Ye Olde Inn

Howdy Inn!

My group is about to embark on the KK expansion, and I've been looking for ways to spice up the monotony of the grind. I've found that my group loves discussing strategy, and they use logic to decide on the best decision/route. Therefore, I want to add in some interesting logic puzzles for them to complete and I'm looking for some ideas. I'm thinking in the vein of Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia style puzzles. Whether for a reward of some kind, or to escape a trap, or to easily dispatch a group of monsters.

If you have any ideas, or have a favourite puzzle you've experienced or created, please share!

So far I've got 2 that I'm adding for sure:

1 - Throughout a quest, secret door/trap searches will reveal 4 levers in four separate rooms. The levers must be pulled in a certain order to reveal a secret artifact stash. The heroes will have found clues in an earlier quest hinting to the order the levers need to be pulled in.

2 - One room becomes sealed after a hero enters it. Searching the room reveals a pressure plate in the corner. If the hero stands on the plate, the door opens, but closes as soon as he gets off. There is also a treasure chest in the room, if the hero figures out that he can move the chest onto the plate, he can escape! Can also be adapted with multiple pressure plates requiring teamwork to activate.

Looking forward to hearing some ideas!

If playing KK, play as KK... You could always use it as a base to create something new but making such changes would mean it was no longer KK.

My quest pack had a few puzzles... but they were more deadly kind. Not a "you can figure this out" but a, "If you weren't thinking you are dead". This can be annoying for the Heroes but once they learn this is the nature of the game, they will think things through more.

There's a pressure plate, Magic Circle in the 1st quest, a Rope Bridge puzzle, that collapses if you take the plate armour (which should be suspicious as every other armoury I play shuffles the deck pick random), a quest designed to make them lose all their weapons. Also... the zombie is who you were looking for, don't kill it. A few other hidden twists too. I noticed in the last group I had people were all what if this what if that, before things happened and they never did, so I designed my quests to have these kind of links.
Take a look Click Me!!!

Thanks for sharing! Just to be clear, this thread is not strictly for KK. I'm just trying to compile a list of puzzle traps, logic escapes, riddles, etc. Then when I feel there is an opportunity to seamlessly insert a fun puzzle for my group, whether in a published quest, or one I create myself, I will have a resource to draw from. I'm interested in what types of things others have used before, or ideas they may have had.

Going to try and remember to come back to this tonight - 'tis time for bed for this
guy right now.

torilen wrote:Going to try and remember to come back to this tonight - 'tis time for bed for this
guy right now.

A long and restful slumber?

Yes, nice long nap. hehehehe.

Actually - not really. Did not sleep very good this week, and yes, I did forget to come back to this. BUT YOU REMINDED ME! So, hooray.

You mentioned pulling levers in a certain order. I would suggest making it only 3 levers, and have some sort of "result" from each wrong set pulled. This will keep it from going on forever and keep boredom from setting in.

1-2-3---1-3-2
2-1-3---2-3-1
3-1-2---3-2-1

This can be done with all sorts of thing: buttons of different colors, buttons with pictures, foot plates with colors or pictures, drums of different pitches, horns of different pitches. Perhaps give them a hint about a "historical figure or event", and they have to pull the lever underneath the proper story or event or person.
(Ever watch Big Bang Theory...they did something like this during one of their Christmas D&D episodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfyKXr7f2zU)

You can add some interest and thought into the mix by including a clue in the form of a poem or story...maybe a math problem, and they have to figure out the addition or subtraction to figure out what to push first.

You do something similar with steps. They must step on only every other step, or skip every fifth step, something like that. Have a poem or story to give a hint. If the step on a wrong step, maybe an arrow shoots, or an alarm is sounded, some monster is set loose, or the stairs turn into a slide and they start back at the bottom again.

One thing I've wanted to do is include tricks that cause "minor" damage. You want a certain magical ring...maybe ring of fireball? Pick it up, you MUST get hit with a fireball, or get burned in some way, or it is magically put back. Same with a cold spell.

Perhaps there is a magic ring with a sleep spell for the character to use. It is in a cage with indestructible bars. Fall asleep in the room, and the bars are not there. Get the ring in your dream, and magically have it in real life.

Change it up - use rings, amulets, bracers, headbands, etc.

Then, of course, remember the castle of mystery from the original quest pack. The doors would drop you in various places. You could play off that and make it either more dangerous or simply harder to get to where you need to go. You could add spikes or falls for going through "bad" doors, or add more monsters to fight. Or, if they go to the same place more than two or three times, something bad can happen with increasing harm or danger. To make it harder, try to make it even more random. Roll 3 dice instead of only two. Double up on some doors, so the characters end up back in the same place more often.
OR...keep rolling only 2 dice, but decrease the number of places you go. Double up on a few. However, you need a key for each place, so they have to go to all of them in order to get out of the final door or room.

I have one in a quest i use where there is a living door (from zealot) that requires a password. In the room is a clock that is stopped and a torture victim chianed to a wall that is long dead and now a skeleton. The heroes have a small battle in the room. i have a few other red herring items in the room to search as well thta really have no purpose other than to distract them, but the method to learning the passwors is the clock. If the heroes move the clock forward i describe the scene as if time progresses...their beard begins to grow, the corpses they killed start to rot, etc. if they turn back the clock it turns back time. If they turn it back one step, the monsters they killed are alive again, but keen observers will notice the skeleton in the torture chains while dead, now has decaying flesh that is sloughing off (i swap out a skeleton mini for a zombie mini). If they turn it back again further this time, while having to fight the monsters again now the torture victim is faintly alive (swap out the zombie mini for a prisoner mini). If they investigate him quickly (my discretion regarding how many other turns they spend investigating other items in the room) they can speak to him before he again slips out of conciousness and dies. He being in the room, is privy to the password as he has overheard it many times while being tortured. He provides it and they can get through the door.

DullandRusty - that is a grand idea...but man, that is messed up. I hope there are no prolonged descriptions
of anything during turning the clock backwards.

Wow there are some great ideas in this thread! While I agree that KK needs some spice, I also agree that it is not KK anymore afterwards, and I would love to see the result.

Yeah. i use puzzles like the one i listed in homebrew quests.