[RPG] How to present an “unsolvable right now” puzzle without frustrating the players

player-communicationpuzzle

I think me and my players are quite fond of puzzles in our TTRPGs, me designing them and they solving them. Last session I presented them with a puzzle that was unsolvable “at the moment”. I thought that they had sufficient foreshadowing about that condition, and at the moment decided not to “backseat play” their game and let them to their devices. Which was very frustrating for both parties, and now I see I should’ve let them know clearly and directly that what they needed wasn’t available right then, we could have kept on playing instead of banging our heads against the wall.

This bad decision aside, I’ll explain the puzzle and their situation:

Situation

They had contracted a sketchy Skyship captain to fly them to another continent, but he asked as part of their payment that they completed a task for him. Middway through the ocean there was a temple to Nemesis (we use greek gods in our campaign), that was one of the clues in a treasure map. They had to get through it and get a treasure that was on the other side.

This is the second temple to Nemesis that they had found, but in the first they never encountered the puzzles that opened the inner chamber (Instead one of the PCs stole everything that wasn’t bolted and angered the Goddess).

In this second temple, they found several traps that summoned Driders if triggered. They quickly found the way through it to the other side, but this time they also found the puzzles to the inner chamber.

The puzzle

The first door had a brazier with an engraving that read: “Blood of the petitioner”

They know, thanks to previous encounters with the goddess' avatar, that she is a very easy to anger goddess, but also very personal and intimate, and just in her decisions. Whoever started this puzzle would be the one needed to finish it, this I directly told them.

The party decided that “the petitioner” should be the character that had angered her, because “best case scenario” Nemesis forgave her, "worst case scenario" the goddess was already angry so nothing changed.

The Character poured a few drops of blood on the brazier, the door opened and they proceeded, killing a few Driders that disappeared and left no trace whatsoever when killed (they were summoned magical constructs).

They found a second brazier, that read “Blood of their friends”. There was also a mural that depicted Nemesis sacrificing her best friend while everyone watched. They tried to use the Captain’s blood, and it didn’t work. She suffered some backlash damage (10 points, just to discourage trying to fit anything in the brazier without thinking), and I told her that as far as she knew Nemesis, she had allies and grudges, but only very few Friends and Enemies, as those words were reserved to personal, intimate people. Then they tried with the blood of one of the other players, which are friends, and it worked.

I thought I had established here that “random friendly person” and “random unfriendly creature” would not qualify.

They found the third brazier, that read “Blood of their enemies” with a partner painting of Nemesis killing Hades (which in our world is her enemy, and they know that since it's kinda centric in the story).

Now, the Character that had been doing this has a personal enemy, someone that stole all her things and sold her to slavery.

I thought they would understand that they needed to find THAT enemy.

Instead they activated some Drider traps on purpose to have their blood. When they killed them I explained again how they didn’t leave anything behind when killed, so then they tried to kill one while it was standing on the brazier… wich they accomplished somehow with very lucky dice.
It didn’t work either.

Then they started throwing things at random, several trophies of previous hunts, vials of acid collected from monsters… everything. They resorted to heal her so they could try more things.

In the end they left frustrated. I think, justly so, because I should have stopped and said: It’s not working, think it better. Or “go on with your lifes and come back later”

After much prodding on their part I decided to tell them how to solve the puzzle (now that they are away, and accomplished their main mission), and they felt like it was impossible for them to get to that conclusion and the puzzle itself was unfair.

Actual question

Let’s take out of the equation the fact that I should have interrupted them when they started thrashing at random.

How could I have presented this in a better way?

Best Answer

I, myself, usually run puzzle-heavy adventures. Some of the puzzles are intended to challenge the players, while others are intended to challenge the characters. I am not sure which one you are looking for, but let's try to answer it anyway.

For similar situations, I have had puzzles that were simply not solvable. I'm also a blood-loving person, so, as an example, there was a puzzle in a ruin from old civilizations that required blood from a race that was long (>200 years) extinct. Without Wish, AFAIK, that was impossible. In my case, that made sense for me - they were exploring something made ages ago, time passed, things changed. The puzzle was not impossible when it was made - it is now, and it will probably be forever from now on.

I will split my answer in OOC solutions and IC solutions.

Out of Character solutions

Align your expectation with your players'. This seems a problem of players thinking everything you put in their way is a challenge they can immediately beat. This is not your expectation. Align it.

You can, from the beginning, explicitly state that there will be puzzles that can not be solved, either immediately or ever, as my example above. This is usually done best in the first session. Doing it in a session you will be presenting a puzzle might harm more than help - they could associate you telling that with the puzzle that you are presenting now and immediately think it is not possible to solve without even trying. In one of my campaigns I did that (telling them during a random session, because I forgot to tell it during the first one) and they gave up on solving a puzzle that was actually supposed to be easy. On the other hand, when I present that information from the beginning, they actually try to do it - and when they fail too many times, they give up. Note that they might give up in a solvable puzzle, but that's okay (for me, at least) - people give up from problems they actually could solve all the time. If this is a problem for you, you can still apply my solution and then solve the "giving up from a solvable puzzle" problem - which, from my experience, is easier to do, mainly in character.

If your players simply don't want things they can't immediately solve, either don't present it to them, or, if you really really want to use this mechanism, it might be best to find another group which fits your expectation better.

Also, you could, as you said yourself, just stop them when they have tried too much, OOC, and explain them that. I would not, however, present the solution as you've done, it seems. I would just tell them "Guys, you can't solve it for now. Think better about it, leave and come back later."

In Character Solutions

It is similar to the Out of Character solution, but instead of communicating through speaking OOC, you can communicate in game.

Communicating that there will be unsolvable puzzles is easy. My earlier example was enough for my players to understand that without me saying anything. I was asking for the blood of a race that doesn't exist any more. They went around asking about that race, discovered it was extinct. They went around trying to find a (conserved) blood sample, they couldn't find, obviously. They realized it was an immersion tool, not a mechanical challenge.

Using an NPC (the Captain, it seems) to tell them "Hey guys, you have been there for a while, you tried lots of things, are you sure you want to keep doing it? It seems you are tired. Take a break and let's think about it better." and then giving more tips "Well, if my blood didn't count as a friend, then probably random enemies's blood won't count as the enemy. Is there anyone you really hate?" - if he didn't know the story already. If he did "What about that guy that sold you to slavery?"

Note on how the challenge was presented

As Dronz already mentioned, it seems you put this puzzle in a distant, hard to reach island, similar to the last Tomb Raider movie. That strongly indicates to the players that the puzzle should be solvable in one-go. Unless that enemy is in this island, I would probably have gave tips about the inviability of proceeding there before they even went to the island. I can't suggest how to do that for you without running the campaign itself, but it is certainly something I would have worried about when creating the adventure. If I'm wrong and there are other motivations in the island besides the temple/puzzle, forget this section.


Although I'm not familiar with ToA for D&D 5e, it seems (from this question) it presents an unsolvable puzzle. It seems (again, from the question) it presents it in a bad way, though, but you might get insight from experienced adventure publishers there.