[D&D 4.0] Puzzles and their use in game

[RTHRCNFSD]

I'm a first-time DM running a mostly-homebrew campaign for my friends. As I was reading through the Dungeon Master's Guide, I was intrigued by the use of puzzles or riddles as a plot device, especially logic puzzles. I'm not very good at coming up with puzzles, though, and I am wondering if there are strategies that you can suggest or good puzzles that you can tell me about.
My ultimate goal in this is to trap my players in a puzzle dungeon, sort of like Myst, where they have to solve a series of different puzzles to escape, and when they screw up too many times, monsters appear and the puzzle changes.

[Beta Ray Bill Cosby]

Hey, I wrote an article about puzzles in RPGs once!

[Gaumer]

And a wonderful article it is.

The main things I took away from it were 2 big problems with puzzles: either your characters can't come up with a solution because they don't have the in-game knowledge to figure it out and still be playing the role; or the players can't figure out a tough puzzle because they are simply missing the solution.

It all goes back to that old chestnut: player knowledge vs. character knowledge and keeping those two things separate; very hard to do when dealing with a puzzle.

Its contexts go much deeper than simple puzzles, and I personally deal with this issues in my current game, where one either has to dumb down their character which could bring a game to a screeching halt in a quick hurry, or cross that role-playing line where the player is playing the game and not playing a character.

I always MUST err on the side of playing my character. Doing this can often lead to my character not doing something I see as an option because its out of my character's...well, character.

There's always OOC discussion, but that's nowhere near as fun in the context of figuring out a puzzle IMHO.

And there's always the DM. During a puzzle he needs to have a firm grasp of where his players are with their characters as far as the actual puzzle goes, and adapt to move the solution into the realm of solving, while still having the players realize that their characters were able to solve the puzzle.


So, I agree with the article about puzzles being solved OOC first, but I would think that to be true with many aspects of role-playing. The main goal is to simply do what the character you are playing would do. If players are playing like that and the DM knows the characters as well, as I believe he should, it can make puzzles fun.

[SpiderLover]

I love puzzles, I mean love puzzles in my games. While Rodrigo's article makes some very good points, I still use them to a degree. I generally design a puzzle toward the intelligence level of the characters, or what they are good at. For instance say you have a knight that loves to paint in his spare time. I would do something that has to do with the color spectrum.

The second check for me is it easy enough for my players to get? If the answer is no, I make a new puzzle.

[@lantis]

I think puzzles can be used, but as Rodrigo's article points out, they can't be used in the traditional sense of riddles or logic puzzles.  Those require too much player knowledge to get correct.  I instead like to go for puzzles that are fairly simple. 

For instance a puzzle the characters can solve through trial and error, like a figuring out the safe path.  I set up the ground with each square having one of three symbols on it.  Every tile with 1 will deal fire damage if stepped on, every tile with 2 was safe, and every tile with 3 dealt cold damage if stepped on.  After stepping on a 1 or a 3 they learn to avoid those tiles and only use the 2 tiles to advance.  You increase the difficulty of the puzzle by how you arrange the tiles with 2 and by possibly making the puzzle terrain for a battle.

You can also disguise a skill challenge as a puzzle, so that characters use their skills to figure out the clues they need to solve a puzzle.

[That Ninja]

Shortly after I read the article my dm at the time ran a dungeon that was almost exclusely puzzles and traps.  I know he had read Rodrigio's article but whatever.  Ever puzzle possible I solved in character.  One was something akin to the bottle puzzle in the 1st harry potter book, and as soon as I heard the line, the small one will bring you no harm, my character immediately grabbed it and drank it, and happened to be right.......... I was wisdom 8 leave me alone.

[Chaddric]

One thing also is use possibly use an actual physical puzzle to represent what was happening in the game.  In the most resent dungeon crawl I used an old tile sliding puzzle I had and taped onto it the symbol of the temple they were in.  When they reached the puzzle, I presented them the puzzle.  This worked way better than I thought it would, to the point were they forgot about posting someone to keep watch for the surprise attack I had planned! (to be fair, the room had that obvious "encounter area" look to it, so they should have seen it coming)

[litanyofthieves]

This is probably the best "puzzle" I've ever seen, with or without the dwarven forge stuff.