[d&d4e] Puzzles in RPGs
AzaLiN:
I also find that puzzles interrupt flow and pacing less if there are more of them, and if they're optional or if the tackling-of them is player initiated, and if they're 'naturally occurring' and/or story/character/setting/scenario integral. When they're less-so than that, it helps if they're funny and if there's a joke involved, often some irony of conflicting character and player knowledge, or a blatantly absurd obstacle for the players that is sometimes circumvented by players defying it or refusing to solve it- like a riddler who gets tortured or threatened for the information instead of answered.
Only the best-designed and integrated puzzles, I find, can be taken really seriously. If i made the poison puzzle too serious, it would suck; however, if one of them dies and we all laugh at it (while being horrified), it'll work out excellently. What I want to be able to do is make the really good puzzles though...
otspiii:
The SomethingAwful.com forums has a 60 page thread titled "What's your worst experience with role-playing?", and poorly thought-out puzzles have a pretty significant representation in it. The big complaint voiced there is something you've already largely avoided, though, that puzzles can too easily turn into a game of "guess what the DM is thinking".
Intentionally avoiding a planned solution does a pretty good job of circumventing this, although there is still an issue. If you're open to the players overcoming the puzzle in whatever manner they want, how do you decide which plans they come up with are valid and which are faulty? If you're too harsh the puzzles starts slipping back into "guess what the DM is thinking" territory, while if you're too lenient the players can just say any solution they can think of and it becomes less a challenge and more a story-telling moment (this can actually be pretty cool, although it depends on the type of game you're running).
I think that the fact that the pit and navigation puzzles focus more on in-game exploration is one reason they sound appealing, but I think that their open-endedness is another huge draw for them. They seem like the puzzles with the most loosely set 'win' conditions, allowing for a lot more flexibility of thought to be put into solving them. The gargoyle one sounds interesting to me for this reason, too, although it's a bit more controlled. The cup one and the translation ones both have pretty rigid answers they have to find, and seem like they both run the risk of being really frustrating and game-flow-destroying if the players approach them the wrong way. Those are the two that seem to me to toe the 'guess what I'm thinking' line, although it sounds like you're pretty good at offering proper information/clues to keep things from stagnating too badly.
Callan S.:
Strictly speaking, it's always guess what the GM is thinking - it can't slip back into it. <soapbox>Gamers tend to blame it on the other guy, rather than attribute it to themselves giving up imagining it as fictional events</soapbox>
AzaLiN, you've already talked about some things that integrate them more. Another might be a real life time limit - after which, as one suggestion, all the players roll their character int and the best roll gets told the solution (or just tell them all the result after the time limit ends). If they figure it out before the time limit, kudos and XP or whatever. Indeed, just kudos is enough, but who doesn't love currency as well!? One issue, perhaps a murky one, is how often we tend to play out a scene as determined by how long the fictional events take to play out in real life. It's a very 'were here for the fictions benefit, the fiction isn't here for our benefit' way of doing things. A real life time limit on completing the puzzle may seem odd (or perhaps it wont?), but it makes play about the puzzle, rather than play being about the fiction and how long it decides to play out.
otspiii:
Quote from: Callan S. on August 04, 2009, 11:33:51 PM
Strictly speaking, it's always guess what the GM is thinking - it can't slip back into it.
Yeah, this is a good point. I guess maybe my focus should be more on how to make the way the party finds the solution less. . .blind? The frustration came from when several options are presented/thought of that all, on the surface, looked equally valid, but only one would work. The walls of the room sprout spikes and move in to crush everyone, so some players try to force open the door to get out and others try to use some of the junk laying around the room to jam the walls. The correct answer was to cast stone to mud on the ground and hide under the level of the walls, but nobody guesses it so they all die.
I guess there are to main ways I can think of to make this more manageable. If you give the players clues/more information they can make a more informed decision, and if you leave the solution open-ended it allows the players to come up with creative answers. In the above example this might be a distorted spot on the stone floor, where someone had used this solution earlier, as a clue, or just letting the players roll/autosucceed at opening the door/jamming the walls as open-endedness. I feel like clues are somehow less satisfying, just because it forces the players to conform to a specific solution they didn't come up with. On some level you have to read the DM's mind even if there is no pre-decided One True Way to solve the puzzle, but I feel like there is a big difference between 'guess the specific thing I'm thinking' and 'guess what I'd allow'.
Daniel B:
Good to see others aware of the "Grumpy Gamers" work X-)
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