when starting on the path of tabletop RPGs,
through Dungeons and Dragons like many of us, I was taught that puzzles played
a very important part in the game. A good game or more likely a good dungeon
consisted of a healthy balance of exploration, social encounters, puzzles and combat.
The tried and true winning recipe. Though in all the games I played, I haven't
in the end encountered that many puzzles, and as a game master I haven't run that
many either. And even fewer successful ones. I like riddles, brain teasers, ciphers, mysteries,
and even used to work at an escape room. And yet I struggle to bring that into role-playing
games. Because they're really hard to get right. They can easily break immersion. You as a GM have
very little control over the pacing of a puzzle. It could take seconds or it could be long and
frustrating and cause the game to lose momentum. And momentum is a thing far too precious
to risk. Protect it. With your life. Truth is we stop maybe at the wrong end
of the issue. There's a huge difference between creating a puzzle and creating
a puzzle specifically intended for RPG. We think about crafting smart brain teasers
but ultimately narration and interactivity are the bones and blood of role-playing
games. Ideally, we want our puzzles to be filled with bones. And blood.
So let's bring it on, let's build our puzzles not as puzzle makers, but as
storytellers. And we'll start with an example. Tell me, would you like to hear a
riddle? Or would you prefer this. You open the door to a room so dark
that even dark vision won't help you. The inside is completely shrouded, but not still,
and not silent. You are not alone in the room. As you step in, you can hear disgusting
squelching sounds, along with the raspy, disembodied cooing hum of a lullaby,
the source of which is hard to discern. Any person's sound of mind would likely try
and shed some light on their predicament. As a torch is lit, you finally catch a
glimpse of your surroundings in the dim light. Instead of floors, walls and
ceilings, all here is made of messy intertwined bare flesh and sinew.
You've no time to take it all in, because as soon as the light hits the
flesh, it violently contracts and shrieks. The shrieking targets whoever caused this
light to appear with distant whispers (or whatever other damage dealing
mechanic is appropriate to your game) and mere splits seconds later, the light
is snuffed out in a single wet breath. (or wet dispell magic should it be magical light) Once the light is out, the shrieking dies down, soon replaced with the same
soft lullaby you heard before. You stand again in complete darkness, but now you've caught a glimpse of just what
kind of horror lies in there with you. How do you deal with that situation? We'll get back to that soon, and see the solution, but ideally this is more the kind
of pace and vibe I'm looking for. I want my puzzles seamlessly
woven into the narration, for them to call my players
to action, to be engaging. And now that we know where we're going,
let's see a few ways that we can get there. First, by taking out the GM and puzzle
crafter hat, and starting the process from the point of view of the players who are
going to roleplay their characters through it. Turn your puzzles into dilemmas, roleplay
opportunities or creative prompts. Basically, just write the situation that you would
like to describe your own character going through. Have your players come up with a poem, or
enact something, or if your group loves drama, then create a puzzle that eats
secrets. Force them to reveal something, and then let them deal with the consequences
of that secret now being in broad daylight. I have another idea and example, but anyone who doesn't want spoilers
for Curse of Strahd should skip to here. In Curse of Strahd, a puzzle at
the entrance of Van Richten's Tower requires the players to dance according
to specific moves in a specific order. And you absolutely should get your
players to stand up and perform it. Having your players use their bodies
also immediately gets them engaged. In short, a puzzle that requires direct action and creativity from your players
will always be more engaging. Two: think about context. Often, puzzles don't entirely make
sense when taken as part of a whole. The actual logic within a
puzzle could be flawless, but still make you wonder
"why would this be here?" Say to enter the cultists' lair,
you have to enter a riddle, and once that password is
spoken you can pass through. But if a puzzle was meant to
keep outsiders out, then why would the riddle be written by the door?
To help outsiders figure out the answer? The cultists don't need to write the riddle by
the door they just need to remember the password. Bad cultist, bad. This is an extreme example, but even so, all the clues to a puzzle are usually
scattered in the general vicinity. Which is fair, in a meta sense, you
don't want your players to get stuck. But there needs to be a coherent story
reason for these clues to be here. For example, it makes sense to
scatter clues if your puzzle was intended as some sort of trial for
the new members of a secret society. Or if the puzzle is part of a ghost's unfinished
business, then clues about their death or even manifestations from the spirit itself are
story relevant ways to help your players. Because the ghost does want
to finish their business. This also gives you opportunities to think
creatively about the format of your puzzle. Riddles and door puzzles largely
dominate the playground, but they can get redundant over time,
and I refuse to be predictable. Three: if you play in person and are a creative spirit who enjoys making props
for RPG, then play with that. When I first started GMing I wanted to
use a cipher in a letter as a puzzle. And I could have done a lot
better with the execution. Instead of just leaving it there, I
could have created a physical cipher wheel to hand to my players, so they can
decode secret messages between cultists. Players will maybe have more fun with ciphers if they find this object that they
can actually hold in their hands. You could use invisible ink
and a tiny UV flashlight, or actual locks on little chests.
Or even a timer to up the pressure. If there's still enough of a child
in us to spend hours playing pretend, then there's also a good chance that we are
children enough to enjoy playing with toys. Four: your puzzle could
easily turn into just a wall. What I mean by this is, your players
could figure out the answer quickly, or they could go in circles forever. Well, maybe not forever, but in game time a few
minutes without progress can feel like forever. And there, you're stuck, facing a wall. If that happens, do not make your players roll
for intelligence to get the answer. no no no. Maybe they'll succeed on the roll,
but it won't feel like a success. Instead, when designing the
puzzle, think of a backup plan. Think of three different ways the
party could still achieve their goal. That way, even if your players don't have the
answer to the puzzle, they still get to feel accomplished, because they will have found
a creative solution to counter the problem. Five: if you want your puzzles to be
as entertaining and fun as possible, rather than looking for puzzle
examples, look for mini game examples. Mini games in RPGs are super
fun, like well crafted skilled challenges at a festival or playing
some variant of blackjack that uses dice instead of cards when your party is
just chilling and gambling at the tavern. When you think about it, puzzles and
mini games act kind of similarly in RPGs. They are both a halt in the
pacing of the game but ideally, rather than break immersion, they
are shifting the gears of immersion. And mini games are a lot easier to
get right than puzzles on that front. Campfire games are great with this, because
they're often played with children and that means they're meant to entertain
people with a short attention span. And when it comes to make believe, our
attention span is not always all there. Now how about seeing some
of these ideas put to use? Remember that room made of
flesh that we mentioned earlier? Let's get back to it The Sleeping Room is in part
a puzzle, in part a trap. It has been placed here to guard
the path, an important item, whatever seems fit to your scenario's needs. The room is awakened and conscious
in some way. it sleeps peacefully, soothing itself with a melody, almost
behaving like some scared baby. but any source of light will deeply upset it. the key is to trust the thing in the darkness,
and to let the thing in the darkness trust you. various acts of empathy and
kindness could earn you that trust, by talking softly to it, or
humming along to its lullaby. of course, it's going to feel scary, as the
creature gets curious about this new presence. You can take it one step further,
since your players can't see anything, ask them to close their eyes so they
can really sit in that darkness. there are very few things more unsettling
than some abnormally large tongue licking your arm. Even better when
you can't see what's doing it. but as you gain the Sleeping Room's trust, it guides you through its entrails, and
by reshaping its own fleshy structure, it creates a passage or frees whatever
object or person it was holding captive. I like this puzzle as a way to play with tone, giving you lovely opportunities
to creep out your players. You can even find ways to link this to your
lore. Perhaps this cursed creature has taken form from the remains of soldiers or
sacrifices who died a horrible death. Some fragment of their self lingering, still seeking rest and empathy, and
fleeing from the fire that harmed them. Or you can give as a pet to your Big Bad Evil. it doesn't have to be a door puzzle either. Perhaps instead of guarding something, a failed
mage experiment is spreading in the academy, just overtaking its walls and ceilings. soothing the creature will convince it to
shrink itself to a much more manageable size. And then the mage can keep it as a pet. let's move on to another example of a puzzle. this one is pretty much just a minigame that's
played in summer camps in my home country. it's called draw a moon, but here
we'll rename it as the dragon potion. the way this works is someone will grab an
imaginary paint brush, and draw a moon in the air. they will then keep passing it from person to
person around the circle, so everyone can try. if you've done it right, you'll be told
"oh yeah, that's a beautiful moon". if you do it wrong though, you'll be booed.
Whatever it was that you drew, it was not a moon. thing is, it doesn't actually matter
what shape you draw in the air. what really makes the moon beautiful is whether or not you said "thank you" to the
person handing you the brush. If you said thank you when receiving the brush, even if you drew a disgusting pile of
garbage, it still counts as a beautiful moon. You can adapt this even with
changing the theme a little bit. For example, your party's current
mission requires some investigation, and there are direct witnesses who could
help you gain a crucial piece of information. the bad news is, the witnesses
in question are children. they saw something, but don't necessarily
take the whole situation seriously. Of course, this only works if what
they saw is relatively benign. If they were witnesses to a murder they're
probably traumatized at this point. As children, they're playful and stubborn
and like to mess with the adults. Before they tell you anything, you have to
prove yourself worthy of their little gang, the Dragon Warriors, by playing a game with them. In this case, the game will
be called the Dragon Potion. Instead of drawing a moon with an imaginary
paintbrush, they will have you take a sip from an imaginary portion that supposedly
makes you breathe fire like a dragon. Pretend to take a sip, blow in the air,
and if you said "thank you" to the person who gave you the potion, then everyone will
cheer and say "wow! You're like a dragon!" And now, they will tell you what they saw. Really mime this imaginary potion all the way.
First, the confusion in your players is really entertaining to watch, but it's also really fun
to have them role play dealing with children. And it's not often that we get
puzzles as social encounters. It's also very unlikely that
your players will get stuck. For one, the kids don't really care
about keeping what they saw a secret, they just want to entertain
themselves along the way. After some time, they will even guide
their new playmates in the right direction, by just really really exaggerating
the way they say "thank you". Another way to solve this is if the players can actually breathe fire or create an
illusion, the kids will adore them. And if the players really get stumped,
there's probably a quiet kid isolated from the group that they could make friends
with, and who would teach them the trick. Or you could do what snitches do. Go tell their mom that they're
interfering with an investigation. Snitch. There, I think I'm all done. I hope that you'll take some of this with you. though I'd like to end it all by simply saying
that there's no cookie cutter puzzle recipe. everything always depends on your table,
so just like everything else in the game, tailor your puzzles to your players. this is where all of this really comes together. on this note, good evening! and may the dice gods' fortune
shine favorably upon you.
