unforum

[L.Boomer]

ROTten puzzles

[krystyn]

My 'look at me' badge is made of nacho cheese. Ozy's also developing a line of accessories, see, and has asked me to be the spokesmodel.

/me poses sexily.
/me sniffs the air suspiciously.
/me runs away.

[RobMagus]

Damn, if my dog could pee ROT codes, I'd be pretty friggin' impressed.

Something to note concerning puzzle design: it's hard. Perhaps some would-be PMs just drop a cheap ROT or whatever into their tiny pseudo-ARG so that can say they made a game, but I think that the majority of people just have difficulty coming up with innovative puzzles. However, they still want to make a game, so they, for whatever reason, don't let boring puzzles get in the way. They're easy to make, take up some time to solve, they're a nod to old-timers, whatever.

I -am- annoyed by ROT puzzles if they're used in a situation in which they just don't make sense. To solve this problem, I suggest that we have a gigantic brainstorm about what makes puzzles innovative/interesting, rather than say that PMs which use cheeseball puzzles are annoying and just trying to get into the "PM club". Criticism transformed into construction.

So:

What makes puzzles good?

[krystyn]

I remember we busted out a Vigenere way back in Lockjaw ...

Well, rather, I should say it was ANDY that busted out that cipher, but he totally intended for it to be cracked. In-game, the character who received the encrypted message definitely needed to be able to crack it. The key word was "Prague," backwards, but since Vignere is one of those ciphers that's crackable without even using the key, it was simply a way to color the puzzle with some mysterious backstory. As well as being difficult. Because Andy was being a jerk that day.

I don't mind stuff that's familiar, but the trappings can really make it innovative, interesting, and immersive.

F'rinstance, we used Morse code in Metacortechs, but it was used in a short video of a glitch that one character managed to catch in a subway tunnel in Chicago. It was a simple message, and it was a subtle sound cue in an unexpected place. I really liked that Steve came up with that one; it's one of my favorite bits of the whole game.

[jamesi]

What has always interested me, as far as puzzle content in ARG goes, is how the use of the puzzle affects the story. In short, why is that puzzle being used?

In JMX¹, we designed the game as a puzzle trail first, and made a decision during development to include a very thin story later in the game. However, the puzzles made sense in the context of the story because the puzzles were a test for players at first (to get the brightest of the bright on the characters' side), and then a series of puzzles that led to Endgame. So, while the story/character/interaction elements weren't at the forefront of the game, whatever elements there were made sense with the puzzles.

Fast forward a couple of years to the recent trend of IM-based gaming. How much sense does it make when a stranger finds you and sends you a vigenere-encrypted message? How does that puzzle fit into the story? Is the puzzle just there for the sake of puzzle inclusion? And it's not just the puzzles used in IM interaction -- there have been a few puzzles in other ARGs that I've seen that I've wondered why they were given in the first place.

I think an ARG will be at its most successful level if a few things happen. I've said before that if the story isn't believable, then the game is of a lesser quality, and I'll stick by that. I've also said before that character interaction has to be credible within the scope of the story, or the game will suffer. Now I'll add to all of that by stating that puzzles, regardless of difficulty or method, should coincide with elements of the story or of the character(s).

So there.

[Phaedra]

[GuyP]

Ah, to craft a believable puzzle is surely a challenge - not too many of those in reality, and unfortunately the medium happens to demand a sense of realism. Hence the proliferation of mischevious hackers, AIs, and more recently alternate-societies that happen to really like their puzzles. Hmm.

My personal perspective it that puzzles don't have to be in a traditional format if you consider them as general "tasks." A commonplace example of this is steganography - it isn't hard to crack per se, but you need to guess that the file might be stegged, download the little widget, and so on. Alas, that's been done to death too, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from - puzzles are fundamentally about player action and problem-solving, not cracking codes.

As Sean Stewart explained in the ILB post-game chat:

[skilletaudio]

A very good point on perspective, GuyP. Looking back, there was just as much catharsis from figuring out just WHO characters are, and not What Is Happening Next!

[HaxanMike]

[GuyP]

(Disclaimer: My perspective may be influenced by my unmitigated suckitude at puzzles.)

[C_Brennan]

Re: ROTten puzzles

[Nightmare Tony]

I will jump in and parrot, but on all sides of the curtain, one thing is wanted. for EVERYONE to have a good time.

Entertain the players
engage and entertain the pm crew

but mainly entertain the players.

Keep the players guessing and go for new tricks. Do NOT fall into the trap of remaking The Beast over and over again or whatever hot trend is on for the moment. That leads to stagnation. Your game would also get tagged as a me-too kind of gig.

On storyline, one question which was coming up BIGTIME today was a single word: MOTIVATION.

Why is the character doing this?
Why are they interacting with the players?
Why is this puzzle a part of things?

When a puzzle appears, is it dropped out of thin air, or does it have a function that a character created it for a purpose? What is the PUZZLE's motivation and reason for being?