New page! Kislata pushes deeper (Oh my!) and reaches the very threshold of the Vampire Queen! Looks like she’ll be the first to reach the boss room out of our motley band of ‘heroes’ (though her advance through the dungeon did involve running off and leaving her team behind). Will she be able to overcome that most dreaded of all dungeon hazards-The poorly thought out puzzle (of doom!)?! Find out soon in BTB!
I still have a Patreon page to finish (Hathoraz having some fun with a group of centaur…) but I’m aiming to get a double page week under my belt next week (and the week after with any luck) so there SHOULD be a page some time in the week and then hopefully another page on Saturday or Sunday. Be there AND be square. And please feel free to leave a comment if you can spare the time. Thanks! 😀
If you can afford to and you’d like some bonus content, then please consider backing my work on Patreon. Those Patreon dollars buy me the time I need to make the comic-It really does make a massive difference 🙂
Yeah this room would break me. I absolutely hate those puzzles with a passion. XD
Worst part of ‘Resident Evil 4’. I did not sign up for this crap! XD
Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of a simple puzzle, especially if the players are the “Not paying attention to the adventure” type. I remember in a game I was running I decided to have a puzzle lock on the BBEG’s door that required a non-standard “key” to get in. I didn’t make it too obtuse either, the group got some big red flag hints for what they needed but just had a massive collective brain fart. The first major clue they got was the fact that an earlier mid-boss (a hobgoblin general) had this unusually cut diamond that it not only tried to hide, but had stored it with the other important lair keys. When they got to the final door instead of a keyhole it had a large circle of runes on the door, and in the center of the room was a device shaped like the forearm and grasping claw of a dragon. When they examined the device they found the next major clues in that it could be pointed at the door, emitted a focused beam of light from its palm, and the thumb of the claw could be moved to open and close the claw. The final major clue was that pointing the light at just one rune set off a trap based on the shape of the rune. I even had a printout I had made of what the door looked like so that they could examine it out of character as well as in, with which they could have seen that ALL of the runes were traps and that none would open the door alone. It still took the party a good hour of setting off ALL of the traps (multiple times), fiddling with the moveable claw, and begging me NOT to spoil them, before I felt too bad for them and had to hit them over the head with a “clue-by-four”. I outright reminded them about the strange diamond they had mindlessly tossed into their loot. With that they finally figured out that they were supposed to put the diamond into the claw so the beam of light could light up the whole door at once. After the session I asked them why they were having so much trouble solving the puzzle despite the attention I was putting on the diamond, and they basically said “Shiny loot was just shiny loot!”. They had fixated on the gem as loot, and thought my hints were just hyping them up for how much they were going to get for selling it.
That sounds like a cool puzzle! 🙂 If used sparingly and well, puzzles can be fun, though I must admit I’m more of a hack ‘n slash player than a person that enjoys logic puzzles. I like combat tactics and clever moves in battle and I don’t mind a bit of roleplay to solve things without violence if that’s possible. I also quite like more abstract problem solving where there are a number of different solutions (‘How can we get across this ravine?’ etc) but I tend to be content to sit back and let other players deal with the puzzles 🙂
Yeah, a good combat run is pretty good, but a good puzzle can be a nice diversion that challenges a different part of the players’ brains. Or lack thereof in some cases… I tend to get inspiration from the Zelda series when it comes to the really big/important dungeons in a campaign, because in those cases pure combat would get really old really fast if the dungeon is meant to last several sessions. In the story above for example, the door lead to the lair of the dragon I had set up as the final boss of that part of the campaign.
That’s true! And simple puzzled can also spice up combat. I ran a dungeon once where the PCs could activate switches that would light up an area. The light would keep swarms of ghosts at bay. They also had to raise a number of portcullises and fight enemies and the lights would start to reset after a few rounds, so it was quite the balancing act between dealing with foes, keeping the lights on and opening the gates to get through. I think I had the whole place filling with sand too. Inspired by a ‘Sonic and Knuckles’ level but it worked well for a tense and exciting D&D encounter 🙂
Le what ?? 0_o
Such a simple puzzle as test ……….. It can’t be so easy ; i bet for an hidden trick
It could be a trick…
Now I’m ruined on slide puzzles regular omnes wont be able to do it for me anymore, they must be of the doom variety! DOOOM!
Any slide puzzle can be a slide puzzle of DOOM! You just need to have the right attitude (and maybe get somebody to shout ‘Doom!’ at an annoyingly loud volume every now and then while you’re working on it). 🙂
Your right! I’ll get right on it! now hiring a doom guy. (starting pay is 5 dark omens.)
Fiends can never do things simply, can they? There always has to be some sorta catch, or game, or thing they wanna do or play…
Immortality gets dull. As does standing about guarding a room in a dungeon. I guess coming up with games or challenges is just a way of injecting some excitement into their lives 😀
I actually wrote up a fiend who was charged with being the final boss of a dungeon. But considering that people tend to die before he gets to them and when they do it is a very similarly played out fight, needless to say he was bored out of his mind and practically desperate for literally *anything* else than being stuck there.
*they get to him rather
It must get lonely (and very boring) being a dungeon denizen 😀
Damn it Janet….
This isn’t the junior chamber of commerce, Brad! 😉 Now we just need Goret to turn up in a Frankenfurter costume 😉
Besides me, I wonder how many realized the names (Brad and Janet) were a reference to Rocky Horror?
He may not have the costume, but Gorget will have a frankenfurter on full display when he shows up…
His jumbo frankenfurter!