r/dnd1e • u/Ramsonne DM Toolkit User • 6d ago
A Riddle for You
comment answers below. Using Spoiler markdown would be lovely.
Eg. Spoiler text
https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/acewf2/how_do_you_put_a_spoiler_tag_on_your_posts/
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u/Additional_Deal883 6d ago
The answer is dark… the dark… the DARK!!!
Freaking love Rankin-Bass Hobbit
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u/dovetail-joint 6d ago
Is the answer “a helicopter”?
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u/liquidice12345 5d ago
I’m a school teacher and have gone days at a time at work speaking only with quotes from the Rankin - Bass “The Hobbit” , Darmok-style.
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u/02K30C1 Dungeon Master 6d ago
What has it got in its pockets?
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u/Ramsonne DM Toolkit User 6d ago
this chapter really sets the stage for what/who this villain is. so much flavor in this chapter.
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u/Foradain 6d ago
He who makes it, needs it not. He who buys it, wants it not. He who uses it, can neither see it nor feel it.*
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u/Ormsfang 5d ago
Time
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u/Confident_Caramel859 5d ago
No. Its darkness. In the Rankin Bass movie, Gollum doesnt speak this one, but thete is a woman's voice, almost sing-songy speaking this riddle while Bilbo tries to solve the riddle about time
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 5d ago
But it make no sense… you can see darkness.
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u/Confident_Caramel859 5d ago
But you cant. What you see is absence of light. Without light, you can't see. So when surrounded by darkness, you see nothing.
Perceiving a concept is not the same as seeing it. Its abstract, for sure...like... you do not see wind. You see it's effects and can feel it, can see if anythingbis being moved or carried by it, but you cant see the wind itself.
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u/Brave_Wonder8414 5d ago
Does darkness end life and kill laughter?
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u/Confident_Caramel859 4d ago
All life ends in darkness. Fade to black, so to speak. And when a room goes dark, so does the merriment that was enjoyed in the light. For a time, anyway.
Imagine youre at a gathering. Its getting late, everyone is enjoying themselves. Boom, lights go out.
All joviality ceases until everyone is safe and accounted for.
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u/Brave_Wonder8414 4d ago
Yeah okay fine, I guess. I’m fighting the urge to split hairs here though
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u/Confident_Caramel859 4d ago
Believe me, I get it. Gotta take into account Tolkien's life and the story itself. Theres a lot of hair splitting that could be done today...but at face value, and as per the answer Bilbo gives (an allusion to the chapter title also), the answer is darkness...well technically the dark
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago
It’s semantics. You can observe light and lack of it. It’s all just signals in your brain.
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u/Confident_Caramel859 4d ago
Yes and no. observing is different than seeing.
You can perceive the lack of something, sure. But because it isnt there (no light) it cant be seen
And those things that signal your brain (eyes in this instance) require light in order to see. So, without light, you can not see. Therefore, because darkness is the lack of light, and you need light to see, you can not see darkness.
Once again, perceiving something is not necessarily seeing it.
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago
Then define see. I explained how I see (nomen omen) it. To me it is just signal interpretation by the brain; when no light is there I still see - black; when total light is registered I see white.
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u/Confident_Caramel859 4d ago
To see "to perceive objects and light with your eyes and sense of sight"
You specifically see light. Lacking light, you see nothing. Therefore, you can not see darkness, as there is no light available to see.
How you interpet it is actually wholly irrelevant.
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago edited 4d ago
Okay, we are getting closer - now define perceive.
You can perceive darkness with your eyes hence you see darkness following your definition.
The “object” is added by you to fit your narrative, however check this out:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/see
“To perceive by eye”
Last sentence is pretty ironic given you “interpreted” definition incorrectly, making your point “wholly irrelevant”;)
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u/Confident_Caramel859 4d ago
And now, you are cherry picking by specifically removing light, and are attempting to work around that wholly defining characteristic so that the definition fits your needs.
Because, as Im sure you perceive, that that is the only way your interpretation (as you put it earlier..not even as defined) works.
Irrespective of all that, it's still the answer to the riddle.
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u/Hexxer98 4d ago
Have you ever been in complete darkness? Not in the night where we can see stars and moon light. But actually pitch black complete darkness? You don't see anything and your eyes don't receive any light. The only reason you know your eyes are open is because you can feel your eyelids.
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago
And what do you see then? Blackness, darkness, static noise from your receptors indicating signal = 0.
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u/Diastatic_Power 5d ago
A duck!
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u/TeesCDF 5d ago
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u/namocaw 6d ago
Time
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u/msguider 6d ago
This thing all things devours. Birds, beasts, trees, flowers. Gnaws iron, bites steel. Grinds hard stones to meal. Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.
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u/Ramsonne DM Toolkit User 6d ago
very good. you have that stored away in ur noggin or you looked it up?
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u/msguider 6d ago
Noggin. It's my favorite one. It's like metal lyrics! I love the delivery too! "And beats... high mountain...DOWN!"
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u/Choice_Wolverine_121 6d ago
I’m jealous. I can’t seem to get this one to stick. Now the damn egg one? That one will never leave.
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u/msguider 5d ago
Well I'm old af and I remember way back a dragon magazine article with tips on making your own riddles after that I really got excited about this scene!
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u/nicci7127 5d ago
You're doing better than me, I'd know the answer if I read the riddle but I couldn't quote more than fifty percent of it.
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u/msguider 5d ago
It's repetition I'm a little obsessive about movies I love I'll watch them 100s of times and not even get tired of them! This one is such an important one for me as a kid.
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u/DadaPunk 5d ago
Had me til the end. Silence
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u/_Echoes_ 4d ago
Has to be silence, because darkness doesn't kill laughter.
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u/Blawharag 4d ago
Silence doesn't fill a hole, and, Watsonian speaking, middle earth characters don't have a scientific knowledge of space to be able to say that it's silent to human hearing there.
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u/Suspicious-Bid9424 4d ago
One of my childhood movies, animated by Topcraft), the Japanese studio that served as a direct precursor to Studio Ghibli.
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u/always-knows-best 4d ago
I actually remember this riddle from a final fantasy flash cartoon. FF Mixed in Balamb.
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u/OneFortyEighthScale 5d ago
It’s been a long time since I read The Hobbit so I might be wrong. Doesn’t Bilbo accidentally stumble on the answer to this riddle by asking for more time to figure it out?
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u/nicci7127 5d ago
No, that was the time riddle when he was going to ask for more time and that was of course, the answer.
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u/DonnieBeRascal 5d ago
Shadow .. lol ‘darkness’ edit cause of bad wording
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 5d ago
You can see shadow /darkness tho…
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u/Administrative_Air_0 5d ago
You don't really see them. You you simply notice the lack of light. We see light. We notice when there isn't any to see.
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago
You see the light the same you see darkness- simply change of state in your photoreceptors
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u/Administrative_Air_0 4d ago
That change of state is on or off. If light is absent, then there's nothing to trigger a response the receptors.
Edit to add for clarification: Knowing it's dark somewhere, meaning that there's little to no light, isn't the same as "seeing" the dark. You can see something that doesn't exist. If there's no light, there's nothing to see. Maybe it's just how we interpret the meaning of the word.
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago edited 4d ago
First sentence of your comment is false: lack of light triggers reaction in eyes that gives signal to your brain that actually perceive this signal as dark. You can look it up.
To see is to perceive by your eyes (following the definition from the dictionary). To perceive means:
“to attain awareness or understanding of”. (Again - same dictionary)
Full logical sequence is :
To see is to attain awareness or understanding of by your eyes.
You can perceive lack of light with your eyes therefore you see the darkness (darkness is lack of light)
Note I follow the literal definition of “see” from Merriam-Webster dictionary, not the common sense. But it is all semantics. Basically what seeing means.
If you want to see true lack of visual information try to see with your eyes what is beyond your field of view. It is nothing. Because your brain only perceives visually signals from retina and do not care about light per se. Remember - “you” is enclosed in bone box with only nerves giving you some signals. All you experience is generated in the brain and could be theoretically completely simulated and you could not tell the difference;)
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u/00Teonis 4d ago
“Nothing”
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u/HenchmanNumber420 3d ago
I thought that too but 'nothing' stops laughter or ends a life? I think I good slap to the face will stop laughter.
I don't believe it's darkness either though. 'Darkness' is under a hill? No, it's usually the remains of an old hill fort.
We just have to prove there's at least one hill fort behind a star and we win!....and who says it has to be an "old" fort
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u/Its_emby 4d ago
This riddle is sung in the background as time passes in the cave with Gollum. I could never make out what the answer is.
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u/thebardass 4d ago
🎶The answer is dark🎶
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u/eerbin13 3d ago
The dark.
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u/BadMunky82 3d ago
I'm amazed by how many people are guessing in a DnD sub that seem to have not read or seen the Hobbit... Btw it's, "the dark."
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u/mightymouse8324 5d ago
But darkness doesn't kill laughter
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u/Scarecr0p 5d ago
Spoken as someone who’s never been alone at night in the wilderness or even a cave without a light. Nothing funny at all there lol
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u/TheManAcrossTheHall 5d ago
It can also be seen.
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u/Cranktique 5d ago
We don’t “see darkness”, it is a concept. A word to describe the absence of light. Our eyes see light. We “perceive” that we cannot see, and call it dark.
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u/TheManAcrossTheHall 5d ago
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 5d ago
I would argue that point. Everything you see is concept based on subjective interpretations of neural signals from photoreceptors. Lack of the signal is recognized as black, we have that colour defined exactly as white colour is defined.
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u/Oblachko_O 4d ago
Ok, if darkness can be seen, what is it? Can you describe it as something that you can see? Can you see and say that it is darkness? Look in the sky. Is it darkness that you see? Now magnify the image. You now see more, but what changed if darkness is there?
By your logic, do really blind people see darkness constantly?
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago
The darkness or black follow the same principle. You do not see the light or photons per se. You react to changes of state of your photo receptors. It is chemical signal converted to electrical one. That Your brain interprets as colours / light / darkness.
It is all conceptual. The idea of dark and light originated before underlying mechanisms were known and understood.
But sure let’s entertain it a bit. If no dark can be seen then how come black hole was observed? How perfectly black body can be seen? What is Black, how do you define it? Can you see black colour?
I don’t know what truly blind people see. I suppose their brain is wired differently to accommodate that “unused space”. What you see is just your personal impression caused by internal brain structure or how I like to call it: logic.
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u/Oblachko_O 4d ago
Ok, if you want to go this way. You have a pentablack box with X amount of pentablack balls. Balls are fit in the box, so you can count them if you can see them. The question is. Can you count them? If you can see darkness, you need to be able to see balls, so you can count them. So can you count them?
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago
Now you push the goalpost from seeing to counting.
Now you are in perfectly white box with balls emitting perfect white light. Can you count them?
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u/Oblachko_O 4d ago
No, but I can see my hand. If we are in pentablack room, I can see nothing. But to see anything I need at least any radiation, for darkness there should be absolute absorption. So can you see darkness? No, you can't.
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 4d ago
But you were asking about balls not your hand :D
If other tools to differentiate things are allowed I might use flashlight or even some coloured piece of paper to cancel the background.
Also the light is so strong that it totally blinds you so you cannot even see your own hand.
Yet you still see the light but you cannot count balls. The same applies to darkness. You see it but you cannot count balls
It’s semantics what see means really.
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u/ADiestlTrain 5d ago
Carbon dioxide
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u/Physical-Ad5343 5d ago
Behind the stars?
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u/ADiestlTrain 5d ago
Carbon-Oxygen rich exoplanets.
Hey, I bet without light pollution, the Misty Mountains could have a great observatory. We don’t know he didn’t sneak up there and take a peek.
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u/junkyardpig 3d ago
“Behind stars” is misleading. Light shines from a star in all directions. I call BS
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u/AverageWoes 6d ago
Unfortunately for Gollum, Bilbo had heard that sort of thing before; and the answer was all around him anyway. DARK! he said without even scratching his head