The Book of Many Things

Chapter 4: Puzzle

This chapter includes puzzles, riddles, and traps themed to the Deck of Many Things for Dungeon Masters' use.

Puzzles

This section presents two puzzles designed to invite group participation and challenge characters (and players) of any stripe. Each puzzle can be included in your campaign as presented or customized to fit the needs of a specific adventure.

The following information appears in each puzzle:

Difficulty. Each puzzle is classified as easy or medium. The harder the puzzle, the more likely the players will need hints to solve it.
Puzzle Features. This section presents an overview of the puzzle's features and how to interact with the puzzle.
Solution. This section explains how the puzzle is solved.
Hint Checks. This section suggests hints that characters might use their skills to reveal. Provide one or more of the hints if the characters get stuck. If a character has proficiency in a hint's associated skill, share that hint if that character asks for help.
Customizing the Puzzle. This section explores how to integrate the puzzle into your adventures, alter its difficulty, or make other adjustments.

I once fixated on deciphering a puzzle for six hours straight. Euryale had to remind me to eat.
— Asteria

The Perfect Hand

Difficulty: Easy

This sorting puzzle can be used to indicate the presence of a hidden treasure or secret passage. It fits well in a dungeon, a haunted manor, or an abandoned gambling den.

Puzzle Features

The statue speaks whenever anyone approaches, repeating the message each time.

The card on the table is a nonmagical version of the Rogue card from a Deck of Many Things. The four other cards mentioned in the statue's message—Sage, Jester, Knight, and Fates—are each located in a different area nearby.

Grooves in the statue's palms are perfectly sized to hold the cards. Each card can fit into the palms either upright or reversed (upside down).

Solution

The characters must find the four missing cards, then return here. Using the clues in the statue's message, all five cards must be arranged in the correct order and orientation (upright or reversed) in the statue's hands. Diagram 4.1 shows the solution.

A hollow thud emanates from the statue if the cards are arranged incorrectly in its hands. Once the cards are placed in the correct arrangement, the statue slides aside, revealing a secret door.

[image: Diagram 4.1: The Perfect Hand Puzzle Solution]

Hint Checks

Any character can make these ability checks to receive a hint:

Intelligence (Investigation) DC 10. For the cards to face the directions indicated in the statue's instructions, some must be placed in the statue's hands upside down.

Wisdom (Insight) DC 10. The statue's message explains the proper order in which to sort the cards.

Wisdom (Perception) DC 10. Grooves in the statue's palms would perfectly fit a fanned hand of five cards.

Customizing the Puzzle

Characters must use deductive reasoning to arrange a group of objects in the correct order. It's not important that the objects be cards—they could just as easily be statuettes or paintings on the wall. As long as the characters are given enough clues to correctly arrange the objects without having to guess, this puzzle can take any number of forms.

Missing Pieces

You can choose where the missing cards are located. For example, the characters might need to decode a map or navigate a maze to find the cards. You can also make this puzzle more complex by separating the clues. For instance, have each clue come from a different statue or scrap of parchment somewhere in the dungeon.

Another way to adjust the overall difficulty of the puzzle is to make acquiring the cards more challenging once they've been found, perhaps by requiring the characters to defeat monsters or overcome a test of skill.

Starting with a Full Hand

To make this puzzle easier and quicker, place all five cards on the table in front of the statue so the characters can begin interpreting the clues right away.

Unseen Order

Difficulty: Medium

This guessing game requires characters to use deductive reasoning to determine the correct sequence of four cards. They must use a game board and six stacks of cards on a table to make their guesses. Give the players a copy of Unseen Order Handouts 1 and 2, then read the following boxed text aloud:

A long table fills the center of this chamber. On the table is a peculiar game board carved with a grid of rectangular grooves, four per row. Each row is numbered one through ten on its left side, and on the right side of each row are four small glass orbs. Beside the game board are ten stacks of playing cards. Each stack has four copies of the following six cards: Comet, Gem, Moon, Skull, Star, and Sun.

A ghostly goblin in jester garb manifests on the far side of the table. She holds out four cards, faces hidden, between her fingers. She then intones a riddle:

Guess my hand and win the game.
Place your guess and I'll tell you plain:
Right card, right spot? An orb turns red!
Right card, wrong spot? Blue instead.
Ten guesses, no tricks, good luck to you.
Guess it right in six or less, Win an extra prize, woohoo!

Puzzle Features

The cards on the table are nonmagical versions of those from the Deck of Many Things. If the characters struggle to understand the riddle, the ghost can explain the rules more clearly:

Objective. The characters must guess which cards are in the ghost's hand and in what order.
Rules. To make their first guess, the characters must place four cards into the empty slots of the first row on the board. The ghost's hand might consist of four different cards, or it might include two or more copies of the same card. If a card in that row is the correct card in the correct slot, the orb next to that row turns red. If a guessed card is one of the cards in the ghost's hand but is in the wrong slot, an orb turns blue. The characters can use this information to make another guess by placing four more cards in the next row down.
Winning the Game. There are ten rows for cards, meaning the characters have ten chances to correctly guess the ghost's hand. If they guess the hand in fewer than ten tries, they win a treasure of your choice. If the characters find the solution in six or fewer guesses, the ghost tells them of an even greater treasure buried at a distant adventure location.
Losing the Game. If the characters fail to deduce the ghost's hand in ten guesses and want to try again, the ghost selects a new hand, and the game starts over.

Other Materials

You don't need cards to use this puzzle; you can use paper, a red pen, and a blue pen. Write down the puzzle's solution on a piece of paper, and fold the paper so the players can't see it.

Give the players a copy of Unseen Order Handout 1 or a sheet of grid paper. Ask them to write their guess in the first row of empty boxes, writing the card names or drawing symbols like those provided in Unseen Order Handout 2, the symbol key. Secretly compare their guess with the solution. In the empty circles next to their guess, color one circle red for each correctly guessed card in the correct position, and color a circle blue for each correctly guessed card in the wrong position.

Solution

The answer to this puzzle can be determined only through logic. Diagram 4.4 illustrates one possible hand the ghost might have (Moon, Sun, Skull, and Gem, in that order) and how the game might play out. You can devise alternate solutions by selecting a different hand of four cards.

Hint Checks

Any character can make the following ability check to receive a hint:

Charisma (Persuasion) DC 10. If asked politely, the ghost provides an example of how the game might play out. Show the players diagram 4.4. Choose a different solution for the actual puzzle.

Customizing the Puzzle

As long as the basic rules of the game remain the same, the puzzle can take any number of forms, including differently shaped tokens or game figurines such as chess pieces.

Increasing the Difficulty

You can make this puzzle more difficult by increasing the number of cards in the ghost's hand or by adding more possible cards to choose from. Each new variable makes the game much harder; consider increasing the number of guesses the characters can make.

Riddles

A riddle is a verbal puzzle. Riddles can be simple or complex, brief or protracted, and low stakes or deadly. This section includes basic guidance for DMs who want to design and use riddles in adventures.

Why Use Riddles?

Riddles are a staple of the fantasy adventure genre. Used judiciously, riddles neatly illustrate the wondrous, whimsical, and often dangerous nature of a fantasy world. A good riddle can challenge all manner of adventurers—novice or veteran, weak or strong—and can make the reward at the end of the adventure feel well earned.

Riddles can be used to do any of the following:

Provide an opportunity for the characters to engage with a creature that's too strong to defeat in combat
Reward clever characters who overcome a challenge with brains instead of brawn
Make a villain, an area, or an object seem more interesting or mysterious

However, using too many riddles can slow gameplay. Use them thoughtfully and sparingly. Especially tricky riddles should entail worthwhile rewards. Be wary of using riddles found online, especially if players can access the internet during the session.

Where to Use Riddles

Puzzle-loving antagonists and mischievous monsters are the most common ways to introduce a riddle. Here are some suggestions for how to incorporate riddles into adventures:

Creatures. Not every adversary wants to engage in mortal combat. Certain creatures might delight in a battle of wits. The reward for answering a creature's riddle might be a small treasure, a bit of helpful magic, or permission to pass through the monster's lair unscathed. If combat is inevitable, the answer to a monster's riddle might reveal useful information like the monster's secret weapon or hidden weakness.
Items. Few things are more enticing than a rare item with magical properties hidden behind a riddle. Items have the added benefit of being portable, allowing the characters to ponder a confounding curio during short rests or while traveling. Sand-combing adventurers might find an incomprehensible message in a bottle that, when decoded, reveals itself to be a treasure map. The inscrutable runes carved onto a cursed bow might hold the key to undoing the weapon's evil magic.
Locations. Mystical grottoes, forgotten temples, and secret hideouts might all be locked behind befuddling riddles. A lich might enchant the statues outside her innermost sanctum to ask a magical riddle before opening the way. The strange poem on a tombstone could be a clue to the whereabouts of a buried fortune. A series of frost giant runes etched onto a stone wall could, when decoded, activate a magical doorway to a long-lost city.

Writing Riddles

Writing new riddles for your group can be fun and satisfying—as long as the players don't guess the right answer in seconds or, conversely, rip their hair out in frustration. Here are some tips:

Reinforce a Theme. A good riddle is related to something the characters are currently dealing with. A tricky beholder, for example, might pose riddles whose answers all have something to do with eyes or orbs.
Give Three Clues. A strong riddle provides multiple clues about the answer; three is a good number. To vary a riddle's difficulty, you could split the clues up, providing the first clue initially, then the second and third if the characters ask for a hint.
Rhyming. Though it's not always possible or necessary to give a riddle rhythm and rhyme, doing so is a good way to help the characters remember the riddle. Rhyming words can also be clues, indicating which part of the riddle is most important.
Guesses and Time. Give characters plenty of time to guess a riddle's answer, and let them make multiple guesses. In the game, characters might have hours or days to answer a particularly challenging riddle. In the real world, you could pose a riddle near the end of a game session, allowing your players to ponder guesses before reconvening. (Remind them of the clues at that time.)
Hints. For a high-stakes riddle, consider preparing one or two hints for characters who are stumped. To earn a hint, a character might have to succeed on a DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation) check.

Twenty-Two Riddles

Here are twenty-two riddles you can use in any campaign. Each riddle's answer is the name of a card from the Deck of Many Things:

Trap Rooms

Traps can be as puzzling as any riddle or maze, but they're far deadlier! This section includes a collection of trap rooms: dungeon chambers loaded with hazards to test adventurers' wits and fortitude. A trap room is a group of traps designed to work in tandem. Taken separately, each element of a trap room might be only a minor setback for the characters, but when combined, those elements form a unique and memorable challenge.

Trap rooms aren't likely to be found in just any abandoned manor or forgotten temple; elaborate contraptions like these appear in dungeons designed to guard truly valuable treasures and to punish overcurious adventurers.

Each of the trap rooms described below includes a range of suggested character levels to match that room's difficulty. Each entry also includes information about the trap room's features and a diagram illustrating its design. You can use the trap guidelines in the Dungeon Master's Guide to adjust these traps' severity.

Contents

Chapter 4: Puzzle

Puzzles

The Perfect Hand

Puzzle Features

Solution

Hint Checks

Customizing the Puzzle

Missing Pieces

Starting with a Full Hand

Unseen Order

Puzzle Features

Other Materials

Solution

Hint Checks

Customizing the Puzzle

Increasing the Difficulty

Riddles

Why Use Riddles?

Where to Use Riddles

Writing Riddles

Twenty-Two Riddles

Trap Rooms