TOPIC: Puzzle rooms with treasure....or not

Slightly off topic, but my big beef is why are treasure stamps in puzzle rooms on COMBAT runs?

Bradley Wayne wrote: Slightly off topic, but my big beef is why are treasure stamps in puzzle rooms on COMBAT runs?

Probably because that is where the Rogue boxes are located as well.

In pure combat rooms, a clue from a Rogue box isn't really that helpful.

bpsymington wrote: I still think the lava room was a pretty awesome puzzle, I liked someone's idea of having the DM say something like, "You see treasure balanced on the edge of the opposing bank. If you make more than one error crossing, it might fall into the lava."

I completely concur; and I'd love to see that especially for normal runs. I fully accept that on HN/NM I cannot whine. But when I want to pay $520 USD for a group of 10 people to do the run, 6 of which are entire new players to the game and get them into it for the first time, the last thing that I expect is a DM that is short with me and says that the puzzle wasn't solved to his satisfaction and no treasure. It wasn't even explained that it was a timing thing; just a "you didn't do it the right way" and a "move on". It was just a bit of a let down, and disappointing that the puzzle was solved, but we didn't know why or how the solving of it did not net the shinies at the end.

But why not just move the stamp to a combat room?

Beth Henricks wrote:

bpsymington wrote: I still think the lava room was a pretty awesome puzzle, I liked someone's idea of having the DM say something like, "You see treasure balanced on the edge of the opposing bank. If you make more than one error crossing, it might fall into the lava."

I completely concur; and I'd love to see that especially for normal runs. I fully accept that on HN/NM I cannot whine. But when I want to pay $520 USD for a group of 10 people to do the run, 6 of which are entire new players to the game and get them into it for the first time, the last thing that I expect is a DM that is short with me and says that the puzzle wasn't solved to his satisfaction and no treasure. It wasn't even explained that it was a timing thing; just a "you didn't do it the right way" and a "move on". It was just a bit of a let down, and disappointing that the puzzle was solved, but we didn't know why or how the solving of it did not net the shinies at the end.

Quoted.

As a person who hosted 3 runs this year with 6/6/8 newbies the new puzzle rules (which were NEVER explained to me at any point anywhere) are disappointing. If a change like this is coming please let us know ahead of time so we can prep people.

Also let the DM know if we give them the answer and let the party play the puzzle they can NOT deny the treasure no matter what. We are voluntarially avoiding ruining the room for the party, don't penalize us for it.

Personally, for the lava room, I think it would be better to not only say something like "the chest may fall if the lava splashes too much", but also say that the first person across can grab the chest and open it before anyone else tries to get across, saving the treasure (and allowing people to "cheat" the puzzle to get through after it's been solved).

Kelly Overholser wrote: Personally, for the lava room, I think it would be better to not only say something like "the chest may fall if the lava splashes too much", but also say that the first person across can grab the chest and open it before anyone else tries to get across, saving the treasure (and allowing people to "cheat" the puzzle to get through after it's been solved).

Agreed.

If player 1 solves the puzzle and player 5 flubs their crossing the party should not lose the treasure. Not unless, as previously stated, there is some specifically story related reason. (Sphynx is offering you loot if you do X really well)

The more time I've had to think about this, the more I'm convinced that the real goal should be: "Is the party is having fun trying to solve a puzzle?" Coming up with the "book" solution should certainly result in treasure, but I don't think that's necessarily the most important thing in a puzzle room.

I realize that allowing multiple solutions makes puzzles easier, but long ago when I used to DM tabletop games, the party only approached tricky challenges the way I expected them to about 1 time in 10.

If the party comes up with a reasonable solution to avoid push damage and had fun coming up with it, I'd say they deserve a treasure stamp.

Eric Martin wrote: The more time I've had to think about this, the more I'm convinced that the real goal should be: "Is the party is having fun trying to solve a puzzle?" Coming up with the "book" solution should certainly result in treasure, but I don't think that's necessarily the most important thing in a puzzle room.

I realize that allowing multiple solutions makes puzzles easier, but long ago when I used to DM tabletop games, the party only approached tricky challenges the way I expected them to about 1 time in 10.

If the party comes up with a reasonable solution to avoid push damage and had fun coming up with it, I'd say they deserve a treasure stamp.

There seems to be massive hesitation giving out stamps which is odd considering the sheer number of treasure boosts out there.


Looting treasure makes the dungeon run more fun, I'd expect more leniency in giving stamps to keep the overall feeling of the game positive. Those of us who can pull 160 treasure in a run already break the system to the point of needing massive treasure piles...

Personally, for the lava room, I think it would be better to not only say something like "the chest may fall if the lava splashes too much"

Another thing that would work for the lava room would be: "It looks like the Drow you are chasing dropped something valuable on the G tile." It's only used in EIGHTH, so that would give you time to figure out the puzzle through trial and error, but you would have to understand the puzzle to actually secure the treasure. If someone jumped the gun and tried to grab the treasure early, both they and the treasure are going swimming in the lava.

Eric Martin wrote:

Personally, for the lava room, I think it would be better to not only say something like "the chest may fall if the lava splashes too much"

Another thing that would work for the lava room would be: "It looks like the Drow you are chasing dropped something valuable on the G tile." It's only used in EIGHTH, so that would give you time to figure out the puzzle through trial and error, but you would have to understand the puzzle to actually secure the treasure. If someone jumped the gun and tried to grab the treasure early, both they and the treasure are going swimming in the lava.

Oh, now that's a good idea, I like that.

I think my own personal thought is, you need to solve the puzzle in order to get the treasure, and can't brute force the entire puzzle, but as long as you've figured out the solution it doesn't matter what else you do.

You need to figure out that you can only step on certain letters and it matters how many went before you, but if you can get that far you get the treasure - again, putting it on a certain tile that's used later works nicely. For the mushrooms, the players should have at least some educated guess about which mushroom it is, even if their logic isn't completely correct, as long as they have a reason to pick their mushroom beyond a random guess. For the spider web... actually, I'm not entirely sure how you solve that one without doing some random brute force, but we got the treasure anyway...

Eric Martin wrote:

Personally, for the lava room, I think it would be better to not only say something like "the chest may fall if the lava splashes too much"

Another thing that would work for the lava room would be: "It looks like the Drow you are chasing dropped something valuable on the G tile." It's only used in EIGHTH, so that would give you time to figure out the puzzle through trial and error, but you would have to understand the puzzle to actually secure the treasure. If someone jumped the gun and tried to grab the treasure early, both they and the treasure are going swimming in the lava.

Of course, in that particular case, it could throw off people who think "if the drow dropped the treasure on G, then the drow stepped on G, and therefore..."

I already said my piece on how this puzzle needed some luck/retries because there was no way to gain all the necessary information. I preferred the talking mushrooms to the lava tiles for that reason, hard as they were to hear at times.