The Puzzle Box

[ajardoor]

Okay, let’s say the players in your campaign search an important location (dungeon, an enemy base, a Bad Place, secret room, safety deposit box, treasure vault, the crime scene, etc.) and make their rolls.

So they find a puzzle box hidden somewhere.

So GMs, tell me;

What kind of puzzle needs to be solved so the players can open the box?

And what does the box contain?

[johndallman]

How portable is the box? Is there any indication that it needs to be opened straight away? The characters may well take it home and work on it at leisure if they think they can.

[Flowergarden]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

What kind of puzzle needs to be solved so the players can open the box?

And what does the box contain?

There is no puzzle. And it's not a box. It's a key. Just a little bit too fancy. It's a cube that has retractable cylinder with some grooves and notches. Fancy grooves and notches

Players: strange puzzle box, we will investigate later
GM thoughts: it's a key to a hidden door. Please, find a door, don't go back(
10 sessions later
Player: we have a strange box... Oh, could it be a key?
GM: *happy GM sounds*

[DeadParrot]

Do the players like solving puzzles? If yes, consider buying some type of puzzle gizmo and let them try to solve it at the table, perhaps with a time limit. If no, create a success roll number and if one makes the roll, then success and proceed with adventure option A, otherwise, fail and proceed with adventure option B.

Depending an adventure path on a successful "Find Something" roll is fraught with danger. Just asking for a series of bad rolls and failed luck re-rolls. Or players missing the obvious "you really need to search here" clues.

And as mentioned, players may go, "We don't want to take the time/risk of solving the puzzle here." and delay the whole puzzle thing until later.

[Dalin]

The box is a perfect cube. On each face there is a series of four concentric clockwork dials, each with 10 positions numbered 0-9. Three of the faces are fixed at specific numbers. The opposite faces can be set to any combination of digits.

The nature of the puzzle could refer to any sets of important numbers that the campaign lore might indicate. One possibility is that the creator of the box was fascinated by mathematics and loved the mystical potential of amicable numbers. In which case the three fixed faces might be set to 220, 1184, and 2620 (the first of the first three amicable pairs). The box would open if the opposite side was set to the corresponding number (284, 1210, 2924).

This would be effectively impossible to guess, but there would be multiple ways to find a solution. There may be a book in the owner's possession about number theory. Or, if the PCs showed the box to a mathematician, they might recognize the significance of the three numbers. There may be artwork elsewhere in the scene that depict amicable numbers. There may also be more mundane methods: listening closely as you turn the dials to hear when the pins engage. In the internet age, of course, you could simply type the three numbers into Google and find the answer almost instantly.

Within the box, in a padded compartment, is a powerful love potion.

[Kesendeja]

Initially I was thinking an entirely different puzzle box key.... but that's what I get for running Horror 😈

[ajardoor]

Originally Posted by johndallman

How portable is the box? Is there any indication that it needs to be opened straight away? The characters may well take it home and work on it at leisure if they think they can.

The box is portable and it does not need to be opened now. Taking it home may or may not be a good idea. It could be cursed, after all.

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

Do the players like solving puzzles? If yes, consider buying some type of puzzle gizmo and let them try to solve it at the table, perhaps with a time limit. If no, create a success roll number and if one makes the roll, then success and proceed with adventure option A, otherwise, fail and proceed with adventure option B.

Depending an adventure path on a successful "Find Something" roll is fraught with danger. Just asking for a series of bad rolls and failed luck re-rolls. Or players missing the obvious "you really need to search here" clues.

And as mentioned, players may go, "We don't want to take the time/risk of solving the puzzle here." and delay the whole puzzle thing until later.

The box is an optional thing. Opening it may reward the players, or take the adventure in a new direction. But it doesn’t stall out the adventure if the box is ignored, not found, or failed.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Kesendeja

Initially I was thinking an entirely different puzzle box key.... but that's what I get for running Horror 😈

"The LeMarchand Configuration is like a box of chocolates. You never know what delights, so many delights, you'll get."

[The Colonel]

What role is this going to play in the campaign? If it's important to progressing, then any test needs to be more or less symbolic - otherwise your players will fail to open it and just frustrate everyone at the table.

If it's an optional sidequest you have more options - again, I'm not a fan of player skill, but if you and your players like that sort of thing, there's plenty of physical puzzles you can pick up, often in the same places as RPGs and board games. Or just use a Rubix cube or something.

If opening it is a bad idea, encourage the PCs to research it in game to get bonuses to open the thing. Research should also indicate that opening it is a bad idea.

[Varyon]

The puzzle boxes in The Nested Worlds are interesting. They appear to be crafted of wood with some brass decorations, but are functionally impossible to damage and, initially, seem impossible to manipulated. If charged by magic, however, glowing runes appear on the surface. The holder can move these around, but doing so also changes the rest of the runes into different ones.

The trick to the box is that you need to know what's inside it, and then you can write it out with the runes, at which point it pops open.

Now, what's inside these boxes in The Nested Worlds would absolutely break your setting, as they are in fact the Words of Creation - the knowledge used to create the Nested Worlds themselves. But you could certainly have them contain something much less literally-world-shaking.

As a plot seed, this can drive the characters to go out to find information on what the runes mean (if it's an obscure script) as well as what the box may contain, followed by needing to work out exactly how the runes change so that when they put them together, they'll spell the correct word to open the box. And, of course, such boxes can serve well as a MacGuffin, with plenty of unsavory types pursuing the characters to take it for themselves (that is, in fact, the roll the first one we see in the story plays for some time, but then it gets opened and its contents become quite integral to the plot). It needs to contain something rather worthwhile - or at least potentially contain such, although your players may be a little miffed if they wind up with a poor reward - to justify all the trouble, naturally. Note if you can't think of anything of sufficient value that would fit in the box, it could also serve as something like a Bag of Holding, comfortably containing (and negating the weight of) something much larger. Indeed, basically getting a Puzzle Box of Holding may well be part of the reward for opening it!