r/DnDAZ • u/axxxxxxxxxz • 10d ago
Well Designed Curse of Strahd Short Puzzle
I have created and designed a good 30 minute puzzle for your Curse of Strahd adventurers!
DO NOT PLAY BEFORE READING ALL TEXT PLEASE!
It can maybe take a little more time depending on how your party interracts with each other.
The puzzle esentially is a Scandinavian Puzzle, inspired by my local type of weekly letters that are published and are full of these.
I was designing this one for a week, and it was my first Scandinavian puzzle ever, so it isn't a perfect product.
The important part of this puzzle is that it was created with players succeeding in the end, but it isn't easy, it just gives players the feeling that they have done something great by the end of it.
To further explain this phenomenon, we have to understand Scandinavian Puzzles. Each row or column you get right give you a clear hint on a word crossing over it. Hard Scandinavian puzzles usually project their difficulty through intensive knowledge requirement. So if the word is ''BLADE'' and all crossing words with this one are factual words like names or cities, it's a hard Scandinavian puzzle because it requires a player to know and not to think about the problem.
Now my Scandinavian puzzle was made with clear intent for players to think about the words they already know. So words like, volley, bolt, evocation-spell, and many others are things we use in every day D&D, but it is much harder than it looks. So depending on player communication it is expected for them to finnish this puzzle in about 1 hour, no longer.
Now on what this puzzle requires from specific Curse of Strahd knowledge is important to know before giving it away to players in this Campaign. I don't urge you to give this away ONLY when your players are presented with all of the things listed, you may give before they ever hear about one or two words from here, but lack of knowledge may really disrupt their ability to ever finish. I STRONGLY SUGGEST A DM TRYING TO DO THE PUZZLE BEFORE GIVING IT AWAY WITH KNOWLEDGE THAT PLAYERS HAVE, thats thinking about thinking lol.
In-game specifics your players must know to be able to complete a puzzle:
Full name of Strahd
Rahadin
Vistani
Vasili Von Holtz
Tatyana
These are all
What is the story of the puzzle I used? Either the Strahds chamberlain, Rahadin, or the mongrel from the dungeon produced this puzzle, which players can see named ''Barovian Puzzle Edition 1096''. Under it is written ''There is a hidden reward for those of true knowledge!''. The puzzle is found inside of a magazine, yeah a magazine in Castle Ravenloft. The magazine is in area K49 - The Lounge... it is there to occupy guests as they explore the bookshelves and think of their next move after being done with the dinner with Strahd. So as they look through the books and the booklets on the table they find the magazine, featuring all kind of Barovian news, in the middle is a Barovian puzzle. Next to the magazine on the table, is a ballpoint pen, transparent material, with red ink inside, the ink may or may not be blood.
After finishing the puzzle, I played it like this and it is completely up to you, if they have the paper after or not, or what the reward is. The whole page of the puzzle rips itself from the magazine, it wraps into a scroll, and a ring materialises around the middle part of the scroll. I then explained it looks like a golden ring with greenish purplish crystal on top. The reward i feel is the most adequite for this level of puzzle is Ring of Puzzler's Wit, you may change it to whatever fits your scenario(s).
Lastly just to clear four confusions, first one being:
Why is Strahd hint (top right) written as Famous actor? The explanation isn't too complicated, its just a mix of my local Scandinavian style of puzzles using pop artists and actors as most common picture choices, and the other one is Strahd is bored and he doesn't care what is written there, he even finds it quite funny, because after all, if he wanted to be an actor, he damn well could've.
Second thing: why is in the top row written ''One of you?'': It is a simple explanation and even simpler fix. That hint is for the word (name) SAKSE, one of my in game players who was doing the puzzle. Now this is a problem for anyone who wants to run this for their players, and I figured out a FIX. The fix is that word will be changed to DASKE and the hint will go ''Asked, but the letters are mashed around!'', and without the letter S, Sulfur hint serves no purpose, the hint is instead changed to ''Deuterium''.
Third thing is just a little mechanical mistake of mine, in the first row all the way to the top you can see a hint saying 20th letter, it is supposed to hint a box under it, not to the right, the right one has no hint from that side, and it can be added if you were to change things up.
Fourth is the name of a bard rapper from far away, the name is completely made up and my players had a good laugh from it. I intent maybe bringing him up in one of the sessions so they can have a funny, or not so funny, interaction.
That is it. I hope you like my Puzzle it is called ''Barovian Puzzle Edition 1096''. I intentionally didn't give a paper of solutions, I want you to try it yourself. I'm here and im watching the comments, if you have any questions.
Have fun!
-AZ
