One of the things I really like about group RPGs and published solo adventures is solving puzzles. This is probably the hardest thing to emulate in solitaire gaming. You can fake it with skill/attribute rolls, but this is a little bland.

One of the things I really like about group RPGs and published solo adventures is solving puzzles. This is probably the hardest thing to emulate in solitaire gaming. You can fake it with skill/attribute rolls, but this is a little bland.

So I had the idea that instead of solving a puzzle in play, I would try creating one instead. However long it took to create would count as the amount of time it took my PCs to solve. As a bonus, I could then share the puzzle with the community, so you can (potentially) drop it into your own games.

I'm sure this a is a less-is-more kind of thing; one or two per dungeon ought to suffice, and maybe not in every dungeon, either.

So here are some brief guidelines if you want to try it:

-The only real requirement is that is needs to fit the setting (in the example below, it was devised by Christian monks some time between the 11th and 12th century).
-However long it takes to think it up in real time becomes the approximate game time it takes for the PC/party to solve it, if time matters (e.g. round to the nearest Turn if you're using an OSR ruleset). If it's a two or more part/location puzzle, just average the time for each section.
-It can involve skill rolls if you want it to
-XP are only gained if the solution would normally earn them in the game you're playing
-You can use reference works to create it
-If you're offering it up to the community for their own use, please put the solution somewhere easy to find, but hard to stumble across accidentally.
-If you get stuck and give up, so do your characters. If you have a flash of inspiration afterwards, it means they need the help of an NPC or an item/spell they don't currently have.

There's a more long-winded write-up of this process at the end of my latest adventure report: http://aleaiactandaest.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/lotfp-solo-hex-dungeon-crawl-part-v.html

But if you just want to see the first puzzle itself, click the link below (but if you want to use it, don't click on the links within until your PCs get that far):