Goodman Games

My DCC campaign using the Blackmarsh campaign setting, waiting till Aereth is reworked, is in month nine now and the players have left Toad Hill headed back toward the Keep. I am designing a nasty dungeon that will be filled with traps, puzzles and riddles to solve. Are there any books that describe dungeon puzzles, riddles & traps? I could sure use the help....

Of course. The various Grimtooth's traps books and Dungeon Alphabet are highly recommended.

A big +1 for The Dungeon Alphabet.
I raid my old AD&D Dungeon Builder's Guidebook for a long list of random traps.
Frog God's Tome of Adventure Design (hah! )is a great resource to dip into too.

Cloud Kingdoms publishes riddle books and have several with RPG themes:

http://www.cloudkingdom.com/Products/Cl ... books.aspx

Also, out of print CK books can be had at Nobleknight:

http://www.nobleknight.com/ViewProducts ... _GenreID_E_

Good riddles are hard to find. You need something hard enough to be a challenge, but easy enough where the players can actually figure them out. I have a couple of books of riddles for RPG adventures laying about somewhere, but even those hardly ever seem to do what I want. I'll try to find them so I can post the name, etc, for you.

Crawl 7 is a traps issue. You might try that.

I have found in my experiences DMing that riddles and puzzles work great in movies and books but are a little trickier in a real game. The reason being, in a movie or a book, the outcome is decided by the author and the protagonist can be as smart as they need to be.

In a game with real people, it can be hard to focus in a crowd on solving something that takes mental focus any time. The very mindset that a puzzle-solving requires can often take the player out of their character's role and into their own abilities.

A bad thing? Not necessarily, but it is helpful to know what it is going on in your player's head.

That said, I love to drop old-school riddles in my games, but I am very careful to not make them a roadblock. I have collected many through the years that are clever but not too hard. I only want to present riddles that the party can figure out with just a few seconds of thought, to give a little flavor, but not grind the game to a halt.

If you need a riddle or two, I'd be glad to post a few if you would like to peruse some for options.

I would appreciate it if you posted your riddles.

I quite like this list of riddles - it was worth the $1: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1 ... al-Riddles

Here are a few. Again, my preference are riddles that have old-school flavor but will not slow the game down too much and pull the player out of character.

To make it more fun, I'll leave off the answers.

Like...

1. It has a golden head... A golden tail... And yet it has no body...

2. What is light as a feather and yet, no man can hold it for even ten minutes?

3. Has a mouth but cannot speak... Has a bed but never sleeps...

4. You break it even if you name it.

5. It occurs only once in every minute, twice in every moment and yet, never in one hundred thousand years.

6. The part of a bird not in the sky, can swim in the ocean and always stay dry.

7. So simple minded, when asked a question I can only point. Yet I guide wise men all over the world.

8. A warrior amongst the flowers. He bears a thrusting sword... that he is willing to use... to guard his golden hoard.

9. I weaken all men for hours each day. I show you strange visions while you are away. I take you by night, by day give you back. None suffer to have me, but do from my lack.

10. I have many tongues but cannot taste. By me most things are turned to waste. I crack and snap and yet stay whole, a spreading plague to take my toll. Around me some feel safe to sleep, yet run when I escape my keep. I jump in anger, leap and bound. The cold man wishes I were found.

Hopefully, one of these will fit the bill. I have collected hundreds of these down through the years that strike a balance of not-too-hard but evocative of the genre.

DM Marcus wrote:1. It has a golden head... A golden tail... And yet it has no body...

gold piece

2. What is light as a feather and yet, no man can hold it for even ten minutes?

Breath

3. Has a mouth but cannot speak... Has a bed but never sleeps...

And it runs all night. A river.

4. You break it even if you name it.

Silence.

5. It occurs only once in every minute, twice in every moment and yet, never in one hundred thousand years.

The letter M

6. The part of a bird not in the sky, can swim in the ocean and always stay dry.

Shadow

7. So simple minded, when asked a question I can only point. Yet I guide wise men all over the world.

Signpost

8. A warrior amongst the flowers. He bears a thrusting sword... that he is willing to use... to guard his golden hoard.

Bee

9. I weaken all men for hours each day. I show you strange visions while you are away. I take you by night, by day give you back. None suffer to have me, but do from my lack.

Sleep

10. I have many tongues but cannot taste. By me most things are turned to waste. I crack and snap and yet stay whole, a spreading plague to take my toll. Around me some feel safe to sleep, yet run when I escape my keep. I jump in anger, leap and bound. The cold man wishes I were found.

Fire

7. Signpost is a good answer, compass is a good answer too!

I included a riddle in a recent adventure, and the players got it almost immediately. (By coincidence, it actually happened to be #3 on DM Marcus's list.)

That's what I find often happens with riddles -- either the players get it immediately, or they can't get it at all. That can be true of any puzzle, but I think puzzles that have an experimental/interactive component (pulling levers, pushing buttons, moving tiles, etc.) keep the players more in-character and tend to have a smoother difficulty curve and broader appeal.

Something I've started doing are puzzles that have consequences if the PCs fail, but aren't a complete roadblock. For example, pulling the right sequence of levers kills a tough monster, and lets you pass through the doorway at the back of its cage. Pulling the wrong series of levers releases the monster. Now you have to fight it, but once you've killed it, you can pass. I found this worked quite well the last time I used it.

I totally agree on the "not a roadblock if failed" idea.

I once ran a puzzle/code, where an NPC that was known for playing solitaire was mysteriously missing. The I gave it to the PCs that the cards he left on the table looked sort of like one of his games, but not quite. They deduced that he had left them some kind of message before we was spirited away, perhaps a clue to his kidnappers. They all got interested, and almost solved it, and I was surprised by how long they all stayed interested (maybe 20 minutes, or so).

But had they ignored it, it would've just meant not having that early lead. There were future actions from the kidnappers that would mean the party was behind the 8-ball somewhat, but they'd still be able to try to rescue their friend.

For math puzzles, I really recommend "Amusements in Mathematics" by Henry Ernest Dudeney. Here's the Gutenberg version: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16713?msg=welcome_stranger