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Interview with Tabletop Misfits!
29 Plays7 months ago
An interview withTabletopmisfits! After joining him on his livestream a few months back, I got to bring him on to my podcast! He threw a curveball at me at the end of the episode, which was a fun way to end! His insight into how to improve puzzles and building puzzles into the world was phenomenal.
tabletopmisfits on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tabletopmisfits/
https://www.twitch.tv/tabletop_misfits
Themesong by the DungeonMaestro on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thedungeonmaestro/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello my friends and welcome to another interview of the dungeon problems podcast
00:00:20
Speaker
Sure amounts and never grows And wins a toothless spider Darkness fills up the deep holes And turns an endless spider What we're here for is mysteries But puzzles yet unsolved So sad secrets lost to history Has not your problem solved alone Attention!
00:00:45
Speaker
problem zoom, puzzle zoom to solve them all dungeon zoom, problem zoom, puzzle zoom to solve them all
Meet James a.k.a. Tabletop Misfits
00:01:18
Speaker
I'm Art Those Creations. I am the runner of this podcast that you've probably heard if you listen to this. And today I have a very special guest. You might have conned me on his channel a month back, but today he's here. Today we are joined by James or Tabletop Misfits from Instagram, Twitch, all the fun places. James, how are you doing today?
00:01:43
Speaker
Doing good man, doing good. Just got back from a convention and just, you know, jiving on some D&D, that's for sure.
James's Adventures at Genghis Khan
00:01:50
Speaker
Which convention was it? Genghis Khan out Colorado Springs. Did you have fun? Did you play in games? Did you run? I did actually. So this year was my first year out of three that I decided I was not going to run games.
00:02:04
Speaker
So I just played and I played in about six different games, which is a lot which was quite a bit Six different characters or six or the same So one of the one of the games was a three sets three per three part track So we played the same character for three three different sessions about 12 hours all together in gaming Actually, no four times. Yeah. Yeah, it's well
00:02:29
Speaker
I can do math, I promise. And then I just jumped into a couple of one-shots. One of the games was actually not even a role-playing game. It was a card game, because they do card games and board games there, too. So I played Doomtown for the first time, which was a pretty cool card game.
00:02:46
Speaker
Tap I like that doom town. It's kind of like a it's kind of like an old Western Card building game, but you don't have to And it's very similar like how they build magic cards like you can just build so many nice thing The nice thing is though is that with doom town you when you buy the set you get all the cards you need You don't have to go buy booster packs. You don't buy anything like that But you do get way over the amount of cards that you can utilize so then I
00:03:14
Speaker
you can build the 52-card deck with whatever you want out of the multiple sets. So it's kind of neat.
00:03:21
Speaker
I was getting very Roger Rapp, who framed Roger Rapp. I don't know why that popped into my head. I don't know. That's it just was like the judge in that called Professor Judge Dune or something. I think so. I get off topic right there. It is what
Current Projects and Future Plans
00:03:39
Speaker
it is. So tell the people what you do, what you're kind of working on, where they can find you, what to expect when they do find you.
00:03:47
Speaker
Sure. So right now I am Tabletop Misfits. I do two shows a week over on Twitch. My Monday night show has moved from our normal channel to the GenCon TV channel over on their site where we're running Icewind Dale with five amazing players. And we are about to dive into what is considered the rhyme of Icewind Dale, which is when everything goes pretty much to crap. I'm just going to say that right now.
00:04:14
Speaker
So right now the players are not fully ready for what's going to happen. Um, but they know that something is in the catalyst. They're just waiting for the catalyst to activate. So, uh, yeah, pretty, pretty excited with that one. Uh, definitely go check that out over on Monday nights at 9 PM. And then of course, like we were saying earlier, I do a interview show every Wednesday night at 9 PM.
00:04:36
Speaker
where we have three different types of interviews. So we have a storyteller interview where you get to be a player and you're kind of doing a one-on-one with another NPC. We have what is considered a world-building interview, which pretty much you drop me somewhere in your world and I'm going to do a very deep dive of that area. So it's not going to be world-building in a large scale, it's going to be very small scale.
00:05:02
Speaker
If I walk out a door, what do I go? What am I seeing to my left? What am I seeing to my right? What is so significant about what I'm seeing? Those are the types of questions that we ask during that interview. And then of course, there's the basic everyday product interview or game master interview where I just kind of sit there and jive and we back and forth banter for about an hour. And it's been pretty fun.
00:05:25
Speaker
We're lining up people already for March and April. So hopefully, we'll be booked out through July by next month. So we're hoping for that. If you're listening to this, the Gen Con live play is awesome. Great. But I
Balancing Personal Milestones and Creative Challenges
00:05:40
Speaker
highly recommend the Wednesday night ones. A lot of great creators go on there. Yeah. And of course, you can find me on all the wonderful channels out there. It's just Tabletop Misfits. I think Instagram doesn't have a little
00:05:55
Speaker
underscore some of them do some of them don't you'll notice me because i'll have a it's a big old blue wizard it says tabletop this it's on it everywhere so and yeah yeah if you can't find it if you type it in just find me because you probably follow me and look at my followers list and my who i follow and you'll find him there easy peasy lemon squeezy easy peasy let's do this but uh yeah
00:06:19
Speaker
What I'm working on, oh goodness, I don't know, really. I will be at Ericon this year, and I will be at GenCon this year. I'm most likely going back to PAXU because I really enjoyed it. And yeah, I do, currently I don't do any panels or anything like that, but if you're a convention and you need people to talk, I am definitely a talker, so I'm happy to run stuff for people.
00:06:46
Speaker
I'm trying to think if there's anything else we're really working on. There's a couple projects that I'm in the talks of, but I can't say anything about them until after we've confirmed everything, and I'm trying to get better at that.
00:07:01
Speaker
Normally I'm the cat with, you know, I'm the cat that lets everything out of the bag. And if it was my channel, I would do so with no issue. But since these are working with other creators and writers and things like that, there's a possibility for another couple of books that I'll be writing this year. So we'll see. Okay, that's exciting. Yeah.
00:07:20
Speaker
Part of me is I don't know if I'll ever be able to do big projects with other people, because I'll just be so excited to talk about it. Yeah, so my first one two years ago, since I've been writing for a company out of Colorado Springs called Gooey Cube for the last three years, last year I had released my first module, which was pretty awesome. That was an epic
00:07:44
Speaker
Milestone for me especially with everything that my life has been personal life has been just kind of going to craziness and being able to do that on top of it was just a homage to the Ability that you can accomplish pretty much anything as long as you put your mind to it So I know it's a cheat cliche thing to say but like with the way life was going and me still say yeah I'll pick up a book and write another write 65 70 pages like you know I
00:08:10
Speaker
No, we pulled it off. It was a little late to the printing press, but that was premiered at GenCon last year for one of their games. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome.
00:08:27
Speaker
Now, time to ask the question that I usually ask right at the beginning, but we asked different questions instead, because hearing
The Role of Puzzles in D&D
00:08:34
Speaker
about all the problems... But I was wondering, you put me on a show and tell me to talk. I'll talk all day if I have to. Do you love puzzles? Do you hate puzzles? Or are you blase about puzzles? Blase? Look at that word. It's like he's like studying or something to learn how to use better words, because I would never have thought of that word.
00:08:55
Speaker
It's my, it's my $100,000 English degree that I have never really used ever. Hey, man, that's awesome. No, I don't have it. I don't have any sort of degree like that. I'm a degree in math or mathematics type degrees. So for me, it's more of a. This is definitely that portion of D&D can be difficult. I don't always come up with the best of words, but puzzles. I like them.
00:09:23
Speaker
But I don't like to use them a lot because I think they're really good when you can hit a really good story beat with them. But I feel like if you consistently use puzzles that it just kind of gets annoying because a lot of times puzzles though that you might see and think that they're really easy, your players might not. And if your players aren't those types of players,
00:09:50
Speaker
that can immediately change the shift of the game itself. I like this. This is good. This is good because I find that a lot of people that I've interviewed, like, so last week's interview was with Keith Fire and Dice. Fire and Dice. And he mentioned, he does something very similar to me where he kind of, when he runs one shot, stuff like that, it's kind of, I don't want to use the word formulaic, but, you know,
00:10:18
Speaker
yeah roleplay encounter combat encounter puzzle slash riddles slash something like that right try and hit all those notes but the way you kind of just worded that seems like you you like puzzles and you think they have a very good
00:10:32
Speaker
heart and D&D, but you there's a limit to it. What do you think is kind of, do you have an idea of what you think your limit would be for puzzles? Like you don't want to go every session or I can, I mean, I can kind of give you an example if that would be the easiest way to do it. Do it up. So, so big one. So we were doing, I was doing a customized evil campaign in Tomb of Annihilation.
00:10:55
Speaker
If anybody knows about Tomb of Annihilation, when you get to Omu, you have to go through each of the temples and get the card, you know, the token, right? And there's nine tokens. Well, if your players are getting so excited about getting those nine tokens and they just go from one temple to the next, it's puzzle after puzzle after puzzle. After about the third puzzle, my players are like, dude, we don't have, like, we wanna do something else. And a lot of times I will throw random stuff at them on top of that.
00:11:26
Speaker
Oh, you walk out of the puzzle room and now I'm going to hit you with an encounter. Or now we're going to have somebody show up that needs help or whatnot. But I think for me, it's the consistency of puzzles. Like I'm not going to put a puzzle, especially if they're having a hard time with it. I'm not going to put a puzzle in one session and then show you another puzzle, literally that next session. I'm going to take a couple of sessions off between that because I don't want you to be like,
00:11:53
Speaker
Oh man, half of our game's going to go over just because we're going to be stuck on this puzzle for 20, 30 minutes. It also depends on the type of puzzle, though, too, because you can get really easy puzzles where you can just show people things. Like, if I have five blocks here, and each one has different colors on all sides, and I line up those colors, and you say, oh, your puzzle's done, it's a really simple puzzle. It's just something that they get to play around with and give a little bit of dexterous
00:12:20
Speaker
Um, what's the word I'm looking for? Textress, uh, like, like sensory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So stuff like that where yep. Sensory activity. It's like throwing somebody Rubik's cube and saying solve this for the first time. And you've never done it before. You know, that takes a long time. All I can think about is the, uh, Mr. Beast, uh,
00:12:45
Speaker
He did one thing where he had like girls and guys against one another and they were all stuck in someplace And like he gave them a special challenge where he was like, okay I'll give you a special prize if you can solve more Rubik's cubes than the girls or the guys One time and each group of like a hundred guys a hundred girls only one person knew how to solve all the Rubik's cubes and it was like
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, see the downfall is, is like Rubik's Cube specifically, especially the 3x3 set, there's 3 algorithms that you need. And if you know all 3 algorithms, you can solve any. So, but you have to get it to that algorithm, which the main thing is, is you just have to have a cross on one side and then from there you can turn everything to zero. So.
00:13:30
Speaker
You mentioned that your players will get frustrated and they'll just be like, we don't want to see another puzzle for a little while and you'll sense this as a DM. What do you think the greatest kind of frustration stems from? Obviously not being able to solve it, but what do you think really hinders them from being able to solve puzzles?
00:13:53
Speaker
Um, so I think sometimes it's the, you know, sometimes puzzles, especially in Dungeons and Dragons, puzzles are not just mental, they're physical. So if you think about it, if I'm in this room and I need these things to open, or I need this connection to work here and this connection to work here, and I gotta go find this over here and find this over here.
00:14:13
Speaker
and you put obstacles in between it, you're like, okay. So you're just taking those extra pieces to the, to the connections and you're trying to find ways to manipulate it. But if you do that in every single room, then every single door seems to be a puzzle. And to me, it's just, I'm not a big fan of monotony anyways. So I would think that would start to become cliche, monotonous, that kind of thing. Uh, but,
00:14:38
Speaker
Like I can even remember in Tomb of Annihilation after the third puzzle, like I threw a, you know, they got attacked by one of the unit or one of the organizations as they were getting ready to jump into the temple. And I had the whole thing just fucking explode. So I just had the whole temple collapse and then they were just rummaging through rubble trying to find this thing. And it made it so much easier for that portion. Cause I'm like, oh, there's your puzzle simple. You, you completed the conflict. Technically that was your puzzle. Now find it. Um.
00:15:08
Speaker
And that comes down to the, you know, does your DM really want to be ugly or not? So the way I do that normally is I'll let players roll. Like, everybody roll dice. Okay, cool. If more of the view succeed than less of you succeed, you succeed the puzzle. All right, done. Move on. And they'll be excited about that. But sometimes it's fun to actually watch them, like, put their minds together to try to figure out something, which I think is really cool.
00:15:37
Speaker
My main focus on that is I'm looking for puzzles that a five-year consult can solve if I'm looking for a puzzle, and then I'm going to manipulate it to a way that works in Dungeons and Dragons. I find one of the things I really do love about puzzles, and one of the reasons why I am a little bit, I would say, monotonous about it. My players are typically expecting a puzzle every two or three sessions, like a real puzzle.
00:16:04
Speaker
because I've been finding that they are getting better at them as we do them, maybe partially because they're used to my style of how I design puzzles and stuff like that, but also because it allows them to think about it a little bit more. Yeah, and there's some really good books. I have one, or it's off the top of my head, but it's like The Game Master's Guide to Puzzles and Traps.
00:16:31
Speaker
You almost got a puzzle from that book today. Yeah, I was like, I almost thought about grabbing it as like, I was like, Oh, we're talking about puzzles tonight. Let me see what I can come up with. Um, but I just said, and I think puzzles can be so much, they can, they can tell a great story. But I think if they're not connecting to the story, then to me, the puzzle is just there just because you're trying to hit
00:16:53
Speaker
You're trying to hit the pillars of the D&D spectrum, in my opinion. And I don't think that it needs to be hit all the time, although I do think that at least it needs to be hit ever. At least once an arc, and an arc can be anything from three sessions to six, nine sessions. I think those are really cool because a lot of times when you're building arcs, you're trying to solve something anyways, so why not add a little bit of a twist to it with a puzzle? That's a really good option.
00:17:25
Speaker
But it also depends, for me personally, is it has to make sense with the story.
World-Building and Puzzle Integration
00:17:29
Speaker
If I'm building a puzzle and I'm like, we're raiding an orc camp, what kind of puzzle are these orcs going to come up with? Like, really? They've got a seven intelligence. Like, let's do this. Come on, let's see what we can come up with here. And sometimes it can be as silly as, you know,
00:17:45
Speaker
Three rocks one has a sun one has a moon and one has a star on it place it in the right spot, you know And if you think about it, you know You put the sun in the front and as they comes it moves over the the horizon and then oh look a door opens You there's a treasure behind it and take the extra the new special treasure but things like that and those are real simple ones, but sometimes it's funny because or you place those symbols somewhere else in the
00:18:10
Speaker
on the map, and then that way they can say, oh, when they won't find this door and there's three places that they can place it, you're like, oh, well, I got the symbol for the sun was here, the symbol from the moon was here, and the symbol from the stars was here. Click, click, click, done, move on.
00:18:25
Speaker
Super simple. Mind you, like it reminds me of a Skyrim puzzle, actually. Right. And those are those are kind of those types of puzzles, right? Those are the same ones you'll see in Skyrim, the same ones you'll see in some of the RPGs where it becomes a textile thing because I have the piece, right? Sometimes you can't do that because a lot of us play online, so you have to come up with trick ways to do it. But I've also built
00:18:52
Speaker
You know, I've, I've put a map out in front of them and I said, this is your puzzle. These are your pieces. Y'all put this together and if it works, then it'll open. If it doesn't work, you're going to sit there and mess with it. Sometimes it's great to do it that way. Sometimes players get really annoyed and you're like, like, Hey, roll me something. So I can at least give you a guide. Like, give me, give you a hint. Um, or when every time they fail, you know, you zap them.
00:19:15
Speaker
You know, it depends on how you want to do it. Either give them the carrot or you give them the stick. You know, it's your choice. It depends on how your players are.
00:19:24
Speaker
I think one word you've been using in terms of puzzles has me really thinking about something that I hadn't thought a lot about. One of the joys that I've been discovering with this podcast is thinking of different types of puzzles. For example, our friend Team Drew's Basement brought up puzzles in combat figuring out a puzzle to do with the combat encounter. Like, oh, there's a special rune. If you stand on it, you weaken the enemy. Something like that. Oh, yeah.
00:19:52
Speaker
And you keep using this saying puzzles related to your story, a story puzzle. Do you have kind of a definition in mind of that? Like, what do you think when you say a puzzle that has to do with your story? Are you thinking just like, because a lot of times for me, it's like, OK, I have a puzzle in this chamber. I won't lie. Sometimes it really doesn't make sense that it's in this dungeon or whatever. Right. So every time I bring a puzzle into a game, my first question is why.
00:20:21
Speaker
It's the first question I'm going to ask myself is like, okay, why is there a puzzle here? What is the purpose of this puzzle? And why is it here? If it's a hidden locate, if it's a hidden chamber so that there's something special behind it, what is behind it that the players won't need or the players might need, but that would be hidden there from.
00:20:40
Speaker
whatever is going on. So if you've got a wizard's tower, right, and you've got to put each one, you've got four, this is what I've heard before, it's super simple, right? So you've got a wizard's tower, and you've got four braziers, one on each side, and you have to realize, and then you've got a book in the front that says, you know, the elements is the way to go, and you figure this out, okay, cool, so if I cast a fire spell here, I throw water in this one, toss some earth in this one, and I blow in this one, you know, they all light up, and the door opens.
00:21:09
Speaker
What's going to be behind that door is the main question. This first thing I'm going to ask is what is there and why is it there? If the wizard's hiding a cursed item, it's hiding a special magic item, something maybe from its past, something maybe that it's getting ready to, you know, or you can be really mean about this, which is what I've done this before, and it's really a cruel thing to do your players, but it's a lot of fun. It's a piece to a puzzle.
00:21:37
Speaker
You just solve the puzzle in order to get more, but you don't, but that puzzle is going to be a puzzle that's going to last over time, right? Like it's not going to be a puzzle that you're going to give them the piece at the episode three. And then they might not find another piece to this puzzle until they go somewhere else in the world because like, Oh no, this connects to this now. So this is the, this is the reactor. This is the catalyst. This is the trigger. And then put those together. Oh, now I have a death cannon, you know, something like that.
00:22:07
Speaker
A good example of that is the puzzle that they used on Season 2 of Critical Role to build the Stargazer, I think is what Ford's weapon turned into, the sword. They needed a specific type of metal, and they could have had to go get it and buy some somewhere else, and they needed this, and they needed this. They needed three different pieces to create this magic sword, right?
00:22:31
Speaker
And from there, that's a puzzle as well, but that's a puzzle that they chose to deal with. If they didn't want to choose to deal with it, they didn't have to deal with that puzzle. So it's kind of those different options you can give somebody.
00:22:46
Speaker
I just realized that essentially the stories we tell as DMs, these campaigns we put together, are puzzled in themselves. They're giant puzzles. They're just letting you solve it. I don't know why that didn't super occur to me because right now I'm planning a Monster of the Week miniseries actual play. And that's essentially a puzzle. That's why I'm planning it. It's a puzzle. You have to figure out who did it, why they did it, and solve the mystery.
00:23:13
Speaker
Right and if you want to be more and if you want to enjoy this even more so they the big thing that I talk about when I when I'm working on like puzzles especially like combat puzzles or like puzzles for for long term my biggest inspiration from that is the Witcher right so if I know that there's a creature out in the woods and I've heard that it eats this and it does this and I'm gonna go talk to the sheriff down the road this is oh yeah you know I saw
00:23:42
Speaker
blah, blah, blah, in the woods doing this, we threw fire at it and seemed to run away. But if I don't go talk to that guy or learn that from that guy, when I go into battle, because my players didn't take the time to actually learn what the hell was in the woods, they're at a disadvantage because they figure out those puzzle pieces. I mean, you can play all sorts of ways with combat puzzles.
Combat Puzzles as Strategic Narratives
00:24:07
Speaker
Combat puzzles to me are almost
00:24:09
Speaker
consistent because people don't really realize that it's a puzzle. Until they're not solving in their middle of combat. Well, that's the thing, right? There's a game that I run at conventions where the last boss, if you don't have all three pieces and you're not 30 feet away from it, that sucker hits like a truck. But if you have all three pieces of it, now this thing is kind of on down.
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah, cuz like it starts at a 22 AC and if you have all three pieces it turns into a 16 AC and you're only level three characters 22 AC and it's hilarious too cuz most the people they'll see this giant monster. Oh, we're all gonna attack it We'll kill it quickly and then the lake 21 you're like, no like wait what? I think that's the greatest joy a DM gets when the players just like how did that not hit that was a that was a 21. Yeah Yeah
00:25:08
Speaker
Another fun puzzle was giving a timer. So I do this at conventions as well, more so because of time. But the convention that I just went to last weekend, I wasn't supposed to run anything. And the last day, somebody had canceled and I got a phone call and they're like, hey, we know you know this adventure. Can you come down and run it for us? And I said, sure, I'll run it.
00:25:32
Speaker
I have 12 worms, right? I have 12 worms. I have every player. Once they hit phase two of the campaign, these worms start bursting out of these ground. These six-foot worms start bursting out of the ground. But you roll a d4, right? I have 12. Remember 12, right? You roll a d4. If you get a three or four, you pop two up in a different location, then you have the first set. Well, if you run out of 12 worms, you enter what is considered an alternate conflict.
00:25:59
Speaker
Because now the problem is there's so many worms in this location, you can't contain it at that point. So you automatically would be consumed. So I told the players this, and I watched their faces change, like completely change faster than I've ever seen before. Because they're like, wait, this is the last round? I said, yeah, this is the last round. They're like, why? I was like, well, you've entered into a contingent fail. Like, well, what do you mean by that? I said, well, right now there's 12 worms on the field.
00:26:26
Speaker
You've been rolling fours very consistently on this D4, which means two worms that burst it out of the ground every time. And you're not killing the worms fast enough. So if you roll, I was like, you have two options. You need to kill two worms so that if you roll a D4 again, you hit a four, you can still be okay for one more round. Or you can try to kill the mother, which is the big, big one I was talking about at the end.
00:26:46
Speaker
And they already had all three pieces at this moment in the campaign. So they had figured out that they needed these three items close enough because they started to do some serious damage to it. But it still has a ton of health. Right. And. As a game master and we were running into like less than 15 minutes left before I had to shut the game down because it was we were the last game of the con.
00:27:12
Speaker
My goal was to let the whole round go and then our paladin, who has been not hitting the entire dang time, hit him for anything decent. I was going to let it kill it because it would have just been an epic opportunity. But I said, you know, if they hit 114 health points and they're at 83 right now, if they hit to 114 health points, I'm going to let them kill it where whoever kills it doesn't matter.
00:27:33
Speaker
I said but if anybody misses we're gonna be in trouble because if the paladin misses then the whole thing's gone because I'm working I'm working on the paladin Thankfully our monk rolled two crits in a row for her for her fury of blows and just fucking It was great
00:27:53
Speaker
But I legitimately had this party at a panic, like we might legitimately, you know, lose. And that was part of the puzzle was, you know, you, you, you weren't killing them fast enough. And they're overwhelming you to the point where, because every time they bit something, they would turn it too. So not only were the, the, the worms getting were, were erupting from the ground. If they're in a, a packed location,
00:28:22
Speaker
every round, they're biting things, and then those things are biting things. So you're just getting this massive spiral of infected people. And if you take of it in a storyteller perspective, there's no way out. You would not be able to kill fast enough that many people. There's only five people. Because all the characters that could help you are in this weird daze because of what's happening in the world.
00:28:52
Speaker
And then as they wake up, which was cool because then it was like once the mother was killed, the days or the curse kind of lifted from all the people that were a part of this carnival.
00:29:02
Speaker
and they're all the actual strong characters. So then I can just describe them taking their abilities and using them to just cleanse up the rest of the carnival. But for the moment, they didn't have that backup. So it's like, what do we do? And it was, yeah. So when I think of puzzles, I'm thinking multiple ways of how this connects, right? But the simple,
00:29:27
Speaker
one plus one equals fish puzzle like that that to me is the ones i will most likely not use more than like once every like three or four sessions so so many thoughts have just come to my mind this is what happens when you ask me to come on board it's so it's so wonderful and although i'm just like oh my god too many thoughts the first thought i think is very simple uh about
00:29:52
Speaker
You mentioned timers, puzzles that have timers with them. We've talked about that a little bit before in the past and why we love and hate them. And I think one of the things that I think they can really help with is when you have players who it's taking a little bit too much time. If there's a timer on the puzzle, A, the players might feel motivated to really start trying to crank out the answer as opposed to sometimes I find my players are just going,
00:30:19
Speaker
Hmm, let's think about this a little bit too long. A timer really can help make it so the puzzles don't take half your session. Right. You don't necessarily have to kill them at the end of the puzzle, but just be like, oh, you have, especially if it's a puzzle that leads to like a treasure they don't necessarily need or something like that. Yeah. You can just be like, OK, the puzzle's over. You failed. You get zapped or the lightning bolt damage. Yeah.
00:30:48
Speaker
But the really, I mean, or you can be really cruel with them and just not have them damage it at all. But you can be like, hey, you know, there's this, uh, as you're, as you pull apart, as you pull this piece from the door, uh, a shift in the sand twist and, you know, and then now you've got your timer, right. And at the end of the timer, all you do is see the bars jump, drop down on the door. You can't get in at this point. Yep.
00:31:13
Speaker
or a shield appears on the door. So now you can either come up with a new way to try to get a stupid door, or it's time to move on because you just sealed the door for life, right? So what's the nice thing about that is as a game master, then it's like, oh, cool. I've got a magical item that players must seem to want, even though they don't know it's behind the door. I now know that I can do this again, and they're going to be pushing to get that.
00:31:42
Speaker
But I wouldn't drop it like the next episode either. I would wait a couple.
00:31:45
Speaker
I think the big thought that came to mind during, uh, kind of your thought on puzzles was you asked the question, why is this puzzle here? Uh, and it reminds me of the old, I don't know if this is something I learned in elementary school or something, but like who, what, and why three very important questions. And you obviously, we obviously think of the, what it's a puzzle. You have to think of what the puzzle is. And you brought up why is the puzzle there? And I really liked that.
00:32:15
Speaker
but i think one of the things that can help dm's who are trying to design puzzles is who made this puzzle right if it's in a wizard's tower think about it lets you get in the head of the wizard you know be like does he really like stars great he has star puzzles everywhere
00:32:33
Speaker
Right. Yeah, that's kind of the whole, like I said, the who and the why are going to be very similar. It's like, oh, hey, why is this puzzle here? Well, the wizard wanted. Well, what is the wizard really want, though? Like, what is the wizard like? How does he act? What is his, you know, what kind of wizard is he? What does he do? Maybe it's a time puzzle because he's a time wizard. Maybe it's a
00:32:53
Speaker
Maybe it's a fire puzzle, and at the end of it, if you don't make it, the fireball goes, hey, I don't know, it could be anything funny. Maybe it's the cloud lizard, and as soon as you fail, candy bursts out of the doorway.
00:33:06
Speaker
depends on what kind of age group you're playing. I'm starting to learn how to play with kids and everything blows up in the candy, you know? Everything's smart, fart jokes all around. Everything explodes in the candy, like it legitimately is what it's turning into. I'm talking to my son about it and like the last time we played, we played a very slow, or not slow, a very like simple D&D game, you know, like, hey,
00:33:31
Speaker
so-and-so lost something in the woods, go find it. And you kind of move him through a small pathway. And then he ended up running into a wolf, which he decided to kill because he's like, oh, well, they're protecting this thing that I need to get. So, and then when he cut it in half, it turned, it bursted into candy like a pinata. And I was like, oh, there we go, done. And he was super excited about it, but yeah. That's when you take real candy out and you put it on the table.
00:33:56
Speaker
Right, yeah, no, I do. I actually when we play combat with my kids, if I when when my little ones play, because they don't play very often, normally combat is done with gummy bears. So that way, when they kill it, they just grab the gummy bear and eat. I've seen that extra extra connections for the kids, too, because they're like, yes, I get to eat at the same time. But yeah, or big ones, you get Oreos because they take up four spots, that kind of. So now, yeah.
00:34:23
Speaker
You're running the game on the Genkong Twitch channel. The Rime of the Frostmaiden. Yes. Maybe spoiler alert for anyone who is reading that book or something like that. Good luck. Good luck for it to be a spoiler. I use the book for inspiration. I don't use the book for... So you've gone off... We haven't yet, actually. Well, technically we've already gone off the rails because I didn't start it where it's supposed to start.
00:34:53
Speaker
Have you done any puzzles are that are there any puzzles in that module and oh, yeah, there's a bunch I Mean the biggest puzzle is as the is the the first main act in it the biggest puzzle is is how to understand The big bad is like a it's a it's a very big puzzle because it's like you need certain pieces to the to the story in order to be like, okay, I
00:35:19
Speaker
This is where the big bad is going to go next. This is where the big bad is going to go next, because the big bad can move faster, he can do things quicker, and he can do things worse than you can, unless you get there on time. And that's why we- So it's a puzzle to figure out stuff about the big bad. Yep. Okay. So that's pretty conducive. Yeah, there's also other puzzles in there, but nothing I've really seen that's like,
00:35:47
Speaker
When we talk puzzle trap type stuff, they're very simple traps. It's like, hey, Rolodex there is like those types of traps, not, Hey, you know, the, the spite, you know, the door dropped now technically.
00:36:05
Speaker
We're going to talk that way. They're in a puzzle at the moment because I split the party. We have to find out how to get to the party members because there's a giant jagged teeth that split between. The best way I can describe this is because this was this happened right at the end of episode four, which is what we just just launched last week. Go watch it. One of the Durga run past like run away from everything, right? And head into an area where they can't see.
00:36:34
Speaker
and two of our players who are our big beefy characters. We're starting to notice there might be a slight love interest going on there, so I'm pretty curious to see how that's going to go.
00:36:47
Speaker
We're actually playing with more ladies than we are guys this time, which is interesting because it's the first time I've ever ran a campaign where I've got more ladies than I do then, which is awesome. It brings a different dynamic to the story. These two run off through this doorway and the big bad for this specific little encounter is standing on the other side next to a lever. He pulls the lever.
00:37:12
Speaker
and do you remember the episode and i know everybody's seen this they don't like this series but i love it episode one towards the end when darth maul is fighting the two jedi you know how the little like the red gate goes up and you can't get through it and you're kind of sitting back and forth it's kind of what's happened so they've locked out the the big bags on this side of the wall
00:37:34
Speaker
There's a wall here, there's a wall of teeth here, then there's the door guard and the two characters, then there's a wall of teeth here, and the rest of the characters are back here. I hope this doesn't end like that movie.
00:37:44
Speaker
You've right, those two characters are dead, and the other ones come in and figure out what's going on. I have a contingency plan if a TPK happens, just in case, but I don't think it's gonna happen, so. It's weird to say I have a contingency plan for a TPK, but Icewind Dale is brutal. I don't always... I don't always...
00:38:08
Speaker
like to kill players off, just to kill them. But I do like to, if something like that would happen, I want something that's story-based that makes sense, that would really tie the story together of how you got protected. And our players have already set that up for me. So I'm like, OK, good. You gave me a way to bring somebody in if I need to, just in case.
00:38:33
Speaker
I just thought of a very interesting way of doing that type of puzzle. But I are around because my question I was about to ask you is that seems like a great puzzle. A lot of fun. It seems like it would more geared towards like rolling the dice for dexterity to jump through stuff like that, which would not always be the great greatest podcast.
Virtual D&D Games: Challenges and Opportunities
00:38:57
Speaker
Right.
00:39:00
Speaker
it would be really cool to see if you could do this virtually but in person make it so you have like little things that like light up like little like lights that you can control by remote control have the players ready with their miniatures for when it goes down they have to get through enough and then stop before like if they cross through the light boom they get bit by the teeth it would be cool right so do that virtually
00:39:26
Speaker
It'd be interesting to do it that way. So what I'm thinking for this one is, though, is the funny thing is the the big bad is actually controlling the whole thing. He's got the lever in his hand. He can do up and down. So he's going to just let the door guard and the two characters fight each other. And then when they're done, he's going to drop it. But if the players aren't waiting for that that that teeth to go off.
00:39:45
Speaker
Then he's going to open it, close it again, and then the players are going to be in the second room waiting while the two other players are fighting off this duergar, this next duergar. And the funny thing is, though, is the two players can take it because they're the stronger players. So it's also kind of giving them that opportunity to really shine and do their
00:40:06
Speaker
their dirty work the way the characters are built. Because we got a couple characters that are more social asks, they're support characters. And we've got our big badass characters that are, that's all they want to fight. And those are the two characters that, of course, that ran off and tried to kill things.
00:40:25
Speaker
I'm trying to think of a way of how you could do something like that virtually. One of the things I love to do with my puzzles is really give the players something to interact with IRL. So it's not just like, oh, does my player know about this? They can obviously, yes, roll arcana, dexterity, stuff like that. But I like if the players can do it. So what have you had on the screen that you guys, like your tabletop,
00:40:52
Speaker
If you're using a VTT now, I'm getting now I have an idea like have have it be where there's a picture of the wall of teeth and You just you make does it make it disappear for a second? And if the players who are on the opposite side notes and go like I quickly run through You know then they can get through but if they don't notice it it can go up and stuff like that That would be yeah a cool way. It would be cool. What do you?
00:41:18
Speaker
So I'm thinking about putting a nine piece puzzle next to the wall of teeth on the other side of it. And if they can put the pieces together, then the teeth will unlock and then they'll be able to go through to the second one. A nine piece puzzle? Yeah. So you put four, at least put a three by three with symbols on it. You have to connect all the symbols, but they can do it in real time. Like what I could do is I can move it to the side of the screen so that it's showing up on the Twitch channel and they're moving the pieces, trying to line up the puzzle pieces.
00:41:47
Speaker
while I'm battling at the moment. So it's in real time that that's what they're doing. But I have really smart people. I have really smart players. I don't think it would work because I think it'd just be done too darn fast.
00:42:02
Speaker
You can always, so I do know, I've designed, I've done a puzzle like that, like the old toys where like you'd slide the slides up and down. There are a bunch of websites you can do different amounts of tiles and too. And you can also put your own picture. So you could make, you could get a picture of a wall of teeth and make them put it together.
00:42:22
Speaker
I can do the Wall of Teeth. Or like I said, it's going to most likely be the Door Guard. So it'll be a type of underground dwarven, symbols, runes, that kind of thing, which we've already based on the rune. We already are working with the rune puzzle anyways. But I didn't plan early enough for the rune puzzle because I would have had to sprinkle what that rune means or where that rune would be and how it would make sense early on in the session in order for something like this to work.
00:42:51
Speaker
really well but right now I don't think I've got enough puzzle pieces in the background for that to piece it all together. I think so the reason I started this podcast all about puzzles and stuff like that because it was of my opinion that nowadays people in the TTRPG space kind of hate puzzles you know which is proving to be wrong
00:43:16
Speaker
I will say 99% of the people I've talked to are like, I'd love puzzles. But they're like, it's hard to do nowadays. And I think one of the big things is the virtual aspect of D&D, the kind of showmanship that has appeared with all the live action plays. Puzzles are not always the greatest for that. So I would
00:43:41
Speaker
Super love to see if you know next session when I tune in I see a nice little puzzle with those wall Yeah, I might like said maybe not this arc, but I'm definitely gonna be working on it So we I've done it with gooey cube stuff before like we have at the end of it. There's It's a star and there's a and there's a riddle at the top and you have to match the pieces to the points of the star And you can literally do it on a virtual tabletop. Just grab the coin and move it to the spot you can put it at stuff like that So I've seen it done. I just
00:44:09
Speaker
It has to be something that makes sense and it has to plan out, right? Because, yeah. Cool. Awesome. Well, it's nice to hear about the puzzles going on in your Gen Con game. And it's nice to think a little bit about what can be done with them. But now I think it's time to see if you can solve some puzzles.
00:44:39
Speaker
What kind of puzzle we're working on here? I'm gonna try. Normally when you saw puzzles in DNE, you got four players. That has been one of the difficult things about this segment. Who knows, maybe someday I'll find a way to solve that. That's my puzzle. Figuring out how to make this segment the best it can be.
00:45:00
Speaker
So we have two puzzles a puzzle that I wrote and a puzzle from an official module or some official book somewhere Stuff like that. Which one would you like to sell first? Oh, of course. I'm gonna go with one you wrote first Okie dokie. Here we go on yours. I'm on your channel. So I want to try your puzzle first That way if I fail, it's your puzzle. It's not failing to some random puzzle.
00:45:25
Speaker
No, listeners kind of body horror warning,
Solving and Critiquing the 'Eye for an Eye' Puzzle
00:45:29
Speaker
Oh
00:45:29
Speaker
trigger warning at this point. I don't know why I made a kind of disgusting potential puzzle, but if you don't like a little bit of body horror, I don't think it's too bad, but maybe fast forward like 10 minutes, five minutes, something like that. You have entered a chamber and the door behind you slams shut.
00:45:55
Speaker
In this chamber, you have found a small bust of a pirate captain. A bust. It's the head and shoulders of a pirate captain with a devilish grin on his face. There's a large rimmed hat made of black leather with a giant feather tucked inside of it that sits on his head.
00:46:22
Speaker
On his left eye is an eye patch with a symbol emblazoned on it of a small like spoon. Across from the bus, there's a dining room table set with plates, silverware and cups. At the center of this table is a covered platter. And that is what you see in this chamber.
00:46:46
Speaker
I have, so I walked into a room, I have a pirate captain's statue in front of me. Yep, it is made out of stone. It's made out of stone. His hat and his eye patch are not. Okay, hat and eye patch are not. And then across from it, literally like right behind it, I'm guessing, or right across from it is the dining room table and there's a covered platter in the center.
00:47:14
Speaker
with, and then there's also silverware, cups, plates, the accoutrements of a dining room set. You said there's a symbol of what looks like a boon or like a balloon? A spoon. A spoon on his eye? On his, on his, on the eye patch. All right, I'm going to go over, can I pick up the platter from the middle of the table? Okay, you want to just pick up the whole platter or pick up the lid? No, like open it up.
00:47:44
Speaker
opening it up, you reveal the decapitated head of the pirate. Perfectly preserved. Now this is the perfectly well done head. It doesn't have the hat or the eye patch. And you say the eye patch is, is, has the symbol on it. Yep. Okay. And quickly, just before I go any farther, like what am I, what am I solving for? Or am I trying to get out of the back out of the door?
00:48:13
Speaker
Yep, you would walk into a room door shut behind me and it says, oh, you're stuck here until you get out there until you figure out the puzzle to get out the door. Exactly. OK, got it. Making sure any of that. No writing anywhere around. Not that you can see. OK. Is the is the pirate facing each other or no? Pirate head facing the bust? Good question. Yes, yes, they are.
00:48:43
Speaker
Well, that's not useful then. On the plate, are they set properly? Yes. It looks like someone had set up right for dinner. Right for dinner? OK. Do you know why I'm asking this? Because this has helped me figure out if I'm even anywhere near the puzzle or not. I'm curious why you're asking this.
00:49:07
Speaker
So if you think about it in a noble's way of setting a plate, spoons are on a certain side, forks are on a side, knives are on a side. Yes. So the spoon is always on the left side. Fork is on the right, knife is on the left. And technically, the salad fork is also on the right. Welcome to the Dungeon and Problems podcast, where we teach you about puzzles and proper dining etiquette. Proper dining etiquette, right?
00:49:37
Speaker
I think I'm right. I could be wrong. It's been a while. My grandparents used to make me set the table every Christmas. We never set the table, Zoe. So that's the reason I asked, because you said the left eye has the symbol of the spoon on it. So curiosity was that if it was supposed to be on the right eye because of the fact, let's say it was a fork on there, then it would have made it different on the puzzle.
00:50:07
Speaker
The pirate himself, he has both eyes. He does have both eyes, yes. OK. And are they open? They are open, and they are a beautiful hazelnut color. OK. Just to set the scene a little bit. So there's no symbols on the eyes or anything? There are no symbols on the eyes. OK. Is he bald, or is he? He is bald. Bald is a baby's bottom. OK, he is bald. Nothing. Nothing on the skin of the head.
00:50:37
Speaker
Nope. Okay. Walking through the picture. Walking through the picture. Right eye is good, just hazelnut eye. Yep, on the decapitated head or the statue? On the statue. So the statue's eye is just made out of stone. The right eye, you just see stone. But you can just see a stone eye. There's nothing crazy on that. There's no color, nothing like that.
00:51:07
Speaker
like this. No smile. No smile on the cap. Hey, I got a check. Look of pain. Okay. One of the best things to do with puzzles listeners is gather all your information. Uh, there's no time limit on this one. Uh, but if you were to run this puzzle yourself, maybe throw in a time limit, maybe have poisonous gatherer. If it's a pirate captain, water start to fill up the room and stuff like that. But try and gather your information first.
00:51:36
Speaker
If I lift underneath the eye patch, is it just a stone eye? You lift the eye patch up and you see that there's a small divot inside. It seems like there's a rounded opening underneath the eye patch. Okay. If I check the hat, do I feel anything? See anything? Give me an investigation check.
00:52:06
Speaker
Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. 17. 17. You find that this, that the hat is just a regular old kind of pirate cap. You remove the feather and the feather actually ends in a three pronged, three pronged,
00:52:34
Speaker
tool, kind of like a trident. It seems like the feather is actually kind of a fork. All right. And is it on the left side or the right side of the feather? It would be the right side. It doesn't matter on that one. I like this too because this is throwing so much more information at the puzzle that I hadn't considered and loved the ad lifting.
00:53:05
Speaker
So it's curious, though, because now you've set the plate right. Right. I've done it. I said it was on the right side. I'm helping him build the puzzle. It's OK, guys. We got this. It'll be harder the next time he runs this. He'll have extra information. Though I'm not sure I really understand the puzzle yet. I'm still trying to piece the pieces together.
00:53:28
Speaker
Um, left eye symbols. Oh, I didn't even put spoon. I put Boone because I thought he said the balloon, like a arts coin. Uh, but spoon makes more sense. Um, nothing else on the bus to the pub of the, that I'm missing. Is there, give me an investigation check and this gracious, do I get a plus to this or no?
00:53:58
Speaker
Uh, you always seem inqui- you're very inquisitive. So I'll give you, I'll give you a plus for your proficiency. Uh, cause... A level away. We'll go with your level seven. So plus... Four? Plus... Cool. I got an, I got an eleven. Okay, so plus four and then you are very, uh, investigative. So we'll give you a plus three. So, uh, so seven, eighteen.
00:54:26
Speaker
So it'll be 11 so 15 or 14 It's a 11 plus proficiency which would be plus 4 no, no, no, I got a 7 oh added before Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I'll be honest. I got a 7 so okay, so got a 15. That's still pretty good ah
00:54:47
Speaker
you start searching around the statue and you find a small button in the back of it just a little little thing that can be pressed in okay i'm gonna push in the button hopefully it doesn't stab me in the eye
00:55:04
Speaker
you push in the button and the magic mouth spell activates. And it says speak to me. It says I invited you to dinner and you repay me with treachery. I demand what was stolen from me. So if I remove I remove the hat and put it on the
00:55:31
Speaker
Decapitated head and I removed the eye patch and put it on the decapitated head. What happens? Nothing happens. OK. Did the stupid pirate start talking at all or no? Nope. OK. So it's not that. Does the pirate have hands?
00:55:56
Speaker
The statue? It's all just heads. Heads and shoulders. Heads and shoulders. Shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Without toes, knees and toes, without toes. Okay. Pay me with treachery and demand what was stolen. I don't know what was stolen. I know your left eye doesn't have a patch. Ooh.
00:56:26
Speaker
That doesn't sound good. I think I know what I have to do and I don't want to do it. All right, so we're going to do a little saw shit because that seems to be with the body. I'm going to put the hat back on the dude. I'm going to put his eye patch back on, but I'm going to flip the eye patch up. I'm going to walk over to the decapitated head. I'm going to fork the Trident thing from the rimmed hat. I'm going to pluck his eyeball out, shove it in the statue's head.
00:56:54
Speaker
Alright, give me a sleight of hand with disadvantage. Well, that's not good. That was a five. You start to go for the left eye and you stab into it with the fork and you puncture it causing it to burst. Well, shit. Is there any grapes around? There are no grapes around.
00:57:23
Speaker
Damn. But there's that as a possibility. There's another eye. There's another eye. My dexterity is not hurting it. Well, here's a little thought. Here. Just a little. I'll play the role of another person. What was that symbol on the eye patch there? What's the spoon?
00:57:53
Speaker
But who would put a spoon on their iPad? I could dig it out with a spoon. What's the fun in that? Yeah, I'm going to dig it out with a spoon. Any random spoon or? Probably the spoon that's right next to him, because I haven't found the spoon otherwise. But there are spoons, there's spoons all around the table.
00:58:21
Speaker
I'm gonna have to pick the one that's at the table. Do any of them have weird symbols on them? You start picking up the spoons. There are five spoons in total. There's a spoon with a sun. A spoon with a moon. Ooh, spoon with a moon. That's pretty good. There's a spoon with a dog on it. A spoon with an eye on it. And a spoon with a banana.
00:58:54
Speaker
I mean, I would want the banana, but I have a feeling it's the spoon with the eye on it, but... The question is, do I have any background information that says what was stolen? I would say no.
00:59:20
Speaker
don't okay got it um yeah i'll use this but maybe if you run this in a game you definitely would right yeah so um i'm gonna say the spoon with the eye okay i'm gonna try to please take the eye out give me that slight of hand check with advantage 17 and that's a nat 20 nat 20 you i think nope never mind that wasn't that one but it was 17 first
00:59:51
Speaker
You pop that stalker out with the eyeball bouncing on the spoon. Maybe you put it in your mouth and do like a little egg race. No, not really. As you do that, the head on the platter seems to melt away, leaving this eye on the spoon. You go over to the statue and fit it into that eye socket. And it turns to stone and says,
01:00:17
Speaker
Thank you. And the door rises up. Nice. That was my eye for an eye puzzle. A little bit of addition. What were you what are you thought on that puzzle? I would have wanted something a little less obvious once I got to the spoon. That would be my only my only change I would make on this. Something you could think about.
01:00:47
Speaker
It depends on your world though, because a lot of times you could play around with it being part of the world itself. Or you could have spun it differently and had, you know, symbol of a trident on it. Like, oh look, it connects. Kind of the same thing as the eye thing, but symbol of the trident as well. But what I would have played around with was something, if you actually, this pirate had something that was stolen from him, besides his eye of course, then you can make that symbol on the spoon.
01:01:15
Speaker
Then they have to correlate those things. That's a good idea. The the symbols on the spoon was originally, in my mind, just going to be a investigation check. You find a spoon with an eye. Yeah. But since you were so curious, I wanted to throw in a couple of different ones. That's why banana was the last one. Yeah. I was like, yeah. It was funny because when you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, no, he's he's doing what I've done before.
01:01:45
Speaker
because I've been there before. It's like, ah, here's a puzzle. I have three answers and I'm giving the fives. Let me make up the last two just on the spot real fast. Also, the button was on the spot. When I was originally designing this, I was thinking about when you first enter the chamber, the statue saying something or an inscription on the statue, but I thought one of the things I've been playing around with recently is
01:02:14
Speaker
making so the puzzles are more challenging. They don't just tell you right away what to do. Because if you walked in there and the statue had been like an eye for an eye, you would have started off like right away. Yeah. So something you can do for that and it's kind of a fun little little little jingle for that is let's say you're getting you're in a
01:02:43
Speaker
I'm trying to figure out, OK, so the pirates here, let's say you're in a pirate's headmaster's quarters, right? He's protecting it. Every one of those creatures that you fought up to this would have a doubloon in their pocket. And then you know why. You don't know why. So you go back and you say, oh, on the back of the pirate's statue, there's a circular shape. It looks like something might fit in it. And then any time they didn't,
01:03:12
Speaker
get that investigation like you always want to give them like one or two just be nice but every other time they kill something if they go back and they investigate and look and see what's in its pockets and they roll high enough you give them another one and then you read the word you read the sentence off once and then you don't read it again and you say that you know the balloon disappears so then they realize that if they don't
01:03:39
Speaker
get it the first they didn't write it down fast enough and I would even like throw an accent in on it like heavy like thick iron accent so because what you want to do is you want to distract that first run so that they're only picking up pieces of the puzzle and oh now I get to put another balloon in then they're realizing that their timer is clicking in now it's like oh I only have five balloons he can only say this five times before I don't know what the hell he said
The Tomb of Horrors: A Historical Perspective
01:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, so you're just giving a little extra twist to that that puzzle. So now this puzzle. Is pulled from a module. And I will read the it's just a puzzle where it's not really a. Giant like there's no trap door you can bypass as a player, but we'll see what you can solve.
01:04:34
Speaker
The stone archway before you is filled with a veil of thick vapors. The stones on either side of the base and the keystone protrude slightly from the stones around them. As you move to within touching distance, the left-hand base stone begins to glow yellow, the right-hand base stone orange, and the keystone seven feet above blue.
01:05:04
Speaker
And that's all you see. So veil of thick papers, left stone, yellow, right stone, orange, keystone blue. Yeah. And we're in a line, like what is, what are we, is it just three different stones and that's all I see? That's all you see in this large archway with the,
01:05:34
Speaker
vapors pooled within seemingly a portal. The reading that's again, it seems like this is blocking the portal out. OK. And this is the only information I can gather. Yeah, this is really so I'll explain that at the end of the puzzle. Sure. Like what I'm saying is like there's nothing else in this room or like there's nothing else around. I have a
01:06:04
Speaker
I have a statue in front of, or I have a set of an archway in front of me on my left side. On the left side, glowstone, right side, glowstone, top glowstone, pretty much. If I activate all three, the thickening will change. What is this veil of thick vapors? Is there anything to that or no? Give me a arcana check. Sure. You are great. That's a natural one.
01:06:38
Speaker
If you had to guess, you think it might be a portal of some kind, or it just might be poisonous gas that if you try and cross it, you die a horrific death. So it has nothing to do with the puzzle. That's all I was checking with. Can I move the stones at all or no?
01:07:03
Speaker
No, they're a pretty solid stone archway. It seems like the... Can I push on them? Can I touch them? You can touch them. Do they do anything if I touch it? Which one are you going to touch? I'm going to touch the yellow one. As you touch the yellow one, it goes dark. Then I'm going to touch the orange one. You touch the orange one and it goes dark.
01:07:36
Speaker
And then I'm going to touch the blue one. You touch the blue one and it goes dark and the vapors remain. What do you do next? I'm going to touch the yellow one again. All right. So after about 20 seconds, the lights return and the yellow one. I was just waiting to see if you did something before the lights returned. No, I'm not walking into the vapor. That's dumb.
01:08:04
Speaker
The you touch the yellow one and it goes dark. OK, I'm going to leave it. I'm going to. If I touch it again, it just comes back or after about 30 seconds, it will come back. Yeah, OK. I'm going to touch the blue one first. You touch the blue one and it goes dark. And then I'm going to touch the orange one, orange one, and it goes dark. And then the yellow one, yellow one goes dark and the vapors still remain.
01:08:34
Speaker
Okay, not based on first letter of the color. So once everything colors correctly, like highlights back up and I've got all the colors back, I'm gonna touch orange, then yellow, and then blue. You touch them and they all go dark when you touch them, but the vapors remain. So it's not that, at least it's not in that order.
01:09:05
Speaker
So when they come back, I'm going to go the opposite order. I'm going to go blues and yellows. You do it. Vapors remain and they come back. OK. So it's not rainbow. Or if it is, I'm not doing it right. But I'm based on what the rainbow says. It's not rainbow.
01:09:36
Speaker
It's not Simon Says, because orange isn't in Simon Says. That's red. It's not highlighting changes of color, because if that was the case, then that keystone would be red. Because then red plus yellow would equal orange. But blue plus yellow doesn't equal orange, and yellow plus orange doesn't equal blue, and yellow plus blue doesn't equal orange.
01:10:06
Speaker
And I tried blue, orange, and then yellow. Have I tried that already? Yeah, you did try that already. So it's not based on the number of letters that are in each color. Have I tried yellow, orange, then blue? I tried the first time, right? Yeah, that was your first try. That was the first one, and that's not right. So it's not the mouse to the lowest.
01:10:34
Speaker
There's nothing else in the room that would give me any sort of a hint. Unfortunately not. Yeah, that's what I figured. So. It's. And if I touch it once and then tap it again the second time, it doesn't happen. It just stays dark and it goes, comes back after a minute. Yep. Or after 30 seconds.
01:11:01
Speaker
Now, an interesting thing I would potentially change in the DM for this is when you touch the wrong color first, I'd probably do some sort of like necrotic or lightning damage or something like that. Yeah. So what I would do is instead of touching the wrong one first, I would definitely make sure you did the puzzle first and then zap them. Yeah. Because if you did the wrong one first, very quickly, they're going to figure out the right one. So you're going to see. Yes. I mean, unless it's some serious.
01:11:30
Speaker
But, um, cause I'm guessing this tells you, you have to get the three in order in order properly. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Um, I would say maybe it'd be interesting for if like started off, like if they do it wrong, zap them or something, and then as they do it wrong so many times, it just start zapping them more and more frequently. Right. Like I said, but with nothing else in the room to help,
01:11:59
Speaker
This to me is, this is not a puzzle I would just present to my players. I would want something that would connect to it. Okay, so for brevity's sake, and I'm okay with failing this puzzle because I don't want to sit here for 20 minutes trying to go through all the different things.
01:12:17
Speaker
I'm a mathematician. If I really wanted to I can figure it out. There's only oh, yeah, there's only nine combinations like yeah So I could just continue to go through these until I got the right my curiosity What is the right order because I now because then I want to think through it once we get the right order on how you could figure Okay, so are you going to see defeat to this puzzle? I Mean I say no, but I don't want to go through all nine combinations
01:12:44
Speaker
I'm saying this is what I would do consistently until I got the right one. So do you want me to go through them? No, you know what? That's as a DM. That is one way of solving it since this puzzle does not have any... Any downfall to it. Yeah, negative. There is one downfall to it actually. So the correct answer is yellow, blue, orange. Yellow, blue, orange. So left, top. It's really just doing it in order.
01:13:14
Speaker
Now the reason why this puzzle might not be so great in most people's opinions is this is from the Tomb of Horrors.
01:13:29
Speaker
The Tomb of Horrors had like the most puzzles in it. It's the Arch of the Mist. Nothing will cause the vapors to clear, nor will any sort of magic allow sight into the area until the glowing stones are pressed in the proper sequence. Yellow, blue, orange. If this is done, the vapors disappear and the path appears to go eastward.
01:13:50
Speaker
If the archways entered when it is clouded, those characters do so will be instantly teleported to area seven where they essentially die. And then if passed through after pressing the glowing stones in proper sequences, those who step through, well, I find the writing of old puzzles were very overly simplified. Yeah. And I think for this one, I think this one is one of the ones, though, that I would definitely
01:14:22
Speaker
I would start giving hints on things as they did it once or twice because for me, there's no... Let me see how you said it. I think one of the biggest things I like, the reasons I do... Even the way you say it, even the way you ran through the numbers, it's still opposite to what the actual answer is.
01:14:47
Speaker
I when I originally read this, I thought it was the correct way when you read it. But when I read it for you, I was like, wait a second. No, this isn't right. Yeah. So going through because like I've done puzzles before, like I was hoping it was the rainbow because I thought that would just been unique. Yeah. One of the other directions I didn't I didn't think. But just saying yellow, blue, orange, I'm trying to think through like what that would actually like.
01:15:17
Speaker
I don't think it does anything. I don't think it does anything. I think it's luck kind of. And that to me is not a puzzle. If luck is all it takes, that is not a puzzle in my opinion. There has to be some catalyst to it. It's just there. Yeah. Now.
01:15:35
Speaker
I think it's, it's good inspiration to think of other puzzles. It is good inspiration to think of other puzzles. Cause what I was hoping was going to happen is you were going to what my goal for it, right? This is what I was thinking through in my own head is that either every time I touch a different color would show up.
01:15:52
Speaker
Or every time I touched it, something would happen, like show something different. Like, oh, I typed it twice. Like, because if you think of, or one of them would not move. So this is another little interesting puzzle you could play around with this idea is, oh, you know, the blue one never moves, right? And the yellow one, but you can push the yellow one and it turns from yellow to red or yellow to green to orange, whatever you want to play the number of colors that
01:16:21
Speaker
But the idea would be is that in the color wheel, if you had yellow and blue, that would make green, right? So you could do yellow and green and that would make blue. So you could highlight those change colors and whatnot. So. I like that. See, that's the way I would play it because it's an actual puzzle. There is a purpose to why it's doing it. And you could really play around with that really well because you could start showing things like,
01:16:51
Speaker
Everything in the room is this color. Like, oh, OK. And it could even be the wrong color, right? You could be complete. Everything in the room is purple, right? And the top one is blue. The middle one's yellow. And this one's yellow. And this one's orange. And then you just be like, tap it and change this color. Tap it, change this color. Tap it, change this color. Oh, but everything in the room is purple. So the top one has to be purple. And then you have to highlight the two to connect to the purple. So it's thinking through that puzzle.
01:17:21
Speaker
It goes back down to the two questions that we asked at the beginning, which is who and why. If a wizard is doing this, he's extremely intelligent. Why is he doing this? He's trying to keep you away from a portal, right? So at least you've got these two connections that you can be like, OK, he's extremely intelligent. The other thing you could play around with is, and this is a little deeper, a lot harder, is everything is blacked out.
01:17:49
Speaker
other than the top one, and you could make it a specific color. Or you could do even better, and you could put two colors here. And the black one now is a specific spell because you need, based on the spell colors, for the different types of spells. That would be cool if you build that into the world a lot.
01:18:11
Speaker
Yeah, because like I said, if it's a wizard, you kind of think through it. So you get a yellow crystal and a red crystal, and you have to cast, I think it's a transformation or a transmutation. Transmutation spell, which is orange, but whatnot. Let's go puzzle making. And that's one thing I like about puzzles. This to me is when I think about puzzles, I have to go to that level of like, OK,
01:18:39
Speaker
Who is it? Why are they doing it? And what is behind it, right? Would it be really annoying? You did all this, right? And you unlock it, and it's an orc dagger. Why the hell would a wizard want an orc dagger? But even if it's part of the storyline, why does the wizard have the orc dagger? You then have to answer that question.
01:19:04
Speaker
And why is he keeping the damn thing? Like, if I was a wizard and I pulled a Nerf dagger, I don't care if it's plot armor or not. I'm gonna be like, this is stupid, throw it away. So, for me, and I liked your puzzle better. Yes! I really did, because it had a purpose, and it had connections to an actual story.
01:19:26
Speaker
Yes, and I also think there was there was more to it the older puzzles on finding There are some really cool ones like another one from that same adventures the three armed gargoyle or something like that There are a couple great puzzles in there, but I think one of the reasons why there's a lot of
01:19:44
Speaker
A lot of puzzles in there that aren't really even puzzles. It's like, you pick up the coin, you consume yourself in the coin. Like, really? That's it? Yep, you're dead. Done. What? Or I think there's a doorway in there somewhere, too. Like, you just grab the doorknob and you automatically... Like, I'm like, how would I know that? There's nothing in this puzzle that would even give me that hint. I think definitely I find a lot of the old puzzles, there were so many of them, that...
01:20:14
Speaker
They were kind of just like that where it's like, okay. So do you want me? Do you want me? How old are you with Dungeons and Dragons? I'm 3.5. Okay. I'm gonna burst your bubble on. I'm gonna burst your bubble on this one then. I love it. Do it. This specific adventure Tomb of Horrors was a tournament game. Okay. You weren't supposed to know much. So and it was a grinder.
01:20:40
Speaker
They were done at conventions, and your goal was to see how many rooms you could complete before you died. That's why there's so many puzzles. There's so many encounters, and there's so many traps. I knew it was a grinder. It wasn't supposed to be. Yeah, but it was done literally at tournaments. So you would have 40, 50 people prepped for this game. Everybody would start at the beginning. How fast can you? How fast can you? How quickly without dying can your party get?
01:21:10
Speaker
And that was like a second edition, first edition thing, right? As they were trying to ramp up the excitement of Dungeons and Dragons at conventions. I kind of like that. That's probably, that's probably my reason why the puzzles are so just basic. There's no real storyline to them because they didn't have to, that wasn't the point. The point was is, you know, get done as fast as you can. So if you're just like, okay, I've got nine options, I can do it. Okay.
01:21:40
Speaker
yellow, blue, orange, yellow, orange, green. And you just continue to go until it still unlocks. Because it's just, you only have, I think, it's like a half hour to do this entire dungeon. Nobody does it. So how many rooms could you get through as fast as possible? And I think that's why they would do something like that, because you're right. There's really no concept to it. But there is an algorithm that
01:22:08
Speaker
If enough tries happened, it would open and do something. But can you imagine if you're in a grinder and you're rushing through, you see this, you see this, everything goes dark and you're like, oh, maybe I answered the puzzle and then you go through and you die. Yeah. So that's one reason why I asked, what do you do? Right. So I think that's where you're coming from. And if you were in a very competitive motion moment where people are all around you doing the same
01:22:36
Speaker
track trying to find out fastest way to get through this puzzle. I think there would be a lot more tension built into it to be like, I'm just going to try to run through it. Like, yeah, no, didn't happen. You're dead. Like those are the things I think they were thinking through when they were talking about two of four. Now I'm not, I'm not a second edition guy. I've just read a lot about it. It'd be interesting to talk to people who have been playing second edition, first edition for years. This was fun. I enjoyed it. Um, I think it was a, an eye opener to
01:23:06
Speaker
all of us to say that, you know, sometimes puzzles really don't have a purpose. But you also have to go back through and actually think through like why that comes back to the question of why, right? Like Tomb of Horrors was not built for a storyline, it was built for a tournament. So it built differently. Same thing with convention games. Like there are certain things that you do at convention games that you don't do at your home table.
01:23:35
Speaker
Or if you do at your home table, you're probably not going to get the same reaction or experience. Time for the final question.
Exploration of Favorite Puzzle Games
01:23:56
Speaker
Okay. What has been your favorite puzzle in anything? Video games, TV, movies, life, going to get the mail and suddenly there's a bobcat in your way. Um, that doesn't happen to you. No, it doesn't. That's not one of them. That's not it. Uh, one of my favorite puzzle games at least, I wouldn't say my favorite puzzle, but one of the puzzles that I've really loved because there's such an intricacy to it is any of the God of War games.
01:24:24
Speaker
all of them have beautiful puzzle connect like the puzzle rooms are ridiculous but some of the puzzles are not just like puzzle rooms it's like hey you need to go to this entire new world bring it here open this doorway then you're going to find out you need another item that's you got to go pick it up get back and open this doorway
01:24:46
Speaker
While all of these doors have puzzles to get into that room itself as well, the one I can remember the most, God of War III, so not even the new series, the old series,
01:24:58
Speaker
When you're trying to get into the Tears Tomb, it's all three spiral circles. And each one shifts doors. And so you have to line up all the doors to get to the center. And then you have to realign all the doors to get out. And there's traps and stuff and monsters all around throughout the whole thing. But if I can say a single puzzle game, I would definitely say God of War. The series alone has been just tremendously good puzzles. Now, there are a ton of other games
01:25:27
Speaker
puzzles too. We can go old school and go to like Zelda. Zelda is a huge game for puzzles, right? Huge game for puzzles. Big puzzles. I didn't know that about God of War. I only played like maybe 30 minutes of the OG PS2 God of War and it just seemed like a hack and slash to me.
01:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, so it's hack and slash until you hit a puzzle room, and then it's build the puzzle, and then it's hack, hack, hack, hack, hack, puzzle, hack, hack, hack, hack, puzzle. Really, that's all the game is. It's puzzles and hack and slash.
01:26:01
Speaker
I'm going to have to go buy a freaking PlayStation 2 now and get God of War and play. No, just go get your PlayStation 5 and buy and just download the remastered version of the whole series. My son, who's nine years old, is playing through the original three because he got he started playing the Viking levels, which for PS5 have tons of puzzles in them, too. You could even start at that one. Truthfully, if you didn't want to deal with all the like pixelation and all the cheesy
01:26:30
Speaker
you know, God of War looking like he's got square arm, square muscles, that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Um, but, uh, I don't mind it, but yeah, those, those are the types of like, if you're talking puzzle, puzzle, those are the types of puzzles I think of immediately.
01:26:46
Speaker
Because I'm thinking through other games really there weren't that many puzzles unless you talk about goals and word puzzles to me are like the most Thing in the world truthfully. I think they're fun, but they have to be gone. There has to be a purpose like oh you find this journal and These these names are crossed out. What do you like? Oh Or Somebody did this to me actually one of my one of my game masters
01:27:13
Speaker
said, hey, uh, your mentor left you a note. And then I didn't realize it, but until like an hour later, he was like, there's blood splattered across it. And I was like, okay, whatever. And then I, then I put, and then he was like, Oh, well get there fast. I might not be where I'm supposed to be. And I was like, what the hell was he talking about? So instead I looked back at it. And if I circled the words that have the blood splot on them,
01:27:43
Speaker
It told me a different story completely. Oh, I love that. So I miss that. But then again, you got to ask the questions. Like I was playing a thief. So it was thieves can't in all honesty, honesty. But it was just a very heavy form of it. Everybody listening, this is medieval cheerleading squads right now. This is what I'm hearing. Bring it on. Yeah.
01:28:07
Speaker
So that's interesting because this could play really well into your catalyst.
Character Backstories and Interactive Sessions
01:28:12
Speaker
So knowledge lost. Once gone, it is a loss felt from generations. How was such wisdom forgotten or made to be replaced? What machinations caused such an unimaginable thing to happen? What fallout was there in the cloud cast by such absence? Is there any hope for its recovery or is such lore lost forever?
01:28:36
Speaker
Are there any left who still remember pieces of what was once known? Now I'm going to steal from my favorite, uh, video game series that had a fair amount of puzzles, but what was stolen that night when we were drugged was my family's ancient book of songs and stories. Uh, the, uh,
01:29:06
Speaker
The Bardacus in Kellis stolen from Sly Cooper and the Thebius Raccoonus. It's a book that my family has written down all their Bardic stories and songs and techniques. And the other performers stole it and split it apart. And members of the troop have spread throughout the desert to keep it away.
01:29:37
Speaker
And I have one year to recover it. And now you have an arc that your Gungeon Master can play with on top of everything else. And like I said, and that was just with three roles. So, and you've built a character that has some very deep depth to it. You've given a Game Master some things to really play with. And I mean, I would play that character. I would have no way she'd play that character.
01:30:02
Speaker
I'm not a big fan of playing bards and that, but I would definitely try. But yeah, no, I think that's an interesting one. This would be interesting to do short form, you know, quick five minute, 10 minute, check in live session on Instagram once or twice a month and just kind of build real quick.
01:30:27
Speaker
Even if we had to, we could kind of like roll right before the live session and be like, hey guys, these are the numbers we rolled this week. This is what we're kind of working with and then kind of just spitball for a little bit.
01:30:38
Speaker
Awesome. Well, my friends, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dungeon Problems.
Designing Meaningful Puzzles
01:30:44
Speaker
I've been Earthos Creations, and I think we learned a lot today about... I think the biggest thing, the biggest takeaway from this is the who, what, and why. I think that is a very important question. As a DM, you should ask yourself when you're designing puzzles and traps and stuff like that. Today, I have been joined by the amazing tabletop misfits, James.
01:31:07
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me. Tell us where we can find you. It was an honor. It was so much fun. Plug the Instagram, all that.
Tabletop Misfits on Social Media
01:31:16
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, so all that fun stuff, right? So the way you can find me is anywhere you're going to see this goofy-ass black and blue, or, yeah, black, blue, and white blizzard. It's going to say tabletop misfits on it. You can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitch.
01:31:31
Speaker
probably outer space somewhere, I don't know, but Facebook businesses. You can find me at conventions. I usually have that logo. But yeah, I run a Icewind Dale campaign on Monday nights over on the Gen Con TV Twitch channel. That's Gen Con TV, all one word. And then on Wednesday nights, I do another interview show where we bring guests in every week and we talk about D&D and
01:32:01
Speaker
great characters and worlds right on the spot. And you can see me doing that on Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thank you again to Tabletop Misfits. Please go check him out on Instagram and his Twitch channel. The theme song was done by the Dungeon Maestro on Instagram and TikTok. And you can find me at Earthos Creations everywhere. Have fun, do your best, and remember, I believe in you.