The sweater was from Think Geek. It is currently sold out, sorry my dudes! www.thinkgeek.com/?fbclid=IwAR1ntpLtm2pSY-6Z1jhP_bxb90UdEfec0kjXomrrUHh6FOQXqV7EmDE_zAQ
The guy said “open” and I’m like “I bet they have to say please.” That would have been the second thing I tried. Actually, probably the third, I would have tried just pushing it first.
Here's the trick: When the dude said "Could you open?" You should have had the hand make the spinning wrist gesture, like you do when you're trying to urge someone to say something else, or elaborate more. "Uh... could you open... please?"
Definitely! Something to hint that more is needed. Maybe even after 25 or so mins of failing some less subtle hints along the lines of the door seems to be finding them quite rude.
I guess that's what current Jacob would do, but he said that he was "a bit of a dick" back then, and it can be very daunting to herd 10 cats, especially for a newer dm.
I would have made the people outside real jerks who kept demanding things of the door. And perhaps given the door a face instead of a hand, so that it could be expressive and show how warm/cold the players are to the correct answer. You could make the entire dungeon around these sentient doors who each have distinct personalities. The Temple of Ianus or something like that.
I had a similar door puzzle that I gave my PCs a while back that they also keep bringing up :P So they were in a temple of Melora (coincidentally, they were also looking for what was basically and Infinity stone XD), and there was door with a riddle: I am the beginning of the end, the end of every place. I am the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space. What am I? (except mine had like 6 more verses :P). The answer was the letter E which they had to then press on the stone pedestal that had the name Melora on it. No joke, it took them 2 hours of solving, at which point one of them yelled in agony: EEEEEEEEEEEEE (thats like a frustrated yell in SE Europe). I went yes, thats it. They just stared at me... XD
Unconventional solutions is what's best about the game: Once we were tasked with obtaining a fairly illegal plant from a local Baron so instead of just having someone break in we managed to get ourselves invited to a party he was throwing, befriend and kidnap the daughter of the Baron while befriending the Baron's alchemist for a partnership in the illegal drug production while another party member befriended the Baron's cook so we could kidnap the daughter, start our own illegal drug business, frame the Baron for the local murder we were trying to solve AND kill the Baron with poisoning. We basically took over that city in the space of one night.
I once did a door puzzle were it only existed if you tried to open it. Therefor all you had to do was walk into it. One of the players found out almost immediately it was illusionary but it still took them 15 mins to get through.
Hey I have a similar story. The group I was dming for had a habit of breaking down doors if there proved to be any resistance or just because they felt like it. I thought I would be coy and have an unbreakable door to a bad guy's base that had been watching them. The way to open the door was...to just open it normally maybe dispell the magic or use a different door. About an hour later I cave and tell them a solution.
A group I played in had a door puzzle once... It’s a really long story I’ll try my best to shorten. My group got a job from the city: take care of a dragon that moved in nearby. So we went and talked with him and struck a deal: he’d leave the city alone (and even protect it once) if we went to an abandoned ancient temple and unlocked it for him. Our party traveled to the temple, spent all day pushing 30-some pillars around just to unlock the door into the damn hallway, and everyone was beat. We see a door with chains covering it. There are several hallways nearby. I go in one; four doors. I go into a room and solve a puzzle: read a text and say aloud the word spelt by the marked letters. Then the next room and the next puzzle: place colored lenses over skylights to match the colored pillars they shine on. Then the third and fourth rooms and puzzles. I go back into the main hall and count the hallways: four total. The rooms? Four in each. How many chains on the door? Four fallen on the floor with twelve remaining. Energetically livid by now, I scream for the barbarian to wreck the door and unleash on it as well. On the first strike, all the chains fall off and an inscription glows into existence on the door that reads: “Patience is a virtue, but these puzzles are stupid.” And the door swung open. My Druid now uses violence to solve every problem. Well, that and drugs. She bombed a city with aerosol hallucinogens, once. But that’s a whole other story.
My player's give me grief over one session I ran where a town was constantly plagued with Snow Raptor attacks and no npc warned them of the attacks......they now ask me constantly "Is it raptor season?"
My favorite door puzzle just involved a large wooden door with intricate carvings on it. Anyone with a high arcana role and an understanding of magic would clearly get that the door was warded against damage and it couldn’t be dispelled by normal means. There was a tiny keyhole on the door but anytime you tried to stick something near the hole (like a lockpick) the keyhole would seal up. There were plenty of other things in the room, like book cases, tables and chairs and even a few chests. Everything was very tidy uniform length apart from eachother. Additionally, the floor was spotless, clean as ever. My players spend the better part of an hour searching everything in the room, reading the books and even trying to sneak up to the door, with no success. They kept asking if they saw a key or something out of place and when they rolled I would tell them the description of the room again and that they saw no key. Eventually a player got frustrated and pulled a book case over, spilling the contents. Immediately, a seamless door on a wall opened up and a gelatinous cube came out and started sucking up the spilled contents, within the cube, someone spotted a key so they quickly killed it and the key was allowed to open the door.
Our DM once had a door we needed to go through in the villain's base that gave out a riddle for us to solve. Now the answer to the riddle was CLEARLY something along the lines of fire, so we spent maybe an hour just listing off synonyms for fire. At some point I officially gave up, at which point the DM let me know the answer... ....Swordfish.... I think I just started laughing at the point. His reasoning was, "Why would someone lock their door with the answer to an easily solvable riddle?" It made sense in universe but it was still frustrating as hell, and when the rest of the party found out we spent the next hour going off at the DM about it. So stupid, but hilarious in hindsight. Edit: holy crud this got a lot of likes, thanks all
see I think the path up to the riddle door should have been full of swordfish related stuff for "no reason" make them curious and then they might say that as the answer.
As soon as the guy got slapped for just saying "Open" I instantly went: "Oh, well I'm sure the answer is you just have to say please." If only I were there that day, lmao
I heard the same story from a friend - only for her party, it took 3 hours and the "please open" was less of an attempt and more of just pure frustration and begging.
One time my dm made a puzzle where we had to put salt in this small body of water surrounding a shrine like thing to open a path down to the treasure and it took us over an hour of trying to put things in the water until someone took a chicken leg and put it in this extra-dimensional book that had a salt dimension and the book turns whatever you put in it to that element or substance or whatever and then just yeeted the chicken leg in the water as a joke and it was actually the answer to the riddle and i hate it
That puzzle sounds as simple as trying to get a cookie out of a jar when the opening of the jar is just small enough to fit your hand when your hand is empty but not when your hand has a cookie in it.
It's like in fellowship of the rings what does the door say "speak friend and enter". Gandalf tries a bunch of things and they don't work and then Frodo is like what's the dwarf or elf or whatever word for friend and boom door opens
This isn't a stupid puzzle, it can help remind players that just because they're in a game they should still have manners. This is something I would pull on the player that demands to pay even less, on top of a bargain, at the shop. Or better yet this is a perfect puzzle for someone's first time. It could be a gateway to the world you've created and a stone tablet in front of the door says, "while you're here, don't forget what mama taught you" i have the type of players that would remember that line and take it to heart for many sessions to follow. This isn't a bad puzzle, it just needs some context/reason.
i think the part that confuses me is that the npcs that had been around the door for who knows how long also never said "please", which i think is a little ridiculous.
I wouldn't punish players for trying to pay less money. That's called haggling, and it's normal. That's what contested rolls are for. Now, if they build a bad rep with a shop or town, then they could be punished by having less ability to haggle. People who build a good rapport with a shop might automatically accrue discounts. Outright punishing someone for haggling seems a bit too heavy handed.
It's kinda stupid though. It's a puzzle that even in-game is meant to be solved because the true goal is not to block entrance, but to teach a lesson. Thus, it either needs more hints that a specific word is needed or any attempts at being polite should work. I solved it based on the context provided in this video, but if I was a player and tried being polite, then I would stop trying that, which is exactly what happened with this party. Just make a bigger deal out of the hand. Have it slap someone and describe how its index finger wiggles in the air like a disappointed mother would do when a child misbehaves.
@@OtsegoKid I love haggling but when my player has been in the shop for 30 minutes taking time away from the other people at the table after he's already gotten half off and a mission that he's going to get paid for it's no longer haggling
@@M1sterSh4ggy Then make them use a real life skill. Have a timer, like an hour glass, that's only 30 seconds, or a minute. Tell them they have until the time is up to finish their dealings, and if they fail, then they fail. Some might call that a dick move, but hey, so is wasting game time. Just use discretion on how often you use it.
I think I figured out the answer to the door when I realized that demanding it be opened didnt work. Personally would love more puzzles like this in my campaign and might try something like this should I ever have to run something
Just don't let a puzzle be super annoying. Honestly if a puzzle is taking more then twenty minutes (or people are getting really annoyed by it) I'd just find a in-game way of telling it. Also leave actual hints and clues instead of having a guessing game
@@thatonenecromancer4044 oh yeah, nothing is more frustrating than trying to solve a puzzle, except all the pieces are the same shape, colour, and you're blindfolded
Incredibly enough, from what i DMed and what i played, this makes sense to me, this puzzle. So much so that when he say the door backhanded someone because they said Open my immediate reaction was "Aren't you gonna say Please Open next?"
My dad used to play old school dnd, he had a door puzzle that took about 2 hours. It was a chalk outline of a door, they were trapped in the room and you had to walk backwards through the door to leave. The party only found that out after a fight amongst themselves and pushed one of the members through the door (backwards)
I did a puzzle with three "keys". It was all simple in my mind. It's setted in a abandoned and tormented Asylum (which was an Illusion from a Paladin's head corrupted by a evil cliché mask). It had 3 floors and each floor had a key and a friendly NPC who was essential to the puzzle. 1st floor, all you had to do was exploring its corridors until it looped back to the hall. 2nd floor, it had a cabinet with medicines all labelled as "Happyness" in a room full of beds for the injuried. 3rd floor was a simple room filled with books and shelves, a chair and a desk and the NPC who clearly was a Doctor or Nurse by her appearance. All you needed to do is explore the 1st floor, go to the 2nd and grab the medicine and give them to the NPC in the 3rd floor, so she uses it on the players to dispell the illusion. Man, they did everything. Even smashing the medicines because the Barbarian "didn't like happyness". It took about an hour or more. At the end, they fought the Evil Cleric who was imprisioning the Holy Warrior and took off his mask. It was so simple in my mind. But no... They liked it but it somehow torments them to this day. (Pardon my english)
Never underestimate the ability of players not to understand the solution. There was a puzzle dungeon I made that was borrowed from a book for another edition of dnd, so I had adjusted it a bit. My party also had to get past a door. The door was insulting them. They rolled low, so they didn’t see much in the way of hints. One of them eventually tried insulting the door, but rolled way too low and failed. There was a chest I had placed in the room just to give some kind of reward. I had previously stated it looked like a chest of holding. They ended up all climbing into the chest. When they realized that wasn’t the way out, they tried to climb out. I believe two succeeded and the other four failed. They managed to get the other four out. Finally, they went back over to the door and tried insulting it again. This time, they rolled high enough, so the door cried and opened. This took about an hour or so. And, yes, it still gets brought up.
My friend made a puzzle of o diagram of a human body on a wall and a note on a desk that said something along the mind will set you free. Apparently his group had been working on it for like an hour when I came late because reasons and he explained the puzzle to me. My character immediately pressed the labeled brain and puzzle solved. Apparently they tried pulling it out and when that didnt work they didnt think to push.
first problem: they had the correct solution but because crappy rolls you said they failed and mislead them from the correct solution. you do not need to roll for everything in DnD. Second problem. you can be wayyy to specific on whats correct. they touched the brain part, and with "set you free" removing it seems logical. by saying that it doesn't work it seems like the brain isn't the correct solution, again misleading. also, if you touch something to pull it out, and there is a bit of give, you probably notice that it can be pressed inward. here the basic method of answering the puzzle was obscured, not the answer.
I just used this on my party (who don't watch this channel) an hour ago and they got it INSTANTLY, not even a second to think, all three saying it simultaneously. I described the door opening through peels of laughter. thank you.
I had a similar puzzle called “The Courtesy Door” (not my original idea) where the solution was to knock. After a significantly high arcana check and 30 minutes in, I told them the name of the puzzle revealed itself on the frame of the door. For an extra 10 minutes they are saying “please” “please open” giving other party members gifts in front of the door, complimenting the door on how nice it looks today, etc. And when all but one player attempts to backtrack, he gets the idea to knock and his character tells the others it was his amazing magic abilities that opened the door
Also speaking of doors. In one shot my group did, our DM had traps that would trigger when a door opened. & there were a lot of doors in this dungeon. SO we eventually quickly came up with a simple solution. After the second door, we had our barbarian pry that door off and use it to bust through every door following it. So we used doors to defeat doors. :D
I was DM once...and created...the magical mystic druid tree...the tree would dispell magic thrown against it, Dodge attacks, occasionally slap you with it's branches and in a 30 foot radius would make you walk in a circle around it. You could help someone but they would try to intimidate you with advantage. Everytime you didn't get spelled to walk around the tree you had advantage on your next save against the spell...the save DC was 10 intelligence...they spend like 2 hours walking around this tree. And it forever haunts them
This is very similar to a door puzzle I tried to put in my very first dungeon. I too was an inexpert DM, in my head they just had to check the mobile nearby, I thought it would be easy Apparently, it wasn't Doors really are the greatest foe in Dungeons and Dragons
So my DM did this puzzle and our barbarian (who had 1 health) decided to stab the door And got slapped For 1 point of damage And failed 2 death saving throws Also this was a sort of training game because none of us had ever played and so she was almost killed by a door in the her first session ever What a brilliant start to D&D
Oh man. This reminds me of the door in my session of dnd. We were all new and testing out the game mechanics when our dm decided to use the door puzzle. We had to get through to the other side of it and after trying every which way, the solution was to just pass through the door as pur dm demonstrated via npc. We were livid lol
Looks like I'm very smart! (Or just a DM...) Anyways, After "Open!" - SMACK!, the very next thing I would have said would have been "Open, please?" :D Although I have to agree that "Would you kindly open" should have worked as well, from a riddle perspective. Really happy you're doing the stories again, those were how I found the channel and why I subscribed.
My brother once had an overly arrogant half-dragon BBEG with a small, early game hideut containing a password door. The only clue was "The strongest being in the universe." Thankfully, my brother and I think a lot alike, so while the party screamed random monsters or the BBEG's proper name and/or title, I answered after a few short moments with "Me," to which the door opened.
The best idea to do thematic puzzles. One of the puzzles I design was the spinning bridge puzzle; when you spin the bridge when another part connects the bridge spins where the bridge spins to the part and connects.
This reminds me of the first game I ever ran. The party was trying to get into this sunken city to retrieve a cursed chalice or something, but blocking the way was a very theatric and over the top spirit. The only way they could gain passage was answering his riddle: he split himself in two, and one said “one of us tells only truth” and the other continued “the other tells only lies.” The party spent *an hour* asking this spirit questions trying to sus out which was lying. They kept rolling ability checks, despite me telling them that I wouldn’t just hand out the answer, until finally one of them rolled a Nat 20. See, I was really enjoying RPing this spirit, but god, the over-the-top voice was really starting to strain my vocal chords. So, I took the Nat 20 as an easy out, and just told them the answer: Both of them. They’re both lying. The first one is lying about either telling truths, and the second one was lying about only one of them telling lies. I thought this would be such a simple speed bump on the way to the fun and atmospheric dungeon I’d planned, but no, it was an hour long debate about the oldest riddle in the book. Thankfully, my players all thought it was super funny as opposed to frustrating, but I wonder whether or not that mentality would’ve held up if it lasted another half hour or so
I have a similar story to tell. Played a game with several friends. I went AFK to get food (we were playing on Roll20), so I had the DM make my character follow the party. When I got back, everyone was attacking this wooden door, so I figured they tried opening it and it was locked, and nobody could pick the lock. I did the most rational thing I could do, which was take out a pickaxe and start bashing the door with the party. After I crit the door, but then said "You know what? Let's try this. I open the door". And the DM said "And the door opens" Followed by a few minutes of "YOU GUYS DIDN'T TRY THE DOOR KNOB FIRST!?" Fun times.
Haha. That is great. I will never forget the first time I GMed I had this cool noir dungeon and it started with 30 minutes of the group debating where the car keys were.
I *heart* the fact the players were complaining "this door puzzle has no clues" despite the fact the door was CLEARLY acting sentient. Cool Story, brah.
Was at a table once and our group entered the antechamber of a long forgotten stronghold. Leading up to finding the entrance the DM played up the fact that this fortress was nigh impregnable. When we enter the antechamber the gate slams shut and a huge portcullis drops down and we hear a ticking sound. Searching the room we find the source of the ticking, a dial on a raised pedestal, a dial counting down to zero. After much bumbling and stumbling trying to open the inner gate our rogue inspects the dial and sees that it can be reset, impending crisis averted. Another 35-40 minutes of trying to figure out how to open either gate we decide to just buff ourselves and get ready to what ever wickedness was going to happen once the dial of doom reached zero. All of us standing around the dial back to back waiting as it ticked down to zero, the sound of stone rumbling and metal screeching echo through the chamber as the inner gate swings open revealing.....an empty passage leading deeper into the fortress. Turns out the outer chamber was just an air lock and the dial was a timer ensuring that the inner gate couldn't be opened until the outer gate was secured.
My first ever D&D game involved us trying to get out of a crypt we'd woken up in (for Plot Reasons). It involved some kind of hourglass that we had to turn in a specific direction and place on an altar but it also altered gravity for whoever was holding it. It took us TWO AND A HALF HOURS to open that goddamn door and the DM had to tell us the answer. I still don't actually know what the answer was - I just said "I do what [smarter player] says". I uh...I backed out of that game & didn't play D&D again for like 6 months 'cos I thought that shit was standard.
I also had an even more impossible door puzzle. We were playing Midgard, a german RPG system that is i think based of DnD (some edition idk). And there was this door in the cellar, I go "I want to push the door open" DM "Doesnt budge." Our party talks about multiple ways to open it and ~30 minutes of discussions later our Elf Sorcerer said "I want to pull the door" DM "It opens."
My second session as a dm I did this to my players... only took them like 5 mins because I’m not a dick but they still ask if it’s a push or pull door every time now
4:03 I have read a google drive document, where a door slaps the creature that says "Open" But opens if they ask nicely. Funny thing is that behind the damn door is a fiery death trap but that's a totally different thing.
Can attest, I did this puzzle with my group as well. It also took them over an hour lmao however I made the door talk and he moaned and groaned about how nobody is ever nice to him. They still couldn't figure it out. And, yes, they were the murder hobo type of party lmao
On our first door puzzle, my party tried to pick the lock, which failed. After fiddling with it for about 20 minutes, everyone started to say “let’s come back another time.” I then used chill touch to freeze the lock mechanism and force the door open, while everyone else looked on with open mouths, including the DM. It was a good time
This is great, and I'm totally stealing it for a session. I agree with some of the other comments here that hints towards the 'magic word' might have reduced the amount of time they spent before simply being polite. I think another point is that if your players have figured out the result, but haven't got it exactly right, then still give them the win otherwise they'll spend too long on a simple puzzle. I had a very similar thing where a door to a warehouse was sealed and the players had to do a special knock. So one PC loitered nearby until an NPC went up to the door and knocked. I knocked on the table in the pattern I had decided was right. Then the player tried it, but did the knock wrong (it was clearly a special knock though). Foolishly I said the door stayed shut...about an hour later I think they simply blew the door up which attracted a load of guards but gave them time to fail to find the secret basement (because I didn't give them enough environmental clues) before leaving the warehouse to a street full of guards. I think out of frustration the players 'accidentally' killed some of the guards...well long story short they had to get smuggled out of the city (which was an island city state) and now they're wanted and can't go back...all because I should have said "the door swings open". I learned a lot about how not to run D&D puzzles that day.
Once I made a pretty easy puzzle featuring moving a box onto colored symbols on the floor which corresponded to a mural on the wall of chromatic dragons... The party asked if the box was hollow, and proceeded to Dimension Door inside of it. (They tried to Misty Step first, but I told them they couldn't since they couldn't see inside of it) The box was empty.
I love players falling for the simplest puzzles or traps, it's always so interesting to see how the most obvious answers get so often overlooked. I ran q session last year where there was a series of trapped rooms triggered by opening doors on the ither ends of the rooms. The players realized this pattern, then came to a large room with a fountain. I very vividly described this as smelling coppery and sharp, like broken batteries, and said that the mosaics on the floor had been scarred away and pitted. A low dc spot check allowed them to see that the walls of the fountain seemed to lower in a way that would spill the liquid out, and there were grates along the edges of the rooms. With all this info, knowing that theres only one thing in this room and it's potentially q bery dangerous trap, they decided not to test what the liquid is or try and figureout how the trap works, they just go through the door into the next room. They were level one at this point, it was their first ever real dungeon, and the cleric, wizard, and druid all got absolutely smashed with acid damage in that room. They had to hole up in a side room and take a rest so they wouldn't die in the dungeon, it was just hilarious to me how with every single clue possible qnd with no other things of interest to distract them, they still didn't get it somehow 😂
Saying please was literally the first thing that came to mind when he said open and it slapped him. Seemed obvious the door was punishing them for being rude. I wouldn't feel bad for them not getting it, but I wouldn't let them waste so much time either lol
I've watched this several times over the years Funny thing is one of the things my party usually does is ask doors to open nicely One time somebody rolled a nat 20 to say open sesame For the rest of that campaign I let him open doors automatically if he rolls a nat 18 or higher In that same campaign someone else (a wizard) caused the god of youth purity innocence and childbirth to kill themselves because he kept lighting *everything on fucking fire* and caused many people and children to die I think he even managed to burn down waterdeep cause he kept rolling high (i know he rolled two nat 20s but I don't really remember the rest he might've rolled a 17 and 16 along with a 15 but because of his stuff they got buffed a bit high)
When you said someone flipped off the door and it flipped them back off I thought right there that nicely asking please could work. Gotta love them sentient doors lol.
My DM had a "puzzle" door that would display a riddle on the door that we "had" to solve. The door wasn't locked. He never told us there was a handle. He said there was a door, and a riddle. That's it.
To me, the obvious answer is to hit it with Dispel Magic, transmute Rock to Mud, Stone-shape, try to mine through it and finally give up and mine around it.
The best "simple" puzzle I ever encountered, I solved purely by accident. I was playing an entire party because there were only two of us and the party came across a riddle. I sat there in complete silence as I went through every word methodically to try to come up with the correct answer. I just couldn't think of anything that worked, but then the door opened. It turned out that the answer was "silence".
I had a similar experience with my players! :D Big Large Door to hidden Ninja Village, with obvious triggers that require one with earth ninja abilities to open. Obviously no one was an Earth Ninja to open the main door, so they had to find another way in. They discover 5 holes and a series of writing on the wall in Under Common. No one in the group knew Under Common. 1st hole was a pit of Zombies. 2nd hole was a Bulette Play Pen. 3rd hole was a deep hole with no end, that if you fall in, you fall forever to never return. 4th hole was a room that walls would close in if you step on the ground. 5th hole was a room filled with a singular Gelatinous Cube. Solve it by reading the writing on the wall, which casts a spell upon you that allows you to enter the Ninja Village through Hole #3... They spent 1.5hrs on this puzzle... :/
I ran that puzzle too! Found it on reddit when looking for puzzles that I could put into my game. But it trapped players in a room and I remember giving them a hint that the wizard who had created the vault they were in was obsessed with etiquette. I don't remember many details beyond that.
Reminds me of a door puzzle i came across with my Dragonborn Barbarian. The door was locked magically, and was sentient. The dm kept hinting at a plaquard over the door with some text on it. My barbarian cared not for poultry words and just hacked the sentient door down, while the door screamed in agony. And that's how the game started.
“Speak the magic word and be welcomed” Literally everyone calls “please” the magic word. Its confusing enough to make them overthink but if you just step back and think “hmm what could be the magic word?” SOMEONE will say it. (I’m totally using this btw)
I remember when my DM did a similar puzzle in our game. One time in our campaign we found a chest that had runes on it. Due to some bad arcana checks, the only rune we were able to identify was "Open". After my character touched the rune, the chest opened but not without activating a trap dealing cold damage to his hand. Our DM later told us there was another rune that meant "Please". I joking referred back to this little mishap when we recently had to solve a kind of runic combination lock. The first thing I did was ask, "Do any of the runes say 'please'?".
I don't think that's stupid at all. It's simple and frustrating when you're meta-head keeps you from thinking about it. But the door was there to limit access to a powerful magical item. If they wanted someone to get a hold of it but not someone horrible it's just to sort of test I'd design to limit access. Making someone ask nicely be the key is great worldbuilding.
Our famous door story is when we just started playing in high school with my father as (very experienced) DM. We encountered a stone building with a stone door that didn't open. I'm not sure what we had tried already, possibly only pushing it open... One of the guys didn't have a lot of patience back then, so he decided to headbutt the door. A stone door. I mean, he survived, but did take some damage and ever since it's been referred to as a typical stupid action xD
The most infamous puzzle I ever put my players through was also a door puzzle of sorts. The party entered the room and the door behind them audibly locked. Nothing they did could harm the door they came through. On the far side of teh room was a metal door set into a stone wall. In the room was the following: Three ropes with hoops on the end 8 flasks of various coloured liquids a series of gears a sliding block puzzle set into the floor and a series of levers on the right wall Adding different flasks to the ropes caused them to be weighted down and turn the gears, and the levers controlled how far the ropes could fall. The sliding block puzzle was a pictograph of the eight bottles in a particular order. The party spent almost two hours trying to figure out the proper alignment to set the flasks in to unlatch the door. None of it did anything, the opposite door was never locked. Players will NEVER just try the door first >:)
Well that's just. Idk why you'd do that. Players come to the table to play the game. Whatever that may entail for them. Whether it's slaying monsters or engaging with npcs or solving puzzles. If the players see a room set to look up like a puzzle, there's no reason for them to think it's anything other than a puzzle and try to engage with it that way, since they're there to play the game. Robbing them of that victory by making a puzzle entirely useless is kind of a dick move.
I play with peoples assumptions. I don't want them feeling like it's just a game. If not everything in the world is tailored to them, if things don't fit game formulas, the world feels more real and less like a game board. If my players will tackle every threat because "the DM would never place something in our way we couldn't defeat" thats meta gaming and immersion breaking. Some DMs are cool with that, but not myself or the DMs I play with. We build entire worlds to explore, not games to play, and sometimes that means taking peoples assumptions and chucking them against a wall.
@@Terezar Okay, yeah that's true. The world should feel like a real world and not every encounter the players get to has to be winnable. The world is full of danger and some dangers are just too much, so they need to run. The world shouldn't feel tailor made to the players, it should feel like a world all on its own. And subverting expectations very much helps with that. That's all perfectly fine. But setting up a puzzle that isn't a puzzle, doesn't only not make sense from a game perspective, it doesn't make sense from a world perspective. It just doesn't make sense period. Subversion purely for subversion's sake just rings hollow and must feel bad and confusing for the players. It's like punishing them for trying to engage. It's weird.
The answer seems so obvious as an outsider. The door doesn't want to be commanded. When someone insults the door, they get damage. Wouldn't then the first thought to be... you know... nice to the door? And ask it politely to open?
1:16 Oh man, really? One of my favourite sessions in my first campaign was doing a heist on a wizard's house that was protected by a bunch of puzzles! Even though my brain was too small for most of them, the puzzles were really cool with interesting solutions, and it was awesome seeing how the other players figured them out.
The door should have had a sign that says "speak the magic word and I shall let you in" or something similar. There are so many potential magic words in DnD that it's not immediately obvious, but at same time everyone will be pissed they didn't figure it out faster
At most you should have made the hand do the "go on" gesture when they were polite, while being more harsh the more harsh they were (if they curse the doors existence, the door casts Bestow Curse). As a final touch, make the door reflective as a clue that it will reflect their their approach. But all in all its a good puzzle, one that I am using (my version anyway).
Lmao I had a puzzle where he party got trapped in a cursed mirror. There was a teacup and a blue orb on a table in the middle of the room with various other furniture and all the doors in the room it was reflecting were missing. They had to break the teacup to leave but I left no hints cuz it would be too easy. They spent 2 hours trying different ways of getting out and using different spells. Thought they had to protect the teacup so some argued not to break it. Eventually they got fed up with it and smashed it. I loved every moment of it but I promised not to include any more trolly puzzles going forward. The wizard who created that puzzle was supposed to be a bit of a troll though.
My Dm's favorite door trap is a door with a riddle on a pedestal infront of the door. The riddle was impossible and would hit you with a disintegrate spell if you answer wrong. The solution was to just walk past the riddle and open the door. His party almost wiped to that trap.
Игры
The sweater was from Think Geek. It is currently sold out, sorry my dudes! www.thinkgeek.com/?fbclid=IwAR1ntpLtm2pSY-6Z1jhP_bxb90UdEfec0kjXomrrUHh6FOQXqV7EmDE_zAQ
*oof*
You look cute in that sweater ;P
I got one before they sold out and I love it! Twinsies!
Hey, quick question about the discord. Do you guys only play D&D 5e, or do you guys play other versions or pathfinder?
69 likes 😏
When he started describing the puzzle, I immediately thought of saying please. Admittedly, I am Canadian.
Me too
I thought they would just have to treat it like shit by swearing at it.
Same
same
Same heer bud
Question:
"How hard is it to be polite?"
Answer:
Impossible...
Unless you’re British
DC 30
Colton will remember that.
James Moore will remember that.
This meme is so old it took me a while to figure out what this was.
@@miscellaneousshadow7452 stop you have violated the law!
Don't ruin the like
No joke i thought "Please Open" was the right answer the moment you said that the guy who said "Open!" got slapped.
Same here. Please IS the magic word, after all.
Same here. Haha
The guy said “open” and I’m like “I bet they have to say please.” That would have been the second thing I tried. Actually, probably the third, I would have tried just pushing it first.
Can we still appreciate the door flipping off the party member?
@@Alpha121198 And then slapping him with the flipped finger as he does it back
“Do you know any rhymes for “stories?””
I relate to this heavily as someone who mostly plays Bard
Jake Stavinsky glories is a good one. Also territories, categories.
Rhymezone. Saves my ass.
Quarries, like a target animal or person?
“Let me tell you one of many stories, of a hunter and his dangerous quarries”
Lets drown out those worries, with some long daring stories
store, or ease.
Here's the trick: When the dude said "Could you open?" You should have had the hand make the spinning wrist gesture, like you do when you're trying to urge someone to say something else, or elaborate more.
"Uh... could you open... please?"
Yes! That's how you hint at the right direction of a puzzle! 😇
Definitely!
Something to hint that more is needed. Maybe even after 25 or so mins of failing some less subtle hints along the lines of the door seems to be finding them quite rude.
@@Jango1989 I would have had them roll insight to know that. And honestly, with how it sounds, their rolls were not good.
I guess that's what current Jacob would do, but he said that he was "a bit of a dick" back then, and it can be very daunting to herd 10 cats, especially for a newer dm.
First Rule of Designing D&D puzzles, I learned this very quickly.
The Simpler the Solution, The less likely the players are to figure it out
Amen
Players are dumb?
@@kapitan19969838 no they think the dm is smart
Set up some Resident Evil shit, they'll figure it out in 5 minutes. Hide the key under the mat, 6 hours IRL.
@@ssfbob456 Jesus that bad 0_0
Reminds me of "Speak Friend and Enter" from Lord of the Rings
Yea, but that was cleaver, this is a what I call a "Quote Mythbusters" moment
"When in doubt, C4"
I would have made the people outside real jerks who kept demanding things of the door. And perhaps given the door a face instead of a hand, so that it could be expressive and show how warm/cold the players are to the correct answer. You could make the entire dungeon around these sentient doors who each have distinct personalities. The Temple of Ianus or something like that.
Very cool idea stealing it
Doors with Faces that have different personalities...someone's been playing Fable
@@skullsquad900 here's me that thought of Labyrinth
Have the door make oblivion dialogue wheel faces when you speak so the party can know when it’s getting closer
The Doorngeon, but with all sentient doors.
I had a similar door puzzle that I gave my PCs a while back that they also keep bringing up :P
So they were in a temple of Melora (coincidentally, they were also looking for what was basically and Infinity stone XD), and there was door with a riddle: I am the beginning of the end, the end of every place. I am the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space. What am I? (except mine had like 6 more verses :P). The answer was the letter E which they had to then press on the stone pedestal that had the name Melora on it. No joke, it took them 2 hours of solving, at which point one of them yelled in agony: EEEEEEEEEEEEE (thats like a frustrated yell in SE Europe). I went yes, thats it. They just stared at me... XD
This is basically the trick of half of the puzzle riddles in the Red Wall book series.
Genius! I loved it!
What were the rest of the verses (if you can remember :p)
😂
Idk where exactly from SE Europe you are but when I read that Eeeeeee I immediately thought “Eeeeeee brate” or “eeeeee jebiga” hahaha
Unconventional solutions is what's best about the game: Once we were tasked with obtaining a fairly illegal plant from a local Baron so instead of just having someone break in we managed to get ourselves invited to a party he was throwing, befriend and kidnap the daughter of the Baron while befriending the Baron's alchemist for a partnership in the illegal drug production while another party member befriended the Baron's cook so we could kidnap the daughter, start our own illegal drug business, frame the Baron for the local murder we were trying to solve AND kill the Baron with poisoning.
We basically took over that city in the space of one night.
Thats legendary
So CE party or nah?
When he said "open" and got backhanded, I assumed that they had to say "please open" or something.
Yeah that was literally my first thought
Same xD
I once did a door puzzle were it only existed if you tried to open it. Therefor all you had to do was walk into it. One of the players found out almost immediately it was illusionary but it still took them 15 mins to get through.
Hey I have a similar story. The group I was dming for had a habit of breaking down doors if there proved to be any resistance or just because they felt like it. I thought I would be coy and have an unbreakable door to a bad guy's base that had been watching them. The way to open the door was...to just open it normally maybe dispell the magic or use a different door. About an hour later I cave and tell them a solution.
Never tell the players the answer directly, maybe have a group intelligence roll
A group I played in had a door puzzle once...
It’s a really long story I’ll try my best to shorten.
My group got a job from the city: take care of a dragon that moved in nearby.
So we went and talked with him and struck a deal: he’d leave the city alone (and even protect it once) if we went to an abandoned ancient temple and unlocked it for him.
Our party traveled to the temple, spent all day pushing 30-some pillars around just to unlock the door into the damn hallway, and everyone was beat. We see a door with chains covering it. There are several hallways nearby. I go in one; four doors. I go into a room and solve a puzzle: read a text and say aloud the word spelt by the marked letters. Then the next room and the next puzzle: place colored lenses over skylights to match the colored pillars they shine on. Then the third and fourth rooms and puzzles. I go back into the main hall and count the hallways: four total. The rooms? Four in each. How many chains on the door? Four fallen on the floor with twelve remaining. Energetically livid by now, I scream for the barbarian to wreck the door and unleash on it as well.
On the first strike, all the chains fall off and an inscription glows into existence on the door that reads:
“Patience is a virtue, but these puzzles are stupid.”
And the door swung open.
My Druid now uses violence to solve every problem.
Well, that and drugs. She bombed a city with aerosol hallucinogens, once. But that’s a whole other story.
My player's give me grief over one session I ran where a town was constantly plagued with Snow Raptor attacks and no npc warned them of the attacks......they now ask me constantly "Is it raptor season?"
Clever girls they are...
My favorite door puzzle just involved a large wooden door with intricate carvings on it. Anyone with a high arcana role and an understanding of magic would clearly get that the door was warded against damage and it couldn’t be dispelled by normal means. There was a tiny keyhole on the door but anytime you tried to stick something near the hole (like a lockpick) the keyhole would seal up. There were plenty of other things in the room, like book cases, tables and chairs and even a few chests. Everything was very tidy uniform length apart from eachother. Additionally, the floor was spotless, clean as ever. My players spend the better part of an hour searching everything in the room, reading the books and even trying to sneak up to the door, with no success. They kept asking if they saw a key or something out of place and when they rolled I would tell them the description of the room again and that they saw no key. Eventually a player got frustrated and pulled a book case over, spilling the contents. Immediately, a seamless door on a wall opened up and a gelatinous cube came out and started sucking up the spilled contents, within the cube, someone spotted a key so they quickly killed it and the key was allowed to open the door.
So basically "The Clean Dungeon".
Our DM once had a door we needed to go through in the villain's base that gave out a riddle for us to solve. Now the answer to the riddle was CLEARLY something along the lines of fire, so we spent maybe an hour just listing off synonyms for fire.
At some point I officially gave up, at which point the DM let me know the answer...
....Swordfish....
I think I just started laughing at the point.
His reasoning was, "Why would someone lock their door with the answer to an easily solvable riddle?" It made sense in universe but it was still frustrating as hell, and when the rest of the party found out we spent the next hour going off at the DM about it. So stupid, but hilarious in hindsight.
Edit: holy crud this got a lot of likes, thanks all
see I think the path up to the riddle door should have been full of swordfish related stuff for "no reason" make them curious and then they might say that as the answer.
It's a trick, nothing you want to keep safe should be accessable by nearby context clues...
It's because it's a reference to Discworld. :)
@@Pistonrager A puzzle where there's tons of clues but the answer is the thing that there is no clue for.
As soon as the guy got slapped for just saying "Open"
I instantly went: "Oh, well I'm sure the answer is you just have to say please."
If only I were there that day, lmao
I heard the same story from a friend - only for her party, it took 3 hours and the "please open" was less of an attempt and more of just pure frustration and begging.
A door that backhands people, I love it
One time my dm made a puzzle where we had to put salt in this small body of water surrounding a shrine like thing to open a path down to the treasure and it took us over an hour of trying to put things in the water until someone took a chicken leg and put it in this extra-dimensional book that had a salt dimension and the book turns whatever you put in it to that element or substance or whatever and then just yeeted the chicken leg in the water as a joke and it was actually the answer to the riddle and i hate it
That puzzle sounds as simple as trying to get a cookie out of a jar when the opening of the jar is just small enough to fit your hand when your hand is empty but not when your hand has a cookie in it.
It's like in fellowship of the rings what does the door say "speak friend and enter". Gandalf tries a bunch of things and they don't work and then Frodo is like what's the dwarf or elf or whatever word for friend and boom door opens
That's the high mark of puzzle doors. Nothing will ever beat that.
"Mellon..."
This isn't a stupid puzzle, it can help remind players that just because they're in a game they should still have manners. This is something I would pull on the player that demands to pay even less, on top of a bargain, at the shop. Or better yet this is a perfect puzzle for someone's first time. It could be a gateway to the world you've created and a stone tablet in front of the door says, "while you're here, don't forget what mama taught you" i have the type of players that would remember that line and take it to heart for many sessions to follow. This isn't a bad puzzle, it just needs some context/reason.
i think the part that confuses me is that the npcs that had been around the door for who knows how long also never said "please", which i think is a little ridiculous.
I wouldn't punish players for trying to pay less money. That's called haggling, and it's normal. That's what contested rolls are for. Now, if they build a bad rep with a shop or town, then they could be punished by having less ability to haggle. People who build a good rapport with a shop might automatically accrue discounts. Outright punishing someone for haggling seems a bit too heavy handed.
It's kinda stupid though. It's a puzzle that even in-game is meant to be solved because the true goal is not to block entrance, but to teach a lesson. Thus, it either needs more hints that a specific word is needed or any attempts at being polite should work.
I solved it based on the context provided in this video, but if I was a player and tried being polite, then I would stop trying that, which is exactly what happened with this party.
Just make a bigger deal out of the hand. Have it slap someone and describe how its index finger wiggles in the air like a disappointed mother would do when a child misbehaves.
@@OtsegoKid I love haggling but when my player has been in the shop for 30 minutes taking time away from the other people at the table after he's already gotten half off and a mission that he's going to get paid for it's no longer haggling
@@M1sterSh4ggy Then make them use a real life skill. Have a timer, like an hour glass, that's only 30 seconds, or a minute. Tell them they have until the time is up to finish their dealings, and if they fail, then they fail. Some might call that a dick move, but hey, so is wasting game time. Just use discretion on how often you use it.
Now, as a player, I'd carve "Use Good Manners" in the rock next to the door. 😝
Or just add some obscure hint.
Dark souls, huh?
@@haosmagnaingram6992 "One is not granted the title of patron if one does not show respect to the barkeep" or something.
@@haosmagnaingram6992 Now, as a player, I'd carve "You need to please the door" in the rock next to it.
@@admiraltonydawning3847 the bard: “I roll to seduce the door”
I think I figured out the answer to the door when I realized that demanding it be opened didnt work. Personally would love more puzzles like this in my campaign and might try something like this should I ever have to run something
Just don't let a puzzle be super annoying. Honestly if a puzzle is taking more then twenty minutes (or people are getting really annoyed by it) I'd just find a in-game way of telling it. Also leave actual hints and clues instead of having a guessing game
@@thatonenecromancer4044 oh yeah, nothing is more frustrating than trying to solve a puzzle, except all the pieces are the same shape, colour, and you're blindfolded
Incredibly enough, from what i DMed and what i played, this makes sense to me, this puzzle. So much so that when he say the door backhanded someone because they said Open my immediate reaction was "Aren't you gonna say Please Open next?"
My dad used to play old school dnd, he had a door puzzle that took about 2 hours. It was a chalk outline of a door, they were trapped in the room and you had to walk backwards through the door to leave. The party only found that out after a fight amongst themselves and pushed one of the members through the door (backwards)
I did a puzzle with three "keys". It was all simple in my mind.
It's setted in a abandoned and tormented Asylum (which was an Illusion from a Paladin's head corrupted by a evil cliché mask). It had 3 floors and each floor had a key and a friendly NPC who was essential to the puzzle.
1st floor, all you had to do was exploring its corridors until it looped back to the hall.
2nd floor, it had a cabinet with medicines all labelled as "Happyness" in a room full of beds for the injuried.
3rd floor was a simple room filled with books and shelves, a chair and a desk and the NPC who clearly was a Doctor or Nurse by her appearance.
All you needed to do is explore the 1st floor, go to the 2nd and grab the medicine and give them to the NPC in the 3rd floor, so she uses it on the players to dispell the illusion.
Man, they did everything. Even smashing the medicines because the Barbarian "didn't like happyness". It took about an hour or more.
At the end, they fought the Evil Cleric who was imprisioning the Holy Warrior and took off his mask. It was so simple in my mind. But no...
They liked it but it somehow torments them to this day. (Pardon my english)
Never underestimate the ability of players not to understand the solution. There was a puzzle dungeon I made that was borrowed from a book for another edition of dnd, so I had adjusted it a bit. My party also had to get past a door. The door was insulting them. They rolled low, so they didn’t see much in the way of hints. One of them eventually tried insulting the door, but rolled way too low and failed. There was a chest I had placed in the room just to give some kind of reward. I had previously stated it looked like a chest of holding. They ended up all climbing into the chest. When they realized that wasn’t the way out, they tried to climb out. I believe two succeeded and the other four failed. They managed to get the other four out. Finally, they went back over to the door and tried insulting it again. This time, they rolled high enough, so the door cried and opened. This took about an hour or so. And, yes, it still gets brought up.
My friend made a puzzle of o diagram of a human body on a wall and a note on a desk that said something along the mind will set you free. Apparently his group had been working on it for like an hour when I came late because reasons and he explained the puzzle to me. My character immediately pressed the labeled brain and puzzle solved. Apparently they tried pulling it out and when that didnt work they didnt think to push.
first problem: they had the correct solution but because crappy rolls you said they failed and mislead them from the correct solution. you do not need to roll for everything in DnD.
Second problem. you can be wayyy to specific on whats correct. they touched the brain part, and with "set you free" removing it seems logical. by saying that it doesn't work it seems like the brain isn't the correct solution, again misleading. also, if you touch something to pull it out, and there is a bit of give, you probably notice that it can be pressed inward. here the basic method of answering the puzzle was obscured, not the answer.
I just used this on my party (who don't watch this channel) an hour ago and they got it INSTANTLY, not even a second to think, all three saying it simultaneously. I described the door opening through peels of laughter. thank you.
I had a similar puzzle called “The Courtesy Door” (not my original idea) where the solution was to knock. After a significantly high arcana check and 30 minutes in, I told them the name of the puzzle revealed itself on the frame of the door. For an extra 10 minutes they are saying “please” “please open” giving other party members gifts in front of the door, complimenting the door on how nice it looks today, etc. And when all but one player attempts to backtrack, he gets the idea to knock and his character tells the others it was his amazing magic abilities that opened the door
Also speaking of doors. In one shot my group did, our DM had traps that would trigger when a door opened. & there were a lot of doors in this dungeon. SO we eventually quickly came up with a simple solution. After the second door, we had our barbarian pry that door off and use it to bust through every door following it. So we used doors to defeat doors. :D
I was DM once...and created...the magical mystic druid tree...the tree would dispell magic thrown against it, Dodge attacks, occasionally slap you with it's branches and in a 30 foot radius would make you walk in a circle around it. You could help someone but they would try to intimidate you with advantage. Everytime you didn't get spelled to walk around the tree you had advantage on your next save against the spell...the save DC was 10 intelligence...they spend like 2 hours walking around this tree. And it forever haunts them
My solution to a similar problem was a dwarven press. Spin the wheel crush the door. Engineering ftw.
Power of -German- Dwarven engineering
This is very similar to a door puzzle I tried to put in my very first dungeon. I too was an inexpert DM, in my head they just had to check the mobile nearby, I thought it would be easy
Apparently, it wasn't
Doors really are the greatest foe in Dungeons and Dragons
So my DM did this puzzle and our barbarian (who had 1 health) decided to stab the door
And got slapped
For 1 point of damage
And failed 2 death saving throws
Also this was a sort of training game because none of us had ever played and so she was almost killed by a door in the her first session ever
What a brilliant start to D&D
I loved that outro so much: *Camera quickly closes around Colton like an 80's sitcom*
Oh man. This reminds me of the door in my session of dnd. We were all new and testing out the game mechanics when our dm decided to use the door puzzle. We had to get through to the other side of it and after trying every which way, the solution was to just pass through the door as pur dm demonstrated via npc. We were livid lol
Looks like I'm very smart! (Or just a DM...) Anyways, After "Open!" - SMACK!, the very next thing I would have said would have been "Open, please?" :D
Although I have to agree that "Would you kindly open" should have worked as well, from a riddle perspective.
Really happy you're doing the stories again, those were how I found the channel and why I subscribed.
Woudl you kindly open
Doesnt work. It just puts sign language for no or yes,but because it woukd doesnt mean it actually opened
No, it would not have opened for a very simple reason: "please" is the magic word.
My brother once had an overly arrogant half-dragon BBEG with a small, early game hideut containing a password door.
The only clue was "The strongest being in the universe." Thankfully, my brother and I think a lot alike, so while the party screamed random monsters or the BBEG's proper name and/or title, I answered after a few short moments with "Me," to which the door opened.
The best idea to do thematic puzzles. One of the puzzles I design was the spinning bridge puzzle; when you spin the bridge when another part connects the bridge spins where the bridge spins to the part and connects.
One thing that's never going to die in our game:
"The creature is a... ten-dric-u-los. Not a tendril-icious as I've been previously reading it."
To be fair, please IS the magic word
This reminds me of the first game I ever ran. The party was trying to get into this sunken city to retrieve a cursed chalice or something, but blocking the way was a very theatric and over the top spirit. The only way they could gain passage was answering his riddle: he split himself in two, and one said “one of us tells only truth” and the other continued “the other tells only lies.”
The party spent *an hour* asking this spirit questions trying to sus out which was lying. They kept rolling ability checks, despite me telling them that I wouldn’t just hand out the answer, until finally one of them rolled a Nat 20. See, I was really enjoying RPing this spirit, but god, the over-the-top voice was really starting to strain my vocal chords. So, I took the Nat 20 as an easy out, and just told them the answer:
Both of them. They’re both lying. The first one is lying about either telling truths, and the second one was lying about only one of them telling lies. I thought this would be such a simple speed bump on the way to the fun and atmospheric dungeon I’d planned, but no, it was an hour long debate about the oldest riddle in the book.
Thankfully, my players all thought it was super funny as opposed to frustrating, but I wonder whether or not that mentality would’ve held up if it lasted another half hour or so
I have a similar story to tell.
Played a game with several friends. I went AFK to get food (we were playing on Roll20), so I had the DM make my character follow the party.
When I got back, everyone was attacking this wooden door, so I figured they tried opening it and it was locked, and nobody could pick the lock. I did the most rational thing I could do, which was take out a pickaxe and start bashing the door with the party.
After I crit the door, but then said "You know what? Let's try this. I open the door".
And the DM said "And the door opens"
Followed by a few minutes of "YOU GUYS DIDN'T TRY THE DOOR KNOB FIRST!?"
Fun times.
Haha. That is great. I will never forget the first time I GMed I had this cool noir dungeon and it started with 30 minutes of the group debating where the car keys were.
I'm happy that at least y'all are in the D&Decmber spirit!
Shame Projared couldn't partake
Long live projared
The murderous intent in his eyes as you talked about this door puzzle. He is still so pissed about it to this day.
I *heart* the fact the players were complaining "this door puzzle has no clues" despite the fact the door was CLEARLY acting sentient.
Cool Story, brah.
Was at a table once and our group entered the antechamber of a long forgotten stronghold. Leading up to finding the entrance the DM played up the fact that this fortress was nigh impregnable. When we enter the antechamber the gate slams shut and a huge portcullis drops down and we hear a ticking sound. Searching the room we find the source of the ticking, a dial on a raised pedestal, a dial counting down to zero. After much bumbling and stumbling trying to open the inner gate our rogue inspects the dial and sees that it can be reset, impending crisis averted. Another 35-40 minutes of trying to figure out how to open either gate we decide to just buff ourselves and get ready to what ever wickedness was going to happen once the dial of doom reached zero. All of us standing around the dial back to back waiting as it ticked down to zero, the sound of stone rumbling and metal screeching echo through the chamber as the inner gate swings open revealing.....an empty passage leading deeper into the fortress. Turns out the outer chamber was just an air lock and the dial was a timer ensuring that the inner gate couldn't be opened until the outer gate was secured.
My first ever D&D game involved us trying to get out of a crypt we'd woken up in (for Plot Reasons). It involved some kind of hourglass that we had to turn in a specific direction and place on an altar but it also altered gravity for whoever was holding it. It took us TWO AND A HALF HOURS to open that goddamn door and the DM had to tell us the answer. I still don't actually know what the answer was - I just said "I do what [smarter player] says". I uh...I backed out of that game & didn't play D&D again for like 6 months 'cos I thought that shit was standard.
Yo question for either Jacob, Colton or anyone who knows is the comments, where did you get that cool sweater that Jacob is wearing? I’m interested.
Here ya go, but right now it's out of stock :) www.thinkgeek.com/product/ksoj/
I also had an even more impossible door puzzle.
We were playing Midgard, a german RPG system that is i think based of DnD (some edition idk).
And there was this door in the cellar,
I go "I want to push the door open"
DM "Doesnt budge."
Our party talks about multiple ways to open it and ~30 minutes of discussions later our Elf Sorcerer said
"I want to pull the door"
DM "It opens."
It was neither a puzzle, nor impossible but the fact it took us 30 min, I kinda think it counts for the court xD
Your name made me curious, I looked at your channel, and will probably subscribe shortly.
@@jamesforgie6594 Ah thank you but Im not that active in making videos anymore sadly ;_;
Timewise I just have too much atm
My second session as a dm I did this to my players... only took them like 5 mins because I’m not a dick but they still ask if it’s a push or pull door every time now
4:03
I have read a google drive document, where a door slaps the creature that says "Open"
But opens if they ask nicely.
Funny thing is that behind the damn door is a fiery death trap but that's a totally different thing.
"Please" do this again, Jacob!
Just 7 days of stories, bittersweet feeling, we want MOAR!
Can attest, I did this puzzle with my group as well. It also took them over an hour lmao however I made the door talk and he moaned and groaned about how nobody is ever nice to him. They still couldn't figure it out. And, yes, they were the murder hobo type of party lmao
On our first door puzzle, my party tried to pick the lock, which failed. After fiddling with it for about 20 minutes, everyone started to say “let’s come back another time.” I then used chill touch to freeze the lock mechanism and force the door open, while everyone else looked on with open mouths, including the DM. It was a good time
Love these stories! Always nice to hear other parties fun moments.
This is great, and I'm totally stealing it for a session. I agree with some of the other comments here that hints towards the 'magic word' might have reduced the amount of time they spent before simply being polite. I think another point is that if your players have figured out the result, but haven't got it exactly right, then still give them the win otherwise they'll spend too long on a simple puzzle.
I had a very similar thing where a door to a warehouse was sealed and the players had to do a special knock. So one PC loitered nearby until an NPC went up to the door and knocked. I knocked on the table in the pattern I had decided was right. Then the player tried it, but did the knock wrong (it was clearly a special knock though). Foolishly I said the door stayed shut...about an hour later I think they simply blew the door up which attracted a load of guards but gave them time to fail to find the secret basement (because I didn't give them enough environmental clues) before leaving the warehouse to a street full of guards.
I think out of frustration the players 'accidentally' killed some of the guards...well long story short they had to get smuggled out of the city (which was an island city state) and now they're wanted and can't go back...all because I should have said "the door swings open". I learned a lot about how not to run D&D puzzles that day.
"I am not sorry and never will be"
is amazing
Oooooooooh look at that multi recording angles. Oooooooooh baby it IS Christmas to see their good sides. And their better sides.
Your channel is the absolute best and honestly it's a been a big part of surviving lockdown for me. I just wanted to share that with you.
Once I made a pretty easy puzzle featuring moving a box onto colored symbols on the floor which corresponded to a mural on the wall of chromatic dragons...
The party asked if the box was hollow, and proceeded to Dimension Door inside of it. (They tried to Misty Step first, but I told them they couldn't since they couldn't see inside of it)
The box was empty.
I love players falling for the simplest puzzles or traps, it's always so interesting to see how the most obvious answers get so often overlooked. I ran q session last year where there was a series of trapped rooms triggered by opening doors on the ither ends of the rooms. The players realized this pattern, then came to a large room with a fountain. I very vividly described this as smelling coppery and sharp, like broken batteries, and said that the mosaics on the floor had been scarred away and pitted. A low dc spot check allowed them to see that the walls of the fountain seemed to lower in a way that would spill the liquid out, and there were grates along the edges of the rooms. With all this info, knowing that theres only one thing in this room and it's potentially q bery dangerous trap, they decided not to test what the liquid is or try and figureout how the trap works, they just go through the door into the next room. They were level one at this point, it was their first ever real dungeon, and the cleric, wizard, and druid all got absolutely smashed with acid damage in that room. They had to hole up in a side room and take a rest so they wouldn't die in the dungeon, it was just hilarious to me how with every single clue possible qnd with no other things of interest to distract them, they still didn't get it somehow 😂
Saying please was literally the first thing that came to mind when he said open and it slapped him. Seemed obvious the door was punishing them for being rude. I wouldn't feel bad for them not getting it, but I wouldn't let them waste so much time either lol
As soon as he said that the door slap him because he said open. I immediately was like
"Please open" that's gonna be it
I've watched this several times over the years
Funny thing is one of the things my party usually does is ask doors to open nicely
One time somebody rolled a nat 20 to say open sesame
For the rest of that campaign I let him open doors automatically if he rolls a nat 18 or higher
In that same campaign someone else (a wizard) caused the god of youth purity innocence and childbirth to kill themselves because he kept lighting *everything on fucking fire* and caused many people and children to die
I think he even managed to burn down waterdeep cause he kept rolling high (i know he rolled two nat 20s but I don't really remember the rest he might've rolled a 17 and 16 along with a 15 but because of his stuff they got buffed a bit high)
I once had a dm do a "puzzle" that turned out to be a complicated math problem that required advanced trig.
I just noticed your D&D christmas sweater NICE!!!
When you said someone flipped off the door and it flipped them back off I thought right there that nicely asking please could work. Gotta love them sentient doors lol.
My DM had a "puzzle" door that would display a riddle on the door that we "had" to solve.
The door wasn't locked.
He never told us there was a handle.
He said there was a door, and a riddle. That's it.
To me, the obvious answer is to hit it with Dispel Magic, transmute Rock to Mud, Stone-shape, try to mine through it and finally give up and mine around it.
Them: the door's not opening
Me: have you tried diplomacy?
The best "simple" puzzle I ever encountered, I solved purely by accident. I was playing an entire party because there were only two of us and the party came across a riddle. I sat there in complete silence as I went through every word methodically to try to come up with the correct answer. I just couldn't think of anything that worked, but then the door opened. It turned out that the answer was "silence".
I’m glad that these stories are back!
I had a similar experience with my players! :D
Big Large Door to hidden Ninja Village, with obvious triggers that require one with earth ninja abilities to open. Obviously no one was an Earth Ninja to open the main door, so they had to find another way in.
They discover 5 holes and a series of writing on the wall in Under Common. No one in the group knew Under Common.
1st hole was a pit of Zombies.
2nd hole was a Bulette Play Pen.
3rd hole was a deep hole with no end, that if you fall in, you fall forever to never return.
4th hole was a room that walls would close in if you step on the ground.
5th hole was a room filled with a singular Gelatinous Cube.
Solve it by reading the writing on the wall, which casts a spell upon you that allows you to enter the Ninja Village through Hole #3...
They spent 1.5hrs on this puzzle... :/
I ran that puzzle too! Found it on reddit when looking for puzzles that I could put into my game.
But it trapped players in a room and I remember giving them a hint that the wizard who had created the vault they were in was obsessed with etiquette. I don't remember many details beyond that.
Reminds me of a door puzzle i came across with my Dragonborn Barbarian. The door was locked magically, and was sentient. The dm kept hinting at a plaquard over the door with some text on it. My barbarian cared not for poultry words and just hacked the sentient door down, while the door screamed in agony. And that's how the game started.
I really enjoy the game stories. Good work
I would never apologize for such a puzzle
“Speak the magic word and be welcomed” Literally everyone calls “please” the magic word. Its confusing enough to make them overthink but if you just step back and think “hmm what could be the magic word?” SOMEONE will say it. (I’m totally using this btw)
I love the idea of a door that backhands you when youre acting rude
I remember when my DM did a similar puzzle in our game. One time in our campaign we found a chest that had runes on it. Due to some bad arcana checks, the only rune we were able to identify was "Open". After my character touched the rune, the chest opened but not without activating a trap dealing cold damage to his hand. Our DM later told us there was another rune that meant "Please".
I joking referred back to this little mishap when we recently had to solve a kind of runic combination lock. The first thing I did was ask, "Do any of the runes say 'please'?".
I don't think that's stupid at all. It's simple and frustrating when you're meta-head keeps you from thinking about it. But the door was there to limit access to a powerful magical item. If they wanted someone to get a hold of it but not someone horrible it's just to sort of test I'd design to limit access. Making someone ask nicely be the key is great worldbuilding.
Man, that was good. Instant subscription material.
Okay, that reveal with Colton staring at you is hilarious. I'm mad on behalf of him hahhaa
Our famous door story is when we just started playing in high school with my father as (very experienced) DM. We encountered a stone building with a stone door that didn't open. I'm not sure what we had tried already, possibly only pushing it open... One of the guys didn't have a lot of patience back then, so he decided to headbutt the door. A stone door.
I mean, he survived, but did take some damage and ever since it's been referred to as a typical stupid action xD
The most infamous puzzle I ever put my players through was also a door puzzle of sorts. The party entered the room and the door behind them audibly locked. Nothing they did could harm the door they came through. On the far side of teh room was a metal door set into a stone wall. In the room was the following:
Three ropes with hoops on the end
8 flasks of various coloured liquids
a series of gears
a sliding block puzzle set into the floor
and a series of levers on the right wall
Adding different flasks to the ropes caused them to be weighted down and turn the gears, and the levers controlled how far the ropes could fall. The sliding block puzzle was a pictograph of the eight bottles in a particular order. The party spent almost two hours trying to figure out the proper alignment to set the flasks in to unlatch the door.
None of it did anything, the opposite door was never locked. Players will NEVER just try the door first >:)
Well that's just. Idk why you'd do that. Players come to the table to play the game. Whatever that may entail for them. Whether it's slaying monsters or engaging with npcs or solving puzzles. If the players see a room set to look up like a puzzle, there's no reason for them to think it's anything other than a puzzle and try to engage with it that way, since they're there to play the game. Robbing them of that victory by making a puzzle entirely useless is kind of a dick move.
I play with peoples assumptions. I don't want them feeling like it's just a game. If not everything in the world is tailored to them, if things don't fit game formulas, the world feels more real and less like a game board. If my players will tackle every threat because "the DM would never place something in our way we couldn't defeat" thats meta gaming and immersion breaking. Some DMs are cool with that, but not myself or the DMs I play with. We build entire worlds to explore, not games to play, and sometimes that means taking peoples assumptions and chucking them against a wall.
@@Terezar Okay, yeah that's true. The world should feel like a real world and not every encounter the players get to has to be winnable. The world is full of danger and some dangers are just too much, so they need to run. The world shouldn't feel tailor made to the players, it should feel like a world all on its own. And subverting expectations very much helps with that. That's all perfectly fine. But setting up a puzzle that isn't a puzzle, doesn't only not make sense from a game perspective, it doesn't make sense from a world perspective. It just doesn't make sense period. Subversion purely for subversion's sake just rings hollow and must feel bad and confusing for the players. It's like punishing them for trying to engage. It's weird.
Maybe, but they thought it was hilarious, so I'ma go with that :) @@aapjew18
@@Terezar Ah, alright. Well, as long as your players liked it, it's all good, right?
The answer seems so obvious as an outsider. The door doesn't want to be commanded. When someone insults the door, they get damage.
Wouldn't then the first thought to be... you know... nice to the door? And ask it politely to open?
"I go up into the sky, and I write... go away. Please. Go away, please".
Kindness was the KEY.
"The doorbslapped him"
Me: you should try saying please!
1:16 Oh man, really? One of my favourite sessions in my first campaign was doing a heist on a wizard's house that was protected by a bunch of puzzles! Even though my brain was too small for most of them, the puzzles were really cool with interesting solutions, and it was awesome seeing how the other players figured them out.
The door should have had a sign that says "speak the magic word and I shall let you in" or something similar. There are so many potential magic words in DnD that it's not immediately obvious, but at same time everyone will be pissed they didn't figure it out faster
At most you should have made the hand do the "go on" gesture when they were polite, while being more harsh the more harsh they were (if they curse the doors existence, the door casts Bestow Curse). As a final touch, make the door reflective as a clue that it will reflect their their approach. But all in all its a good puzzle, one that I am using (my version anyway).
I did a similar one where you essentially shook hands with the hand, then twisted it like a doorknob and opened the door
Lmao I had a puzzle where he party got trapped in a cursed mirror. There was a teacup and a blue orb on a table in the middle of the room with various other furniture and all the doors in the room it was reflecting were missing. They had to break the teacup to leave but I left no hints cuz it would be too easy. They spent 2 hours trying different ways of getting out and using different spells. Thought they had to protect the teacup so some argued not to break it. Eventually they got fed up with it and smashed it. I loved every moment of it but I promised not to include any more trolly puzzles going forward. The wizard who created that puzzle was supposed to be a bit of a troll though.
My Dm's favorite door trap is a door with a riddle on a pedestal infront of the door. The riddle was impossible and would hit you with a disintegrate spell if you answer wrong. The solution was to just walk past the riddle and open the door. His party almost wiped to that trap.