By DM Lane (@Tyrennii on Twitter)

I like puzzles. I really enjoy them. I’m also really bad at solving them and that’s probably why I like being on the DM side of the screen more often than not. As a DM though, I think that you have to be wary in putting puzzles in front of your players and this is because you are often testing the intelligence of the Players and not the Players Characters; in which this is one of the key statistics of the Dungeons and Dragons.

When I do design a puzzle for my game, there are some guidelines that I like to keep in mind.

  1. Know your group: Canvas your group about puzzles. Do they like them, do they hate them. This should give you a good idea into their mindset of puzzles within the game and act accordingly. You may have a group that will just walk away at the first sight of puzzles. You may have a group where half of them enjoy puzzles and the other half hate them. This puts you in a tough position, though this might give you a good opportunity to split the party so you can give boths sides of the ‘puzzle’ equation. If you’re unsure, start with a ‘small’ puzzle, and work your way up to more complex things.
  2. Make the puzzle non-essential: Put the puzzle into the game that if they choose not to complete it, and bypass it, it doesn’t matter to the players completing the quest. Sure, they might be shitty, or forever curious about the puzzle, but if they cannot complete the puzzle, allow them to move on with the game. An example of this might be where completing the puzzle might open the door to a cool item, but all that not completing it means, is that they miss the item and continue on. No harm, no foul.
  3. Make puzzles with alternate solutions: Your players enter an area where they need to solve a puzzle to enter into the next area unnoticed. If they solve the puzzle, great and its a bonus for them, they get the jump on whatever is next. If they don’t, they can still open the door to the next area, but maybe the guards know of their presence and can prepare. Maybe even throw in an alternate way of getting into the room other than said alarmed door.
  4. Give Clues: If you’re expecting the characters to solve the puzzles you have to be expected to give clues when the players roll successfully for intelligence, inviestigation, arcana or whatever else checks might be applicable. A puzzle set in a forest might have a nature or survival check. Be flexible and allow your players to gain hints dependant on their characters abilities. Additionally….
  5. Allow for spells to provide answers: There are a multitude of spells in D&D that are non-combative, investigative options that players can use. Arcane Eye, Scrying, Detect Magic, Identify, Detect Thoughts or even Clairvoyance might give the players some sort of additional clues to how to solve a puzzle. Invisibilty might allow a PC to see a guard complete a door alarm-puzzle, and hence know the combination. The idea of a character that is a ‘Magic using Sherlock Holmes’ seems very intreguing.
  6. Make the puzzle make sense to the story: This is less about the intelligence of the players/characters and more about running a puzzle in-game correctly. If the puzzle is in a dungeon, ask yourself, ‘why is it there?’ and ‘What was the purpose of it being there in the first place.’ This will help you integrate it into the story and give it more purpose. In turn, this will have your players want to solve it with more enthusiasm and vigour.
  7. Non-fail puzzles: Let failing the puzzle just be a setback for the characters, not an outright fail. If they put in the wrong combination, have another goblin scream out of somewhere to attack them, or have them magically transported to another area where they have to come forward again to retry.
  8. Relax the RP: It is a challenge to make puzzles character appropriate as possible but you can’t always make a puzzle that rotates around the background of the one player that likes puzzles. In addition, it can annoying for player playing the Barbarian, everytime a puzzle arrives, to sit out due to low intelligence. It is really difficult to not metagame puzzles, so relax the roleplaying for the puzzle and let all the players get involved.
  9. Think Larger: A puzzle doesn’t have to be; ‘solve this to open a door.’ A puzzle can be much larger. ‘Rob a bank’ can be just as good as anything else. This can involve investigation, roleplay, combat, spells, ability checks and alternate solutions all easily within the storyline of the campaign. Even something as simple as ‘cross the raging river as the bridge is out’ can be seen as a puzzle.
  10. Don’t have a defined answer to the puzzle: This is pretty sneaky from your part of a DM. Set the puzzle without a solution and see how your players react to finding a solution. Quite often the players will come up with something that you have never even thought of. This can be pretty damn cool and rewards player creativity. You, at this stage as a DM, might go, ‘That’s enough,’ and allow the players to succeed. Puzzle solved!

Even following these guidelines, there will still be players who will want their characters to solve any puzzle by hitting it very hard or throwing multiple fireballs at it. Sometimes, that’s okay too.

Don’t let one bad experience with puzzles put you off altoughether. Adjust how you’re running them and give it another shot.

UNT.

Other Articles:
Managing Murder Hobo’s
Hero Points Inspiration System
DMPC’s – to Play or not to Play, that is the question
The Long Rest Conundrum (and Leomund’s Tiny Hut)
Beefing Up Combat (pt.2) – 10 More Ways to Challenge your Players
Beefing Up Combat pt1
Simplifying Complex Combat
DM Burnout
My DM Screen Information (+PDF)
The D&D Escape Room
DM’s Die Rolling for Players Skill Checks 
Concentration Q&A’s
Encouraging Players to ‘Roleplay’
Character Creation: Why Adventure? (on d10again)
Metagmaing – Players Looking up the Baddies
Be a Better Role Player (Pt.3) – How to Improve In-Game
Be a Better Role Player (pt.2) – What your fellow players want from you
Be a Better Role Player (pt.1) – What Your DM Wants From You
5e Combat Cheat Sheet
Temporary Hit Points Q&A’s
DM Disappointment: Players Don’t Follow the Story?
Session 0
Tips for New Players
New Years DMing Resolutions