonuses to later areas.
Basically, I guess my golden rule of puzzles is never make it just a puzzle.
I figure I could take a bear.
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simonwolfi can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered Userregular
If anyone is interested in playing PbP, I just made a thread for Aristo-Maze, a board game I picked up in Japan and talked about in this thread a while ago. It's by the same designer as Tragedy Looper, which has been getting a fair amount of praise lately, and I think it's a neat little thing.
In other news, I played Betrayal at House on the Hill over the weekend. I was the traitor vampire thrall of Dracula, and ended up converting one of the heroes to Vampire Incorporated (which was actually kind of creepy since I was the 57 year old Professor Longfellow and my victim was the 9 year old Missy Dubourde). The other heroes managed to slay the Bride of Dracula with the spear early, but made a few critical errors (like not fleeing and trying to stall for time) which led to a traitor victory.
I will also be probably be playing it again this week, along with Machine of Death! I am looking forward to actually playing that game.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Yeah.
The puzzle may be better with a physical shape.
I was thinking a square with the word printed in the middle of it, and a I was concentrating a lot with the translation meaning rather than my Latin.
So I'd give them the blocks first and have then ask if they can translate it rather than giving it to them.
Humans still, I guess? Like humans that everyone hates?
One of the big things I run into with this setting is that huge parts of the world are well spelled out, and others aren't at all because I don't really listen to the music in question
So if you want to know about elves or tieflings, I've got you fuckin' covered
But I don't listen to metal at all, so when I was trying to come up with how all the orcs and giants worked, it became this big game of looking stuff up on wikipedia and trying to understand music in a way that involved not actually listening to music
Yeah I mean I see that the puzzle is a palindrome but without knowing anything else about the environment or situation I wouldn't really know what to do with that information.
I had a puzzle recently where there was a door with a face set in it, and the password for the door was carved into the frame above the door.
When you approach the door it talks to you, but refuses to open. If the players speak the password nothing happens, but they have to get the door to say the password itself in order to open it.
It took them over an hour to work it out. I was a bit disappointed, I must confess.
If you're gonna throw down a puzzle with such obscurities as word-play in a dead language, I'd leave it as the cliff-hanger ending for a session so the players can gnaw at it until next meeting. If they hadn't solved it by then, and within the next 10 minutes, I'd start tossing in suggestions for alternate paths.
I think providing the translation straight off is too much of a red herring - if I do go ahead with the puzzle, I'll just chuck the blocks at them and see what they do, giving information based on different knowledge rolls.
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited October 2014
Rhesus, where are you getting your translation?
I learned about the sator square in Latin class, but I've always learned Arepo as being a proper noun, not a verb
So it translates to "The farmer Arepo holds the works wheels"
Works wheels being, in this instance, an ass backwards way to say plow
Straightzi on
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
And, that said, I think the translation I'm familiar with makes a better puzzle.
Look at it this way- you give the blocks to your players, they're trying to puzzle it out. Maybe they get it right away, but if not, one of them will probably try to have their character translate it. If they do well on their intelligence test, then hey, they can translate four of the words. But the fifth one doesn't mean anything.
It allows the translation to actually help, as opposed to hinder, the progress.
If "arepo" is taken to be in the second declension, the "-o" ending could put the word in the ablative case, giving it a meaning of "by means of [arepus]." Thus, "The sower holds the works and wheels by means of water." Using this definition of "arepo" and the boustrophedon reading order produces the text "The sower works for mastery by turning the wheel."
I agree that having a nonsense word in there makes knowing the Latin more useful and less of a red herring, considering how many other responses were that they would look for a wheel to turn.
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this is apparently in response to The Escapist's mealy-mouthed gamergate apologia, and given the circumstances, I certainly can't blame them for leaving the site
there's just one more thing I need to know
who
is
K-pop
:P
Satans..... hints.....
I haven't been following their front page much lately.
Satans..... hints.....
Which is hardly surprising, given they also appear on GamerGate boycott lists.
What would you guys try? I'm thinking that it's the type of thing that would either take someone a couple of seconds or several hours if they haven't seen this before, and don't want to risk boring my group.
Satans..... hints.....
"Magic missile"
Here, I wrote it down for you.
"Explosive run":pop:
Which probably means I'm not going to get it in a few seconds, unless there looks like something you can turn like a spinning wheel
My immediate action would be look for a wheel.
My second action is look on the stones for the message.
My third is see if I can piece the stones into a wheel.
The what my party would say is, can we stick a dead goblin in it?
Satans..... hints.....
If it worked once, it might work every time.
Yeah I would either look for a spinning wheel shape and try to interact with that and/or try to physically turn the stone that said wheel
wait shit is it a clue that the latin is a palindrome? and will they see the latin/translation written down on something? Because both the palindrome and the fact that you mean sower (as in planter) and not sewer (as in person who sews) will probably not come across when spoken if those matter as clues
are the blocks laid out like the rows of a sator square? (also after the session I would google the latin and learn about sator squares (then try and put the blocks together as a sator square))
There is no spinning wheel.
Hint which might not be very useful:
...actually what I'd do is assume no one is dumb enough to leave a passcode on the outside of their castle and think its a trap.
Is this based on the Sator-Arepo word square?
Arrange them into an arch with the middle word as the keystone? The latins sure loved their arches
It's what's known as a Regio in Ars Magica - they're at the right place, but they need to find a door to get them onto what is basically a higher plane of existence. Every Regio has a way to get through, some are simple, and some are complicated.
@Thomamelas: yep.
Ars Magica so lets assume the Christian Occult use of it to form the Greek Cross spelling out Pater Noster. Are any of your players Latin scholars or students of occult history?
They're mainly from the sciences, but with plenty of trivia thrown in. I hadn't considered the Pater Noster use (and the blocks are in five letter chunks so they'd have to break them up), but I might give them some bonuses to their rolls if they think of that, as they're going up against an Ifrit which straddles the line between demon and fairy.
My golden rule of puzzles is that if they block progress, they are pretty easy and can be solved by multiple approaches. A magical portal might be battered through, zapped open, or puzzled out. Each with different negative consequences (e.g. the zap might create backlash, sitting around puzzling will give the gnolls time to attack).
For puzzles that are supposed to be thought about while play continues, I like to mix multiple comparatively simple puzzles so that different players can contribute. So there might be a riddle hidden inside a cryptogram that gives hints to the eldritch simultaneous equation that needs to be solved.
That puzzle is something you either know or you don't. If you know it is annoyingly simple. If you don't it's a while to notice the symmetry depending on the smarts of your group. Either way the translation is a red herring.
If I was going to do a Sator Square puzzle then first I'd put it in a different font, like one of the runic ones from here: http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=705
That would make it be about noticing the patterns in the runes rather than latin. I would drop the translation.
I would also have a receptacle where the assembled puzzle must be placed that is somehow protected - perhaps by a locked cover that a thief or Strong Person With Hammer can work at.
I would also have each incorrect attempt punished with an electric shock, or something more thematically appropriate to the castle. That would mean that PCs can argue over who wants to be guinea pig, who is the toughest etc.
I would also add time pressure and stress from monsters/enemies prowling nearby, and perhaps attacking.
I would also have those attacking NPCs know hints to the puzzle, or have hints to the puzzle given through the magical zap that punishes incorrect placing of the blocks, e.g. a psychic attack that involves a vision of life inside the castle or the mind of the puzzle-maker.
I'd also think why there would be such a puzzle there. In my last puzzle-a-thon D&D adventure, the dungeon was the Library of monks who were protecting magical knowledge from the forces of chaos. Long after their death, they wanted only very logical thinkers to be able to access their library.
I'd put that info on the puzzle-maker in as part of the adventure. Try to make it blend in.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
Edit: that looks like I'm saying no to poshniallo - I was saying no to the suggested answers
But then I'm a major historynerd with a speciality in the absurd and useless...so, probably a statistical outlier.
Most people are not familiar enough with ancient history or mediterranian esotericism.
P.S: If that is the solution, then I highly recommend using props. If you're not familiar with it it's nearly impossible for most to rearrange the words in their head. Using props so that the players can rearrange the words would vastly increase their chances.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
In other news, I played Betrayal at House on the Hill over the weekend. I was the traitor vampire thrall of Dracula, and ended up converting one of the heroes to Vampire Incorporated (which was actually kind of creepy since I was the 57 year old Professor Longfellow and my victim was the 9 year old Missy Dubourde). The other heroes managed to slay the Bride of Dracula with the spear early, but made a few critical errors (like not fleeing and trying to stall for time) which led to a traitor victory.
I will also be probably be playing it again this week, along with Machine of Death! I am looking forward to actually playing that game.
The puzzle may be better with a physical shape.
I was thinking a square with the word printed in the middle of it, and a I was concentrating a lot with the translation meaning rather than my Latin.
So I'd give them the blocks first and have then ask if they can translate it rather than giving it to them.
Satans..... hints.....
Ugh, fuck, I don't know
Humans still, I guess? Like humans that everyone hates?
One of the big things I run into with this setting is that huge parts of the world are well spelled out, and others aren't at all because I don't really listen to the music in question
So if you want to know about elves or tieflings, I've got you fuckin' covered
But I don't listen to metal at all, so when I was trying to come up with how all the orcs and giants worked, it became this big game of looking stuff up on wikipedia and trying to understand music in a way that involved not actually listening to music
When you approach the door it talks to you, but refuses to open. If the players speak the password nothing happens, but they have to get the door to say the password itself in order to open it.
It took them over an hour to work it out. I was a bit disappointed, I must confess.
I learned about the sator square in Latin class, but I've always learned Arepo as being a proper noun, not a verb
So it translates to "The farmer Arepo holds the works wheels"
Works wheels being, in this instance, an ass backwards way to say plow
Look at it this way- you give the blocks to your players, they're trying to puzzle it out. Maybe they get it right away, but if not, one of them will probably try to have their character translate it. If they do well on their intelligence test, then hey, they can translate four of the words. But the fifth one doesn't mean anything.
It allows the translation to actually help, as opposed to hinder, the progress.
I agree that having a nonsense word in there makes knowing the Latin more useful and less of a red herring, considering how many other responses were that they would look for a wheel to turn.
Unless I just add a wheel.