| aboyd |
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A year ago there was a post on Reddit about a puzzle called the question door. The idea is that to get a magic door to open, the door speaks some words, and the PCs have to respond correctly. However, it's a small trick: the door is speaking the answer to a question, and the PCs have to provide the question. This is an interesting challenge because the players are not told that they are being given answers, nor told that they need to provide the question. AND the door will hear any question -- even "what is this door talking about?" -- and count that as the question, and evaluate it. So there is a funny early moment in this challenge, when players are asking questions, they don't realize that they are providing the door with something to evaluate, and then the door deems the question to be the wrong one, and it moves on to the next set of answers.
Last week, I ran my players through the very first ever Pathfinder Society module, called A Silent Tide. I ran this as a house-ruled home game, not official PFS stuff. One of the sections of the module is a challenge of 5 treasure chests to open, but supposedly none could be opened by a normal locksmith -- Disable Device (or in this old module, they call it Open Locks) won't open the locks.
EXCEPT... one of the chests *can* be opened with that skill, completely undermining the story that the locksmith was befuddled. So, I had to take that box (chest #1 I think) and give it a new test or challenge. I chose the puzzle door idea. I told players that the box had 3 glass circles on the lid, looked like they might light up or something, but none were lit at the moment. A PC pressed the first circle, and the sequence began, answers were spoken with a mechanical voice. Get one right, a circle lights up. Once you light up all 3 circles, the box opens. My players needed almost all the question/answer combos below, because they had no idea what was happening for the first 10 tries or so.
* Eziah of the Silent Sanctum -> Who lives on the sun? (Or, what famous wizard moved to the sun to get away from people?)
* Somal -> What is the name of the moon of Golarion?
* onyx gem, silver wire, diamond dust -> What are some spell components?
* pork, beef, chicken -> What are some types of meat?
* breathing fire -> What is a red dragon's special attack?
* copper, silver, gold, platinum -> What are the coins of the realm?
* Pharasma, Rovagug, Nethys -> Who are some of the gods?
* Misery Row in Absalom, also Downmarket in Kaer Maga -> Where can someone buy slaves?
* Acavna, Amaznen, Aroden -> Who are the dead gods?
* Alaznist, Xanderghul, Karzoug, Krune, Sorshen, Zutha, Belimarius -> Who are the Runelords? (Or who are the *last* Runelords?)
* Brigh -> Who is the goddess of invention?
* Milani -> Who is the god known as the Everbloom? (Or, who is the god who fights against oppression and unjust rule?)
* you -> Who is trying to get into this box?
* cinnamon, cork oak, eucalyptus -> What are some trees that have a bark which is harvested for use?
* Akiton -> What is the desert planet? (Or, what is the 4th planet from our sun? Or, what is the red planet?)
* Sovyrian, on Castrovel -> Where is the ancestral homeland of the elves?
* Cailyn and Romre Vanderale -> Who saved the city of Magnimar from the spider-race known as the shriezyx? (Or, who are the leaders of the Eyes of the Hawk?)
Anyway, if any of you wish to steal these pre-made answer -> question sequences, feel free. (Note that I picked which ones to use in random order. Also, once they realized that they needed to provide the questions, I allowed the players to do Knowledge checks for info -- kind of a fun way to learn some facts about the game world.) Have fun!
| aboyd |
It IS a Jeopardy door, but try not to word it that way for your players. I did not word it that way myself, but when one player figured it out, he said exactly that out loud, which caused another player to then answer a couple of questions in actual Jeopardy format, which doesn't actually work.
(If I remember correctly, the current "answer" on the table was "Pharasma, Rovagug, Nethys." The correct question for that is "Who are some of the gods?" Or even "What are the names of some of the gods?" However, because a player heard "Jeopardy format" she then replied "What is a god?" In Jeopardy, that'd be right. In this door system, however, you're expected to ask a real question that gets that answer, so it should be as close to natural question/answer as possible. The question "What is a god" would get a response such as "a god is a supreme being, possibly all-powerful, or all-knowing, possibly the creator of existence" or something like that. It's totally wrong for the answer provided. Thus the correct answer is "What are the names of some of the gods?" Or close to that.)
