D&D puzzles that make your players think

Thanks so much for the feature, and glad people are enjoying our puzzles book! :D Also, by popular demand, there is now a discounted bundle available that includes all three volumes!

I think the solution to a puzzle that surprised me the most was politely asking the gargoyle blocking the door to move aside.

when your character is intelligence 20 but irl you're struggling with 8

Her players: "It could be a biblical allegory" Mine: "Maybe if we hit it a 5th time..."

The best advice I ever got was “don’t solve your own puzzles”. When the players suggest something cool or creative that’s the solution.

My favorite simple puzzle. As you enter the door shuts behind you. In the center of the room is a pedestal with a big red button. An ominous clicking noise rhythmically clicks from somewhere in the pedestal. The door will automatically open if nobody pushes the button after 5 minutes, but if they do, the timer resets. I've had groups use over an hour debating how to get past this obstacle and it's so great.

I once asked my players, "what kind of corn grows on trees and is not yellow." 20 minutes later, my players were frustrated and started naming parts of a tree until they got an acorn.

I made the boat crossing puzzle into a social encounter and the player at my table who “hates puzzles” didn’t even notice it was one until another player pointed it out to them afterwards.

If I were a player with that puzzle I would be like "We need 118 more keys??"

If your characters don't have a way to fly/spideclimb - Consider having them play jenga to work on a scaffold to reach an area too high or sheer to climb. Magically enchanted logs that will move to the highest stack, as if moved by invisible hands.

every so often between sessions our dm gives us art pieces that relate to the next plot point/character arc/etc that she calls “teasers” and they always have codes or ciphers that we have to get together to solve. it’s so cool and one of the best times i’ve ever had solving dnd puzzles

"When players encounter a door with key holes they know they are looking for keys" Roguish laughter intensifies

Ginny this is a life saver. I'm literally having my players climbing a tower that is based in a mix of encounters and puzzles and this video gives me so much to think about and possibly rework. Thank you so much!

All I can think of now is Sam going, “If there is a key, then there must be a lock.” 😂

I had a puzzle once where players just had to stand/sit/exist on top of colored circles that corresponded to their magic, and it took like 1/2 the session. Simplicity is sometimes a its own challenge, lol.

The way you promote the DMs Guild materials is great. It's the perfect balance between not giving away the contents of the books for free, but they're also never annoyingly vague in a 'you just have to buy the book if you want to know more' kind of way. You have a great video as usual with solid advice and nice examples that can stand on its own, and also give a clear indication of what to expect and how to use it if you do invest in the sponsored materials if you want to go more indepth. Done with respect to both creators and viewers!

I just want to say, I am SO HAPPY you made a Galaxy Quest reference 😂 that movie is so underrated ❤

My biggest problem with most TTRPG puzzles is that they block progress until the players solve them. It's like a wall that the characters have to climb, but if everyone fails their checks ... nothing interesting happens. Just try again until you get it. The triangle lock puzzle, for example: it sounds like a cool puzzle, but if the players fail to solve it, all that really happens is they're pushed back out into the hall and take a little damage. The situation doesn't change in any interesting way. Their only choice is to go back and try again. (The secondary doors closing is a nice touch--there are consequences for the players' failure--but it doesn't solve the fundamental, "try until you get it," problem.) I use a very liberal application of the "Success at a Cost" suggestion (DMG p242) to get around this. Basically, redefine what it means when the players fail to solve the puzzle. Normally, success = players solve the puzzle and progress; failure = players don't solve the puzzle, don't progress, and have to try again. But what if success = the PLAYERS solve the puzzle and progress, while failure = the CHARACTERS solve the puzzle and progress (i.e. you give the players the solution through their characters), but they suffer some sort of complications/dire consequences? Going back to the triangle lock puzzle. Let's give the players three chances to solve it on their own before the walls close in. If they get it in three tries, great--the walls draw back, the door opens, and they progress. But if they don't get it, their characters solve the puzzle anyway, BUT it takes them a little too long--the door opens just as the walls come together. The characters manage to squeeze through, but everyone has to make a Dexterity save. The character who rolls lowest takes full damage from getting squished by the walls, the character who rolls second lowest takes half damage, AND the walls coming together makes a lot of noise, so everything ahead of them in the dungeon is now alerted that they're coming, and guards or curious critters are likely headed their way, so they can't even stop to tend their wounded just yet. End result: the adventure moves forward, the group is in a new situation determined directly by their success or failure in the previous situation, and now they have new and interesting choices to make (instead of just, "try again").

In a scifi game, I had players run into a first contact situation and had to decode manually the messages sent by the aliens. Alien script was a corrupted form of tengwar, so my super nerdy players quickly identified the characters of the messages. It still took them hours to fully decode the messages, but at least it was relatively entertaining for everyone. And we were playing over the weekend at a player’s parents who had a sauna and swimming pool so we had plenty of time and also could take a break to enjoy some swimming and sauna. I think I’d do it differently these days when weekend games are a thing of the past.

I use puzzles as Easter Eggs. You can get through the encounter with dice rolls and abilities, but the WHY of the whole thing could be figured out later. Having a group with engineers and chemists and a linguist makes me spoiled for choice, so I know that if I use a Turkish word for something or hand out a clue in the Hex value for an ascii letter, they'll eventually have that epiphany. Or that the "Tomb of Jerrod Sproing" is just a test because Mister Sproing isn't actually dead.