[DF] Appropriate Riddles

[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