Alright, here's the deal. I'm in the process of writing a campaign to run in a few months. The charachters are in Lastwall in the PF Campaign Setting. I've added into the setting that the main source of income for Vigil has been a mine just inside Virlych that holds all manners of metals, gems, etc. Recently, however, all the miners disappeared, and all scouts sent to discover the issue have not returned. Due to a lack of manpower, Lastwall is hiring the job of scouting and cleansing the mine out to whomever is worthy, and powerfull enough to come in and help fix the problem.
Of course any ideas in general would be helpful, but my main issue is this: sometimes I get an amazing idea that is just massively time consuming, so I am looking for resources to help me. Just into the mine, I want the characters to find a diary. The diary is written in Terran (not likely anyone will know that language) so they will have to first translate it. The second part of the task of finding out what it says is that it is written in code. Each page is written in a format where each letter X is shifted Y number of letters down/up in the alphabet (i.e. a=e, b=f, etc...). But, I want each page to shift randomly down or up, and then a random number of spots. This will mix the in game mechanichs of linguistics checks, with the player's own abilities to decipher the writings, to learn about what they are getting into as they go.
So, does anyone know of any way, like a website, or excell function, or anything like that, to make the translation easier? Or do I have to sit down and write the diary out, and then shift each letter of each word myself? Any help at all would be appreciated :)
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So... you're applying a Caesar cypher to a foreign language?
What do you mean by "each page to shift randomly down or up" and these other factors?
If all you need is something to encode the text via the caesar cypher then you can find a million different applets online that do that kind of work.
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/CaesarCipher/
That link is one such example (not sure what the "multiplier" is as that is not part of a normal caesar cypher, but leaving it as a 1 seems to make it act as one).
I do have to warn you that a caesar cypher can be broken by the average person with a little extra time on their day off (and not much extra, an hour at most even with minimal data) and this in fact regularly occurs as one of the common word puzzles in newspapers is a Caesar cypher. The DC for this check would likely be no higher than 20, and that only if you changed the cypher on every page. Also note that it can be brute forced with 25 guesses, which would take longer but only require a DC15 check (IMO).
Even doing a more complicated substitution cypher wouldn't take very long, and a first term cryptography student can crack it in about 15 minutes (30 if they haven't already written a tiny helper program). It'll take a D&D character longer, but won't be any harder. DC30 at most.
There's also the transposition cypher, which is about as easy/difficult to crack as the substitution cypher. Combining the two would increase the DC to about a 35 or 40.
Go any higher than those methods and you're into something that requires some real knowledge of cryptography principles to understand. Maybe not more than a single college class worth, but still probably more effort than its worth just to be able to hand the players a sheet of text.
Basically a ceasar cipher, but the catch is each page would be a random number of letters shifted. So say, page 1 would have a=e, page 2 a=l, page 3 a=b, etc. Those would be shifts of 4, 11, and 1 respectively. But then by up or down, I mean, for lack of a better phrase, a reverse ceasar cipher, so a shift of 4 would make a=v, a shift of 1 a=z. I guess logically going up or down doesn't make a huge diffence, because the up is basically just a bigger down, but throwing the number shift at the top of the page could throw them off if they assume it all goes one way.
My idea was that it would take time and linguistics checks to translate each page, which they would then be given and could make additional linguistics checks to get hints, but would have to translate it themselves.
Thanks for thw website, it is EXACTLY what I was looking for actually :)
EDIT: and after playing with the multiplyer for 20 seconds, it seems to either multiply the move by x amount, or raise it to the x power, or something like that. either way, it just creates a greater shift based on a=1/a, b=1, c=2, d=3, etc...
A couple thoughts:
•If you happen to know that your players love this kind of puzzle, then awesome. Otherwise, they might just pocket the diary until they can bring it to a sage for deciphering.
•A language they can't speak AND in code seems redundant.
•It's a good principal not to have the solution to a puzzle be the ONLY way for a story to advance. It's great to have some award or advantage tied to the puzzle, but some players may become frustrated if the adventure is stuck until the puzzle is solved.
•Players may attempt to "solve" the puzzle with a skill roll (linguistics?). You may decide to let other PCs aid other with relevant knowledge rolls.
This puzzle will only give them added information, and in no way is crucial to the charcter's success. It adds depth to the story, and solving it may give them benefits aongthe way, but nothing about advancing the story depends on having/not having, reading/not reading it. I have two players who really enjoy puzzles, two who don't mind them, and one who is just a baby about them, so my hardest/ most time consuming puzzles, which this one would be one of, because they won't be able to just solve it all with a skill roll, I don't make part of the actual adventure/campaign advancement.
Bear in mind that one simple spell will resolve the language problem - Comprehend Languages. Most wizards have it in their spellbooks, and it is a clerical spell as well ...
Otherwise, it sounds great! I have a DM who has used a few ciphers and puzzles on us, and it has been ... interesting working them out.