How To Use Logic Puzzles in Your RPG Adventures
"To pass, you must answer one ridd...is that...is that a box of MEOW MIX?!"
Logic puzzles are a fun way to create non-combat encounters for your players to deal with in an RPG. They can be adapted and twisted into various forms perfectly suited for your campaign world and ongoing stories, but there are some practical issues with using them in the context of a gaming session. Luckily, the official Robot Viking playtest group worked their way through one of these with me the last few weeks, and we learned a thing or two.
You’re probably familiar with logic puzzles from grade school, or, as khovaros can attest, law school (I don’t ever want to hear anyone complaining about rules lawyers – I game with an actual lawyer (I’ve been running that joke into the ground ever since he passed the bar!)). They usually look like this: “John, Dave, Fred and Stanislaw (there’s always one weird Eastern European name) live on the same street. Dave’s house is blue. Fred lives to the left of John. The person in the red house does not live next to Dave.” And so on, until it asks you some question you can deduce from the clues.
The D&D Fourth Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide actually suggests using logic puzzles in encounters, with a few ideas on how to make it work. I would add that you should award party XP based on a fairly complex skill challenge of the party’s level.
Ok, your first step is to find a logic puzzle. They are all over the Internet, and there’s no doubt books full of them too (Oh, look! there’s a link to one in that Amazon.com advertisement over there!). They vary in difficulty, generally based on the number of variables left open. I would suggest that you can choose one that is fairly difficult, because your players will be tackling it as a team, and gamers are generally pretty intelligent people, so don’t soft pedal them. On the other hand, you don’t want two hours of a gaming session spent sweating over a puzzle. Use your discretion. A puzzle with three variables worked well for us.
The next step is to alter the puzzle so it fits your game world. Your post-apocalyptic road warriors are probably going to find it a little odd when someone suddenly asks them what flavors of tea Nigel, Mikhail and Gordon prefer. It’s usually pretty simple to just swap out the names and variables for something more apropos. I took a puzzle about DJs at some kind of dance competition and turned it into a puzzle about a mage’s tournament. Just keep track of what you’re doing so the name changes are reflected correctly in all the clues.
The most fun part is inserting the puzzle into your adventure. I created a basic gate (an impassable magic door) with two talking statues who would not allow the party to pass until they’d answered the riddle correctly. Hackneyed, yes, but it works. The statues explained the puzzle, but the clues were scattered through the dungeon. The party basically had to clear the upper level to get all of them. As it happened, they found most of them prior to encountering the gate, which meant the clues themselves seemed very cryptic at first. I recommend this, in fact, as it really kept the party guessing when they found the initial clues.
You could come up with something far more elaborate, however. Given enough time, a logic puzzle could be integrated into an adventure so smoothly the player’s wouldn’t even realize it was there. Here’s one example:
The characters need to discover the words to a rare and powerful magic spell and speak them in the correct order to open a magic gate and revive a dying elven city. They track down an old wizard who once knew the spell, but his memory is failing. “The second word of the spell was the ancient Draconic word for ‘infinity.’” The PCs know that the spell consists of five ancient Draconic words (a dead language), but they don’t know their meanings. A skill challenge in a library reveals which of the ancient Draconic words does not mean infinity. Later, they fight their way into a dungeon whose treasure contains a scroll with part of the spell. The damaged scroll reveals the order of two of the words. Continue parsing out the clues like this until the party deciphers the spell.
There are a few practical considerations that will make logic puzzle adventures work much better. The most important is, get a white board. Your players will be working together to solve the puzzle, but someone will have to take notes and write out the grid or matrix or whatever method they use to find the solution. Inevitably, someone will be left looking at the page upside down or will be on the far side of the table, unable to see. A white board lets everyone see the clues together and contribute to the solution equally. A medium sized white board is not terribly expensive, and it has many uses around a gaming table, not just logic puzzles (keeping track of party buffs mid-encounter, for one thing).
Another thing to consider is the penalty for guessing wrong. If there is no negative reinforcement for making an incorrect answer (or if the penalty is negligible), it makes the puzzle a lot easier. Often, the puzzle can be narrowed down to two or three possible solutions even without seeing all the clues. Multiple guesses allows the players to find the correct solution through trial and error (which is exactly what happened with my players, something I totally didn’t see coming). This is not necessarily a bad thing, and you can fall back on it if the party is getting frustrated with the puzzle. On the other hand, it might not fit the adventure. If they’re trying to determine the identity of a murderer so they can present their evidence to the magistrate, a wrong guess puts an innocent man on the gallows while the culprit goes free. So keep this in mind ahead of time, and find a way to convey to the players the consequences of a bad guess before someone actually loses a hand.
If you want to use a logic puzzle but don’t want to bog down a gaming session with it, you can allow your players to solve it online, between sessions. The characters have to fight to get all the clues, but the players can puzzle it out between themselves. Just make sure there’s a way for everyone to be involved. There are websites that offer collaborative work spaces, or you could use a chat room or forum. For that matter, a simple “CC: all” email discussion works fine too.
Related posts:
- 5 of the Best House Rules for Your RPG
- Turn Up the Heat with a Cold Open in Your RPG Adventures
- Duels of the Planeswalkers Expansions Brings New Decks, Puzzles and Unlockable Cards
- TinyPlots – A Way to Manage the Many Plot Threads in an RPG Campaign
- Rise of the SuperMinion: Dealing with Absent Players in 4E
May 20th, 2009 9:38 AM
Personally I’ve always liked logic puzzles but I rarely put them into my games since, for the most part, they don’t make sense.
What is a door’s purpose in a dungeon? To restrict access. Assuming there is no way to circumvent the door the most restrictive type of door is one locked with a key. After that is the password (which can be a type of logic puzzle, but assuming the people who came up with the password know anything about security, it won’t). The big benefit of a password over a key is that if you, as an authorized user, want someone else to be able to pass the door all you need to do is tell them the word.
Finally, there’s the logic puzzle. Anyone smart or wise enough to correctly come up with the answer can pass: doesn’t really make a lot of sense, for two reasons. One: most dungeon dwelling minions are very, very dumb. Even if you tell the Ork marauders the solution to the logic puzzle ahead of time there is a solid chance they’ll forget it anyway, and be stuck outside until the necromancer comes down to let them in (for a similar reason I generally hate traps). Second: any clever unauthorized person can make it in.
That sort of illogical but gamer-friendly behavior always hurts verisimilitude. Now, I can personally imagine a few scenarios where logic puzzles make perfect sense (a dungeon that is specifically designed as a test for instance, or the above mentioned necromancer, who installs a statue that comes up with new logic puzzles every time he wants to get into his study: an enjoyable diversion for him, but an impassable obstacle for his idiotic underlings) and in those cases I’ll rush to plant as many as I can.
May 20th, 2009 9:46 AM
My advice is: Make sure you know what happens if they get something WRONG. Riddles & puzzles work best, in my opinion, if they pay out rewards or shortcuts.
I used riddles notably in a couple of sessions:
http://mordicai.livejournal.com/1591384.html
http://mordicai.livejournal.com/1596284.html
& knew how I’d “pay” the players for the right reward– the first was pretty cheesy: two goblins were mounted on huge rats. They are the chief’s top lieutenants. rather than fight for the number two slot the chief drew a line in the sand, sent them out & said who ever’s rat crosses this line last wins. They players were talking with the two goblin exiles, which left me a chance to drop hints, & respond to their musing.
Next I did a variation on the chicken/fox/grain riddle; how will the farmer get them across if the boat can only hold him & two others? I figured everyone knew the basic “trick” & they could use the minis to help think it out.
Third was a fatal lottery. Pick the black marble, death, pick white, life. unfortunately, the executioner had it in for the NPC & had switched the marbles to both be black. Solution: swallow the marble he picks! So if there is a black left, by process of elimination me must have swallowed white. In THIS trial, I was sure to know what would happen if it wasn’t figured out.
May 20th, 2009 10:14 AM
“Speak: ‘Friend’ and Enter.” Tolkien’s logic puzzle. It made sense in the story, showing how far the world had fallen from better times and it stymied Gandalf for a good while. However, most (at least many) gamers are going to know that one. Ed’s right, you have to make them tough enough to challenge the party.
As to putting in a believable reason for the logic puzzle, taht all depends on the delivery of the mechanism. The Davinci Code put forth a believable reason why the builders of a door, for instance, would want their code to be breakable. In case they were all killed and they didn’t pass on the password to any one else.
In our case, the builders were all dead and we’re not sure yet if they were trying to seal in treasures or seal in the succubus (we are now caught in a kill or be killed fight with their nemesis-almost the entire party has been bloodied at least once and the succubus just summoned a demon). In any event, they presumably had a desire to let some future generations of Bahamut worshippers avenge them and reclaim their relics.
That’s the way I would tend to pursue a logic puzzle – at least for a door, leave it out in a way that indicates it was a last ditch password reconstruction concept, designed to be solvable, hopefully people who had similar goals or motivations as the creators. If it was bad guys, you could take bits fo the code from couriers or find them on their dead bodies etc. I thinks its just a question of delivery and I found the puzzle to be quite fun.
May 20th, 2009 11:40 AM
One potential failure of logic puzzles is the player is not actually their character. A large part of D&D is doing things as a character that you either could not or would not do in the real world.
Your own ability to solve or not solve a logic puzzle should not project on to your character.
The group barbarian with an intelligence of 6 played by a very intelligent player would have a better chance of figuring out a logic puzzle than the party’s wizard with an intelligence of 20 but played by your neighbor’s 6 year old. You must have a group that is willing to suspend their game roles enough to complete the puzzle as a metagame.
Otherwise, what’s to prevent the intelligent barbarian player from saying, “Conan is going to pound on the doors with his fists and curse the builders’ ancestors while Greywolf the Wise figures out the puzzle,” leaving the 6 year old kid to try to muddle through a puzzle far beyond him?
I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re including puzzles, you should make them solvable by skill challenges, too. A player should be able to say, “Personally, I don’t have a clue. Ask Samel” and roll a d20.
May 20th, 2009 12:21 PM
I don’t agree Gavin; I totally see your point, & I agree with it– roleplaying trumps all, & roleplaying in games like DnD where you are sort of required by balance to be good at somethings & bad at others can be tricky. I don’t like skill test as a solution though; skill tests are skill tests, puzzles are puzzles.
MY solution, as a smart guy playing a dumb guy, was to play on my character’s high wisdom. I couldn’t THINK of the solution but I could agree with other PCs when they were on a track I liked. Maybe a high-charisma character could help the 6 year old wizard by Socratic method?
May 20th, 2009 12:31 PM
Honestly, I often throw realism and even proper role-playing out the window if it would prevent us from doing something fun.
May 20th, 2009 12:38 PM
Oh, no doubt. And that’s fine… for us. All I’m saying is that some groups that are heavier on the RP aspects of the game might resist puzzles like this.
May 23rd, 2009 1:02 AM
Back in high school I used the Tolkien logic puzzle in a Palladium fantasy adventure, thinking my players would get it immediately, but they didn’t. They had to transport a magic sword to the hidden shrine of an ancient god.
In order to find the shrine, they had to decipher a poem found in a large old tome. The poem itself was written in code and could not be deciphered, but above it was a phrase in old elvish which they could read. It said: “Speak speak and listen.” Of course, the idea was that they would command the book to speak by saying “speak,” and then the book would magically read the poem aloud in a language they could understand.
At least three of the people sitting at the table (out of 5 or 6) were familiar with the Lord of the Rings, but they were just as stumped as Gandalf at that door. Eventually I had to hint quite strongly and they figured it out. But I wasn’t sure if I had failed to give them proper clues, or if they were just having an off-day.
I guess what I mean is, it’s hard to predict what sort of context the players will default to when you present your puzzle, and sometimes the context determines everything. If I were running the adventure today, I might prepare them for the puzzle with some word games with NPC’s, or other logic problems–warm them up, as it were. When a puzzle comes out of the blue, it’s often quite difficult to solve.