Don't F*ck Up Puzzles

November 8, 2023

Puzzles Gone Wrong #

So I was running The Eye In Team the about a month ago with a relatively small cast (only Phiscus and Rattakus). It wasn’t obvious where the session was headed, beyond the waking up of not-corpse Malborn, but that’s one of the great things about blades. You don’t need extensive prep. You just need to play off the players. With the small party it wasn’t as easy as usual but everything was going smoothly until we decided

I need a puzzle. “No stress, I got this” I ignorantly assured myself. I’d just wing it like the rest of the session, with a bit of flavour decorated about some die rolls.  I wasn’t wrong, per se, but I didn’t fully grasp the weight of the puzzle in the minds of retired Dungeons and Dragons players. The moment I said “riddle” the atmosphere shifted from a light humour to clinical analysis. I begin introductions and set the scene as my mind spins out an idea:“Dimmer sisters. 2nd trial of entry. Who do they accept? Anyone with desire. That’s it: the theme. Rich, powerful and poor all invited, just whoever is ambitious. The players will make a few rolls or flashbacks to investigate the sister’s values and pick the one that matches”. With that it was settled.

And with that I proceed to describe three chefs with different dishes following themes of power, beauty and hunger. All the while I’d been running my mouth firing of a string of flavour dissected and laid out as clues by the cast. They did not roll socials, they did not research the sisters, they searched the residence. They took the intellectual route and formulated the strongest of suspicions possible given the limited (and upsettingly contradictory) axioms. And thus, at the end of the session when I revealed that it was carrots on the poor lady’s plate (carrots being the only item shared across all three dishes) it was not regarded as a revelation but instead a disappointment.

There were a dozen points of failure here and a dozen ways the party or I could have performed better. I could have listened to their rationale and bent the answer toward them, I could have removed my poker face to show them hints being hot or cold. I could have obeyed the gm-player contract and directly told them what was missing, or even asked for a moment to think right back at the start. They could have looked at their character sheets for resources or are use of flashbacks and social rolls. In any case, my puzzle was throughly f*cked.

Unf*cking puzzles #

There are innumerable ways to implement puzzles successfully but, at least for me, they fall into three general categories.

Abstraction #

When the characters are solving some esoteric cypher, stepping hesitantly across a grid of marked and trapped tiles, or answering the realm’s historical trivia, what are the players doing? They don’t know the lore and they , tragically, don’t have access to the +4 int of their character. Oftentimes the answer is abstraction.

Instead of giving players an impossible task you “translate it” into an achievable task for a 21st century civilian. This is a task requiring an initial stage of preparation, though the puzzle can often be ‘kept in one’s back pocket’ until the need arises. This is especially potent when you carry a physical prop for the players to handle. My example would be the Dimmer sister’s statue collection of past whispers. The characters must pair together texts and quotes with faces to demonstrate their commitment through research. The players were given a stack of cards with descriptions and names of the characters of past episodes which they had to match under a time constraint.

This encourages attention at the table, rewards player dedication and requires reminiscence. Its is the perfect puzzle for my purposes. You can be sure that no campaign of mine will go too long without a memory game of some form, though any test of player wit is warmly welcomed at my table.

Patience #

Its was only obvious in retrospect but 6 seconds isn’t long enough to spend designing a puzzle when your players are fresh from a long line of dungeon crawlers in which every puzzle is poured over collaboratively for hours on end. At some blades tables I’m sure it would have been perfectly natural to solve the riddle in a role or 3 with a quick “I bribe the butler” or “I’ve had and interest in this place for months. Can I flashback and roll study for a clue?”. At my table though, the expectation is that a puzzle is a challenge to test the wit of player and GM alike.

When last I used the approach (which is literally just pressing pause to set up a narrative mini game) I had just given out the monotype cards and had ten minutes on my hands to plan. It wouldn’t interrupt the session, which was great, but pressing pause for a few minutes is always fine. Players often benefit from a chance to breathe and at a table of friends the conversation can be as enjoyable as the game itself ^(almost ;)). The chance to draw an outline, to rip out the unintended red herrings and provide a defined goal and method of resolution, is invaluable. 6 seconds isn’t enough, but 6^3 seconds? That’s an opportunity.

Players, if you’re reading this I hope you understand that I still want you to make rolls in Blades in the Dark. I design my puzzles with the expectation that you use flashback, study or survey rolls and your criminal inventory to break through. Without making use of these tools you are only receiving a quarter of the puzzle.

Competition #

Puzzles are a competition, only they are generally static. The gm is finished with the puzzle before the players have started. A gm sweating for a puzzle can simply design it live by representing the obstacle himself. 

This may break immersion for some but battling the cast, especially in Blades in the Dark where your chief role is to support them, is thrilling. Usually I do this by pulling out a deck of cards but any form of intellectual battle from eye-spy to competitive hangman.

Long story short #

You only f*ck the puzzle by f*cking the players. Know your audience and their expectations. Make sure they understand your own expectations. Remember it’s a game and have fun.