Challenging RPG Puzzle for Players AND Characters

Here's a picture of the puzzle to pique your curiosity!  I've changed the central picture, but the example still works...

So, there's this board game called "Mansions of Madness."  I don't own it, but I know a little bit about it.  It sounds really cool and if I get the chance, I will probably try to play it sometime.

In the game, there are these puzzles that you must solve to move on.  Maybe from room to room or to get a weapon or to escape.  I don't know exactly, but I do know that the PLAYER must solve the puzzle and the INT of the character she is playing determines HOW MANY MOVES they get to solve it.

I didn't reverse-engineer the puzzles from the game.  I adopted a similar style, but the puzzle pieces and the design of each is mine alone.

So, I thought, what if we did that at the table?  Each round a PLAYER gets a number of moves based upon the stats of her character.  Here's a table that I might use to determine the number of moves --

• ATTRIBUTE < 13 = 1 move
• ATTRIBUTE 13, 14, 15 = 2 moves
• ATTRIBUTE 16, 17 = 3 moves
• ATTRIBUTE 18 = 4 moves
• Specialized skill = +1 move
• Character level = +1 move/5 levels

Right up front, I want to say that I have NOT used this in my game yet.  I have tested the puzzle on actual humans and it does what I want it to do.  YMMV.  :)

Each round the Player gets a number of moves (I'll define those below) based upon the stats of her character?  What stat?  Well, the puzzle is an abstraction.  Maybe its a complicated mechanical lock that requires nimble fingers to manipulate (DEX).  Maybe it's an arcane puzzle made of shifting runes and eldritch energies (INT).  Maybe its a series of tests of will and courage designed to challenge the faith of the believer (WIS).  You can decide based on the situation.  

What character class is important can vary as can the types of "specialized skills" that apply.

Some Basic Rules

• To be solved, the symbols on the edges of the moveable square pieces must match the symbols that surround them in the frame.
• Each piece has a number from 1 to 20.  This is to help GMs plan their puzzles.  It is of course totally fine to simply generate a random puzzle by drawing four pieces of the twenty.
• This is NOT a team effort.  One Player and their Character must manipulate the puzzle each round.  If another player and a different character want to try they must take over and manipulate the puzzle during a different round.  No discussion.  (Of course if you want to break this rule, go ahead, but I don't recommend it.)
• It is important to put something at risk.  Each round, what is the price of delay?  Does a new monster appear through a gate?  Does the party take damage?  Is a wandering monster rolled for?    Does the room close in a little bit more?
• When the puzzle pieces are placed on the table, the arrows must point UP at the start.  The puzzle frame must be placed so that the lock is right side up.  

The Moves

• Rotate piece 90° = 1 move.  
• You can rotate the piece clockwise or counter-clockwise, but only 90° per move.  If the piece has a blue arrow, that piece may only be rotated clockwise.  
• In the example puzzle above, you would need to rotate puzzle piece #4 three times to make it fit (3 moves).
• Swap two pieces = 1 move.  
• Choose two pieces and exchange their positions in the frame.  This DOES NOT change their orientation in any way.
• In the example puzzle above, you would want to swap #1 and #5.  You'd have to rotate them both as well to make them fit.  2 rotates each.  (5 total moves).
• Draw a new piece and trade it for an existing piece = 1 move.  
• You may look at the new piece BEFORE you discard the existing piece.  Regardless of the orientation of the existing piece, you must place the new piece in the frame with the arrow pointing up.
• If you've made the moves I've described above, #9 will never work.  Time to swap it out.

Puzzle Theory

There are 20 pieces in the puzzle.  Five groups of four.  Each group was designed to force a minimum and a maximum number of moves regardless of when its placed in the puzzle.  

• Four pieces that require 0 to 1 moves to fit
• Four pieces that require 1 to 2 moves to fit
• Four pieces that require 2 to 3 moves to fit
• Four pieces that require 3 to 4 moves to fit
• Four pieces that will never fit

In Conclusion

Print this out on some cardstock.  Color is best, but I made the symbols very distinctive shapes so that it will work in black and white.  

I hope you can find a use for this puzzle in your game.  I welcome any suggestions you'd like to share and/or any modifications or suggestions you'd like to make.  Look forward to additional puzzles and other crazy ideas as this gets some use in my game.  I've already got some percolating around in my head.  :)

Download the puzzle here.  Enjoy!

Thief Skills (Part 2)

In a previous post, I suggested a couple of ideas for thief skills.  I tried the second option Wednesday night.  I will describe how I ran it and then some (very) initial reactions to it.

I use a d6 based system now.  Each skill has a number of "pips".  I translated these pips into dice.  So, if you had 4 pips in Tinkering, you now have 4d6.  If you had exceptional INT or DEX and if that was relevant, I gave you extra dice for that.  A 5 or 6 is one success.  2-4 are meaningless.  1 is a failure and *may* necessitate a saving throw.

In one test, Oryx the dwarf had 7d6.  He needed 4 successes (arbitrarily decided by me)  He was trying to jam up a mechanical pit trap so the party could cross.  He opted to roll 3d6 initially in his first attempt.  He rolled 2 successes and 1 failure.  He rolled more dice, two at a time, gaining no more successes but 2 more failures.  He rolled a save at -4 (cumulative -2 for each failure beyond the first) and he failed his save.  He fell into the pit trap.  Luckily, he has Feather Fall, so he was able to avoid the falling damage and the poisoned spikes.

After much laughter by the party, they still needed to close the pit and lock it, so they hoisted Oryx back out of the pit and he went back to work.

In his second attempt, he rolled the two remaining successes he needed to jam and disable the pit, locking the cover in the closed position.

Time required - 3 "rounds".  4 successes,  3 failures.  1 failed save.

Verdict - this worked well.  There was something to risk (falling into the trap).  Time wasn't an issue.

In another test, Kalen was using the system to open a secret door.  He has 6 pips in his skill and +2 for high INT.  8d6.  He rolled several times and eventually opened the door.  Blah.

Time required - 2 "rounds".  4 successes.  1 failure.  1 passed save.

Verdict - not so good.  I kinda forced this to try the system and it didn't work.  Nothing really to risk.  No time constraint.  No trap.

The bottom line --

• The system has promise.
• To make it work and seem worthwhile, there must be a risk --
• There's a trap
• There's a time constraint.  One wandering monster check per attempt or some similar passage of time is probably a good rule of thumb.
• There's some other bad thing that can happen if things to south
• My current system of "pips" may be giving the characters too many dice.  Hard to playtest a new system when the PCs are 8th+ level.  Their level of competence is too high.

Will need to do more playtesting to see if I'm still happy with it.

Thief Skills

I have always been disappointed in the way that thief skills work in a game.

• Player "I search for traps."
• DM "OK."  Secretly rolls percentile dice.  There is a trap but the roll fails. 
• DM "You don't find any traps."
• Player "Is it locked?"
• DM "No."
• Player "I open the chest."
• DM "Make a saving throw..."

I know, I know, you can just roleplay it out.  The player can "be" the thief and they can describe how they will search, but sometimes I have a clever idea for a trap and I don't fully know how it works in practice.

How do I know if they are looking in the right place?  How many springs/gears/triggers are necessary for those crossbow bolts to fire?  What tool is useful to jam up the works?

The character's skill is a shorthand for all the technical knowledge they have and I don't.

Currently in my CotMA game, I don't have thieves.  EVERYONE can try to find/remove/unlock if they have the right skill.  I use a d6-based skill system.

Even that doesn't solve the problem above.  I just roll a d6 in secret, rather than d%.

So, I have *two* ideas that I'd like to throw out there and see if anyone has feedback to share.

IDEA 1:  Traps are like monsters.

Traps have an AC and HPs and they can bite you back.  If you hit them, they don't hit you, but if you miss, they have a chance to hit you back.  If you fumble, they hit you automatically.

What it means "to hit back" might vary based upon the trap.  A poison needle need only hit you once.  Save or face the effects.

A poison gas cloud might need 2 hits.  One to prime and another to release the gas.

A flamestrike might gout fire EVERY time you mess up.

Once all the HPs are gone, the trap is defeated.

IDEA 2:  Trade speed for safety

This is a little bit of a twist on my d6 skill system and it takes inspiration from something I think I read over at 9and30 Kingdoms.

You have a certain number of d6 for your skills.  Each trap needs a certain number of successes to defeat.  Each round, you can roll 0 to N dice, where N is the total number of dice you have.

When you roll the dice, a 5 or 6 counts as a success.  A 1 is a failure.  2-4 don't matter.

You must make a save for every failure you roll, with a cumulative -2 for each addition failure rolled beyond the first one.

So, you can go slow, rolling 1d6 each round, hoping for a success and to avoid failure, or if you are more proficient, you can roll more dice and get the job done faster, but you also might have a bigger failure.

It is possible that higher levels of skill might avoid certain failure levels, or perhaps you could reserve dice to "reroll".  They wouldn't count toward successes, but they could be used to mitigate failures.

Anyway, those are my two initial ideas.  Trying to put a little more suspense into the skill process and trying to give the player decisions to make.

I look forward to any suggestions you have or any ideas you'd like to share.

A Curious Answer...

The good folks at Wizards hosted a live chat on Weds to talk about 5e.

Here's a quote from Mike Mearls that made me scratch my head:

11:04

Mearls:  Hmmm... let's see. I've been DMing mostly, and the rules have changed a lot over the past few days. Probably the funniest thing was guest starring as a librarian in a playtest game at DDXP. Also, I got to test the DR rules when the players had to cut open a dead wererat's stomach to find a gem it had swallowed. That was not how I expected to test those rules.

OK, I've highlighted the part that seems strange to me.

Are they actually rolling dice to see if some character can cut open the stomach of a rat?  Are they actually rolling dice to see if they can find the gem that is inside said rat?

Whaaaaa?

I'd love to know more.  I must be missing something here...

Knockspell #6

Matt Finch has just released Knockspell #6!

It is AWESOME!  so go and get yourself a copy!  

I wrote a little article about using dice as a mini-game for thieves/rogues/etc.  It's really old school, because it challenges the player (primarily) with a little help from the character.

If you decide to try out my little system -- you might want to grab this larger PNG image and print one out for the player.  Enjoy!

click to embiggen and download!

So, When a Big Party Searches for Secret Doors...

In my CotMA Campaign, I have five regular players and ten (10) regular PC's... Whew!  When they search for secret doors that's A LOT of d6's to roll...

Well, it occurred to me that I could use probability to calculate the odds of finding a secret door when everyone is searching.  Then, I could just make one d% roll and tell them if they've found something.

One of my players is a math genius and he reminded me that when you calculate probability, it is often easier to calculate the probability of something NOT happening -- in other words, 5 in 6 times a given (human) character won't find a secret door...  If there's a whole bunch of folks searching; you multiply that 5/6 by 5/6 by 5/6...  You get the idea; then you subtract that % from 1 to get the odds of FINDING a secret door.  Easy peasy.  :)

Taking that into consideration, I whipped up the following Google Doc

http://tinyurl.com/secretdoors


You can head on over there and copy it to your account so you can use it.  


Here's what it looks like for my group:

Cack and Vera are both elves, so there's a "2" in the "finding" column.  Oryx is a dwarf -- maybe he needs a "2" as well.  Sir Owyn has "an eye for irregularity" so although he's human, he gets a "2" as well.  Everyone else gets a "1".

When everyone searches, 92% of the time, they will find a secret door.  If a few humans don't search, you just knock a few of the rows off the bottom.  Of course, I can customize this at any time.

Hope you find that helpful!

Skill System part deux

Roger the GS suggested in the comments of my previous post that I make the racial skills two separate dice that you can fill in yourself.

Here's a version of the skill sheet with a "write your own" part.

Thanks for the idea!

Challenging the PLAYER not the CHARACTER

James M over at Grognardia, made a post today about "Gangbusters".  In his post, he shares this observation about the scenario.  I think it neatly summarizes how "new school" and "old school" differ.

The other thing I love about Murder in Harmony isn't really about the module itself so much as about the type of old school play it (and Gangbusters itself) exemplifies. All of the clues that help the characters resolve the central problem of the module can only be found by looking in the right places or asking the right questions. There are no mentions of "a DC 15 Gather Information check reveals ..." or "Succeed at an Observation roll to notice ..." in this module. Instead, the text assumes that the players, through their characters, will try and think things through on their own, collecting information by visiting the crime scene, interviewing witnesses, and generally employing basic investigative techniques to amass enough clues to point them to other clues that might enable them to resolve the central problem of the module. Murder in Harmony is thus very much about challenging the player, not the character, which I think is an important feature of old school gaming.

This isn't new ground.  I know it's been said before, but I'm currently GM'ing a Swords and Wizardry based game AND I'm playing in a 4e game.  The cognitive dissonance between these two experiences is staggering.

I'm just trying to make sense of what's swimming around in my head.

Skill System

Mike Monaco over at Swords and Dorkery has been working on a skill system for his Labyrinth Lord game.  I like what he's done a lot.

His work inspired me to throw together a graphic that I'll probably start using with my players.  I purchased LOTFP and I know there's something like this in there.  I saw it on the character sheets.  I haven't really read it yet; so I'm not certain how similar this is to what James Raggi has created.

I'm thinking that each PC gets to bubble in one or two more "pips" at character creation.  Possibly 1d3* pips (*1-3 = 1; 4-5 = 2, 6 = 3).  Maybe another pip for every 5 levels.  I don't have any thieves in the game, so the PC's had better specialize.  Just some rough thoughts.  Nothing solid yet...

Ability Checks

Like many Old School DMs, I like to let players try just about anything.  I make a ruling and we roll with it.  I try to remember what my ruling was (and if it was a good one) so we can use it again.  If it was a bad ruling -- I try not to repeat my mistake and to do better the next time.

Skill checks and attribute checks are pretty common.  Often "roll d20 under your attribute" is the standard default.  Maybe there are modifiers.  Maybe there are difficulty levels.

Some other bloggers are doing some interesting work on this too.  Check here and here.  They have great ideas.  I put in my $0.02 here as well.

Here's a simpler update.  I want to have both modifiers AND difficulty levels AND I want to keep things relatively simple.  Some kind of "target number" that can be noted down at character creation and used throughout play.  

Here's my proposal.  It hasn't been tested in play -- YET -- but I have a Megadungeon campaign running, so it won't be long.  If you try it out; let me know what you think.  I think the system has great potential.

Attribute(s)	Target number (or less) on d8
3-4	1
5-8	2
9-12	3
13-16	4
17-18	5
Modifiers to Target Number (may apply to one or both dice – DM's option)
In your “idiom”	+1 for every fraction of 5 levels
(E) Easy	+1
(S) Standard	0
(D) Difficult	-1
(V) Very Difficult	-2
(A) Arduous	-3
(N) Nigh-Impossible	-4
A roll of 1 will always succeed (otherwise why are you rolling?) A roll of 8 (the Ocho) always fails.

Single Attribute Challenge: roll 1d8 and see if you roll less than or equal to your target number. If you do – you succeed. If you don't – you fail. No big deal. If you roll an 8; roll again. On another 8 – something of a notable calamity has occurred (fun, but not necessarily deadly).

Dual Attribute Challenge: roll 2d8 (color coded for each attribute). Must roll equal to or less than your target number for each die. Thus, if a character was climbing a slippery, steep incline (STR and DEX) and their STR was 13 (Target 4) and their DEX was 11 (Target 3) If one die fails – the character fails. This may suggest the nature of the failure and the consequences. If you roll double-eight (Crazy Eights), something calamitous has happened beyond mere failure (should be interesting, but not necessarily deadly).

Multi-ability Checks (somewhat simple)

First, over at Eiglophian Press, G. Benedicto made a great post about ability checks using d6.  Then Cyclopeatron added to the discussion by proposing a system for rolling against two ability scores.

I think these posts are great, but I'm just going to chime in with my own system, based upon their systems.  :)

I would propose the following:

	One Ability	Two Abilities (summed)
(E) Easy	Roll 2d6	Roll 4d6
(S) Standard	Roll 3d6	Roll 6d6
(D) Difficult	Roll 4d6	Roll 8d6
(V) Very Difficult	Roll 5d6	Roll 10d6
(A) Arduous	Roll 6d6	Roll 12d6
(N) Nigh-Impossible	Roll 7d6	Roll 14d6

My reason for using only d6 instead of the d12s that Cyclopeatron proposes is this.  Each attribute should generate at least one point of result on the roll.  If you use d12s there is a possibility of rolling a "1" and that makes skill checks using two attributes a bit easier than rolling against only one attribute.

Adding the dice up might be too arduous (I haven't used this yet -- so I'm just in "theory mode" right now) so I'm thinking about how I could create a dice pool slash count successes system.  Stay tuned!