12 Secrets to Creating Legendary D&D Puzzles

Written by Luke Hart

A frequent debate folks have about puzzles is whether puzzles should challenge the character or the player. That is, should your wizard be able to use their Intelligence score to discover the answer to a puzzle? Or should it be left up to the actual intelligence of the players to figure the puzzle out?

However, this “debate” is really just a smoke screen. What’s really happening is that some players just dislike puzzles; they don’t want to actually have to figure them out; and they would rather just be able to make some dice rolls to overcome the challenge. But if that’s all a puzzle is—some dice rolls—and the players don’t actually have to use their own brains, such a puzzle is pointless and shouldn’t even be in the game.

Thus, it’s very clear to me that puzzles MUST challenge players, and not just their characters, or they have no place in tabletop RPGs. Sure, many game masters will allow the players to get CLUES based on Intelligence checks and the like—and that’s reasonable—but autosolving based on dice rolls—no, no, no.

Hi, I’m Luke Hart, and on this site, I share my nearly 30 years of game master experience so that you can run amazing games that your players will love. And today we’re talking about puzzles—just in case you haven’t figured that out yet—and specifically we’re discussing 12 things that make a HORRIBLE puzzle, and what you should do instead.

Watch or listen to this article by clicking the video below.

#1 The Puzzle Is Too Hard

Or the puzzle is too obscure—perhaps it relies on advanced music theory—or the puzzle is too easy. Extremes are usually best avoided. Puzzles that are too hard FRUSTRATE players, and can diminish the fun of the game. Puzzles that are too easy are anti-climatic, resulting in a reward or progression that doesn’t feel earned.

What you really want is a puzzle that is CHALLENGING but solvable. Remember, a good puzzle WANTS to be solved. You don’t want to stump your players. The happy path is a puzzle that is just challenging enough so that when the players solve it they feel a sense of accomplishment and pride.

#2 Too Many Puzzles

Puzzles are like bacon. A few slices next to the eggs, cheese, and corn tortillas are great. However, when it’s half a pack of bacon—well, that’s really too much. What am I saying? Just forget about that metaphor; it fell apart. My point is that puzzles are usually best when encountered occasionally; I would say once per adventures or once every three or so game sessions is probably plenty for most groups—unless you have some players that are GLUTTENS for puzzles. But even then, you likely have players that do NOT like them, so too many is going to lessen the appeal of the game for them. Besides which, lots of puzzles means you have to CREATE those puzzles, and I don’t know about you, but creating a good puzzle can be tough.

#3 The Puzzle Only Has One Solution

A puzzle with only one solution can grind the game to a halt if your players aren’t picking upon the solution and become a frustrating experience. What I like to do for my puzzles is have A SOLUTION that I’ve determined in advance, but then I’m willing to accept other reasonable solutions that the players come up with during gameplay. Just ask yourself if the solution is logical, satisfying, and fun. If so, why not allow it?

#4 The Puzzle Relies Too Much on Dice Rolls

We alluded to this in our overly long introduction which you probably just scrubbed past so that you could get to the meat of the article. However, if you did do that—SHAME ON YOU. I consider you a filthy read-time stealer and will thoroughly berate you in a future video that uses some sweet sweet clickbait to add insult to injury.

Anyway, as I’ve said, you don’t want your players to be able to solve a puzzle with a few dice rolls. Instead, the best puzzles are those that use BOTH the players’ own brains and creativity and ability to apply reason and logic ALONG WITH the characters’ knowledge and skills. The best way to implement this is to mostly make the players have to figure things out but to allow rolls to get insight and hints about the puzzle.

#5 The Puzzle Prevents Forward Progress

When I was writing my Escape from the Fey adventure module, I wanted one of the adventures to be fairly puzzle heavy. However, I had to be careful to allow other means—besides solving the puzzles—of being able to progress in the adventure. You see, if the group is stymied by a puzzle, and just can’t figure it out, AND the solution is REQUIRED to move on in the mission…well, you’re screwed as the game master. Either you have to give them the solution, handwave the puzzle, backtrack and “clarify” that solving the puzzle isn’t actually required, or kindly inform them that they’ve failed the mission and should retreat back to town with their tails tucked between their legs.

What you want to do is make puzzles either optional—solving them might lead to more loot or optional parts of the dungeon—or allow them to be bypassed in another way, such as by overcoming a combat encounter.

#6 The Puzzle Involves Illogical Assumptions

If your players need to make an obscure logical leap, or the puzzle is nebulous or ambiguous, you probably got a bad puzzle on your hands that is going to frustrate players. Most people approach puzzles with LOGIC; thus a good puzzle is logical and doesn’t require guesswork to figure out its methods. Furthermore, the clues presented in the description of the puzzle should point to the puzzle’s method and its solution.

#7 The Puzzle Relies on One Character to Solve It

For instance, a puzzle that requires casting a cantrip that only appears on the cleric spell list is probably a bad puzzle. Or if the puzzle relies on music theory, and you created it because you know that Tim is good at music; but if no one else in the group knows a lick about music, that’s really just Tim’s show, and everyone else is going to be tuned out and on their phones.

Remember, tabletop roleplaying games are GROUP games and thus good puzzles allow for the GROUP to come up with and execute the solutions. Consider requiring a variety of skills or having multiple characters doing things at the same time.

#8 The Puzzle Doesn’t Belong

Now, this a rough one. I’ll be honest, you’re probably gonna be screwed more often than not here. The POINT I’m supposed to make is that a bad puzzle has no reason for being in the dungeon or adventure; it’s really just there because the GM wanted to include a puzzle. Ideally what you want is a puzzle that is tied in with the lore of the location and has a logical reason for being there. Now this CAN BE DONE, but I often find this challenging to do.

You see, the existence of puzzles just don’t make a lot of sense in general. If I have the power and resources to create a complex puzzle, it’s seems like I’d just use keys and magic instead. They are easier to implement and more secure. If I’m the evil bad guy who is making a dungeon, designing and building a puzzle that JUST ANYONE can figure out with twenty minutes of thought seems like a MASSIVE WASTER OF RESOURCES. Again, I’d probably just use thick doors, fancy keys, and powerful magic.

So, to me, a puzzle is almost always going to seem like it doesn’t belong. To me, a puzzle in a dungeon is almost always going to seem like the GM included it because they know some players really enjoy puzzles. But, you know, do your best, I guess.

#9 The Puzzle Has No Stakes

If the only cost to failing a puzzle is not succeeding at the puzzle…well, you got a stupid, pointless puzzle on your hands. Not solving a puzzle should have some sort of consequence or price. Maybe something later on in the adventure is more dangerous—electrified ankle-deep water that the puzzle COULD have turned off—or maybe the group just misses out on the cool loot that they KNOW is behind the stone door.

#10 The Puzzle Takes Too Long to Solve

No one wants to spend several HOURS solving a puzzle—even puzzle freaks will probably lose it at that point. Puzzles shouldn’t take over the entire game session. Instead, a good puzzle takes maybe thirty minutes tops to solve. Now, I KNOW, that you can’t control for how quickly or slowly your wonderful players actually solve a puzzle—something you thought wasn’t that bad COULD turn into a monster. So, I guess all I can really say is do your best when designing the puzzle AND if a puzzle is really dragging on, maybe, just maybe, you could give some clues based on successful skill checks.

#11 The Puzzle Uses Magic or Mechanical Design That Is Out-of-Place

If you’re running a fantasy game, but you have sci-fi elements such as lasers in your puzzle, then it’s going to seem odd to your players. A puzzle should feel like it belongs in the game world, fits the genre, and relies upon the lore of the world. Doing this will make the puzzle feel like it was created by someone from that actual world and reinforce the verisimilitude of your game.

#12 The Puzzle Is One and Done

Puzzles that can be solved with just ONE ACTION are rather forgettable. It’s not so much that they are badly designed, but that something more could have been done. Better puzzles have dynamic elements where multiple actions must be performed to successively progress the puzzle towards its final solution. That is, there should be multiple “little solutions” that lead to the one final solution.