Hi everyone,
Humor me-- I know updates have been infrequent, as real life is... crazy. However, a thought just randomly occurred to me. I know there are many players who enjoy puzzles in modules-- and I know many of these same players become frustrated with puzzles that are too easy/too complicated/too frequently used. So, very simply, what makes a good module puzzle?
Humor me-- I know updates have been infrequent, as real life is... crazy. However, a thought just randomly occurred to me. I know there are many players who enjoy puzzles in modules-- and I know many of these same players become frustrated with puzzles that are too easy/too complicated/too frequently used. So, very simply, what makes a good module puzzle?
I like puzzle mods, but then again, I find fighty mods get boring after the 10th one you've been on that weekend. My issue with Puzzle mods is that often they aren't well run logistically. A lot of people don't like puzzle mods, so the likelihood is that a mod will end up being a combo, puzzle for a couple of peoples and some fighting for the rest. Just keep the two somewhat separate. Yes, if the fighters fall, the puzzlers will be next, but don't make the fighters fight while standing on top of the puzzlers, it's just a good way for the puzzle to never be solved.
ReplyDeleteAlso, playtest your puzzle, especially if it is new and you've never tried it in a mod situation before. Hand it to an NPC or friend before you get to game and see if they can solve it, physical puzzles, logic puzzles, whatever. Take that time, add 5 minutes because they will probably have to fight their way to the puzzle and adrenalin and a racing heart doesn't help your logical focus, at least not for me, and you have at least a reasonable guess as to how hard the puzzle is. Do this a couple of times for each puzzle. Also, it's useful for riddles, just in case there are multiple logical answers.
~Patrick
So my biggest advice for puzzles on mods would be to have a plan if the PCs can't solve it. "They don't succeed" is a perfectly good plan, but if you really do want them to succeed, have some sort of backup plan in your head.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter how easy the puzzle is or how much you test it beforehand, there are about a million factors that can influence how quickly PCs can solve a puzzle. I remember one time we had a puzzle that a friend solved in monster camp in under 2 minutes. Then I solved it in about 5. We added our times together, multiplied by 3 or 4, and figured it'd take the PCs a half hour. It took them three hours on the mod.
Exhaustion also plays a big factor. Same puzzle as before, the first time my friend solved it in under 2 minutes. She tried it again, same event, at 4 in the morning after coming back from a long fighty mod. 25 minutes later she gave up. She tried it again in the morning. 2 minutes.
So yeah. There are obviously puzzles that are easier and puzzles that are harder, and playtesting them is a good plan, but really, you just want to have a backup plan for if they really, really can't solve it and don't want to spend the next 3 hours fighting NPCs.
Cannot agree with this more. If the barrier to progression is a Big Thuggy Monster, it rapidly becomes clear how things are going to go, and in the case of failure, it kind of solves itself. Puzzles can just go on and on and on and on...
Delete...and if it's part of a repeater, there goes your whole schedule!
So true. Puzzles can sometimes go on and on for what seems like forever. Especially if it is late and everybody is tired. I generally do not like puzzles on mods unless the PCs are specifically warned that there will be puzzles and they really should bring somebody who is good at puzzles.
DeleteI am of a mixed opinion on puzzles. They can give the intellectual, non-front line PCs something to do on a fighting mod, and can provide interesting mechanics for the fighters. They are also pretty much required for “tests of intellect”.
ReplyDeleteThe problem that pops up is the huge variability in people’s ability to solve any particular puzzle. I have taken a puzzle I have never seen before in my life (a set of hexagons with different colored borders that you had to match up), figured out an efficient algorithm for solution, and beaten it in under a minute. I was then given a similar puzzle with a slightly different layout and got nowhere for half an hour.
Playtesting helps, but what seems simple to one person can be baffling to another. Many puzzles require the solver to “figure out a trick” that makes the actual solving of the puzzle fairly easy. There is a classic puzzle featuring eight numbered pegs on a board, and you have to arrange them so that no numbered peg is next to one labeled with a consecutive number. Once you realize that the 1 and 8 pegs only have to be kept separate from one number, while the 2 through 6 pegs have to be kept separate from two each, the puzzle solves itself in seconds. Fail to make that realization, and you can be moving pegs on a board for a while.
I have spent a minimum of four hours of my life (probably much more) sitting quietly in cold module buildings waiting for PCs to solve physical puzzles, decrypt text, or figure out what to do with a severed hand that was moving around town. I have recycled as a crunchy again and again after the PCs have scavenged all of the puzzle pieces from my body, only to find that once they got past a ward to a magic candle, they didn’t realize they were supposed to blow it out. It can be a huge waste of NPC resources and time, and it all depends on a huge unknown variable, how long it takes the PCs to figure out a puzzle (or that there even is a puzzle).
Just realized my post had nothing practical to say about puzzles. OK, if you are going to have a puzzle some helpful hints.
Delete-Make sure more than one person can work on the puzzle. If only one person can work on the puzzle, and they get stuck, everyone can get stuck. Some people can see things that others cannot, and so if two or three people look at a puzzle, it is more likely that one of them will be able to complete it.
-Beware the phrase “Bring someone who is good at puzzles”, as it makes it seem like they only need one. If that one gets stuck, everyone gets stuck. Better is “There may be a puzzle lock, so plan accordingly” or something equivalent, as this puts the onus on the group as a whole.
-Make sure the puzzle can be put together in an area that is not being fought in. Forcing the fighters to protect the puzzle solvers is fine, putting the puzzle next to a door the NPCs are recycling out of is not. The puzzle people do not need to be in the line of combat to give them stress anyway. They are well aware that to longer they take the more likely it is the fighters will get taken out, and once that happens, the puzzle solvers are toast.
-Make sure the puzzle is solvable. Have someone other than you run your puzzle and solve it. Make sure all pieces are present and accounted for.
-Make sure the puzzle is visible. If you have a cool looking, dark wooden puzzle, you might want to think twice about putting it in a nighttime field fight. If the PCs can’t see it, they can’t solve it. This does not just apply to light/dark issues. Different colors can be just as problematic. I saw one cool fight mechanic with the PCs gradually getting stronger as they progressed through a mod building turn into the PCs curb-stomping the NPCs because one color of glow sticks was too close to another color of glow stick, and no one realized it until it was too late to do anything. And if your puzzle has pieces that are white, yellow, green, and blue, and the PCs have a green or blue light stick to see by, that can make things difficult. To say nothing about players who might suffer from color blindness.
-Feel free to toss out any of these rules if you wish, as long as you make a deliberate choice to do so. Having the PCs solve a puzzle while blindfolded can be fun!
I only like puzzles if they make 'sense' for the encounter. If it's some sort of weird fey riddle or even a key jumbled up into parts which forms a relevant shape connecting to a NPCs psyche because we're in 'the dreaming' and trying to go deeper that's fine. What I dislike is puzzles being there just for the sake of puzzles. Every mage or ritualist seems to use them and every arcane lock seems to be made out of them. You'd think they'd keep the puzzle pieces on themselves if they'd want to return to their area rather than leaving the pieces on their minions.
ReplyDeleteBe well.
I tend to do one of two things with puzzles. Either the puzzle allows for a short circuiting of the encounter "You must fight fourteen waves of zombies, or if you solve this puzzle you only fight three" or the puzzle itself can be shortcircuited if it's mission path critical "You must solve this puzzle to continue. If you cannot, you must instead do XYZ"
ReplyDeleteSo puzzles are kept from being total showstoppers. Sometimes this works better than others depending on how much of the briefing comes across to PCs, but it's at least the goal.
I don't really enjoy puzzles myself, but I know there are some people who enjoy them. I don't know that I know too many people (at least in my playerbase) who like doing puzzles in really stressful circumstances; most people I run for seem to like doing them for the sake of doing them, not because they want to do them under pressure so they can feel like a Puzzle Hero. So I tend to just either run puzzle mods, for the people who like puzzles, but not where the puzzles need to be done while fighting or on a strict deadline. Or, I often send out someone with puzzles as a tavern encounter during revels, who offer money for solving the puzzles, which keeps people occupied and provides a good motivation for doing it.
ReplyDeleteI also often use word puzzles or riddles. I personally hate the many-piece wooden physical puzzles you have to put together, because it's really easy to lose pieces at an event and then you're hosed.
I agree with the many reasons outlined above that it's unhelpful to combine fighting and puzzle-solving in close proximity.
There's a category of puzzle that's not really possible to fail, but whose solution nevertheless takes time and thought. I'm thinking of stuff like translating code (to which the PCs have a key), tower of babel, sudoku, mastermind, etc. It seems to me that these kinds of puzzles still provide the feeling of intellectual accomplishment, but with a greatly reduced chance of totally derailing a mod. I'm not sure how many of the examples I listed are actually practical for a mod, but it seems like there ought to be stuff in this category would be.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as an alternative to a "puzzle mod" that still entertains puzzle-loving PCs, you can have the PCs retrieve a puzzle on the mod that they're responsible for solving in order to achieve some later goal. I've enjoyed this sort of situation as a PC - it means you can work on the puzzle during your down time, and if you get stuck you can theoretically get any/every PC in the game to take a crack at it.
Stealing from my tabletop experience:
ReplyDeleteI think a useful exercise when writing puzzles is "what if this puzzle wasn't magic?"
By "magic puzzles" I mean wards, rituals, etc.--where solving the puzzle magically helps you progress. They're the most common choice, to the point where they are a little played out. Worse, the "it's magic" excuse lets you avoid thinking about whether this puzzle is an arbitrary task or an integrated part of the setting.
My solution is to always ask "what if this puzzle had to work without magic?" Good examples of non-magical puzzles include codes, ciphers, riddles (asked by real NPCs, not just impassive riddle judge constructs), combination locks with a hint, and invisible ink stuff.
Even if the situation actually calls for a magical puzzle (because it's actually a wizard's ward, or w/e) having to think about non-magical options helps me come up with more ideas and makes me think a bit more about how the fictional context should influence the puzzle design.
I'm probably going to repeat what's been said already.
ReplyDeletePuzzles, riddles, ciphers, etc. have some pros and cons at LARPs.
Pros:
- Don't require skills to solve. Anyone can try their hand at them if they want. Especially great for new players in an established game.
- Time investment. When you solve a puzzle, it's a very rewarding feeling. This is also a great way to take up PC's time, when you're low on NPCs for combat.
- Very in period/setting. Riddle contests and deadly puzzle traps are iconic staples of lots of settings, especially fantasy.
Cons:
- Don't require skills to solve. When a puzzle is used as a ward or a lock, it's frustrating to the people who have the skills to get around wards or locks. Suddenly all that investiture is useless, and you have to be good at puzzles to achieve the goal.
- Random time investment. Introducing a puzzle into an encounter means that it will take a certain amount of time to solve. No one can really control how much time that will be (I suppose there's a physical minimum time with physical puzzles). If you have combat going on contingent to the resolution of the puzzle, things can get frustrating.
I am not terribly good at puzzles. I've run into them like a brick wall on more than a few occasions. When it finally clicks, it feels awesome. But more often than not, I'll pass and let someone else do it.