# Where to find puzzles for dungeons?



## adndgamer

I've found lots of traps to maim and injure PCs, but have yet to find a good source of interesting puzzles that will make them think.  Does anybody wanna post any here, or give me a link to some?

Or should I just sit down and make them up myself?  This would be the most time-consuming, but might be the most interesting.


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## Alaska Roberts

I made a couple for my last adventure, they turned out badly.  So this would be great information for me to.  

Who would have ever thought "live" and "evil" had the same letters.  D%&^ it

Alaska


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## Morrus

I love using puzzles, too.  But I hate _riddles_.  Whenever I ask for puzzle suggestions, people just post riddles, limericks and tricky questions. 

If you find a good source for them, let me know.


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## Akunin

The newest Dungeon has several puzzles that are meant to challenge PCs of all levels.


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## d20Dwarf

Traps & Treachery has a chapter full of puzzles, and the reprints should be hitting shelves this weekend! Also look for Traps & Treachery II in April with even more deadly machinations with which to challenge your players.

Trapmaster Wil


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## Sodalis

puzzle # 1 is prett cool-

http://members.tripod.com/~AmuseTimes/puzzles/puzzles.htm

the rest are not puzzles.... just time passers


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## adndgamer

Thanks 

*friendly neighborhood bump for the evening crowd*


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## anglachel

Go to Yahoo and search on "brain teasers".  You'll find many different types of puzzles that could be incorporated into a dungeon.


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## doodinthemood

I would love a collection of these somewhere, cos I seem to be after a similar thing to the original poster. Here's a few thoughts:
1 - copy existing puzzle/board games somehow. Another DM did a brilliant minesweeper room when I was a PC. Step on a tile and it turns green, green, orange?, PILLAR OF FLAME. And then used red and black squares later on to show more and more 'mines'. You can easily have puzzles based on chess, checkers, and so on.
2 - movement puzzles. You generate a puzzle based on the idea that when something is moved out of the way, it annoyingly creates a blockage somewhere else. This can be anything from the simple 'crate-moving' puzzles where you get through a room, to a much more complex procedure where, say, some members are controlling levers while another has to pass through a pathway generated with an item.
3 - Look at this essay Mathematical Puzzles in Fantasy Games
which has a few ideas, and this website
Braingle: Brain Teasers, Puzzles, Riddles, Trivia and Games
which has lots and lots of stuff, but only a small amount of it could be transferred.
4 - Brainteasers and riddles CAN be good. You are right about too many puzzle ideas for DnD being riddle-based. The idea of a riddle being there with the answer being "time" (the answer is usually time with these things) and the characters just saying "time" and something magically appears is far too rediculous and crowbarred in. But if you read a lot of brainteasers, you will find a lot of them start with lines like 'there is a table with 5 bottles on' or 'you come to a town where everybody lies'. OK, these things scream out "unrealistic brainteaser" but they keep the interactive experience and they're fun. As for riddles, if you find a way to integrate them, I reckon they can work. I intend on having a room with the letters of the alphabet on the floor. There will be 3 riddles throughout the course of the dungeon, each with 4 word answers, and with each one, the 4 players will stand on one of the letters of the answer each and a different door will open. The idea of some mechanism knowing they're standing there and so opening the door isn't so hard to swallow.


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## Mistwell

There is a series of Dungeon adventures called Challenge of the Champions by Johnathan M. Richards.  They are all good puzzle oriented adventures (not riddles).  He also did some other excellent puzzle adventures like Golgordand's Gauntlet.


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## jgerman

adndgamer said:


> I've found lots of traps to maim and injure PCs, but have yet to find a good source of interesting puzzles that will make them think.  Does anybody wanna post any here, or give me a link to some?
> 
> Or should I just sit down and make them up myself?  This would be the most time-consuming, but might be the most interesting.




Grab a Raymond Smullyan book and pick one. Do a little adaptation, add some physical elements maybe and you're good to go.


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## fireinthedust

http://www.cloudkingdom.com/home.aspx]Cloud kingdom games is a riddle and PUZZLE website That I highly recommend.

They have a series of books incorporating riddles *into* fantasy puzzles.  No rules, just how the puzzle works.  
I've used them in my game and so far they're great.  I have two of the books, and when I get some cash freed up I'm going to start grabbing all of them.

I also make up my adventures based around a puzzle the PCs have to solve in some way.  I've used the actual board from "master Labyrinth" when the PCs were in a shifting hedgemaze.  The miniatures battle was fun.

When I design a puzzle, I try to think:

1)  how can I kill my characters
2)  what would be a fun trope/situation to be in
3)  This is a really cool video game/hobby store item; how do I turn this into a dungeon room?
4)  How could this monster be used in a puzzle?


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## Ariosto

> I've found lots of traps to maim and injure PCs, but have yet to find a good source of interesting puzzles that will make them think.



I often come across situations that do both. In such cases, one can with a bit of effort tease out the fundamental logic of the puzzle aspect and change the particulars -- including consequences.

As to constructing one's own, I think the basic necessities are:
1) Something initially unknown.
2) Evidence and inferences by which it can be discovered.
3) Some "trick" to require careful investigation, thus creating an interesting challenge.

Collections of "brain teasers" are good sources not only for specific puzzles but for examples of basic elements.

One thing that's pretty easy to do is to scatter through the environment things that may at first seem unrelated, and later clearly be related --- but maybe in an initially unknown way.

For a simple example, there is a door in one place and a key to open it in another. If there are no clues as to which key will open which door, then the problem is a dull one of trial by error. If doors and keys are labeled with a code that takes some reasoning to figure out, then the process of elimination might be completable without investigating the whole set.

Things with which players can interact and get different results tend to be quite engaging. The temptation to pull levers out of curiosity is pretty strong!


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## nedjer

There's a UK company that does great puzzle books and games/ 'hands on' puzzles. All kinds of different puzzles. The lateral thinking puzzle books and some of the 'hands on' puzzles are great for RPG sessions.

They ship to US but it'd be cheaper to find a local equivalent.

Happy Puzzle Company


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## tallyrand




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## Mark

jgerman said:


> Grab a Raymond Smullyan book and pick one. Do a little adaptation, add some physical elements maybe and you're good to go.





There's a wealth of material there and it is easier to adapt stuff likme this in its raw form, IMO, than to have to strip away other flavor, find the basic mechanics of a puzzle, then rebuild a new puzzle from scratch.


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## DEFCON 1

I've cribbed several puzzles from computer games (like The 7th Guest and Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic).  I've also done the Google Search on puzzles and mindteasers and snagged a few that way.

Some specific puzzles I've used (adapting them of course for what I needed them for):

KotOR has a puzzle where an alien is currently imprisoned in a cell in the Sith base on the first planet of the game.  You have to press the wall lock buttons (which change color from green/red) to get them all to turn green, thus unlocking the cell.  I used this for a wall safe.

In 7th Guest, I used the skull & headstones cake (where you have to divide the cake up so every piece has an equal amount of skulls, headstones, and blank frosting) to create a button panel with "Supernal" symbols on them that you need to do the same division on to unlock a rod stuck in an altar.

I'm also prepped to repurpose the sliding barrier with a hole puzzle (that leads to the basement of the Stauf mansion) as well as the coffin lid puzzle when the time comes.

I've also used the disected T puzzle and the hidden star puzzle to good effect.  Do a google search under "Disect T puzzle" and "hidden star puzzle" to find them.  The T puzzle was to assemble a key from several pieces the party found, the other was a "keyless" locked chest that had the puzzle on the front of it as light-up sections.  They had to press (and light up) the correct five sections to unlock the chest (and there were several other small stars painted on the chest to give the hint of what they might need to look for in the light-up section.

Hope these help or prove useful!


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## Jeff Wilder

The Ultimate Puzzle Site - Puzzles, riddles, quizzes, and tests...


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## Crothian

There have been good published books on pyuzzles and traps over the years.  I poick them when i can and use them as a reference.


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## grodog

Jeff Wilder said:


> The Ultimate Puzzle Site - Puzzles, riddles, quizzes, and tests...




Excellent link, thanks Jeff!



Crothian said:


> There have been good published books on pyuzzles and traps over the years.  I poick them when i can and use them as a reference.




Yeah, but which ones did you like best:  we need titles


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## jcayer

I love using chess boards.  My personal favorite, also stolen from the 7th guest was placing 8 of each piece on without threatening another.
So place 8 rooks on the board so they cannot attack each other.  Easy, put them on a diagonal.  The Bishops, in a straight line.  The knights are fairly easy.

Go try to put 8 queens on a chess board without any of them threatening any other one.  After a very enjoyable hour, one player asked if he could make a history check to see if he could remember where some of the pieces went.  I gave him 3 pieces.  They got it shortly afterward.

If you want the solution, just google 8 queens.


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## Badwe

I bought a book of brainteasers and have often drawn inspiration from the Professor Layton series on the DS.  The most difficult part is often finding a way to make the puzzle seem relevant/related to the player's environment, and possibly allowing for their skills and stats to figure in.

So far i repurporsed what i later discovered was a "knight's tour" puzzle with a secret message.  I justified it by having the thieve's guild resort to puzzles as a way to transmit hidden messages to one another when one of the players seemed intent on infiltrating it.

I also created a research minigame that revolved around the Tower of Hanoi puzzle.  I even, with the help of my girlfriend, made little prop books out of clay to use in the puzzle.  Perhaps later if there's interest I can post some screenshots.


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## Crothian

grodog said:


> Yeah, but which ones did you like best:  we need titles




Forget best, the best ones and most popular ones people know about.  Here is a book I found earlier this year.  It surprised me it had been published in 2000 as I've never seen or heard about it that I could recall.  Of course then at Origins I was talking to a friend at her booth and noticed she was selling it though it wasn't done by her company.  

The book is *Riddle Rooms 3: Past Present and Future* and if there is a one and two in the series I've not been able to find them not that I spent any time going out of my way to look.  It has 20 full page room riddles designed for any RPG and for use in fantasy, modern, and future settings.  There are also four additional smaller puzzles to be used to keep a door secure.  

Each riddle has with it hand outs to serve as clues.  Some of the riddles are complex and will not be easy.  Others I could see how to solve them but it could take a little time with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil to figure it out.  

It is published by Cloud Kingdoms Games.  In the back of the book it lists 6 other products 5 of them having something to do with riddles.


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## grodog

Crothian said:


> It is published by Cloud Kingdoms Games.  In the back of the book it lists 6 other products 5 of them having something to do with riddles.




I have a few of their books, and they're pretty good:  they've been around since the '90s IIRC:  I'm pretty sure I saw them at GCs in years past.


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## jdrakeh

Alaska Roberts said:


> Who would have ever thought "live" and "evil" had the same letters.  D%&^ it.




Mok!


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