I absolutely adore puzzle and riddle rooms in dungeonsTell me your favorites that you solved or died to
>>94699989I also need some puzzles for my dungeon, OP. Tell me about yours!
>>94699989I don't even bother. I've found players are more likely to try to bullshit their way around the puzzles with magic than actually engage with the puzzles, and will whine and bitch endlessly if you make them anti-magic zones or anything like that. I have NEVER seen a player who actually LIKES puzzles, despite having seen several who CLAIM to like them.
>>94700963I love puzzles, I fully embody the wizards I play all the way down to autistic appreciation for puzzles and the satisfaction of completing them. I've been begging my DMs for more of them, no dungeon is ever complete without one or two, in my eyes.Invite me to your groups someday.
Bump
>>94699989Died to a sonic-trap once (basically a tunnel with a magic crystal blasting sound down the corridor for massive thunder damage) because I decided that the solution was for me and the Cleric to chain together ritual castings of Silence and slowly inch our way through the hall.Yeah, apparently we were supposed to "Neutralize the sound with Thunder Damage of our own" and the DM got mad that we were "cheating" by using Silence and decided the hallway was now also filled with arrow traps that auto-hit us because we couldn't hear them firing in our Silence spheres (not sure how we were supposed to hear them if we had solved the puzzle the correct way, as crossbows generally aren't very loud, especially right next to the equivalent of two jet engines firing off at eachother).In short... basically this: >>94700963Puzzles often become DMs expecting a single hyper-specific solution and then getting pissy and vindictive when players come up with a more creative or practical solution.
>>94703406Yeah I admit, its hard to discern between "traps" and "puzzles" sometimes, it varies pretty heavily on the DMHard to tell whether something is just an obstacle you need to be creative about to avoid/overcome, versus an actual puzzle you're expected to tackle with a puzzle solutionNot really a fan of those either myself
>>94703406>Puzzles often become DMs expecting a single hyper-specific solution and then getting pissy and vindictive when players come up with a more creative or practical solution.Reminds me of a game I was in where we had to deal with a puzzle that involved using crystals to change the colors of light beams to unlock a door, kinda like pic-related. The DM got super pissy and said the crystals were immune to magic when a player tried to change their color with Prestigitation instead of googling the right alignment or whatever. After saying magic didn't work, the party Rogue ran with the idea and tried an alternative non-magical method of just filling a glass jar with water and dye and shining the light through that to change it's color. The DM got so frustrated that when we finally got the door open he said the treasure chamber (which was locked by this stupid puzzle when we found it) had already been looted forever ago and we wern't going to get anything for "cheating".
>>94703863Man, I never knew hating puzzles to this degree was the consensus. I love shit like this.
>>94703869I'm not mad about the puzzle. I'm mad that we came up with two solutions for it which SHOULD have worked, but they wern't the solution the DM was expecting, so for arbitrary reasons we got punished. THAT is the reason so many players hate puzzles.
>>94703881I mean, I understand his position. A puzzle is supposed to be a proper puzzle, not just taking a hammer to it and trying to bend the rules. It undermines not only the puzzle, but it sets a preface for every puzzle moving forward.When do you actually integrate with the rules established? Should he just not give a shit about any puzzles to begin with when you all can essentially just break the door off its hinges instead of properly figuring out how to open it?
>>94703406>>94703863>>94703881Part of this is just a symptom of D&D in general, especially in parties with alot of casters. By the time you reach mid-level, the casters have so many ways to warp reality and so many basically-cheat-codes to draw upon that most puzzles can simply be bypassed or corner-cut in some way. Allowing players to do this is rarely satisfying for the DM, but at the same time if the DM puts their foot down and disallows these solutions it ends up rarely being satisfying for the players.As always the answer is to stop playing D&D and play a game where magic can't shit on absolutely every challenge ever.
>>94703901Even without magic, I've seen players do shit like trying to tunnel around doors they couldn't get open, open chests by pouring water in the locks and then leaving them out in the cold so the water freezes and pops the lock, and brute force their way past passwords and ciphers by saying "my character spends the next 8 hours trying every possible combination". I've also seen instances of entire parties just shutting down as soon as they hit a puzzle too. Player A just sits there silent, expecting Player B to figure it out. Player B just sits there silent, expecting Player C to figure it out. Player C just sits there silent, expecting Player D to figure it out. Player D sits there complaining that playing an Intelligence class shouldn't mean they have to solve every puzzle and Player's A, B, and C need to help! People hate being forced to think. Especially there's only one correct answer and creativity is treated like a "wrong" answer.
>>94699989The problem with puzzles and riddles is that they typically have a single expected solution. I greatly prefer presenting obstacles and difficulties for which I have no intended solution, giving my players the opportunity to work out creative solutions instead of just trying to guess what I’m thinking.
>>94703891>A puzzle is supposed to be a proper puzzleNo, a puzzle is supposed to be an obstacle to be overcome. It has an intended solution, much like a lock has an intended key. Getting pissy about players engaging with the puzzle in ways you didn’t expect and coming up with an unconventional solution that meets all the puzzle’s requirements is like getting mad that someone thought to try picking the lock. They’re still engaging with the nature of the challenge, they’re just approaching it from a different perspective. If you can’t handle that idea, you shouldn’t be running games.
>>94703891if the players can come up with an "unexpected" solution to a puzzle then it was a shit puzzle>don't hate Alexander, hate the knot
>>94704024>If you can’t handle that idea, you shouldn’t be running games.My experience, and apparently the experience of most other people in this thread, is that the majority of DMs in fact can't handle that idea.
>>94703891>A puzzle is supposed to be a proper puzzle, not just taking a hammer to it and trying to bend the rules.This isn't a video game where the rules of the world are suspended in the puzzle chamber - if the puzzle is the lock to something very valuable placed there by someone intelligent, it should be sufficiently well designed that there isn't a simple bypass.Of course, most DMs aren't as smart as they think and most of the ones that are quickly discover that their players are borderline retarded and can't deal with an actual puzzle (" I roll an intelligence check to solve the puzzle")
>>94703863>a player tried to change their color with PrestigitationLame, a cheap trick>the party Rogue ran with the idea and tried an alternative non-magical method of just filling a glass jar with water and dye and shining the light through that to change it's color.Genius
I don't know guys, I get the concept that DnD is very interpretive and puzzles being open-ended is fun, but a lot of the time there *are* intended solutions to puzzles that players should be able to solve. I've never encountered a puzzle in a tabletop setting that I wasn't able to solve, and its great being the party's caster that obsesses over those things. It plays into my PCs' obsession to have his wit challenged and to overcome those kinds of intellectual obstacles.However, the puzzles in these scenarios *should* be presented in a way where it discourages player-fuckery like breaking the lock, manually changing the parameters, etc. because players may waste a lot of time unnecessarily.
>>94704046I mean, based on everything I’ve heard about the hobby in general, yes, the majority of people who DM don’t actually have any business running games.
>>94704159>to have his wit challenged and to overcome those kinds of intellectual obstaclesExcept that you’re approaching these from the perspective that outwitting the puzzle-crafter is forbidden. That isn’t challenging your wits by seeing if you can come up with a clever solution, it’s testing your cold-reading talents to see if you can guess what the other guy was thinking. In fact, the autistic “I have to solve this” kind of character is exactly the one I would MOST expect to come up with a solution unforeseen by the puzzle-crafter—a better solution, even, that proves him to be the victor in this battle of wits.>puzzles in these scenarios *should* be presented in a way where it discourages player-fuckery like breaking the lock, manually changing the parameters, etc. Only inasmuch as the puzzle-crafter would have foreseen such tactics and worked to outmaneuver them. And those restrictions and limitations should always, 100% of the time, without exception, be things that the game master wrote down BEFORE the players encountered the puzzle.>because players may waste a lot of time unnecessarily.It’s only unnecessary if it doesn’t work. And it should only fail to work if it runs afoul of a requirement of the puzzle or a planned limitation of the scenario. Otherwise, you’re punishing people for trying to engage with the puzzle as presented, which is precisely what leads to the behavior described in the second half of >>94703968
>>94704159I once made a dungeon full of 'puzzles', but most of them were environmental puzzles that I specifically designed to be possible to bypass.The first room had a walls of fire/ice/rock/fog in front of the door leading further in, with some matching elemental-themed riddles around the room to open it up. The riddles were easy, but I didn't put in layered walls of indestructible magical force, so that brute-forcing the way forward by dousing fire or melting ice was still an option.Designing a puzzle so that it's completely tamper-proof is boring, and just runs the risk of raising the question of, if the designer of the dungeon could make an indestructible door with an un-pickable lock and warded against every spell in existence, he decided to leave a metaphorical key in the exact same room.Having the defenses around the puzzle be imperfect explains why there is a puzzle to begin with, because the maker isn't some flawless mastermind.
anyone ever tried hitting their PCs with this one?
>>94703901One of the examples didn't involved magic tho
>>94704159The fact that players CAN solve a puzzle doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s sensible to force them to do so. Players generally CAN triumph in most combat encounters, and yet they’ll sometimes try negotiating or even just avoiding areas in which enemies can be found. And, even when they do enter combat, it would be utterly absurd to declare that they must defeat their foes in the “correct” way.
>>94704377your approach sounds sane and fun and is something that loses much of its charm in a dumbed down system like modern dndevery caster having easy access to a spammable cantrip with an elemental effect trivializes these challenges; if, in contrast, you have to be really careful about managing your slots and other classes have only limited supply of alchemical compounds, if any, and the dungeoneering is on a timer (could be weeks or months but still) and resting is risky or drains important resources... in those scenarios even a simple puzzle is a question of>do I engage with it "as intended">or do I burn important supplies or time
I dislike puzzles because they're a player not a character challenge. It's actually the subset of a larger problem - your character is your avatar in the game world and thus has physical stats that allow it to do stuff in the game world. Using D&D as an example, that'd be Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. However, it makes no sense for a character to have mental stats that imply some degree of autonomy. A character possesses no Intelligence or Wisdom when the player isn't actively controlling the character. A better word for those stats should be Memory for Intelligence (since most Intelligence checks are "do you know this?") and Analytics for Wisdom (since most Wisdom checks are "can you figure this out?") Charisma is iffy because too many people misinterpret it. I think something like Eloquence or Elocution would be better because a player can be charismatic or not, but it's "filtered" through the character. So a character with high Eloquence would be able to take "I convince the king to give us more money" into an impassioned speech, while a character with low Eloquence would take a player's impassioned speech for more money and turn it into "Give us more money." Anyway, I hope you find some good ideas for puzzles.
>>94699989I'm not a huge fan of the old-school D&D style dungeon puzzle in ttrpgs. I prefer to just give my players a situation that I haven't bothered considering a solution for. An impassible cliff. A magical barrier. An all-powerful demon who asks "why should I?" when the players need her to do something. It's way more fun to just put an obstacle in their path and let them dick around and come up with a solution. Roll with it on the fly, get into whatever they're doing, and pretend like they somehow stumbled across the solution you always intended.I am convinced it's more fun for them. They invent zany bullshit using whatever skills, powers and equipment their characters have combined with novel ways to use them.
>>94705781>pretend like they somehow stumbled across the solution you always intendedI've found it's even better if you're completely open about these being problems you haven't already solved, since that really jumpstarts the idea that they should actually try to solve the problem instead of looking for where you've hidden the solution.
>>94699989I hate puzzles and riddles because I always find a correct answer, but it's not the answer the GM wanted so it doesn't count.It's not my fault riddles often have like 600 things that are correct answers and most puzzles are easily broken. And the ones that aren't easily broken are extremely valuable because they're made out of bullshitanium.
>>94704839It helped that they knew the evil army they'd been working against has sent out a force to take over the dungeon, and while they didn't have an exact idea of the timeframe, they knew they couldn't just spend infinite time on every annoyance.Though it's also not like this puzzle was meant to be particularly taxing or difficult or dangerous either, since it was basically just the front door.
>>94699989What setting and lore?
>>94699989tower of hanoi
>>94708664You fucking monster.
>>94699989I'm a big fan of puzzles where the party has to fight doppelganger versions of themselves and pair off in such a way that everyone in the party is fighting the party member they're best suited to defeating. I always find some excuse to implement some version of this when I'm DMing. I wish more DMs would when I'm a player.
>>94705467Yep, it's been years since my group gave up on puzzles. It's just an in-joke now that now and then the GM goes "Okay guys, this next room has a really gay-looking puzzle with cringe crystals and shit. Roll Intelligence to get through without wasting two hours."
>>94704159>all those front-loaded assumptionsAsk me how I know your only experience with not just the subject of puzzles, but this hobby at large comes from second-hand sources.The basic problem with puzzles is that in 9 out of 10 cases they exist either as a dwliberate time sink, are super specific due to poor design or the GM is really bad at allowing own players to figure an actual solution - and usually all three at once.It also has nothing to do with DnD or magicking solutions. I played rwcwntly an old ass magic-less system from my country from the 90s, designed for dungeon crawl. GM threw a fit when we applied common sense, real world navigating principles, like looking for draft or throwing pebbles, because we did that instead of trying to decipher his super-special coded map on a ceiling of one of the opening chambers.Let me repeat - guy wanted us, the players, to break a cypher, build on 6 digit code, without any clues of any kind. In case you are a mathlet - thats a million of combinations FOR THE CYPHER. Then you have to decode the messages, too. And then it turned out he codwd it wrong when we finished the scenario and asked for his notes, so even if we decided to play cryptologists, we would still fail
The sort of players that insist on subverting the puzzle just because they can, without even once considering what the proper solution might be, are the same 'I'm GENRE savvy!' dipshits who will do shit like murder every single questgiver they ever come across because "they'll probably betray us later" or just refuse to go into the dungeon at all and instead declare that they should spend the next 3 in-character monsters diverting a local river so that it floods the dungeon and drowns everything inside. Its two rooms full of kobolds guarding some dragon eggs, you fucking morons. It would take you 10 minutes, tops. Just play the game you twits. Subverting the adventure is fun and interesting exactly once. The rest of the time its just contorting yourself to have what is actually LESS fun than just doing the damn quest. Like, if you have a tower full of bad guys and you just cast fly to the top of the tower and skip directly to the final fight? I won't stop you from doing it, but I also won't give you anything else to do once you beat him. If your goal is to skip 90% of the game, your reward is that you only get 10% of the game to play.
>>94709677>insist on subverting the puzzle just because they canThat's not the issue, though. The issue is people coming up with perfectly legitimate ways of engaging with and solving the puzzle, but getting them thrown out because they weren't the RIGHT way of solving it.
>>94704159What you do is that you have a dungeon that is heavily puzzle based where the players are fully able to fuck with the puzzles or break them or bypass them. But, if they do, a booming voice rings out from the walls yelling "PENALTY" and then something awful happens. Like, you just cast fly to zips over the jumping puzzle. And that works, but then PENALTY happens and the doors slam shut and the room starts filling with poison gas. The next time you trigger penalty its a different punishment, like everyone gets shrunk down to a few inches tall and has to tackle the next room at a tiny size. Shit like that. Don't say "you can't do that!", just establish that doing that has consequences and then let them make their own choices. Once they know that something is judging them and will punish them for trying to bypass the puzzle, they are going to be more likely to engage with the puzzle as intended so as not to trigger the penalty.
>>94709692> The issue is people coming up with perfectly legitimate ways of engaging with and solving the puzzle, but getting them thrown out because they weren't the RIGHT way of solving it.Thats a non-proveable statement, though. Everyone who suggests an answer is convinced they are right, but that doesn't mean they are. Lets go back to the example in >>94703863. Lets say that the players try the prestigitation spell and the water and dye solution to change the color of the light beam to blue, and the GM says that neither works. The players throw a shitfit because the GM is not letting them bypass the puzzle and is being a bad GM and so on and so on, and only after the session has already turned into a night-ruining argument and the game refuses to progress does the GM just outright tell them that the DYE worked but they didn't dye the water the right FUCKING COLOR because they misunderstood the puzzle and didn't realize that the correct answer was never blue in the first place, it was purple. If they had done a purple dye it would have worked but instead they tried one thing, it failed, and started bitching.Just because you have convinced yourself that your cool and epic alternative solution should work doesn't mean you are right, because as someone who doesn't actually know the answer to the puzzle you never solved you have incomplete understanding of what the solution needs to be.
>>94709677The sort of GM who complains about players "subverting" their puzzles are the same brand of faggot who calls every argument they don't agree with "trolling". Roleplaying games are not books and they are not videogames. If you can't deal with your players exercising the freedom and creativity of the medium, then you should not be GMing.
>>94709718This is alot of mental gymnastics and assumptions to try to defend a pretty indefensible viewpoint. All the DM had to do was say: >"The lock moves a little, clearly responding to the change in the light, but it doesn't quite fully unlock yet. You're on the right track, but something is still off."
>>94709718>Let’s go back to this example and then completely change what happens to make me right and you wrongGee, anon, what a stunning and convincing rhetorical approach.
>>94709718How retarded do you have to be to get the color wrong when you literally have pre-existing light beams and colored crystals right there for reference? You're trying REALLY hard to make the players' fault when it's obviously a case of the DM just being shit.
>>94709677>If your goal is to skip 90% of the game, your reward is that you only get 10% of the game to play.If your players are actively avoiding 90% of your game, you may want to consider changing that 90% to be more like the 10% they're actually enjoying.
>>94709790By that logic, the ideal video game is a screen where you click on lootboxes and get rewards. No actual game that precedes the reward, just the reward. No place for the reward to be used or even viewed as a cosmetic, just the act of getting the reward. Over and over.
>>94709804You joke, but this is why Microtransactions are so successful in the videogame industry. People actually are THAT retarded.
I'll do a crossword if I want a puzzle; they have no place in RPGs. The point of how RPGs work is having characters engage in their world as if it were real, but puzzles only engage the players in abstract thinking about the puzzle. That's the point of how puzzles work, and it's why they cannot contribute to an RPG, only distract from one.They are fundamentally bad RPG design, just like "long scenes of a bunch of NPCs talking amongst themselves" are.
ITT: Brainlets Imagine concocting 50,000 reasons to hate and whine and cry about puzzles because you're too dumb to figure things out yourselfNothing is more discouraging to me than hearing my party members would rather give up like children instead of tackling a proper challenge that they can't throw damage or spells at to make it go away
>>94699989I don’t actually like the idea of dungeon puzzles for the most part. I know, right? Anyway, the actual reason I don’t like them is because I just don’t see the internal logic of a puzzle room:If the goal of the dungeon’s architect was to seal something away where no one would ever find it: then why not just seal the damn thing up? Wall it in, shove a giant stone plug into the hallways leading into it, set a metric fuck ton of deadly traps, collapse the entrance, burn the maps identifying it. Don’t leave some weird-ass puzzle lock somebody might solve.If it’s one of those cases where it needs to be semi-permeable (ie allowing a selected few, those “worthy” if you will, to pass deeper into the dungeon, then why waste time with a puzzle room when you could just have an increasingly elaborate lock-and-key setup and just pass the key off to those deemed worthy? Gets the same effect and, in theory, means that those who commissioned the dungeon know, or can easily find out, who is coming and going through the dungeon.If this was supposed to be a lived-in place now long-abandoned, then why the hell are you disrupting the flow of traffic through the space with some goddamn riddle/puzzle that must be solved first? People got work to do and don’t need it interrupted with such nonsense. Put some guards and security checkpoints if you want to screen who is going where.Don’t get me wrong, I get the external logic of a puzzle room, it’s a narrative chance for characters to show off how clever they are and to give players a chance to solve a puzzle, but I just can’t justify the existence of a puzzle room in-universe because of one or more of those three points. Not to mention that puzzle rooms just get frustrating if your players are about as clever and observant as a brick.
>>94703863>>94703968This is basically my experience with throwing puzzles at players. 8 out of 10 times they will treat is an obstacle they have to bypass somehow and will look for ways to do it rather than trying to actually engage with the puzzle and solve it "properly".Which honestly actually makes perfect sense from the POV of the actual player characters who are just trying to progress with whatever mission they're on, rather than suddenly solving some random ass puzzles they stumbled upon just for the sake of it. But from the meta perspective, it really challenges the sense of including puzzles in the first place.Usually at most 1, maybe 2 players will accept the challenge and try to figure it out, while the rest will just sit around bored, waiting for them to finish, which is obviously also rather suboptimal
>>94705781>>94705818100% these, but honestly I extend it to scenario writing in general. I used to have a somewhat video-game-y approach to preparing sessions, where I would for example design each quest with 2-4 plannes possible solutions or outcomes, but then players usually would do a 5th thing anyway. So I stopped doing this altogether and I just started throwing realistic and narratively interesting situations at them without really thinking about how they can deal with it. And honestly it works much better and they always come up with something anyway
>>94709988>Oh no, the adventurer who brought a pickaxe is using it to steal my puzzle, what a child!It's not my fault you made it out of unobtanium to try to force us to solve it.I'm now obligated to dig the whole thing out as it's worth more than the rest of the campaign combined. My character would have to be retarded not to.
>>94711011Well, solving the puzzle is just suboptimal.No matter how simple the puzzle is, it's probably faster to just detonate it.It's not like I'm engage with the goblins on their terms- "Oh yeah, I'm going to follow the lone goblin holding a knife onto the rope bridge. Sure, that's a great fucking idea." said nobody ever.
>>94699989My favourite one was pretty simple. It was all about reconstructing a mural which told an ancient story (think like a five-panel comic of Perseus vs Medusa or something). The mural had its parts removed and scattered, and there were also parts from other murals lying around the dungeon. So the puzzle was multi-layered:A) Find the piecesB) Figure out the story being depicted (it wasn't commonly known in the PCs time)C) Work out which pieces are the right matches and put them in the right order (the same figures appeared in multiple tales).
>>94710737Generally, in security circles barriers are intended to: delay intruders render certain tools or tactics impractical increase the probability of detection assist in the investigation process after the crimeAnd the average temple security system does really well at all four. Your riddle-based door is made of thick stone, iron-faced wood, or some other resistant material. This is either a delay or renders a tactic entirely impractical if it's so tough no mortal tool will chip it. That then channels the intruder into engaging with the puzzle or riddle itself. This increases the likelihood of detection and causes delay, as your group of thieves have to stop what they're doing and carry on a discussion to figure out the solution. This is good, because most temples during their active periods would be crawling with armed guards or at the very least priests who could be witnesses and that people of the time are discouraged from harming (by being cursed thereafter, etc.).But let's say the thieves manage to get through the riddle. Well, now you know that you're dealing with a thief who knows your rituals and secrets well enough to defeat the puzzle, or is at least a genius compared to the average illiterate street rat. Hopefully, that's a short list and you just need to poke around each candidate until you find the one that's skipped town, or is holding on to your Sceptre of Preciousness.For an extra layer of security, puzzles would involve a physical element. Climbing ledges, moving blocks, etc. If the list of thieves who can figure out your puzzle is short, why not cut it in half? You were at risk from dishonest scholars before. Now all the scholars who can't shin up a white-painted ledge or shove a wardrobe-sized stone block are eliminated too. Or the enemy have to bring multiple persons and their risk of being seen by your guards goes up again. (cont)
>>94712353Adventurers penetrating a site which is hundreds or thousands of years old are still going to have to contend with such defences, but most of them will have failed due to age. Consider that while your puzzle door may still be standing, all the guards and smaller traps defending each key stone or carved clue will be long gone. Modern day explorers may think a four-elements puzzle is laughable, but they are seeing it with the benefit of a millennium of accumulated genre-savvy. Further, the people of the past being presented with a problem akin to "dance the full Macarena while a division of infantry try to stop you" weren't being deterred by the obscure mysticism of the Macarena.
>>94712264Yeah, exactly what I meanPuzzles seem to make sense if we look at RPGs purely as games (or maybe in some more pulpy conventions), but when we look at things more narratively it just falls apart really.In vast majority of situations the PCs just won't have a good reason or motivation to engage with the puzzle if they can somehow get around it more easily or quickly. And in vast majority of situations it doesn't make much sense for the puzzle to be there in the first place, especially if it involves some big elaborate mechanism.And on top of that plenty of players don't really seem to enjoy them at all.I mean, I'm no fun police, if you like puzzles and your players like puzzles, then sure, go for them. But it often feels like such a forced element on so many levels
>>94699989not specifically a puzzle, but we entered a room with a big hermit crab monster that was completely fucking us and killed one of our players, I convinced it that I was a follower of one of its gods since my character has been studying this ruin's ancient language, ended up cooking the deceased part member to get on tyo the monsters good graces (THe dead party member was a turtle man so I cooked up turtle soup)
>>94712353if you have a material so tough that no mortal tool can chip it, that is more valuable than the dungeon and now stealing the puzzle is what the game is about.
>>94712438Good luck harvesting the rock bound by the will of a dwarven god, idiot. It's not going to be magic once you take it out of the temple.(Though tbf stealing adamantine doors is a time honoured shitbag player move)
>>94712444so what you're saying is that if I steal this temple, I can take any stone form, carve it however I like, then move it into my stolen temples zone to make it invulnerable for as long as it's within the zone?How many dwarves do I need praying to keep this effect operational?
>>94712444If the temple is important enough that a god's attention is still on it hundreds or thousands of years later, surely you could just have the passages instagib anyone the god isn't cool with. The puzzle component seems like an unnecessarily fiddly element.
>>94712451nta but a) how are you gonna steal a whole ass temple b) why would you assume the temple renders anything made of stone, especially if brought in from outside, invulnerablec) explain how any of this is practical or useful to the party, and isn't just a case of trying to piss off the dm because you're being that guy
>>94712451If you can get this to work, you have the godlike power to make mundane items indestructible yourself.
>>94712504a. That's what we're going to figure outb. since this stone is invulnerable. It's easy to test.c. well, my first desire is for an impenetrable castle. This entire place is wasted on puzzle bullshit if it's that strong. Though I'm sure if you gave me a week between sessions I could come up with a way to industrialize it.
>>94712526Dude if you joined my group you'd never get a second session.
>>94712534Okay? I've got my own group.
>>94712526The easiest way to get an impenetrable castle (temple) is to dedicate yourself to a good whose portfolio includes such things and become their foremost servant on the plane. No shortcuts.
>>94712548>no shortcutsBullshit, we're adventurers, finding shortcuts is our thing.
>>94712555OK, fair enough. As an aside, the best way to deal with players like this is to appear to relent and then never ever give them what they want. They're giving you tacit permission to troll them into oblivion.
>>94712353> Your riddle-based door is made of thick stone, iron-faced wood, or some other resistant material. This is either a delay or renders a tactic entirely impractical if it's so tough no mortal tool will chip it. That then channels the intruder into engaging with the puzzle or riddle itself. This increases the likelihood of detection and causes delay-and then you decide to completely compromise what sounds like a hard-stop by any would-be intruders by putting in some riddle/puzzle that could be potentially solved and not, oh I don’t know, put a damn lock or passcode on the thing so that only one who specifically has the key or knows the password can get through? And can I suggest something else for a low-tech template security? Get a shih tzu for the temple; small yappy dogs that will flip out if they so much as smell someone out-of-place so the temple guards (or the monks themselves if it’s a Shaolin monastery) will be compelled to investigate.And if it’s a tomb, then you don’t want it entered ever so just don’t make it a door at all.
>>94712586I'm not sure what's getting you so rustled about this, anon. Have you never tried to steal a building before?
>>94699989Puzzles are fucking video-gamey bullshit that are always frustrating and make zero logical sense thematically.>Lol let me just hide all of my treasure behind something a child could figure out fuck you
>>94712590>And if it’s a tomb, then you don’t want it entered ever so just don’t make it a door at all.To be fair, that does depend on the religious beliefs of the culture in question. Sometimes, you need a door so the dead guy can get out and wander around every so often.
>>94712590Think about the logic of the system for a second. If you never ever want the item, as you say, you bury it entirely or destroy it. So this is only for things you do want to retrieve some day. If you have something you will need to get back and an indestructible container then you can't have a key that could be lost or forgotten: it's too dangerous. So the puzzle is just a delay, and you use that delay to support your primary defence: a shit ton of guards. As I said upthread: it's not about making the code unguessable but keeping your guards and intruders busy so that people will notice if they try to open the vault. Once the place is abandoned for thousands of years the system is out of place but that's not the designer's fault.
>>94712618Also magic: I remember there was some spell in an old game (Dragon Warriors?) which gave random items that had been buried or lost without trace. There was a non zero chance that a casting could give you a VERY powerful and dangerous item which (now it's unburied) wizards and others would be sure to start homing in on.
>>94712648Pretty sure it takes longer to mine through solid rock than to solve a puzzle. How would having a single 20-foot-thick stone wall in your otherwise indestructible container FAIL to give the guards time to respond? You can even keep it next to the indestructible door with the indestructible lock that is opened by an uncopiable key.
>>94712681Maybe you know you'll need the item faster than that, in the event of an emergency? Maybe it's safer to design in a slow tough puzzle door than a mining challenge which could lead to the item getting scuffed? At a certain level, all dungeon fantasy is deeply retarded, and we're butting up on "why would a world with fun exist at all?"
>>94712704Except that the puzzles aren't fun to begin with, so you're trying to justify making a logical and fun world less of both.
>>94712722>puzzles aren't funBuilding detected. Go back to battletech.
>>94712728Challenging your players with situations that they must come up with creative solutions is fun. Giving them puzzles you create that follow your internal logic where the only right answer is your isn't gameplay--it's public masturbation.
>>94712829Puzzles aren't built with one right answer. Puzzles are built so that the intellectual route is easiest. You CAN do other stuff, but it makes you a fag. Besides, all the "creative solutions" are variations on fifty-year-old dungeoneering tips you read on a forum post.
>>94699989I don't, and so I don't use them often. Which seems to suit my group just fine. But the one time I did use something resembling a puzzle, I did the following.>party is descending down an abandoned wizard's tower>the floor they enter is filled with elemental fire on one side, elemental ice on the other, both coming from projector-like devices>there are also elementals in this stuff>they receive corresponding damage in either area, so they're on the clock>crossing from one side to the other makes a wake of the area they left follow the character, unless they stop moving>the idea was to complete a loop back to the same area, which would expand that area and obliterate any elementals caught in it>instead they figured they'd draw a line to the projector on the opposite end after a few rounds of just fighting the elementals>good enough for me>I have no taste to throw a TPK on the only real puzzle I give them
>>94699989I always like my new GM's approach, which is to give us physical, realistic problems to solve, rather than symbol-matching or lateral thinking riddles. >get into wizard's tower by dissolving the mortar between stones with acid splash>use ropetrick to create pulley system to remove stones>descend with climbing gear>find the tower abandoned>here to find the kidnapped elven princess, but she's clearly gone>given permission to loot the tower as payment for searching it>alchemical equipment is too heavy and would have to be taken to human lands to be of any value beyond the base metal price>paper is falling apart and most of the notes are illegible, so useless>discover a collapsed floor that sinks into a basement>flooded and filled with necromantic horrors the wizard cooked up>it's dotted with statues and sculptures made from precious metals>kill a few of the servitors that still roam the castle>build a fence system from furniture and lower it on top of the mindless zombies>chum the waters with meat and blood>drop it like a boar cage>lower onto it and start safely popping them>realise statues are too heavy to move and the elves won't help us>cut them up at thin points>can't accurately judge counterweight because they're heavy metals>get the idea to use displacement to judge their mass and use a scale to roughly calculate their total mass>manage to get them up high enough to pull out>hide them from the elves and hand over the papers we found>woken up the next morning by a desperate king asking if there were any statues of gold or silver>deny it>they search the tower and find nothing>the wizard turned the princess to gold to hold her hostage>melt her down with the rest of the artwork and bank it inside clay facades>start a customs house to launder our princess gold>use the trickle of money, so as not to crash the market, to fund bigger adventures>agree to ask if we should, before if we can
>>94713002That's fucked up, why not give the king his daughter statue back? Surely he'd pay you and it's way less effort than gold laundering.
>>94712913I'm sorry that the dynamite is the best way to get through the ruin 9/10 times.Complain to the british museum about it if you don't like it.
>>94699989There’s a big difference between “puzzles” with intended solutions and “obstacles” which don’t have them pre-made. Obstacles tend to be a lot more enjoyable in my experience, both as a gm and a player. I like seekng people try and wrack their brains and plan things togegher - that’s a lot of the fun payout of building things in the first place. Rather than - You need to put the blue orb in the second slot, the red orb in the third slot, … etc. it’s usually a lot more fun to do something like - the thing you want is at the bottom of this flooded elevator shaft, and there are electrical wires exposed 20 feet down in the water- what are you going to do.
>>94713172You aren't the British Museum. You're the coolies getting crushed in a cave-in after knocking out the supports. >>94713255Go post in the obstacles thread.
>>94703406This mostly sounds like your GM is a little bitch, and you should play with other people. That’s the real solution to the puzzle.
>>94703968Where are your wandering monsters anon??? In the span 8 hours they’re going to be attacked dozens of times, same with trying to tunnel through solid stone walls without specialized equipment (which is going to make a lot of noise and attract even more monsters to the area). And all this time they’re going to be burning through light sources too.
>>94705467DnD is a game about player challengeSorry you were misled about that.
>>94699989I've saved a few, mostly from games.Potion Color Puzzle (From 2003 Hobbit game)Premise: 5 colored objects need to be placed in a specific order to unlock something. Once you have all the objects you have a few clues to help you find the correct orderClues:- Yellow is to the left of red and blue, which is not next to black- Purple can only lie beside black and none else- Black is to the right of yellowAnswer: yellow-blue-red-black-purpleMurder Statue Puzzle (Borderlands 3)Premise: A room with a few different memorial statues of dead people from a wealthy family, each with a plaque referencing how they died.Clues:stuff like"Stabbed in the back""Evaporated in an explosion""Head crushed in a hunting accident"Solution: Re-enact the deaths for each statue to reveal some secret family room.
>>94713925Coin Puzzle:https://puzzles.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/sixtyfive.htmPremise- There are 9 coins, one is fake and weighs differently, if you find it you win- You have access to scales that allow you to find the heavier odd coin- You can only use the scales twiceSolution- Break coins into 3 groups of 3 and weigh two piles - This lets you narrow it down into 3 coins- Weigh any coins in that last group against each other - This clarifies which is the odd coin(I loved this puzzle and my DM incorporated it as a side puzzle in a little shrine to a god of fortune for some extra treasure)Never Ending Corridor:Premise: There's some sweet loot on a pedastal at the end of a short hallway. However when you walk down the hallway it endlessly extends preventing you from reaching the loot. (powerful illusion magic)Solutions:- Walk in backwards- Keep your eyes shut as you enter- Teleport- Toss a grappling hook to snatch the loot without entering the hallway
>>94704517they'd take it as a red herring.
>>94712913>Puzzles aren't built with one right answer.They are by definition. The whole point of a puzzle is that they're set with a single specific solution in mind. Jigsaws and sudoku are carefully made to explicitly avoid more than one valid solution. That's literally the point and part of why they're such a shitty fit for the open ended nature of RPGs.
>>94715058Yeah, it's almost like neither of those are RPG puzzles you dipshit.
>>94699989The only time I've seen puzzles crop up, either the gm was using a module or the whole group repeatedly play the same modules to mess with anyone new to the group.
>>94715173RPG puzzles are not distinct from other puzzles, besides the context. The usual definition applies as I said.
>>94715455Thank you for your fabulously retarded reply but the grownups are trying to talk.
>>94712913>Puzzles aren't built with one right answer.Substantiate your claims. Pretty much every presented RPG puzzle has a single listed solution.
>>94715705A single *listed* solution, but not a single *possible* solution. What I'm trying to tell you is that mining out a wall is OK (unless the specific context rules it out) mechanically and narratively/situationally. It's just bad play and makes you a dipshit.It's the same as players who want to kite everything to death, or flood the dungeon from a local river, etc. Yes you can do it, but it's not heroic fantasy play. It's just gamepiece-moving sophistry to satiate the idiot urge to win at any cost instead of winning the right way. See also: buildfaggotry, murderhobos, Judge Dredd paladins, etc.
>>94715766you wanted the puzzle solved, it's solved.
A couple off the top of my head:First room of the dungeon is an antechamber, with a stone statue in each corner: man, skeleton, wolf, gargoyle.If the players inspect the statues, they'll notice the gargoyle has a metal pipe in its mouth that's connected to somewhere, while the others are just carved stone.Now, if there's a metal pipe, and clearly it's not for catching rain because it's underground, I expect the players to be thinking something's gonna come out of it, and they should try to avoid that. And yes, the tube is a poison gas trap. If they try to open the door that leads to the dungeon, a cloud of gas will gradually fill the chamber.Now, they might open the door quickly and bolt through, only suffering partially from the gas cloud's effect. They might come up with a way to open the door from far away and wait for the gas to dissipate before they enter the room again. They might clog the pipe with a piece of wet cloth. They might put a torch near the gargoyle's mouth so the fire consumes the gas (though that one transforms the poison gas trap into a flamethrower trap).If the PCs learn about the metal pipe and do nothing about it, they'll pay for it. But there's a bunch of ways they could deal with this situation. And I guess some of you will argue that this makes it not a puzzle, but I think this is very much a puzzle in the context of a dungeon crawl.
There's an alembic in a sorcerer's laboratory. The still is being heated by a magic Bunsen burner and in the water there is a black stone that emits this multicolored vapors, but the water seems clean as it condenses.If the PCs turn down the heat, they'll notice the stone expands slowly. It starts growing small tendrils and if they turn up the heat again, they will retract. If they put out the fire, the stone expands much faster and the tendrils flail around violently. It's actually a slime creature and the heat was keeping it from growing.It's not an immediate fuck you. Even if they turn the burner down, or off, they still have time to turn it on again and keep the slime inert. But if they're dumb enough to leave the burner off or break the glass, the creature will expand and consume. However, if the players find a way to keep the fire burning and haul out the alembic (which, needless to say, is big, heavy and fragile), they could sell the slime to another magic user and get a good price for it.
>>94700963>players are more likely to try to bullshit their way aroundWell, yeah... Just let them do that. Cheesing their way around obstacles is technically a way to solve it. It make the players feel smart about how they fucked over the GM.I just throw a bunch of confusing shit together, it doesn't even have to makes sense, I know the players will cheese around it. So I didn't waste any real effort making it, the players got their haha funny Im so smart moment and everyone is happy.I made this realization after I spent 3 sessions cheesing every encounter in OSR with the sleep spell (not that I had any better ones). The DM was clueless what to do against it but was still fair. Why he ran so many brigands and 20 men strong groups of bandits and not a small band of skeletons is beyond me. Thats when I realized how good it felt to legally cheese. >You aren't here to fight the players! You are here to make them have fun!If cheesing a puzzle is fun for them so be it. Its hard to explain how satisfying it is to blow up an ancient Mayan bullshit puzzle door with a stick of dynamite without the temple collapsing on top of you.If you push back so will the players until they cant push back anymore because you have the ultimate power. And when they realize that then they will grow bored and quit.
>>94721058lmao this. Is it dumb? Yes. Is it funny as fuck and cool feeling? Also yes. So why not let players have fun? As long as it doesn't derail the game too much.
A funeral chamber has one wall with a large deep tray full of ashes, seemingly from several people. Runes are carved in the wall above the tray.If any PC touches the ashes, or just sticks around too long, maybe looking for treasure, they ashes will start to move. The cloud of ashes is hostile, fueled by the rage of the people sacrificed to create it. It kills with suffocation, and can't be fought with weapons.If a PC has knowledge of runes, they'll know these are imprisoning runes, but something's different about them. If a normal binding is usually "stay here" or "stay out" or "stay away", these are "stay (something else)". And if the PC has deeper knowledge, they'll figure out it's "stay together," the horrible fate these people have been subjected to.The PCs might use water to weigh down the ashes, preventing the creature from moving. They might deface the runes, ending the spell that kept the ashes and souls as a single entity. They might have a way to communicate with the dead, and try to reason with them or appease them with offerings. Maybe they do come up with a plausible way to actually fight and destroy it.I fucking love puzzles, they're my favorite part of GMing, giving the players the opportunity to be clever in other ways, aside from tactics in combat.
>create a puzzle without any solution in mind >wait for players to "cheese it" and try to "cheat around" something that doesn't exist >the second or third idea they come up with unlocks the puzzle>if it was clever, flavourful, or was related to something that's happened in past sessions, the loot's better as a reward >never tell the players there wasn't a solution to begin withI think I've cracked the code. Gonna try it out my next session.
>>94721846Change the solution you go with slightly and nudge them towards that as they're "close enough".
>>94704159And what if they can't solve it? How do they "fail forward" from there?
>>94722391"Fail forward" has been terribly bastardized, both in good and bad faith. First we'd have to know what you mean by that, because there's no consensus. And maybe there never was, but that's neither here nor there.
>>94722391A) never put anything truly critical behind a puzzle with one solution (and try your hardest never to have a bottleneck where one thing is critical anyway)B) the PCs may have to go with an expensive, tie consuming and vastly inferior solutionC) fail forward means failure moves the game forward: how are they going to progress without the reward behind the puzzle? Couldn't it be interesting to see that? Hell, maybe they actually FAIL but in a way that shapes the game: the princess dies because they took too long outside the magic gate. Fail forward doesn't mean auto success at cost, it means "literally nothing happens, not even meaningful delays, try again" is prevented.
>>94722391The most basic example of 'fail forward' in the context of a locked door is that a bad roll to try to open a locked door simply results in it taking a lot of time to open, setting off an alarm, or otherwise having enemies show up.They failed the roll, they made forward progress by getting the door open, but the failure still wasn't as good as an outright success.Use your own braincells to extrapolate out how this might apply to other scenarios.
>>94700963Creatively bullshitting the puzzle is part of the fun
>>94721523thanks boss. these are great.
>>94722268Ooh, good idea, the encouragement is important.
Bump.
>>94699989I know this is a bot thread but I assume there are actual anons hereIm bored and willing to tell you about two puzzles I put in a dungeon in 2009 that I'm still fairly proud of. The dungeon entrance was at the bottom of a well, inside a big barn at the center of an abandoned village. The bottom of the well is dry, and has a hole in its wall, opening into a 10x10 stone masonry chamber, opposite a sculpted stone door with no way to open it. There was a robed skeleton in the sand on the floor, who had a scroll tube, inside of which was a parchment with a paragraph of words in draconic. I can't remember what they were, but they seemed to make sense for maybe half a dozen words at a time but overall the paragraph makes no sense.>none of my players knew draconic, but one of them was a cleric, so they rested in that room and she prepared comprehend languages, then they wrote the words on the wall in chalk as she read themThe puzzle is that the first letter of each word spells out a sentence that must be spoken for the door to open, which causes it to dissolve into black smoke.The 2nd puzzle was later in the dungeon. There is a chamber with several entrances/exits, one of which is another sculpted stone door with no way to open it. This one had a scene of a full moon, among several stars in the sky (which actually glowed a little bit), with clouds along the edges and a fields'n'woods scene along the bottom. A bardic knowledge check revealed that among the stars was the constellation "the beholder", with the moon being in "the eye of the beholder". They had to touch the stars that make up the constellation to get the door to open, but touching a wrong star zapped them with a CL 1 shocking grasp. Even with a mostly-successful bard check, they still blew through most of their expendable healing getting that door open. I think they could have used a knowledge skill or two but they didnt have the ones needed; only the bard had the means.
>>94736667oh, no, the stars didnt glow; the right ones glowed after being touched
>>94713477Substantiate your claims.
Holy fuck guys, there's a simple good practice in order to get all of the upside of puzzles without any downsides, it's piss easy, I don't understand how there can still be controversies around this:>Step 1: Design the puzzle to be brute force-able but will get you through your objective faster if you solve it instead. For example:>You can bash it to get through>It only opens a shortcut to your destination, but you have other ways of getting there>It can be solved even by a complete retard with enough iterations, but being clever will allow you to find a solution in a few steps only>Step 2: There are negative consequences to the brute force approach. For example:>Sure you can bash the door, but that will attract the attention of wandering monsters. They are beatable, but still it's a hurdle.>It's a chess puzzle. Every time one of your piece is captured, it turns into a monster that attacks you.That's literally it
>>94737374No
>>94709692It reminds me of old point and click adventure games where hoping you were on the same drugs the developer was to get into the same mindset was hand the puzzles. >I need to make a phone call to someone to get a location i need to go to>go home and use the telephone? Are you mad?>no instead you need to findl alcohol from someone, spike it with drugs, then give it to a homeless guy so it knocks hum out. >then you can grab his cup and steal all the change he got today, then just that change on the nearby pay phone to make the call instead>then you can go home and spend a thousand dollars on a plane ticket
>>94712240Wasn't that basically what happened with the original tomb of horrors when it had the pure adamantium doors and people realized the solution was to take the doors and fuck off because they were worth more then anything else there?
>>94744237Please unironically kill yourself.>get a canister of helium, some rubber tubing, and a bag>put the tubing into the cylinder and the other end in the bag>turn it on>put the bag over your head and hold it closed>inhale>the inert gas won't make you think you're suffocating, instead you'll just black out in secondsYou really should do it. Everyone here hates you. Your mom and dad love you, but you're such a disappointment to them because you had all this potential, but instead chose to waste it and be - well, you're not a NEET, but you're close. You're a disappointment to them. Yeah they'll cry for a bit, but in like a year they'll be happy to have moved on from the low-grade stressor in their life. It'll be even faster if you have siblings. You really should do it.
>>94745888its amazing how much butthurt a simple "no" can generate
>>94745949When it's someone refusing to justify their idiocy? Yes, I think the world would be better off if every single idiot killed themselves. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233
>>94747588nobody is obligated to explain things to you, and a big whiny bitchpost makes everybody hate you more than the idiot
>>94747624But if you're not arguing your position, you're either an imbecile or an ESL and thus, deserve death.
>>94747768nah, see, you're just petulant and entitledpeople dont have to argue their positionsyou can rightly say that you dont need to listen to them if they don't, but they don't have to
>>94747799stfu ESL, you are NOT to talk to me
>>94748578well now I have to
>>94709988I don't hate puzzles but sometimes I am not in the mood for them. I am pretty sure others feel the same way about them. It's okay to have the players just go in and kill stuff time to time.
>>94700963Stop making puzzles that have a set solution and just make open-ended ones. Less frustration for you and more satisfaction for players regardless of how they solve it.
>>94709718Anon you just changed the issue from the GM's inability to accept alternative solutions to the GM's inability to fucking communicate and give a hint that the color is wrong because player-wise visualization will never be accurate to the DM-side.
>>94711184Yeah, I don't bother much with pre-planning unless I'm running a premade and everyone has agreed to be on board the rails. I'll write down major NPC/faction motivations, put some major events on a timeline for PCs to either stumble on or the consequences of, and just roll with it. Only thing I get autistic about is prepping encounters and that's because I like encounter building and customizing battlemaps in Foundry.
>>94709677>'I'm GENRE savvy!'This is fucking retarded reasoning. If a character in-universe has a way to bypass a puzzle and they have no reason to engage with a puzzle on its own rules (most cases) then why the fuck would they NOT want to avoid all the trouble and just do their own thing? Stop making point&click vidya puzzles if your players aren't on board and start making actual security systems that'd make sense for someone in-universe to fucking rely on.
>>94708771I wish more GMs would give me a version of Ubel who's DTF.
>>94721265>>94721312God I’m glad I don’t play with you
>>94750645=,(Why, though? What's wrong with those?
did any of you ever try the countdown button?
>>94751966I don't hate my players to that extent.That reminds me, there's a recent videogame that has a quick time event where you actually have to miss for the story to progress. I'm generally not into quick time, but I thought that was a neat application of the concept and really worked with the story.
>>94736667I swear it, schizos throwing absolutely unwarranted accusations of everyone being a bot left and right are becoming more annoying than actual bots
>>94752205you know whats annoying?finally getting a (You) after two days and its dumb shit like this
>>94752212You're welcome fuckoYour second puzzle is okay, although I would probably draw a simple image of the star map for the players to help them conceptualise it betterFirst is a neat concept, but I'm not sure how the players were supposed to figure out that it's about the first word in each line, especially if none of them knew the language
>>94736667>>94752246I think the opposite, actually. The first puzzle was fine, the second not so much.Sure the first puzzle has an in-character hurdle, but after that they just had to examine the words and figure it out.On the second, it sounds like the only way to progress was skill checks. The bard player passed his check, but the party still had to brute force the puzzle because there wass no way to solve it with player cleverness.
>>94752452>there wass no way to solve it with player cleverness.eh, they could see all the stars on the drawing I made; they just had to guess the beholder shape out of the available starsI showed them the bards best idea what the shape was, based on his roll then they went from there, and frankly not very well
>>94751966It doesn’t work because half your players will know it off-hand. It’s a neat idea but at this point it’s like putting the riddle of the sphinx in verbatim - no one’s getting anything out of it.
>>94751966Are you talking about the hourglass that you're supposed to allow to run out instead of resetting it? I did use it once, but it must have been like 8 years ago or so and honestly I somehow don't remember how it played out at all, kek It's an amusing idea, but I feel it's a bit pointless. It won't hurt the characters unless they do something very stupid, it's hardly even a puzzle because it quickly becomes apparent there's only one thing they can really do, and ultimately it doesn't really do anything other than wasting time, including the session time. Could be a neat addition to a dungeon with some sort of time limit gimmick though
>>94752834I apologize, anon, I misinterpreted.
>>94700963Bypassing the puzzle means no reward for solving it. EZ.
>>94745888I'm not the original guy who you told to substantiate his claims. I just thought I'd make a humorous reference to this famous interview exchange.
