Puzzle Locks and FRPG Riddles

 There is a FRPG “urban legend” about a really famous dungeon adventure that was first used at GENCON and then later became a published adventure module.  Within this deadly dungeon of tricks and traps there was a riddle whose answer was “NOON”.  I don’t remember the riddle, but it was something about the time that was the same backwards and forwards and upside or something like that.  Apparently one of the groups that lost the tournament was furious at the idea that an English word with English lettering was required to answer the riddle.  After all, they don’t speak English in Greyhawk (I think it was Greyhawk).

I consume a lot of fantasy media.  I read comics (print and online), I watch movies (both good and bad), and I read a bunch of “stuff”.  I am reading a book.  (I have some bad things to say about it, so I’ll keep this generic).  There is a riddle in the book:  If you are holding a bee in your hand, what is in your eye.  The answer is supposed to be “beauty”.  See, if you are holding a bee in your hand then you are a “bee-holder” and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I am a lot less annoyed about the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” because I often will claim that Earth based sayings could easily be the same in a fantasy world, or incredibly similar.  But the word “beholder” is an English word.  I assume that the words for “bee” and “beholder” are completely different even in French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian, so this riddle wouldn’t even make sense in most of the countries on Earth, let alone a game world.

And that is the point:  Using English word tricks or letter tricks makes no sense in a fantasy world.  Even if that world is Medieval England, they weren’t speaking the same English we speak today (assuming they were even speaking English).  This style of word play doesn’t belong.

I want to be fair.  There was another riddle in that same book.  It went something like this:  It has cities but no houses, mountains but no trees, seas but no fish.  The answer is a map.  OK, I have certainly seen maps that show houses and have artistic trees and fish, but now I’m really overthinking the riddle.  I think this riddle is perfect for a FRPG! 

In the Palace of Ballogfar, there are a bunch of puzzle locks.  The use of keys isn’t something they did, so there are these puzzle locks, many of which haven’t been opened or solved in centuries.  (Ballogfar is a ruin in case you didn’t know.)  We had to be very careful not to allow anything that might be considered “English” to enter into the puzzles; hopefully we did a decent job.

For the GMs out there - You know your players.  Maybe some of them would be happy to solve riddles that were 100% based on the English language and our letters, and if that’s what works for you, obviously you should do it.  But while our modern concept of riddles typically involves some play on words, there are an infinite number of puzzles and tricks that don’t.  It just seems to make more sense to avoid using English (or whatever language you’re speaking around the game table) riddles in a fantasy world that has never even heard of that language.

This post was written as part of The Lost City of Ballogfar Part II aka All About Ogres (and Ruins), the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing ogres, especially those who live in fantasy ruins.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 130 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

Styles of Ruins

We talked a little bit about this in the last edition, but feel we need to get a bit deeper into it.  What?  Styles of ruins.  What kinds of ruins are there?  Well, unlimited types.

Let’s start with the obvious:  One of the most common styles of ruins is somewhat similar to what we have here in Ballogfar - a necromantic ruin.  Having enemies in a ruin can be quite easy if those enemies happen to be undead.  The undead can survive without food and do not age.  Now, over the course of centuries, like we have here, even the undead can start to “die” from injuries or deterioration, but not all of them will.

But let’s try to get into some of the other styles of ruins.  There can be Atlantis style ruins.  What happens if a location is built on an island’s shore and something causes that shoreline to go lower as compared to the water line?  Well, the city or whatever sinks into the sea and becomes a ruin.  Of course, the ruin can only be accessed by folks who can get underwater.  But the benefit there is that since so few can get beneath the waves, most of the treasures that went down with the ruin should still be there, as long as they aren’t the type that would be destroyed by being submerged in salt water.

What else?  You can have any and all types of sea peoples inhabiting or exploring the ruin.  You can utilize all manner of underwater creatures, including some dragons, some of those crazy psionic critters, and maybe some cool turtles, crabs, or other shelled stuff.  If someone has set up housekeeping in the sea floor ruin, then they can bring their own ocean bottom style treasures in, all those cool pearls, corals and other stuff.  Or maybe that’s why the coastal city was where it was - it was harvesting those treasures.

What is the opposite of sinking to the bottom of the sea?  Burning down.  What happens if a primarily built-out-of-wood city catches fire?  Most of it burns.  Sure, some buildings would have been made of brick and stone, so those would still be around.  How did it burn?  Was it a war?  Was it a volcano?  We all know about Pompei.  That’s a cool ruin, even if it is tough to get down to it.  Actually in a situation like Pompei, we suggest that a lot of the stone or brick buildings be connected, so once the party gets into one, they can get into a lot of the others.

OK, but our burnt out city?  The stone buildings will likely still be standing, though some may be gutted.  How hot did the fires get?  A normal house fire may melt precious metals, but it would not normally melt steel.  Maybe this wasn’t a normal house fire?

What’s below the surface?  Are there sewers, and if so, how did they fair?  If they had water in them, maybe they did OK, despite the destruction just above them.  Maybe some people took refuge there.  Maybe they are forced to continue to seek refuge there, though that one probably needs some serious explanation. Still, a city that was burnt to the ground, except for a few buildings presents a “young” ruin when compared to our standard concepts, but that might be exactly what you’re looking for.  Exploring a city that was burned to ash about a year ago in search of something that could save the war effort sounds like it just might be a cool setting.

On Earth, some of the most iconic ruins are the jungle ruins.  Featured both in archeology and in fiction, there are numerous stories about cultures who built massive cities, only to abandon them and let the jungle retake them.  Quite often, we still don’t know how massive these ancient cities were, but certain styles of ground penetrating radar used from aircraft are starting to indicate that they are vastly bigger than we expected.

While these settings are true adventures even today, a bit of stylized embellishment makes them perfect mission settings.  Here at Board Enterprises we classify Ballogfar as a necromantic ruin, but it still has some of these jungle style aspects where the foliage covers many of the old buildings, and only the most impressive structures can truly be seen sticking out above the grass and vines.  We also have a couple of true jungle settings where the gorilla-like creatures who once served as slaves still inhabit the ruins despite no one being able to see the ruins under all the trees.

If you have never watched or read a jungle ruin exploration story, you don’t know what you’re missing!  Sure, nearly all of them are campy, but you get danger from battling enemies, danger from battling fierce creatures, danger from the environment (snakes, cliffs with jagged rocks, piranha filled pools, quicksand, volcanoes, OK, lots of stuff!!), and danger from the climate itself.  After all, jungles are typically hot, and everything from dehydration to insect borne diseases can get you.

We have one more for you that should appeal to many, though you might already be using it.  What if 150 years ago, a huge earthquake leveled most of the city?  The death toll was so bad that in some cases, they didn’t bother to dig up the dead, but instead just started rebuilding on top of the rubble.  This has actually happened, and beneath some American cities, there are the remnants of older versions of the city.  These can be great, because they tend to justify why a dungeon would be directly below the main city the PCs live in.  This could be the case in a burnt to the ground city as well, as it seems to have been in Atlanta after the Civil War.  Even if we are somewhat misunderstanding how these ideas have worked in the real world doesn’t mean that they cannot work this way in our fantasy worlds!  You might even be able to have a five-story building where “street level” is now the fifth floor.  From the surface world, this seems to be a perfectly normal one-story building, but once inside, you can descend the stairs and arrive in the ruined city below.  You’d be surprised at how often the human race has simply built over / on top of old structures.  Didn’t Troy have a dozen versions all stacked on top of each other?

What’s the point?  We like to answer this question every time!  The point is that “ruin” can mean a lot more than one thing.  It can be a lot more than just one setting or style.  Add in a magical world and the possibilities become countless.  We’re not suggesting that every adventure you run has to be in a ruin, but they could be, and you still wouldn’t be boring your players with repetition.

This post was written as part of The Lost City of Ballogfar Part II aka All About Ogres (and Ruins), the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing ogres, especially those who live in fantasy ruins.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 130 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

Scroungers

 You know those “crafty” people?  I’m not talking Martha Stewart “I have multiple warehouses of stuff in my backyard” kind of crafty, but the more normal kind.  Sure, the internet is filled with ideas for what you might do with soup cans, pipe cleaners and construction paper, but when the rains come unexpectedly, this is the person who actually has that stuff on hand.  Those kind of folks are “normal” in a rural fantasy setting.  Not only do they know how to knit, but they know how to spin yarn.

Then there are the scroungers.  These people only survive because of their ability to find stuff and make use of it.  They don’t have the money to buy anything, so they must find everything and then find a use for it, or vice-versa, it doesn’t always matter.  Admittedly, these folks are more like hoarders.  You’ve seen the shows - there’s stuff piled four feet deep in every corner and they claim to know where absolutely everything is.  Sometimes they do.

This is the level of scrounging to be expected of the native ogres in Ballogfar.  They literally spend their lives wandering the ruined city collecting stuff they think might someday be valuable.  Like what?  First, we have to remember the lessons from the last edition.  Wood, leather, fabrics, they are all gone - rotted away.  Yes, there are some recently created items from these materials, but not many.  There are no 1,200 year old wooden buckets!  There aren’t even any iron ones.

But there just might be some copper or bronze ones.  More likely, there are buckets made of copper sheeting that used to be used as roofing.  Or there is some sort of ceramic bucket, maybe a mortar or a pot or a brewing vat.  Let’s break away from buckets for a second.

Think a little smaller - cups and steins.  Imagine our intrepid ogre scrounger searching a collapsed home and found a good-sized stein.  The ogres made ceramics, so this is completely plausible.  Except, there’s a chunk missing.  Oh, well, he chucks it back into the fallen down house and goes off looking somewhere else, right?  Wrong!

A true scrounger looks at the broken stein and starts thinking if it has a value.  If he has wax or tallow, would it make a decent candle holder?  Could he still use it to dig like a small shovel?  Is there something he could store in it?  Does it have any value as a weapon?  If he breaks it, will its pieces have any value to him?

And that’s the point!  The native ogres of Ballogfar own a lot of stuff, but very little of it has value to a party of adventurers.  That doesn’t mean it is worthless, just that it cannot be sold in a human society.  And if you think the only things that have worth are those that can be sold, then you’re wrong.  Love, integrity, self-worth ... OK, we were just kidding there.  Some crazy person’s self-righteous voice went off and that’s what came out. Ignore that whole part!

But here’s when scroungers get really interesting:  What is the thing they are using for a purpose that was never intended?  Maybe they’re using a skull to hold a candle off the floor - maybe that’s still not of value.  All that copper sheeting they have turned into cups and buckets and pots, etc. may be “worthless” but it has base metal value.  Not a lot, but still, you gather up 100lbs of it, and the smelter will cut you a deal.

But what about the plate the ogre is using to hold his cheap tallow candle?  He likes it because it is reflective, but you like it because its gold.  The other candle holder, the skull, - it’s a whole different ball game if it is a crystal skull.  Or what if it is animated?  Is the ogre using a glass cup that is enchanted to never break?  Maybe it was a cage for a magical creature at one time but is now just a cup. 

The opportunities are truly endless!  These ogres still like shiny things, but they need food.  There is gold, silver and copper lost throughout the ruins, but the ogres spend less time searching for those things vs. food and things to make their shelters better.  That’s when these recycled uses become very happy surprises.

This post was written as part of The Lost City of Ballogfar Part II aka All About Ogres (and Ruins), the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing ogres, especially those who live in fantasy ruins.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 130 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.