Riddles in RP's (whats your opinion.)


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Haladir wrote:

The thing that bothered me about that puzzle is that it required player knowledge of modern mathematical concepts to solve.

"There are hints in the surviving records of the ancient Egyptians that they had some knowledge of prime numbers"

As it was known by the well-educated, but obscure, a prime number puzzle is entirely approprite for a medieval-style game -- possibly more appropriate than today since the purpose of such a puzzle is to keep people out unless they know the trick, and prime numbers are taught to nearly everyone in the modern world. Of course, Golarion is much different than medieval europe, and some parts of the world, notably Andoran, probably have something vaguely resembling modern public education.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Bigger Club wrote:
As an example because I am finnish. "A bouque held while naked." Is vihta(bundle of birch sticks with leafs on it in sauna.) Now I am sure if I asked that riddle from a group of average north americans they are pretty unlikely to get it right.

That's a very good example, especially since you got the English translation wrong -- the word in English for a bunch of flowers is "bouquet," using the French spelling, because English spelling is not supposed to be understandable. So there's actually two cultural clashes buried in there.

That's the issue with the riddle I posted earlier: "To find the treasure room and advance the plot, Archie is in the sand." That's actually a UK-style crossword puzzle clue, but it hinges on US cultural assumptions to solve (and there's a big clue in the context -- it's a golf puzzle). Archie (Bunker) is a character from a rather famous US television show (All in the Family) and, of course, a "bunker" is also a term for the sand traps on a golf course..... so to solve that riddle, you need to be either an American who is fond of UK crossword puzzles, or a Brit who watches way too many vintage US shows.

Or, of course, we could just stop the game dead until I spoon-feed enough clues that everyone can finally do the right thing, without any sense of accomplishment at all.

Down with riddles!

I must say, I like the real answer. Being from the USA and having used to watch All In The Family, I should have figured that out. Glad you posted again, I would have gone all this time thinking of a Golarion reference. :)


I like the idea that the GM allows you to roll a knowledge check for it, and he could give hints accordingly. That way high int characters would still be more likely to get it right.
In my party, our character with the lowest intelligence is played by our most clever player, so sometimes we just take his ideas and voice them through a character with higher int for the sake of realism. That's also an option when it comes to riddles.

I think riddles and puzzles add a nice bit of challenge to an otherwise hack-and-slash campaign.

Silver Crusade

ShallowHammer wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
Bigger Club wrote:
As an example because I am finnish. "A bouque held while naked." Is vihta(bundle of birch sticks with leafs on it in sauna.) Now I am sure if I asked that riddle from a group of average north americans they are pretty unlikely to get it right.

That's a very good example, especially since you got the English translation wrong -- the word in English for a bunch of flowers is "bouquet," using the French spelling, because English spelling is not supposed to be understandable. So there's actually two cultural clashes buried in there.

That's the issue with the riddle I posted earlier: "To find the treasure room and advance the plot, Archie is in the sand." That's actually a UK-style crossword puzzle clue, but it hinges on US cultural assumptions to solve (and there's a big clue in the context -- it's a golf puzzle). Archie (Bunker) is a character from a rather famous US television show (All in the Family) and, of course, a "bunker" is also a term for the sand traps on a golf course..... so to solve that riddle, you need to be either an American who is fond of UK crossword puzzles, or a Brit who watches way too many vintage US shows.

Or, of course, we could just stop the game dead until I spoon-feed enough clues that everyone can finally do the right thing, without any sense of accomplishment at all.

Down with riddles!

I must say, I like the real answer. Being from the USA and having used to watch All In The Family, I should have figured that out. Glad you posted again, I would have gone all this time thinking of a Golarion reference. :)

This is why I prefer mathematic or logic based puzzles. They're far less reliant on this sort of stuff.

Math and logic are the same for everybody, even if the characters are different for numbers.


Riddles and RP are a bit of a problem together, so if you feel like the INT 7 character (it doesn't always have to be a barbarian, you know) shouldn't come up with the answer more often than the INT 20 wizard, you can just separate in- and out-of-character puzzle solving. Have the players come up with the solution together, or individually or however they can work it out the best and then have the characters roll INT checks and the character with the highest result will be the first to have the solution in-character.

That way everyone can engage in the puzzlesolving, and it still is the characters with the higher Intelligence that usually come up with the solutions.


I find riddles in RPGs to be a lot of fun. I think you have to adhere to a few rules however:


  • Make the riddle solvable in-character, not based on player knowledge.
  • Don't make solving the riddle a requirement, and make sure the players KNOW its not required.
  • Provide hints based on successful skill checks if applicable.

As an example, in a previous campaign a group entered a temple of ancient elves. The elves had long since perished, but a relic in the temple posed a riddle to them:

My strike kins the arrow
I lack the width of my peers
I'm known to all of our kind

Spoiler:
The answer being rapier.
Arrows are piercing weapons, as are rapiers. Rapiers are thin. All elves know how to user rapiers (racial weapon proficency.)


Spook205 wrote:


This is why I prefer mathematic or logic based puzzles. They're far less reliant on this sort of stuff.

Yes, but they're even more reliant on education, rather than common sense, insight, or intelligence.

Example: what's the next number in the following sequence? 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, ....

You need a fair bit of formal education to recognize that as the fractional part of pi, and to be a fair stonking nerd to have memorized it out that far.

Similarly,..... 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,.... is obvious (to any nerd) as the Fibonacci sequence and 2, 1, 3, 4, 7,... is obviously (to that same nerd) the Lucas sequence, but what if your players studied music and literature?

Math/logic puzzles also tend to be boring and repetitive. There's only so many ways you can make the liar and the truthteller into something interesting, and if I never see the Towers of Hanoi again, it will still be too soon.

So I still say,... Down with riddles!


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

@tormsskull, with your riddle, i didn't even know the answer was going to be a weapon.

and "kins" isn't a word.

and what does "I'm known to all of our kind" even mean in context of a rapier? do all riddles know what rapiers are?


Tormsskull wrote:


My strike kins the arrow
I lack the width of my peers
I'm known to all of our kind

Obviously a viper. Now prepare for twenty minutes of distraction as the amateur herpetologists wander down the garden path of attempting to list every species of fanged snake they can think of, to the benefit of..... exactly no one, including the game master.

No, not a viper, something more specific, like an asp! A rattlesnake! No, they don't have rattlesnakes in Golarion, do they? Do they? Well, not around here, obviously. Rattlesnakes live in the desert, not the forest.... oh, except for the timber rattlesnake, I guess. That's why it's called a timber rattlesnake, huh?


Bandw2 wrote:
and "kins" isn't a word.

Riddles are allowed to use creative wordplay - its a well-known component of many riddles.

Bandw2 wrote:
and what does "I'm known to all of our kind" even mean in context of a rapier? do all riddles know what rapiers are?

Context is everything - this riddle was posed by an ancient elven relic in an ancient elven temple in a country that was dominated by.... ancient elves.

Though I will agree that using "I'm" in the last sentence is misleading, and I may have simply said "Known to all of our kind" in the actual game. Pulling things off the top of my head isn't always 100% :)

Believe it or not, when this was presented in game one of the players got it immediately. Then his fellow players convinced him that it couldn't possibly be that, and as a group they submitted a different answer.

Silver Crusade

Orfamay Quest wrote:
Spook205 wrote:


This is why I prefer mathematic or logic based puzzles. They're far less reliant on this sort of stuff.

Yes, but they're even more reliant on education, rather than common sense, insight, or intelligence.

Example: what's the next number in the following sequence? 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, ....

You need a fair bit of formal education to recognize that as the fractional part of pi, and to be a fair stonking nerd to have memorized it out that far.

Similarly,..... 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,.... is obvious (to any nerd) as the Fibonacci sequence and 2, 1, 3, 4, 7,... is obviously (to that same nerd) the Lucas sequence, but what if your players studied music and literature?

Math/logic puzzles also tend to be boring and repetitive. There's only so many ways you can make the liar and the truthteller into something interesting, and if I never see the Towers of Hanoi again, it will still be too soon.

So I still say,... Down with riddles!

Math puzzles grow into positional puzzles. These however end up being more then just a few lines on a wall. I had a party who had to go through varied bizarre quests involving equations, time puzzles, rearranging diodes to change the apparent time of day in the dungeon, and they had to move arms on a giant compass to open and close different parts of the complex.

They also had to deal with circuit style puzzles (one door 1, door 3 closes, open door 2, door one shuts if open or opens if shut, door 3 opens if door 4 is shut, etc).

They seemed really engaged and challenged by it, even if in-character they viewed it as one of the most punishing experiences they've been through.

Time travel and mathematics have a big tie-together in my campaign world. So time shennigans come hand in hand with math puzzles. The barbarian of all people started putting ranks into engineering to account for the fact he kept solving the math problems. (I also derived great amusment from tormenting the guy with a puzzle/proof that indicated .999999~ was equal to 1).


Tormsskull wrote:

Believe it or not, when this was presented in game one of the players got it immediately. Then his fellow players convinced him that it couldn't possibly be that, and as a group they submitted a different answer.

No, that doesn't surprise me a bit. It's more or less exactly what I would have expected,.... which is part of why I disapprove of riddles as RPG elements.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

because the riddle doesn't suggest rapier unless you're thinking in that context first. :/

and kins just made me think i didn't know a word, as kin can't be used a verb. "is like" is more appropriate. if you want to the crazy riddle talk, the arrow and me are made brethren by our thrust. which even gives more indication that is is a weapon. also the use of the word thrust indicates it's most likely a melee weapon.

>:(

I don't like riddles.

but clever wordplay is when the words give indication of the answer through their intended use. thrust is never used by an arrow, so it's probably a melee weapon since you thrust those.


Bandw2 wrote:
if you want to the crazy riddle talk, the arrow and me are made brethren by our thrust. which even gives more indication that is is a weapon. also the use of the word thrust indicates it's most likely a melee weapon.

I like that. If you don't mind, I may steal that if I use the riddle again.

Bandw2 wrote:
but clever wordplay is when the words give indication of the answer through their intended use. thrust is never used by an arrow, so it's probably a melee weapon since you thrust those.

Yeah - riddles can be very frustrating. For the person that made them up, they are so easy. For others, they can often be thinking in a completely different vain and as such not understand the riddle at all.

That's why I always offer hints based on the character's skills after an appropriate amount of time.


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I do like to use puzzles that require knowlege of the campaign world and that are not language-dependent.

I don't have my copy with me right now, so I can't refer to it, but I recall a great riddle in Wrath of the Righteous that involves several different statues of Nocticula and some in-world knowledge to pick the right one. And a different puzzle in Curse of the Lady's Light that similarly involves picking the correct statue of a Runelord. If players have paid attention, they'll figure it out; otherwise, appropriate Knowledge or other skill checks can resolve the encounter.

You can always take an abstract approach as well, and simply describe a puzzle in general terms that needs to be solved by making appropriate skill checks. There's a puzzle like that in the PFS Season Zero scenario King Xeros of Old Azlant that needs to be solved to use the controls of a fantasy spaceship.

Shadow Lodge

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There are riddles present in a number of pfs scenarios. Here's what happens every time.
Me: finishes presenting the riddle
Player One: I'll go use the bathroom while you guys figure this out
Player two: I'm going to go get a drink
Player three: that's a good idea, me too
Player four: pulls out his phone and starts surfing the internet
Player five: looks at the riddle, I don't get it, hands it to player six and walks off.
Player six: I love riddles! Sits there solving the riddle for the next ten minutes by themself.

It's rare to get more than one person who likes riddles at table and even if everyone does, riddle solving isn't a group activity. The game immediately grinds to a halt until someone solves the single player mini game that just interrupted the group experience everyone came for.


gnoams wrote:
It's rare to get more than one person who likes riddles at table and even if everyone does, riddle solving isn't a group activity. The game immediately grinds to a halt until someone solves the single player mini game that just interrupted the group experience everyone came for.

Every group is different. I would say in my typical groups of five people, three or more like riddles.

To combat some of the problems above, I always hand out my riddle so that people can read them (just hearing them doesn't work for some people such as myself.) I try to hand out one copy per player so you don't have to fight over the one copy.

When handled this way, riddle solving can definitely be a group activity, as they will bounce suggestions off one another to come to the one answer they want to submit.

Scarab Sages

I've found that the trick to running riddles and puzzles is to make them a group activity, usually by stealing a simple game mechanic from a party game or another RP-focused RPG. Then I build the riddle puzzle around that and voila: Mini-game!

Another tack I've tried is to have the riddle/puzzle run concurrently with some other encounter (combat or exploration or social or a chase or something) that needs to be dealt with at the same time. The players then divide themselves up into the group that likes puzzles/riddles and the group that doesn't and each does it's own thing.

In fact, I'm currently working on a new sourcebook that deals with just this kind of thing.


I personally hate riddles and puzzles in games, but that's my own issue because I happen to have a short attention span. If players enjoy it, no reason to not have those things in the game. Just don't tie the solving of those riddles to progress in the story or to save or die effects.


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Just to point out... Riddles really should be less intelligence and more wisdom based.

Highly intelligent people sometimes have a problem with over-thinking things. They miss the simple solution to a problem. The stupid fighter or barbarian might see a simple solution that is the right one while the Wizard takes something too literal or simply overthinks the problem.

Example:
You are on a ship docked in the harbor. Hanging over the side of the ship is a rope ladder. This ladder is 20 feet long the bottom five feet are already below the water level. This ladder has steps going down its entire length that are spaced exactly 30.5 centimeters apart. The tide is coming in at the moment and the water level is raising at a rate of approximately 1 meter per hour. How many minutes will it take before the water level reaches the 12th rung on the ladder?

Now... A highly intelligent person might over-complicate this. They might look at it and do the math...

30.5 centimeters is basically a foot, that means the bottom 5 steps are under the water line. That means there are 20 different steps on the ladder each one is a foot apart. The water is raising at approximately 1 meter per hour, one meter is around 3.28 feet. So if we start at 5, in 1 hour we will be at just over 8, in two hours we will be a little over 11.5. There are 12 inches in a foot, there are around 39 inches in a meter, meaning the water is raising at around 0.65 inches per minute, so in the last hour we need to raise by 7 inches, which will take 11 minutes. 11 added to 120 is 131 minutes.

Eureka! It will take one hundred thirty one minutes for the water to raise above the 12th rung on the ladder! Huzzah!

While the kinda stupid fighter will look at it and say:

"It ain't goin' ta ever happen. Boats float on water."


I generally don't like riddles in RPGs. I like them somewhat as a diversion in general, but they have caused a lot of strife in games I have been in.

Sometimes the problem comes from a structural issue like the GM making the players solve the riddle and then have the character of the player that solved it be the character that solved it.

This causes problems in a variety of ways. First it breaks immersion for everyone, and generally only the GM is ready for that. Second it can cause hurt feelings. People in general and gamers specifically have a portion of their self worth tied to their intelligence. When someone else solves a puzzle before us we can get very defensive. I have seen far too many groups get resentful after a riddle, especially back when we were younger.

Sometimes the problem skips the structural issues and goes right to the resentment. The problem is that there is no way to do this as a team. I don't want to feel stupid because the riddle doesn't make sense to me. I don't want to feel awkward because the riddle doesn't make sense to someone else but does to me.

I totally get the value of riddles as a genre trope. I am just very wary of seeing them in adventures because they so often end in a negative experience at the table. I have seen it done well, but not nearly as often as it is done problematically. I also recognize that what I enjoyed isn't going to be a universal preference.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I'm with Erick Wujick on this...

"I hate riddles, absolutely hate them. If I know that the GM is going to be one for riddles, I will have my character become an expert in riddles. In every town he stops by, he will look up the local sage and immerse himself with riddles. And when the GM springs a riddle on us, I will tell him that my character being the riddlemaster he is, solves that riddle."

Erick Wujick -Amber Diceless Roleplay


LazarX wrote:

I'm with Erick Wujick on this...

"I hate riddles, absolutely hate them. If I know that the GM is going to be one for riddles, I will have my character become an expert in riddles. In every town he stops by, he will look up the local sage and immerse himself with riddles. And when the GM springs a riddle on us, I will tell him that my character being the riddlemaster he is, solves that riddle."

Erick Wujick -Amber Diceless Roleplay

Note to self:

Should I ever run into a player named Erick Wijick, I will not allow them in a game I run.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
HWalsh wrote:
LazarX wrote:

I'm with Erick Wujick on this...

"I hate riddles, absolutely hate them. If I know that the GM is going to be one for riddles, I will have my character become an expert in riddles. In every town he stops by, he will look up the local sage and immerse himself with riddles. And when the GM springs a riddle on us, I will tell him that my character being the riddlemaster he is, solves that riddle."

Erick Wujick -Amber Diceless Roleplay

Note to self:

Should I ever run into a player named Erick Wijick, I will not allow them in a game I run.

Not going to happen without a ouija board, he's been dead for a few years.

I hate riddles for the following 2 reasons.

1. They generally require me to step out of character to solve them.

2. There presence frequently makes no sense in context.

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