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Puzzles in PBP?

   
Puzzles in PBP?

Hi all,

So in my PBP games before I've included non-combat XP-gaining stuff like decoding messages, physical challenges, riddles, etc. but have never really tried puzzles as I could never figure out a good way to present them in the PBP format.

For example I want to make a pressure-plate type puzzle a la Skyrim (and other games) where people have to step on or otherwise compress certain plates in a pattern in order to open a door or something.

Problem is I can't think of any better way to present it in PBP format other than laboriously laying it out using a pattern of keystrokes like | and _ and \ and #'s and *'s to indicate plates with different patterns on them.

And unlike riddles, decoding messages, physical challenges etc. this kind of thing seems a bit too complex to just describe in text without a visual representation.

Any suggestions?

Ask yourself the following question: "If the PCs fail at this puzzle, is the result interesting?"
If the answer is no, then scrap the entire puzzle. Never plan for a puzzle that has the potential to just stop the arc from moving forward (even if the "arc" is just a small part of a larger story).

If the answer is yes, then ask yourself the next question: "If the players fail at this puzzle, will they feel like it's their own fault or will they feel like they're put in front of an unwinnable situation?"
If the answer is yes- no- the latter, scrap the entire puzzle. Players like having agency, and nothing is more stymieing than a puzzle that doesn't feel fair to begin with. And if it's too easy, it runs the risk of just... Being there.

And finally, ask yourself the third question: "Is the puzzle even interesting to begin with?"
If the answer is no, scrap the entire puzzle. Every encounter should be interesting. There's no point in an encounter that is boring and has no inherent motivation behind it than just "this is a puzzle for the sake of the game having a puzzle".

Puzzles are remarkably difficult to do in games because they often don't rely on the PCs, but more on the players. While this can be done well, it requires a particular kind of player and an even better GM. Will the game be lesser for not actually having the puzzle, or presenting it as something other than a puzzle?

Plus, GMs are more often than not blind to how difficult their own puzzles can be because they're the ones who put it up there. What might be completely obvious to the GM might be impossible for the players.

To sum up my opinion on this: puzzles are often a bad idea. Think carefully if you even need it to begin with, as they often serve little to no purpose.

That said, let's try to be helpful in the actual question: Maps. Have a proper map of the area you want to do it in, with grids and clear markers for all the pressure plates. Photoshopping skills come in handy. There are quite a few tools that should allow you to fairly easily build a simple tiled map to populate. It doesn't have to look grand, just as long as it's rather clear.

Heck, you could even try drawing it on graph paper and then scanning it.

Alternatively, describe each plate with something concrete. Dragons, whales, flumphs. Give the players something to latch onto and memorize the things they have to. It's a lot easier in text to describe actual shapes rather than abstract squiggles.

I've done just this as a player. Pressure plates with images on them, and a riddle that described the safe path. The group discussed it, agreed upon the answer, and someone volunteered to test it. We got it right. (We opted not to trip it on purpose just to find out what could have happened. Heh.)

In this case, I suspect half the reason for success was that it wasn't that difficult a riddle -- basically boiled down to matching the line in the riddle to the image on the plate. But then, the point wasn't to keep us out. It was just to present a challenge.

Thanks guys! This puzzle would be part of a campaign-ending dungeon crawl and certain pressure plates would have to be compressed at the same time in a particular pattern to open the door to the McGuffin. Stepping on wrong plates produces bad effects depending on the image/rune on each one (which would need Knowledge-ing or Deciphering to figure out what they mean) effects ranging from monsters being summoned, damaging elemental effects, confusion, and ability drain.

Clues would be interspersed throughout the dungeon to help the players figure out how to solve the puzzle if they get stumped/frustrated: what the runes mean/how to decipher them, clues about what the pattern is supposed to be, clues about what the damaging effects are if they get it wrong.

I just remember some games, tabletop and CRPGs, that had fun puzzles and often in PBP the only obstacles are traps and combat, and an occasional riddle. It gets old after a while, no matter how cleverly the combat scenarios are set up.

Quote:
Originally Posted by KillerK View Post
Thanks guys! This puzzle would be part of a campaign-ending dungeon crawl and certain pressure plates would have to be compressed at the same time in a particular pattern to open the door to the McGuffin. Stepping on wrong plates produces bad effects depending on the image/rune on each one (which would need Knowledge-ing or Deciphering to figure out what they mean) effects ranging from monsters being summoned, damaging elemental effects, confusion, and ability drain.
Having an effect on failing isn't interesting unless the effect itself is interesting. Otherwise it's just a punishment. The punishment too should be interesting, for example: if the puzzles are supposed to be some sort of "test of strength", applying a strength drain on a failure while still opening the door would be an interesting failure. It'd be both thematically appropriate and isn't just a case of "wrong, try again" that is so often a thing. And if they fail and there are more riddles ahead, let them pass through that particular one.

Making things interesting is almost always a matter of presentation, and that's no less true in this case. Keep to a certain theme throughout the puzzles, let the mechanics of the encounters reinforce the narrative you're building.

Quote:
Clues would be interspersed throughout the dungeon to help the players figure out how to solve the puzzle if they get stumped/frustrated: what the runes mean/how to decipher them, clues about what the pattern is supposed to be, clues about what the damaging effects are if they get it wrong.
Will the players know to search for these clues? Will they recognize the link between the clues and the puzzle if they come across the clues before the puzzle itself? Important questions to ask. You might want to consider foreshadowing the riddle somehow so the players know to find the clues as they move through the dungeon.

Quote:
I just remember some games, tabletop and CRPGs, that had fun puzzles and often in PBP the only obstacles are traps and combat, and an occasional riddle. It gets old after a while, no matter how cleverly the combat scenarios are set up.
CRPGs are terrible places to draw inspiration from in terms of puzzles. Discounting the games which have
ie the player is able to type anything into the dialogue box, getting responses based on pre-programmed phrases
a truly free dialogue system, riddles always have a few select options to choose from, all but one of which making at least partial sense. A custom made visual representation of a physical puzzle is also a super important factor is CRPGs, as are highlighted areas to look at: they give far more information than pure textual descriptions can, no matter how detailed the latter try to be.

Overall, be extremely prepared that the players will just try to brute force their way through the puzzle. And don't arbitrarily deny them ("The walls are made of adamantium! Sike!") either. You absolutely must instill a sense of motivation for the players to complete the puzzles. I know I probably sound extremely harsh on the idea of puzzles in tabletop games, but they are incredibly hard to do well.


General musing on the tropes of riddles: Riddles are an interesting feature in literature. As these sorts of roleplaying games are fairly new, they rely a lot on previously established tropes. Riddles happen to be a fairly iconic part of certain kinds of fantasy, namely because the Hobbit did it, as well as the sources from mythology. But in those works, the narrative is already determined: the answer to the riddle is known by the one in control of the characters. Thus, riddles are rarely in a story to make the audience wonder what the answer is: they're there to show the wit of the participants (I believe the Sherlock Holmes stories were rather revolutionary in that they made the audience wonder about the mystery along with Holmes, who just wasn't telling the audience everything - but don't quote me on that). And more often than not we know that the protagonist will succeed in solving the riddle. Riddles are more about the journey to solve it and what it tells about the people involved in it than it is about the answer. However, in roleplaying games riddles are there to test the wit of the player, completely reversing the point of the riddle: instead of the focus being on the process to find the answer, it becomes about the answer itself. The entire trope is turned on its head in the attempt to emulate it from literature and there's very little to be done to fix that. And that's why it's so dangerous to use.

The same does apply to general puzzles too, but in some different ways.

I've used puzzles a couple times. I enjoy them as a player, and so I like to make them an option for my players when I'm DMing. I know, though, that puzzles are a case of "guess what the GM is thinking." Will they interpret the parts of the puzzle the way I want them to? Hard to say, so I always include some options to skip the puzzle.

I did one with a pedestal that had alchemical symbols on it. There were prepared concoctions elsewhere in the dungeon with the same symbols noted as ingredients, and then they came on this pedestal and a shelf full of identically sized vessels. To show the players what they were seeing I used Google Sketchup to make this:


The puzzle opened a door that the sorcerer they were pursuing had fled through, but there was another way into the same area that was more dangerous. In the end they weren't able to solve that puzzle and took the more dangerous route.

I did another puzzle in the castle of a faerie king where there were four bureaucratic offices a la a Terry Gilliam movie and the weird occupants of the little offices would issue keys in exchange for a key and a form from another office. The keys would open one of several doors in the walls, which would lead to another office, but the key you received was based on the key you entered with, so it's a labyrinth using only four rooms. I stole the structure from a Mensa puzzle online.

Anyway, to help them visualize it I drew the rooms and the doors, and then as they discovered which keys opened which doors I would add the key symbol to the map. When they figured out that the keys they received were based on the keys they walked in with, I'd start adding those symbols, too. One player was particularly into it and she kept racing through the rooms getting keys until she'd mapped the whole thing out and identified the one door that no one was giving keys to, then worked the problem backward to figure out how to get the key no one had issued yet.


The workaround: if they had gotten frustrated enough to attack or intimidate the office attendants it would have initiated an encounter where one wall is knocked down by a big war machine with spinning blades and puffs of fire. They could fight the machine, defeat it, and then leave through the wall it knocked down.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ten of Swords View Post
I've used puzzles a couple times. I enjoy them as a player, and so I like to make them an option for my players when I'm DMing. I know, though, that puzzles are a case of "guess what the GM is thinking." Will they interpret the parts of the puzzle the way I want them to? Hard to say, so I always include some options to skip the puzzle.
Actually, I think it boils down more to "Guess how the players will try to solve this". No matter what the GM comes up with, no matter how blatantly obvious the GM makes things, players are NOTORIOUS for coming up with the most convoluted, sick, twisted, my-god-I-never-thought-they-would-go-that-route plans to overcome things. Which is where even the simplest of puzzles or riddles in a game tend to stop the momentum of the game itself as this group of individuals starts missing the entire point and thinking too hard.

Players have a tendency to over-think things. Far too often, and far too readily. So I think you have to be careful when designing puzzles that you do exactly as your last sentence indicates: give options where skipping the puzzle is valid, so long as there is a consequence for doing so. Nothing so mean such as "Well, you didn't solve the marbles, so you can't progress beyond X point". But more like "You didn't solve the marbles, so you can continue to the story completion. It's just going to be a bit harder to cross that ravine as the drawbridge isn't lowered". Or something along those lines.

Short and simple: I, personally, am not a fan of puzzles in games. As, if I want to do a puzzle, I pick one up specifically to do so from a store and focus on that. Which, I've never done in my life. *shrug* Riddles and puzzles can cause issues, with disgruntlement and frustration within a group if a party disagrees on how to solve, or fails to solve. As often with Riddles, there's multiple answers which could fit, and with puzzles, these can be designed to have so many variables it's just a time sink of frustration to attempt to solve.

That said, some people are very into both, and they are excited to test their wits against these things. So I've been looking for ways to incorporate simple puzzles and code words throughout my games in the future. Hidden pressure plates that serve as locks are easy. A simple test vs Perception=Success, where if you have false plates to be found makes it a trial and error option. Things of this nature are a simplistic way to find hidden things, and make guesses which don't harm the party, the only failure you have is one more turn to try another plate instead. However simple, and boring, nothing exciting. More of a delay strange invaders defense system passively, before stronger defensive options are utilized.

I will be doing a maze soon, and this will get complicated. I don't believe my software will let me shift parts of it around as I wish to, but a simple teleportation plate system with a pattern could be a way to incorporate a puzzle. Where the straight forward, walking across the ground until you complete the maze is shut down via instant relocation at certain points through the maze. It then becomes an adventure to find a pattern within these plates and destinations in how to navigate. Something I've been mulling over, and have no clue how to setup currently.

Combining the two is what I will likely do. Some hidden plates will be duds, do nothing. One will open the door, and one or two will if stepped on, relocate everything within the room to another preset location. With some of these actually being the "correct" choice to progress further, the only way to complete the maze by finding these specific things in the correct sequence amidst a series of passages and doors.

Just as a point of fact, I saw the title headline for this post on my phone and from a distance it looked like the z's were s's and the l was an i. I was going to commiserate and agree that yes, it is a problem with pbp but then I put my glasses on and clued in.

Carry on.....




 

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