[DF] Appropriate Riddles

[Nymdok]

DF is great combat fun, but GM's often like to throw in Puzzles and Riddles as a 'Change Up' pitch.

Criteria :

1. Answer must be genre appropriate - In other words no riddles about computers or flight attendants. Stick to DF.
2. Answer must be a noun. This should help us avoid abstract/conceptuals that might get misinterpreted.
3. TRY to make the answer unique. As riddles are often written metaphorically its probably impossible to not be misinterpreted at least a bit (indeed thats kind of the point), but TRY to make your riddle clear enough that it has ONE 'best' answer.

Try to keep the difficulty level low enough where someone can figure it out in a few minutes (This IS DF where we generally like to keep things moving). YOu may also wish to provide hints.

Ill open with a few.

#1
A sand colored fruit
a single cell
stolen at mornings brink
although it does hide
a treasure inside
if in cold water it sinks
beware if you will
and test with a chill
because if it floats it stinks

#2
I make a ribbon of time
of drama and rhyme
the whole of what men can confer
I dance and I curve
stop, start and swerve
as a feather or arrow or fur
The taxman and sage
the bard and the page
Move me with all that they think
I help keep it forever,
but remember it never
at least till I run out of


#3
These six skinny sisters
sing into a hole
Their tension fills the air
If pressed at the neck
still greater they'll fret
only north of the bridge will they dare.

Nymdok

[Gef]

Especially like number 3 there.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Gef

Especially like number 3 there.

Thanks :)

I suppose you could ad as many 'sisters' as you like to make it acceptable for your game. A quick wiki peek shows that the number was variable depending on the instrument.

Nymdok

[Joe]

Nice riddles, Nymdok!

2 and 3 are my favorites. 2 strikes me as the easiest of the bunch, but also the most elegantly written. 3 is very nice, too. Both seem an appropriate level of difficulty for a fast-paced, action-oriented DF game.

My only worry about number 1 is that the "single cell" line might be breaking your rule about avoiding anachronisms.

[Fred Brackin]

....and now I remember why I always hate it when the DM does this. Any time it's been done in the past it brings the game to a standstill for at least one session.

I remember an entire "puzzle" dungeon that collapsed under its' own weight before it could be solved (i.e. why do all the names of the monsters encountered start with "G"?). It's 36 years alter and I still don't know the answer to that one.

Of course a smaller riddle/puzzle dungeon from the same guy had the answer "13" and the big clue was that the stairs leading into it had 139 steps. Because that's 13 squared, isn't it?

As to today's offering's #1 is not a good one to ask over the Internet because I think the answer should be "an egg" but in my locality white eggs heavily dominate. Also, even when I see brown eggs they aren't the color of the local sand which is quite pale from being sun-bleached.

#2 is a game-stopper. I got nothing.

#3 should be some kind of stringed instrument, most likely a violin but there might be quite a few others.

So my advice is probably that you should not do this. I've never seen it end well. If you really are going to do it you need a tested riddle which is both solvable in a reasonable amount of time yet looks clever even when figured out.

The closest I've seen is a visual puzzle from a 3.5 module called ..... I think it's "Barrow of the Forgotten King". It's very D&D-ish with a picture of Beholder and icons/tiles that you have to re-arrange to match eye-stalk powers with couplets describing them.

It's always gotten solved in the 3 times I've run it but usually only by one person in the group who remembered that sort of stuff. The rest of the group was always baffled and if membership of any group had been a little different they'd have been reduced to trial and error. The sort of thing sometimes referred to as "Artifact Roulette".

....and that was as close as I can remember coming to a "good" one. I think that a real DF riddle would probably come closer to "What's Purple and dangerous?" but anyone who does remember an actual good riddle should post it to prove me wrong.

[Purple Haze]

No idea what #1 could be, I think #2 is ink, #3 is clearly guitar.

Medievalizing #3 will probably fail. Medieval lutes had either four or five courses with two strings in each course except for the highest pitched one which often has only one. So seven, eight, nine, or ten strings, and zero chance a player will figure it out. And the sound holes are properly called roses, and covered with intricate scroll work, so hole isn't a good description either.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Joe

Nice riddles, Nymdok!

2 and 3 are my favorites. 2 strikes me as the easiest of the bunch, but also the most elegantly written. 3 is very nice, too. Both seem an appropriate level of difficulty for a fast-paced, action-oriented DF game.

My only worry about number 1 is that the "single cell" line might be breaking your rule about avoiding anachronisms.

Thanks :)

I thought Cell worked as both the modern biological hint and the fact that its an encapsulated space. Im open to edits ;-)

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

....and now I remember why I always hate it when the DM does this. Any time it's been done in the past it brings the game to a standstill for at least one session.

<snip>

As to today's offering's #1 is not a good one to ask over the Internet because I think the answer should be "an egg" but in my locality white eggs heavily dominate. Also, even when I see brown eggs they aren't the color of the local sand which is quite pale from being sun-bleached.

Sand comes in more than one color as well as eggs. :)

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

#2 is a game-stopper. I got nothing.

Then my advice might be dont use that one. Its tough to find a good balance because they will be immediately obvious to some, but not others. I like to think that in a 3 person group someone will figure out the last word of the poem is supposed to be 'ink' which will then immediately lead people to realize that the answer is 'pen'.

I dont think these are nearly so obtuse as squares (or roots)

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

#3 should be some kind of stringed instrument, most likely a violin but there might be quite a few others.

Well of course by 6 sisters I meant guitar, but If thats not suitable for your game, change the number and make it 'lute'. (Do lutes have frets?)

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So my advice is probably that you should not do this. I've never seen it end well. If you really are going to do it you need a tested riddle which is both solvable in a reasonable amount of time yet looks clever even when figured out.

The closest I've seen is a visual puzzle from a 3.5 module called ..... I think it's "Barrow of the Forgotten King". It's very D&D-ish with a picture of Beholder and icons/tiles that you have to re-arrange to match eye-stalk powers with couplets describing them.

It's always gotten solved in the 3 times I've run it but usually only by one person in the group who remembered that sort of stuff. The rest of the group was always baffled and if membership of any group had been a little different they'd have been reduced to trial and error. The sort of thing sometimes referred to as "Artifact Roulette".

....and that was as close as I can remember coming to a "good" one. I think that a real DF riddle would probably come closer to "What's Purple and dangerous?" but anyone who does remember an actual good riddle should post it to prove me wrong.

The problem with tested riddles is that everyone ALREADY knows the answer or googles it straight away and its done.

I liked the minesweeper puzzle from Gorgolands gauntlet.

Although remembered riddles are great, sooner or later, someone has to write a NEW one. I figured I'd give it a shot and maybe get help from some others and make of it a game. At the end we'd all have a shiny batch of new riddles to offer the new DF crowd that should be along any minute and might have a bit of fun in the meantime.

Nymdok

[Nymdok]

Easier?

#4
I hum and I hum
by beat with out drum
although busy all day as I go
the lines that I make
are the shortest to take
but Im known to dodge too and fro
I fly without feathers
but Im covered in fur
I deliver love letters to plants
I think like my friends
and when the day ends
I tell of my deeds with a dance


Nymdok

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Well of course by 6 sisters I meant guitar, but If thats not suitable for your game, change the number and make it 'lute'. (Do lutes have frets?)

k

6 string guitars (as in the song Jukebox Hero where he buys an old six-string in a second hand store) may predominate currently but there are other kinds of guitars with different numbers of strings.

Also, as mentioned before, guitars aren't very medieval. I rejected guitar because of this. It's those steel strings. There were sort of predecessors called "gitterns" and "cytherns" but they were obscure compared to lutes and similar instruments.

All I know about lutes is that they are like big mandolins with a very bent neck. I have no idea if they fret, worry or have anxiety attacks. This is because I only collect trivia with my Eidetic Memory (5pts). I don't play any musical instrument. Most people seem not to.

The riddle might depend on somebody in the group being a guitar player and having specialized knowledge because of that. Out of past gaming groups I can think of I only come up with one guitarist and the nearest thing after that is a clarinet player. He posts things on Faceback when talking to his old friends who were in his High School marching band that are incomprehensible to me.

So requirement for specialized knowledge are another thing to avoid. I think it's generally not good form when you're taking the chance that they will be _one_ player with the background to solve the riddle. That leaves everyone else out and is part of why I rate these things as general failures.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Easier?

Yes.

There really should be one whose answer is "the Moon."