Riddle Me Not

[Avoraciopoctules]

And any reasonable answer would work. A riddle doesn't necessarily have to have only one answer.

It kinda does.

Why? I consider the ability to accept any reasonable answer to be one of things that makes riddles in tabletop RPGs viable.

I am willing to LARP battles. I keep several bins full of wooden sparring weapons in the garage for this purpose, and have taken up amateur carpentry so that I can produce new ones as needed.

You are frightening and terrible.

Also. That is a pretty bad game mechanic. You know, for a game that isn't a LARP.

My "Mass Combat Minigame" is resolved by making the players play skirmish matches in one of several computer games. I particularly like Warlords Battlecry 3 and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. If Spellforce has a level editor, I will probably get it specifically to provide another mode of minigame.

The dungeon was the tomb of an adventurer. He wanted to design it so that it would become quite similar to the complexes he had explored in the past. This adventurer liked riddles and puzzles, so he stuck a few into the plans.

That sentence raises at least four distinct whys.

1. Why would he do that in the first place?
2. Why would "past complexes" contain riddles?
3. Why, as an adventure faced with annoying riddles, would he like annoying riddles?
4. Why would he include a riddle in that apparently pointless manner?

1. Because he likes riddles and thinks they'd improve the dungeon. Also, because he thinks that his riddle system is better than some of the ones he has encountered in the past.

2. Some ancient gods and spirits think that riddles are pretty cool. Some inner sanctums are run by jerks who laugh at mooks that forget the passcode and can't decipher the overly complex "hint". Some designers want people to "prove themselves" in an arbitrary and

3. Because he enjoys challenges that don't involve killing things with his sword. He also likes talking to his friends about how stupid some of the riddles were.

4. To show that he can do riddles better than most of the other designers he's had to deal with.

[Koumei]

I am willing to LARP battles.

Awesome. Finally, I can win a combat by throwing the d20 at the DM and locking them in a triangle choke until they agree that I win.

[PhoneLobster]

Why? I consider the ability to accept any reasonable answer to be one of things that makes riddles in tabletop RPGs viable.

So you consider a game of "May I please sir?" with the GM where you simply negotiate that your answer to his crazy riddle is correct is a good thing?

The whole point of a riddle is that it is a complex metaphor or puzzle that has a fucking answer. If the answer is "Gee, whatever sounds good." That is not a riddle. It's free form fairy tea party.

It is certainly not a password. If the password to the Spirit Gate of De'Nile is "whatever the spirit gate thinks sounds good today" you aren't running a password system and the raving riddle rant it recites before deciding if it likes you today is just short of totally meaningless.

My "Mass Combat Minigame" is resolved by making the players play skirmish matches in one of several computer games. I particularly like Warlords Battlecry 3 and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. If Spellforce has a level editor, I will probably get it specifically to provide another mode of minigame.

That is even worse. Those games are all individually utterly unsuitable for that role.

And it was a bad idea to start with, in general.

1. Because he likes riddles and thinks they'd improve the dungeon. Also, because he thinks that his riddle system is better than some of the ones he has encountered in the past.

Why does he like riddles? Apparently he had a professional career as an adventurer where his life and fortune was repeatedly put on the line by insane riddles that existed for no explicable reason. I would expect him to hate riddles. If not then I would call him insane. And insane riddlers, don't craft answerable riddle traps.

2. Some ancient gods and spirits think that riddles are pretty cool. Some inner sanctums are run by jerks who laugh at mooks that forget the passcode and can't decipher the overly complex "hint". Some designers want people to "prove themselves" in an arbitrary and

This doesn't cover any of the criticisms for the use of riddles as security systems already raised. Effectively you are saying "it's like that because I just never thought of/ignore all the very good reasons for it not being that way."

3. Because he enjoys challenges that don't involve killing things with his sword. He also likes talking to his friends about how stupid some of the riddles were.

"Man those riddles were stupid, it totally sucked how my adventuring romantic interest was murdered by that riddle. Hey. I think I'm going to build a riddle dungeon, wouldn't that be cool, and make me cool. And not make me suck too!"

Replace the word riddle with "Smurf" if you want to see how stupid that argument is.

4. To show that he can do riddles better than most of the other designers he's had to deal with.

So then why does his own riddle suck so much?

Why is it attached to a readily avoidable door?

Why does it allow retries and negotiated pseudo answers until success is apparently inevitable?

Why does it lack any genuine cost, risk or challenge?

Why is it nothing but a waste of time, space and interior decorating expenses?

[virgil]

I personally enjoy riddles. I research them and spend time out of my day trying to figure them out, generally getting them right. Of course, it's gotten harder as time passed, because most of the good ones are the old ones; modern riddles being mostly jokes.

In my own setting, I did put in an area where riddles are used as a weak form of encryption (see Riddle Manor in my Setting thread in the Trenches forum). It's acknowledged in the setting as not iron-clad in the slightest, but it keeps out the riff-raff because it requires a dungeon crawl just to answer the riddle (which then unlocks the info, and whomever stored it instantly knows it was unlocked).

Also...

[RandomCasualty2]

PL, Why is it so hard to accept that some people like riddles and some don't?

Is it unfathomable that some people may find different things enjoyable?

[PhoneLobster]

PL, Why is it so hard to accept that some people like riddles

Because we aren't selecting a group of people who like riddles. You are selecting a group of people who like something else.

The odds of any group of people who selected to like ANYTHING other than riddles all actually liking riddles is incredibly slim.

Because people who like riddles are incredibly rare wankers.

I mean check out all these pictures of fans crowding venues at riddle conventions... oh wait apparently the Riddle family is vastly more numerous.

[Draco_Argentum]

PL, Why is it so hard to accept that some people like riddles and some don't?

Is it unfathomable that some people may find different things enjoyable?

I'm going to give it to PL. Riddles are bad in the general case. Unless you've got a group that really enjoys them leave them out.

[Koumei]

Yeah, you are trying to find the people who fit inside the little cross-over area of the "Likes RPGs" circle and the "Likes Riddles" circle. Adding any circle invariably makes it harder, unless it's one so large that the original circle is contained within it entirely.

Just like I shouldn't be surprised if I were to gather every roleplayer in a room and say "Who here likes ice cream?" and some of the people left. Except in the case of liking riddles, it's more like you're looking specifically for the people who don't like ice cream.

[MartinHarper]

Riddle 2) Your players are stupid

This is just a question of setting the right challenge level for your group and making sure that progress can be made without solving the riddle.

Riddle 5) The players are too smart to want to play the riddle game

I don't see how this is a problem. It's possible to bypass combat, and that isn't a problem with combat.

[Starmaker]

Riddles are a form of entertainment. I have two basic complaints about their in-game implementation (already mentioned by PL):

[*] them being taken too seriously, i.e. not as a form of entertainment, by otherwise sane people in the game world. The two classic riddle examples very specifically do not feature people as antagonists. The Sphinx is a demon that commits suicide when its riddle is solved, a creature that's insane by human standards. So is the initial version of Gollum (that gets tricked by Bilbo, who lives by human standards: survival and shinies first, sportsmanship later). Note that both these encounters weren't level-appropriate. Wit or an artifact ring as a means of victory over CR +6 adversaries makes for a classic story, but it's not good design.

[*] them being specifically not the form of entertainment the players are gathered to enjoy. "Um, guys, what's going on?" "We decided to lay off the game for a while and go bungee jumping. Do you like bungee jumping?"

[hogarth]

What I don't like about riddles and puzzles is PL's reason #1: they take a fast-paced action game and slow it down to a crawl (or even a stop) while one or two people putz around with it.

Come to think of it, that's why I don't like traps, too.

D&D doesn't need speed bumps.

[RobbyPants]

The "correct" answer to most riddle encounters in a D&D game is to use your crazy powers to bypass the damn riddle encounter.

It's basically impossible to include a riddle that it makes any sense to actually try and answer short of the most abysmal railroading techniques. And those are abysmal railroading techniques.

I had an experience with one of these in a 2E game. I was glad that I solved the riddle, but before I figured it out, people just kept trying to bypass the riddle, and the DM kept adding Ad Hoc restrictions to keep us there. The game kind of loses that suspension of disbelief when other obstacles start "appearing" as you go to get around them.

The basis of the riddle was to have a boat in a shallow pond that we needed to cross, but there was something dangerous above the water. To pass, we needed to flip the boat to protect us and then cross the pond under it. The threatening hazard was some form of indestructable dragons statues that would breath some poisonous no-save-you-die gas if we tried to cross above. I have no idea how we knew what the statues would do ahead of time, but we did. I remember each of the players trying things like shooting the statues from a distance and what-not. I think the wizard wanted to fly over invisibly, but the DM just warned him he'd die or something.

Any way you slice it, you're right: a player's first reaction to a riddle that isn't immediately obvious is to bypass it with their myriad of awesome powers. "I've got an adamantine axe. Why the fuck am I talking to this stone door?"

[angelfromanotherpin]

It might be best to compromise. After all, bad-ass characters can still contribute more or less to combat based on the skill of the player at playing the tactics minigame.

So, say there is a mechanical rubric which measures how good a character is at riddle-solving (or whatever). So Al's PC (named Airk) is a clever guy who was raised by a sphinx and has a big riddle-related bonus; and Bob's PC (named Brak) is a comically simple guy who was molested by a metaphor as a kid, and has a small riddle-related penalty.

The equivalent to skill at the tactics minigame is the player' success at solving the riddle. Not even trying is worth a small penalty. Coming up with an answer that fits the criteria but is a stretch is no modifier. An answer that fits without stretching is a small bonus. The actual answer comes with a big bonus.

So even if Bob actually solves the riddle, Brak may not manage it, though his chances are much improved. Just like how great tactical skill may make your character more effective, but doesn't guarantee victory against a bad matchup.

[hogarth]

So even if Bob actually solves the riddle, Brak may not manage it, though his chances are much improved. Just like how great tactical skill may make your character more effective, but doesn't guarantee victory against a bad matchup.

So after the party has figured out the riddle, the DM requires some tedious extra dice rolls? Lame.

[angelfromanotherpin]

No the dice rolls are always required. Because that's how you know if the characters have figured it out. That the players have figured it out is just a modifier.

[hogarth]

No the dice rolls are always required. Because that's how you know if the characters have figured it out. That the players have figured it out is just a modifier.

Can you explain how that makes the busy-work dice rolls un-lame and un-boring?

[MartinHarper]

I don't see the problem with a character with low Int giving the answer to a riddle. Obviously the low Int character had already heard the riddle, and that's how come they know the answer. Just like how low Int people in the real world "solve riddles".

[Roy]

Riddles are fucking terrible. They are purely a metagame challenge, and that shit was supposed to die in a fire along with the rest of the Gygaxian bullshit a long time ago when character abilities and player abilities got separated. And the only way to fix that is... what? Call for an Int check or something? That's the same reason why traps are made of Fail - there's no engagement there. So the only real solution is to just not do that.

[RandomCasualty2]

No the dice rolls are always required. Because that's how you know if the characters have figured it out. That the players have figured it out is just a modifier.

No. Just No.

The game doesn't benefit from having PCs who solve the puzzle correctly and then get fucked because of bad dice rolling. Everything in the world doesn't have to be random, nor should it be.

There's reasons for not including riddles (like your PCs don't like them), and there's reasons for including them... but having some kind of intermediate system that turns it into a mindless dice roll.

The one thing that 4E skill challenges have taught us, it's that mindless dice rolls are bad. They don't engage the players and they don't make the game better.

Don't try to make a riddle system designed for "people who hate riddles." It's just counter productive, much like designing social systems for people who hate social encounters, or trap systems for people who hate traps. That sort of thing I find is the biggest waste of time in RPGs. Instead of having a social system to bypass conversations with NPCs, if your group hates talking, then just don't have NPCs to talk to. It's really that simple.


If you want to use riddles, then use riddles. If your group hates riddles, then don't use them. The real problem here isn't riddles, it's the DM doing something that his players hate, and that's a DM/PC issue, not an issue with riddles in particular. It could just easily be a debate about combats, social encounters, traps, mysteries or any number of things.

The bottom line is that different people (and thus different groups) like different things. Some people are going to buy Halo, other people are going to buy Myst. Some people are going to love World's Largest Dungeon because it's all hack and slash and there aren't any boring social encounters to go through. Other people are going to hate WLD for the exact same reasons.

That's just a fact of life.

Just because you have the possibility of encountering a riddle in game doesn't mean that you have to. You've always had the possibility of encountering a bunch of obscure MM creatures, but chances are there are many your DM has never used. If the group doesn't like riddles, I don't know what's so hard about just not using them.

[angelfromanotherpin]

RC, I'm not sure if you grasp the distinction I'm making between the players and the characters. Chiefly because you use the term 'PC' to refer to the players, which is new and confusing to me.

[Draco_Argentum]

RC is right. Riddles are a big enough bitch as is, having the entire set of players know the answer then all the PCs rolling too low is just frustrating. Its not engaging or challenging, you make no decisions and one die roll determines the outcome. Thats crap mechanics. I can go to a casino and play roulette if thats what I want.

[PhoneLobster]

I think it's a largely pointless argument because you shouldn't be riddling in the first place.

But assuming you were, and assuming a player knew the answer, making them roll for failure anyway to further simulate their character's intelligence is annoying.

If you must go to those kinds of lengths to protect the character's role as smarter than the bimbo barbarian who's player actually solved the riddle make everyone roll an intelligence contest and the winner gets to say "and it was my character who said that".

But it's all still bad because of the premise of encountering, cooperating with and accepting riddles in the first place.

[hogarth]

PL, Why is it so hard to accept that some people like riddles and some don't?

Is it unfathomable that some people may find different things enjoyable?

I don't mind a riddle that takes a minute to figure out, but it's such a small blip in a multi-hour session that it barely registers. It's harmless, at best.

But a riddle (or puzzle or trap) that takes 30+ minutes to figure out (say)? Even if everyone in the group likes riddles (doubtful), it's usually just one or two people contributing to the solution and the rest of the players trying not to fall asleep, or arguing that a different solution is the correct one.

[mean_liar]

Riddles are fucking terrible. They are purely a metagame challenge...

Unlike, say, planning a heist in Shadowrun. Or any one of a number of similar things that are taken for granted in gaming.

Riddling can be stupid. If the players like it, it won't be.

Why the hell is this such a contentious topic?

[hogarth]

Riddles are fucking terrible. They are purely a metagame challenge...

Unlike, say, planning a heist in Shadowrun. Or any one of a number of similar things that are taken for granted in gaming.

Riddling can be stupid. If the players like it, it won't be.

Why the hell is this such a contentious topic?

Presumably, the set of Shadowrun players and the set of players who like to plan heists has a large intersection because of self-selection; people who don't like one of the central ideas of Shadowrun don't play Shadowrun much.

Similarly, the set of D&D players and the set of players who like combat with monsters should have a large intersection; if you don't like combat, you probably won't play D&D because combat is a big part of D&D.