Dungeon Maps & Puzzle-Traps (cont.)!
Our last post focused on building your very own dungeon and populating it with monsters and threats…this time, we’ll dive more deeply into puzzle and trap construction, with some nifty ideas for your next dungeon!
Dungeoneering can’t be all monster fights. You need a healthy dose of brain-teasers and traps to keep players thinking instead of just barreling on ahead at full speed. There are plenty of websites and reddits where people post their favorite trap ideas, so feel free to pirate what you need and tweak it accordingly to fit your world/design. But aside from stealing other people’s ideas or copy-pasting a trap from the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG), here are some ways to get thinking about your own puzzles.
As with the Dungeon Map posts, the most important thing to start off with when considering your puzzles is theme. A random trap door isn’t very exciting, but a trap door whose indicator is a statue of the wizard who built the place, whose motto of “Always look before you leap!” makes sense in the world of that dungeon. Everything should feel as organic as possible. Remember who built the place, and why. Maybe not every dungeon is designed to murder the players so much as keep intruders out; this may lend to more puzzles involving mazes or magical illusions to throw the players off, versus outright death-traps. Even if your setting is a natural cave, the obstacles should make sense for the environment; pitfalls, cave-ins, natural mazes, etc. can help accentuate the deadliness of the cavern halls.
Also, most dungeons are inhabited by something, if not someone. While encounters are inevitable in a dungeon (and encouraged), try not to simply throw a monster at the team and have them duke it out. Make the room a puzzle/encounter-hybrid by having an illusory dragon dealing perceived real damage to the players, but the monster itself is seemingly invulnerable! Ah, but what if the Wizard in the party detects a magical aura all around, or maybe coming from a glowing orb? A quick Arcana check may reveal that there is magic in the room, and it is of the illusion school of magic…or maybe it goes back to the previous example of the wizard’s keep, a wizard who the PCs have learned is a “Master of Illusions”. Then you must figure out how the players must solve the puzzle to dispel the illusion; this too could be something they learned about the wizard, or something else to do with illusions. The puzzle may be just figuring out that the dragon is an illusion, and the answer could be as simple as a high enough Arcana or Investigation check to dispel it…or just let the players come up with a solution on their own.
You can start with the simple trap concept itself, like a room full of quicksand, with some form of puzzle to open up the floor and release the sand/players, but while they’re trying to figure it all out — boom! A baby Purple Worm starts biting at their heels under the sand. This forces players to split their focus; maybe the Fighter and Barbarian will beat down on the monster while the Rogue and Bard will solve the puzzle. That way, each character truly gets to take advantage of their skill set and shine in their own way to avert catastrophe. *Note: be careful of having a “single solution” to any given puzzle; let the players surprise you with their tactics, and reward them for thinking outside the box (as long as it doesn’t detract from the puzzle/trap’s impact).
It’s important your players feel like they’re really figuring something out. Players love the rewarding feeling they get when they figure out a trap before getting damaged by it, especially when it forces them to recall information from earlier. The more you can “help” them without realizing you’re helping them, the more proud of themselves they’ll be. As God said (in Futurama, but still): “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” Try and drop subtle (read: super obvious) hints throughout earlier sections of a dungeon which relate to one or more puzzles later on. This can be done through the existence of other NPCs, diaries/notes, pieces of map, scrawlings or drawings along the walls or tapestries, anything that fits the theme of the dungeon itself.
It should be noted, sadly, that the average player has a very short attention span, and without a proper “Team Secretary” taking notes or someone with perfect recall, you may find that you need to hammer certain key clues, visuals, or phrases that are important to solving a puzzle.
Once you have given thought to the placement and concept of your puzzle(s) and trap(s), the rest is pretty easy (although oftentimes more labor-intensive). You can easily “re-skin” a puzzle from one of the manuals or something you found online, and just change the solution or tweak the puzzle slightly to match the challenge you are trying to present. Let’s use the picture next to this blog as an example (this was the sheet I referred to as DM; the small red numbers and red lines were not included in the players’ version which I handed out/shared on the Zoom screen):
Calendar Puzzle
The theme of this dungeon was an Aztec-calendar / Temple of Time concept (it was also a temple dedicated to a crocodile god, hence the central image). I had previously found on a random website of great D&D puzzles, this numerical puzzle where squares representing “runes” needed to be placed in the right order. While the runes look complex and perhaps without a discernible pattern, the players will drive themselves nuts trying to create patterns that aren’t there. In this instance, the solution was fairly simple: look to the small red numbers I placed above each square - the rune is simply that number as it might appear on a digital clock, eg, a straight vertical line for the number 1, or a diagonal slash for 7 - but set in the order of an analog clock (with 12 being at the top and 6 being on the bottom). The borders of the box make up the rest of the numbers. Once the player sees this (and you can provide hints if they get frustrated or stuck), they can decipher every rune. Throw in a couple of curve balls or misleading answers, and maybe color each rune (even though color is meaningless in this puzzle’s solution), and bam, you have your puzzle! From there, it just was a matter of creating the puzzle on paper, for which I used basic Microsoft Paint since all the shapes were simple geometrics. (I also threw in some dramatic music, quicksand, and a descending spiked ceiling just to force the PCs to think quickly and limit how long they could spend working on the puzzle before certain doom). Make sure you make a DM Solution page, and a Players page of the puzzle, so you can see the answers quickly but they cannot.
DM Version of the Gear Puzzle from above, with numbers matching the gears
And there you have it! A handful of tools, tips, and examples to get your brain percolating on your own brand of unique and creative puzzles. If you are still scratching your head, Tabletop Now offers a “Dungeon Master Academy”, a boot camp for budding DMs looking to learn the ropes or up their current game (we then help you find clients or give us some of our own if you “graduate”). Read more here or send us an inquiry if you’re interested in joining the TNT (Tabletop Now Team)!