Puzzles are an important part of a GM's toolkit. They add variety to gameplay, can help
with adventure pacing, and can make for fun and memorable encounters. A good puzzle can even
help bring the party closer together via the teamwork required.
However, puzzles can also be tricky to get right - they are, ironically, a puzzle unto
themselves. A lot of GMs struggle with certain aspects of designing puzzles for their groups,
including but not limited to:
Where should a puzzle be placed?
How hard should it be?
Why is there a puzzle in the party's way at all?
What should the GM do if the players get stuck?
And most importantly, how does one even design a puzzle in a way that feels fun
and engaging for the players?
Provided here are some tips and a few example puzzles to help GMs out when thinking about
adding a puzzle to their adventures.
General Puzzle Tips
A good place to start, before diving into the actual meat of puzzles, is answering some of the
questions "around" puzzles, namely those listed above.
Where should a puzzle be placed? There are a variety of appopriate places to put a
puzzle in an adventure. A doorway to an ancient ruin sealed with a riddle, a powerful artifact
sealed inside a strange and complicated box, a codex that holds a clue to something the party is
looking for but must first be deciphered; the possibilities are endless! Just don't force a
puzzle in where one doesn't belong, or make them too commonplace to the point they become a
detractor from the group's fun.
How hard should the puzzle be? This depends on the nature of the puzzle itself, or
more specifically, what the puzzle is an obstacle to. If the point of the puzzle was to keep
others away from a specific site or object permanently, then the difficulty of the puzzle should
match that; alternatively, if the point of the puzzle was to keep someone's diary hidden away,
then it probably doesn't need to be too difficult.
Why is there a puzzle in the party's way at all? For in-universe reasons as to why an
ancient ruin or a thieves' guild might have strange mechanisms and doors with riddles on them,
that is up to you, the GM. Out-of-universe, as stated previously, puzzles make for great
gameplay variety and can be a fun way to have your party work together to overcome an obstacle.
What should the GM do if the players get stuck? In the event that the players are
unable to solve the puzzle presented to them, the GM is free to give hints - or even answers -
at their discretion. One way to do this might be by asking for Action Skill checks as a way for
the characters to find additional hints - maybe there's a piece of paper with a hint on it from
a previous person who attempted the puzzle in the corner or perhaps there's an object that the
party failed to find earlier that makes the puzzle easier. Alternatively, you could call for
INT checks from each of the party members and say that after a certain amount of time, they
manage to piece the solution together and find their way through.
How does one design a fun and engaging puzzle? The answer to this question depends
entirely on what you and your party find engaging and enjoyable. Although there is no universal
solution to this, here are some tips that will hopefully come in handy:
Tie the puzzle into the story of the adventure (if there is one); this will certainly
help with engagement and help make the puzzle feel like it has a legitimate purpose;
Make the puzzle a brain teaser but not impossible; this is a fine and tricky line to
walk, but with some practice and some feedback from your party (as well as a bit of help
from external resources), you should be able to make puzzles that are challenging but
not impossible;
Don't abuse them; much like traps or combat, puzzles can be a great way to engage your
players, but using them too frequently (also like traps and combat) can make them boring
and/or predictable. One puzzle every other session or so is entertaining, whereas multiple puzzles
in a single session can quickly become dull.
Don't make them just a series of checks; though skill checks can be a part of the
puzzle if they are necessary and can be useful if the players get stuck, simply asking them
to make a series of checks without any thought or process on their part defeats the point
of the puzzle and fails to make it engaging.
Example Puzzles
Given here are a few example puzzles to give you an idea of what types of puzzles might be good
in an adventure. If you want, you can use these
puzzles exactly as they are, or just use them as inspiration when designing your own.
The Puzzle. The party is making their way through a dungeon, and they enter a
rather plain-looking room with 4 walls and 4 doors (including the one they just came
through); beyond the threshold of these doors is an inky blackness that even arcane
darkvision does not penetrate. Unsure of what to do, the party picks a door at
random - only to arrive in another plain-looking room with 4 walls and 4 doors
(including the one they just came through). The party repeats this process,
occasionally arriving at rooms that look slightly different from the others, but at
seemingly random points returning to that first plain room with 4 walls and 4 doors.
The Solution. The party must pick the correct sequence of doors to go through
to exit this seemingly infinite miasma of rooms, and picking the wrong one at any
point in the sequence returns them to the starting room. Subtle and slight variations
in the rooms should clue the party in to which doors show the correct sequence. For an
added challenge, you can have there be some sort of additional consequence for picking
the wrong door, such as monsters waiting to greet them when they return to the starting
room, or being struck with various afflictions for each wrong door picked, or adding a
time limit before catastrophe strikes.
Hints. The key to this puzzle lies in how which door is the correct one is
communicated to the party; this ranges from extremely obvious tells to extremely subtle
ones. For an obvious example, perhaps the starting room has a big "0" painted on the
ceiling, the room through the first correct door has a "1", then the next correct room
has a "2", etc.; in this example, the party should quickly and easily be able to figure
out the correct sequence to solve the puzzle. For a less obvious example, say the room
is completely barren except for some rocks, and the only difference betweens the rooms
is shown in the placement of one particular pebble. In any case, if your party gets stuck
trying to figure this one out, calling for Perception or INT checks in each of the rooms
can help push them in the right direction.
The Puzzle. The party enters a room where the floor is covered in tiles, each
marked with a particular symbol. The party steps on one only for it to crumble out
from beneath their feet, requiring a Reflex save from faller (or a STR check from
an adjacent party member) to avoid falling to their doom. The party tries another
tile, only to find that that one doesn't fall apart at their touch. The party
must figure out which tiles will break and send them falling to their deaths and which
will bear them safely across.
The Solution. The solution, of course, lies in which tiles the builder of the
room designated as safe, and how the party finds out this solution is entirely up to
you; the answer could be found in another room in the dungeon, or scrawled on the wall,
or the party could simply brute force their way through, relying on their quick reflexes
and dumb luck to get them through. One possible way to prevent the party from brute-forcing
the solution is to make it so that whatever trap the incorrect tiles activate triggers
more than once - after all, if the incorrect tiles simply fall apart once and are no
longer an issue thereafter, there is nothing to stop the party from slamming a hammer on each
tile until they find the correct one.
Hints. As stated above, the solution to this puzzle should give the party all the
information they need to get through the puzzle, the only question is how exactly the solution
is found.
The Puzzle. This puzzle involves a room with a floor that, as the title
states, is completely frictionless, effectively preventing the party from changing
course once they've set foot on it. The party may need to simply find a way across
the room, or retrieve something that the nature of the floor prevents them from
reaching (such as an object that they cannot get to by moving in a straight line),
or they may need to avoid making contact with the floor lest they fall into danger -
say, if the part of the floor that had no friction were in the shape of a large bowl.
The Solution. The solution to this depends entirely on what the party is trying
to achieve: perhaps they need to get cross the room, but it is covered in dangerous
pits and traps that would otherwise be trivial to get around if they could just change
direction. Perhaps there is an object they want in the center of the floor, but every
side of the floor ends in a dropoff to a bottomless pit or some other danger.
Hints. Part of the insidious nature of this puzzle is that it may not be entirely
obvious that the floor is frictionless until it is too late. To this end, you can have
the characters make Perception checks to see that the floor is different, and prevent them
from making a costly mistake. If the party seems to be unable to figure out how to cross
the slippery floor in question, a good INT check or two can help point them in the right
direction.
The Puzzle. This one is rather straightforward: the party enters a labyrinth,
and must find their way through without getting lost. For added danger, the labyrinth
can also be filled with traps and monsters, and/or can be constantly shifting and
changing shape. If your group uses maps or grids in their play, it is heavily recommended
that you leave them to their own devices in that regard (or restrict the use of maps
entirely) for the purposes of this puzzle, lest it become trivial.
The Solution. Again, quite straightforward: the solution is to leave the
labyrinth. If the labyrinth's walls are not floor-to-ceiling or are otherwise
climbable, clever characters may think to simply climb their way out and bypass
the twists and turns altogether; but then, where would be the fun in that?
Hints. One famous solution to mazes is to leave a marker showing where one has
already been and what routes they have already tried; another is to simply pick a wall
and follow it until they reach the exit, or to lay a string behind them so that they
can simply follow it back every time they meet a dead end. If, however, your maze has
a tendency to shift and change its nature, then these markers may very well prove less
useful than the party had hoped...
The Puzzle. The party enters a room wherein one wall is taken up by a single
large mirror - however, on close examination, several differences present themselves
between the room shown in the mirror and the one the characters find themselves in.
If you wish to make this puzzle extra dangerous, perhaps there are monsters or
other dangers that can only be seen in the mirror, but are still plenty capable of
hurting the characters!
The Solution. The characters must make the room they are in match the room
shown in the mirror. While this would be interesting to actually physically do, from
a tabletop perspective it is easy to allow this puzzle to become trivial. To avoid
this, it is recommended to add a more mechanically entertaining element into the mix,
such as a time limit, combat with enemies that can only be seen in the mirror, or
having the characters interact with something whenever they believe they have solved
the puzzle that punishes them if they got it wrong.
Hints. When examining the mirror, a high enough Perception check can tell the
party members what differences remain between the two rooms, or repeated Perception
checks can be called for each item that must be altered, though this can quickly
become dull and repetitive.
The Puzzle. This alchemy-themed puzzle sees the party needing to find the
correct composition of ingredients to create something, be it a concoction, a bomb,
an intricate piece of art or metalwork, or whatever else you may think of. If the
party fails to combine the ingredients correctly, exactly what happens is up to
you: whatever they're making might explode, the concoction could do the opposite
of what's intended, or nothing may happen and the party simply needs to try again.
The Solution. Like the consequences for failure, this is largely up to you
and depends on what exactly the party is trying to do. For example, say the party
is trying to brew a brand-new elixir that was discovered by an alchemist who has
long-since died; exactly what ingredients they need, how much of them is needed,
and how to properly combine them could all be written in the alchemist's notes,
which perhaps need to be found or deciphered, or are smudged and otherwise difficult
to read.
Hints. Depending on the exact nature of this puzzle, various skill checks
could apply if the party needs a hint. If the party is constructing a bomb, an
Explosives Kits check could help keep them from blowing themselves up; if it's a
tincture of some form, then knowledge in Alchemy Supplies would be most useful.
The Puzzle. A rather simple puzzle: the party comes across a locked door that
communicates a riddle to them in some way, such as by having it be written upon the
door itself.
The Solution. The party must speak the answer to the riddle out loud, and the
door will unlock.
Hints. If you feel so inclined, you could have the answer to the riddle
written somewhere nearby, allowing the party to bypass the door without the risk
of becoming stuck. Alternatively, a high enough INT check can be used as an excuse
to simply give away the answer if the party is truly stuck.
The Puzzle. Not exactly a puzzle in the typical sense, but a great way to
remind your party that combat isn't always the answer; the party encounters a
foe(s) of some sort that is simply too powerful to defeat in combat given the
current circumstances. Perhaps an Elder Fire
Dragon bars the way through the cavern the party is exploring, or the party
has been captured by some monstrous creature they have no hope to fight. Alternatively,
perhaps the party could fight this enemy and stands a reasonable chance to
succeed at doing so, but are incentivized not to by some other reason of your own
design.
The Solution. The solution to this depends entirely on the nature of the foe
in question. Perhaps they can be bribed, or snuck around, or they want something
that the party has (be sure to have a reason for them to not simply kill the party
and take it off them that way).
Hints. Giving the players subtle hints regarding the nature of their foe can
be key in figuring this dilemma out in a way that feels fair and satisfying for the
players. Is the Elder Dragon asleep but on the brink of stirring? Does their
jailer have a weakness for drink that can be exploited? Does the powerful aristocrat
have a family that can be threatened in exchange for their silence? How you narrate
things to your players can very well determine what solutions they think of, just
try not to make it too obvious, and perhaps allow them a failure or two before things
really hit the fan.
The Puzzle. The party comes across a series of levers, buttons, switches, or
the like that alters something about the state of the room they are in - perhaps
filling a gauge someway or activating a sequence of lights. The only problem is,
the devices in question don't have consistent effects! For example, say the party
is faced with a row of 6 lights and 3 buttons. Each of the 6 lights must be
active at once for the party to proceed, but the first button activates only the first
light the first time it's pressed, then the first and third on the second press,
then the first, third, and fifth on the third, then only the first again; the second
button activates the last three lights; and the third button activates the second and
fourth lights. Any lights that were active when a corresponding button is pressed
are deactivated, but the reverse is not true. The party must figure out the correct sequence to press the buttons
in order to activate all 6 lights at once and proceed.
The Solution. Given that the exact details of this puzzle can vary wildly, so
too do the exact solutions, but in each case the solution should be to find the correct
combination of levers/buttons/switches in order to achieve the desired outcome. The
solution for the given example is as follows: 1 > 1 > 1 > 3 > 2 > 3 > 3 > 1 > 1 > 1.
Hints. As is plain to see, it is easy for this puzzle to quickly become quite
complicated, perhaps too much so for your players. If needed, you can have the
solution (or at least a hint) be written down in a nearby area somewhere, or if the
players give up entirely, just say that after some amount of time the characters
manage to figure it out on their own, though this is obviously the least desirable
outcome. In any case, when designing this type of puzzle, make sure it is actually
solvable (typically by figuring it out yourself) before giving it to your players,
and be careful and consistent in how you describe what occurs, lest you accidentally
mislead the players and make the whole thing feel cheap and unfair.
