I've been on a big Zelda kick recently and have been think about the format and why I like it. It also relates to what I enjoy about table top RPG's.

When playing a game like Zelda or Divinity: OS one of my favorite things is to see weird, unexplained things and try to guess what it is and how I'll get there. And then after playing for a while if my guesses about the game world are accurate or if I read the game design clues well enough, or whatever, I get to experience the weird thing and see how it matches my expectations. Is it what I thought it would be? Different? Weirder?

When playing a table top RPG I tend to be the player that wants to know what everything looks and sounds like. Not everything of course, but if the GM can provide descriptive details for the important stuff I enjoy imagining it with others.

So here's my question. Have any of you ran a session where you walked around and saw cool stuff, described things, and maybe saw puzzles, but the dice never came out of the bag and there was no combat? Just a lot of exploration and learning about the gameworld, and using your understanding of the gameworld and inquisitiveness to experience more places in that game world? (I'm skipping social interaction here.)

For those of you that have done something like that.... I would like to hear your thoughts in using this kind of a session as (1) an exercise for your GM skills, and (2) maybe a diagnostic as a game designer to evaluate the minimum mechanics to add to your system when do decide to insert them?

Thoughts?

I've had a number of sessions like that in various systems (B/X D&D, Call of Cthulhu, WFRP).

I like having puzzles (inc. traps, which are usually puzzles with bite!) of different types, depending on the setting and players. These are generally "player skill" oriented - so, not about rolling a "spot hidden" or "knowledge roll", but rather having the players actually figure things out. Sometime they involve timers/countdowns (long or short, secret or not), sometime they don't. Those events often don't involve dice - not unless things get triggered, etc.

The main thing with puzzles (or clues in a mystery scenario), I find it's better to lean on the side of "this is probably too obvious" than "this will be a real challenge!"

Mystery stories can be marvelously complex, and the protagonist can always figure it out because the author writes the mystery and resolution. From the player-side in an rpg, nothing is ever that clear. Players get distracted by that meaningless detail or chase down that background NPC, while missing the obvious-to-you clue saying "THIS is the bad guy!"  Hilariously frustrating.

I've had plenty of sessions which were most or all tourism and exploration, investigation, and/or social interactions. Dice certainly were used, but mostly for perception checks, social skills, mundane tasks, and helping divine what NPCs are doing/thinking, or answers to questions I hadn't thought of.

The closest I've come is a necromancer's tower that was about 75% puzzles. The tower itself was one big puzzle, where the sections rotated and opened and closed certain hallways between levels.

It was fun, but very gimmicky. My homage to White Plume Mountain funhouse style dungeons.

On the topic of Zelda (or rather Metroid, but the idea of gated dungeons) is Angry GM's series on his megadungeon.

http://theangrygm.com/welcome-to-the-megadungeon-gating/

Has anyone ever used this kind of session as a diagnostic tool for their own GMing or a games mechanics?

Quote from: Ashakyre;923315Has anyone ever used this kind of session as a diagnostic tool for their own GMing or a games mechanics?

If I follow what you're asking, sure. I am usually self-criticizing my own GMing and game mechanics all the time, and low-impact situations are where I'm more likely to introduce/test new stuff. Though if it's a combat-related or otherwise high-impact mechanic and I'm skeptical, I tend to just playtest them out of campaign instead.

My players have almost never liked puzzles. I think that too often, the puzzles break the sense of immersion; they're often done more for the players to solve with player logic or knowledge, rather than the characters through roleplay.

Quote from: RPGPundit;924150My players have almost never liked puzzles. I think that too often, the puzzles break the sense of immersion; they're often done more for the players to solve with player logic or knowledge, rather than the characters through roleplay.

How is that any different than "player skill" that many people take as a core OSR value?

Quote from: Ashakyre;924173How is that any different than "player skill" that many people take as a core OSR value?

I think because often, what it requires is not effective basic cleverness or sociability, but knowledge of certain specific things (math, english language, popular riddles, whatever) that have nothing at all to do with the PCs' or even the setting.

I mean, a puzzle based on ENGLISH (or even an alphabet that is just a basic code for the english alphabet) is by its very nature immersion-breaking.  Maybe especially so if you're bilingual (which most of my players are).

Quote from: RPGPundit;924551I think because often, what it requires is not effective basic cleverness or sociability, but knowledge of certain specific things (math, english language, popular riddles, whatever) that have nothing at all to do with the PCs' or even the setting.

I mean, a puzzle based on ENGLISH (or even an alphabet that is just a basic code for the english alphabet) is by its very nature immersion-breaking.  Maybe especially so if you're bilingual (which most of my players are).

Yeah. I agree. Unless it's a modern setting and/or one where there isn't that kind of disconnect between the players and PCs and the game world, AND where the players are interested in puzzles and/or it doesn't "matter too much" if the players ignore or fail to solve the puzzle (or think they've solved it by some imaginative idea the GM didn't think of).

Once I thought I was clever to have a dwarven fortress include a set of tunnels that spelled out the word MAP, as a taunt that showed they had designed their defensive tunnels with the idea that attackers would map them. I regretted this fairly quickly, but not quick enough to change it. It was a fairly silly idea, and implied the the common human alphabet was literally the English alphabet, and when the players saw it they just thought it was preposterous and stupid ... they found it on a map someone else had made, and instead of being intrigued or threatened they went straight to "that's just stupid and shouldn't exist in any way, shape or form".

Also this reminds me of the times when the GM thinks up a riddle and then plans/controls things so the PCs must figure out his answer to his riddle, or else things will be screwed up, and/or when they think of another answer to the riddle, it leads them off on some path the GM never thought of, either making his "clever" planned content irrelevant or get skipped, or causing him to do surreal annoying things to get the players back on the "right" track. Errrgh.

Quote from: RPGPundit;924551I think because often, what it requires is not effective basic cleverness or sociability, but knowledge of certain specific things (math, english language, popular riddles, whatever) that have nothing at all to do with the PCs' or even the setting.

I mean, a puzzle based on ENGLISH (or even an alphabet that is just a basic code for the english alphabet) is by its very nature immersion-breaking.  Maybe especially so if you're bilingual (which most of my players are).

Interesting. My favorite part of puzzles is when you need to flex your game world knowledge to solve them. Almost like active exposition or something.

Quote from: Ashakyre;924738Interesting. My favorite part of puzzles is when you need to flex your game world knowledge to solve them. Almost like active exposition or something.

If it's game-world knowledge, fine. But if it's real-world knowledge that has nothing to do with the game world at all, that sucks.