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From: ee163acp@sdcc13.UUCP (DARIN JOHNSON)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: How do you write a dungeon?
Message-ID: <132@sdcc13.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 17:00:07 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcc13.132
Posted: Thu Jan 17 17:00:07 1985
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> I've found that the right mixture of puzzles and hacking can be the most
> fun. The puzzles should not be so tough as to cause the party to come to
> a standstill to figure it out before they proceed. They should be more
> of the type where all of a sudden one character will go "HEY! I've seen
> that symbol before!"

  I particularly like to throw out the puzzles that my party try to
  figure out and the put it off.  Later they run across a situation that
  makes the solution obvious.  The solution then would have made the
  trap or encounter avoidable.  The party then spends lots of time on
  problems that are pointless.  To be fair to the players, I try to let
  the solutions that reveal themselves also partly solve the rest of the
  puzzle.  An example of this is a scroll containing a cryptic rhyme
  describing the major traps of the dungeon.  Figuring out one verse
  (because the fell into the trap) gives clues to the rest of the rhyme.

    Darin Johnson
  avoidable