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Unwritten: System Reference Document/The Art of Gamemastering
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==Using Puzzles== Throughout the Myst franchise, puzzles are the primary obstacle that game players face—you have to solve the puzzle in order to move on. Often, these are explicit puzzles that may or may not have any direct connection to the story or environment. The place of puzzles in your Unwritten game depends heavily on everyone involved. You as a gamemaster may be good at making puzzles and a particular group of players (such as veteran Myst fans) may like sitting down and solving logic puzzles, or decrypting scrambled clues. If that works, then that’s great. On the other hand, that may not be the case. You may have players who just aren’t good at puzzles. Some players may prefer that their puzzles stay in the video games or on sudoku page in the paper and their role-playing to be focused on other things. There are a lot of possibilities. If you will have puzzles in your game, the following discusses how to fit them in. ===Puzzles are Story=== Unwritten always comes back to ‘fiction first’ and that includes puzzles. The best puzzles are those that are both interesting to solve and support the game in some way. Your puzzle can say something about the setting, the narrative, or the characters. For example, the D’ni had an underlying fascination with puzzles and intellectual pursuits, so using a puzzle-based lock in place of something more secure says a lot about the D’ni. The right puzzle can encourage the sort of play you want to see in the game. If you want players to think on their feet, add time pressure to the puzzles. If you want to emphasize teamwork, everyone has to have a part in the solution. Puzzles can also support the themes of the game. Yeesha’s Journeys required players to explore and in doing so, encounter evidence of the D’ni’s folly. Guild training Ages were explicitly tests, so they can emphasize a character pursuing expertise as a personal goal. ===You are on the Players’ Side=== Like compels, puzzles should lead to interesting avenues of action. If a puzzle becomes a dead end or a source of frustration, that’s not awesome. You should rethink how you are using it. You want players to enjoy the challenge, so be aware of your players and how they are reacting to the puzzle. If they are struggling, remind them of the tools that Unwritten gives them. You can offer discover actions to the players so they have questions to use to get information they might not otherwise. Point out that excelling on a Discover action will give them a hint. If they don’t use it, then great, they get a fate point. Also, keep an eye out for situations where a few players are enjoying the puzzles while other players are bored or frustrated whenever they come up. Watching other people have fun when you aren’t is definitely not awesome. Make sure everyone has a type of puzzle that they or their character can participate in, or alternate puzzles with other activities that players find entertaining. If players are just at a complete loss, you can turn the scene around and make it a deduction. (“Okay everyone, this D’ni vault you are stuck in is really tricky. Let’s deduce how this works!”) That gives them the power in the scene. Or, you introduce a new element into the situation that may change the puzzle to something that your players can more easily handle. That might be as minor as declaring a puzzle is mechanical in nature so someone can bring their high Engineering to bear on it. Or it could change the situation entirely, such as adding in someone who has key information for getting past the puzzle. Then it becomes an issue of tracking down the person and getting the information from them. ===No Puzzle Survives Contact with the Players=== Players will surprise you on a regular basis. Be ready to accept creative player solutions; Unwritten rewards ingenuity. Don’t hold on too firmly to your puzzles or specific solutions. A player may come up with a creative idea that completely bypasses your puzzle. That’s fine — just roll with it.
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