Hate em. There is absolutely no thought whatsoever given to Verisimilitude here at all! Who put the puzzle/trap/door here & why? How would they get through if they needed to? If the DM doesn't know the answer to this then how can they possibly make the players buy into this reality? Reasons matter.
I must stress (because its the internet) I'm not opposed to players coming up with clever ways of bypassing or solving an encounter. I actually fully support this, but having no solution & just winging it is a guaranteed way to end up with plot holes & contradictions in your adventure.
Having done both, I'd rather not know the answer and support the players' ingenuity than have a preset answer and get impatient while they continue to guess wildly and bizzarely wrong.
When I ran superhero games, I didn’t design death traps with solutions because watching the heroes figure out something that fit in to the fiction we were all experiencing was so much fun.
Always have an answer in mind, but be willing to go "you know what, that works." Since the party will just do some crazy convoluted thing that kind of makes sense to what the puzzle was asking.
I run into the issue of making a meticulous puzzle and the party trying to brute force it. Once had a player try to tap into leylines to hack a level 9 arcane lock on a cryptex. It was described as "touching a live wire". Each attempt caused a wild surge from one of 10 different tables at random.
Love it when the players come up with something better than you had devised. Put their own answer behind a low DC check and then... "You were RIGHT! gasp"
Absolutely delightful
Puzzles in TTRPGS are weird in any regard. The wizard I'm playing is almost certainly more intelligent than I am and should be able to solve any puzzle much faster - not to mention the much more comprehensive knowledge of the world that would help find answers.
In theory they're fine, building any encounter should focus more on the 3 potential outcomes rather than what the "correct" solution is
In practice tho, unless you have creative players who have energy to cycle through options, it often leads to the players hitting a wall and slows down the game
I don't really do this all that much. But I do go with the "good enough" options for my puzzles. I'll have a puzzle and solution setup. But if players come up with something that is close enough or reasonable and amusing I'll sometimes just run with that.
I like knowing how the puzzle works. Like if the right answer lifts a specific latch or something.
Doing it like this means the players are able to do the puzzle or find another way to lift the latch. There is an answer, but there's room for other solutions. Best of both worlds.
Very efficient, the keys are:
– do enough work that this is an option you can take and not something you have to rely on
– be good at interacting with your players' ideas
– keep in mind long view narrative weight so that players feel like they're in a real world and not a skinner box
I kinda hate it, thats not a puzzle. If youre going to give me a puzzle, think of a puzzle. Dont just wind your toys up and watch us walk in circles until youre bored. This gives me the exact same icks as DMs who improv most of/entire sessions.
Everybody games differently and there's no wrong way to play but that feels like you're putting a lot of pressure on your self. Have you ever tried an improv session, building things on the fly with random charts and encounters? Might be a fun lower stress way for you to DM?
Generally I prefer to have an answer, but be open to them coming up with a better one. I think just assuming they'll come up with an answer could lead to disaster.
I really do not like literal puzzles because it quickly goes out of bounds of role playing. So I rather present the characters with a conundrum that uses their abilities instead.
I always have a "correct" solution, but it's rarely the one the PCs find, and that's great. Sometimes I use their reasoning and ideas to build future puzzles 😂
i try to avoid single-path situations. a door is locked and trapped. The characters see skeletal remains of two soldiers, full of crossbow bolts. The characters can find the key, bust down the door and absorb the damage, attempt to investigate and disarm, use magic, or find another solution
This has worked well for me in the past. My group does not like puzzles in general. This allowed me to reward the first interesting thing they tried and it went smoother than other puzzles.
Comments
It's like the dm who doesn't monitor monster health and let's them die when they think its a cool enough moment
If the PCs have to guess at the solution the GM has in their head it isn't a fun experience
Nor does that make good fiction
Absolutely delightful
In practice tho, unless you have creative players who have energy to cycle through options, it often leads to the players hitting a wall and slows down the game
Doing it like this means the players are able to do the puzzle or find another way to lift the latch. There is an answer, but there's room for other solutions. Best of both worlds.
– do enough work that this is an option you can take and not something you have to rely on
– be good at interacting with your players' ideas
– keep in mind long view narrative weight so that players feel like they're in a real world and not a skinner box
I usually let players make skill checks for hints if it’s within their character’s background
But I don’t think I’ve ever let them come a conclusion because it doesn’t feel earned
However, having the players hit you with a solution you never thought of can be so much fun.
I much prefer puzzles with a few different "correct" answers, often each related to a stat.
dex for picking the lock, str for breaking the lock, int for figuring out the code, wis for knowing the locks weakness.
But an actual puzzle? No. If there was a puzzle-maker, they had a solution.
Each table is gonna be different.