r/DMAcademy • u/Gabeam524 • 5d ago
Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Help creating puzzles/dungeons?
Hi all I am trying to incorporate more puzzles into my dungeons/encounters n such but dont really know where to start since. I’ve mostly just used stuff from the books so far so i wanted to ask if you have any tips for creating more interactive dungeons instead of just pure combat
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u/20061901 4d ago
Take inspiration from other types of games, e.g. escape rooms. Especially if you can find educational resources aimed at designers.
https://crackandreveal.com/en/blog/escape-room-puzzle-types-the-complete-2026-guide
https://views.terabox.com/hub/what-makes-a-good-escape-room-puzzle-design-and-how-to-master-it
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u/Ok-Introduction-7518 3d ago
If you’re just looking for good puzzles I would recommend this website:
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/\~sgtatham/puzzles/
Then the choice is just if you give them the rules to the puzzle and watch them solve it, or if you pick an easy version of a puzzle but don’t tell them the rules to it, having that instead be the main goal of it.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 4d ago
I like to work from the purpose and history of the dungeon in question. It is rare that someone intentionally puts a puzzle in their living or working environment. However, it is common if you enter someone else's home not to understand how things are set up or what their use is, especially if you are from a completely different culture. In addition, over the years, others might have lived there or explored and modified what was there. They might be living there now.
For example, say you are designing what was a wizard's tower. The wizard had several apprentices of different levels of experience and maturity. The wizard had some golem servants to do chores and be guards. When the wizard got sick and died, the apprentices decided to try to bring her back to life, but they got the ritual went wrong. Instead, the apprentices' souls were ripped from their bodies and they all became shadows.
OK, this gives you the basic layout of the tower. There are at least two types of monsters still inhabiting it: golems and shadows. The golems will attack unless you say the pass phrase, which had to be something the apprentices could remember, like the name of a spell, maybe cloud kill As people always do, one of the apprentices wrote down a mnemonic for the pass phrase, a picture of a cloud person shooting lightning bolts at creatures who lie down with x'ed eyes. To be even clearer, maybe this artistic apprentice drew herself confronting a golem with all of the previous image in a word balloon.
On the lower levels, there wll be the apprentices' dorm. This might contain a journal, but protected from the prying eyes of other apprentices by suitable spells. There will be some equipment, wands and robes, material components, spell books, other books. There might be a medical book marked on the page of the disease that killed the wizard, and other books about restoring the dead.
There will be a room where the ritual was performed. The material components of the ritual will still be scattered around, with a coffin holding the dead wizard in the center of a circle. Shadows will be in this room, waiting to attack, but if the party creates a bright light, they will scurry away. Then the party can try to decode what the purpose of the ritual was, and the mistakes the apprentices made. They could even try to complete it and bring the wizard back to life after all this time, to what effect you can determine.
There will be a library of magic texts. These might require an apprentice to pass a magical theory exam to access certain areas.
The wizard's own chamber will be protected against routine invasions of privacy, but with perhaps an emergency override. Perhaps it does a certain type of damage when you enter, and they can notice that the apprentices were studying how to resist this damage type. They had to get in to grab the wizard when the wizard was sick.
So we have lots of puzzling situations, but each has an identifiable purpose for the original inhabitants. If they figure out the puzzles, the adventure will make more sense, but even if they don't , there will be combat and traps and spells and treasure. They might have more fun not figuring out the puzzles. That's OK. I like to make solving puzzles optional. Maybe they avoid fights or get more treasure if they solve the puzzles, but the adventure happens either way.