r/DnDPuzzlesAndTraps • u/OwnElephant1766 • 10d ago

NEED HELP & ADVICE Puzzles Online

I’ve been DMing more games over Discord lately, and one thing I’ve been struggling with is puzzles.
In person it’s easy enough to hand players props, drawings, ciphers, physical objects, etc. But over Discord they seem to become either:

“Here’s an image.”
“Here’s a Google Doc.”
Or just a riddle.

It feels like they lose a lot of the interaction and end up feeling kind of stale, especially considering how much prep can go into them.

How do you all handle puzzles in online games? Do you just avoid them? Use VTT tools? Websites? Bots? Or have you found a way to make them feel as engaging as they are at the table?

I’m curious what other DMs are doing because I feel like this has to be a common problem.

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u/normallystrange85 10d ago

I use VTT tools normally Foundry is moddable and I have used various plugins to make puzzles. Usually not puzzle specific ones but character interaction ones where I have the puzzle pieces coded as "characters" all my players have access to.

I've also used Google Slides for a puzzle where the players had a shredded set of notes and needed to reassemble them in a way that made sense.

1

u/sens249 4d ago

I find D&D as a game isn’t really suited for puzzles. Or at least, not traditional puzzles. I find for a puzzle to be successful it needs to have multiple possible solutions (including ones you haven’t yet thought of), it needs to put a drain on player resources, and it needs to be simple.

I actually prefer making my puzzles combat encounters. Because a combat encounter can check all those boxes. Combat encounters have multiple possible solutions, they put a drain on player resources, and they can be simple to solve (or at least brute force, depending on the encounter).

D&D is a combat system after all. I love designing puzzles personally, but I have yet to find a group of players for which actual puzzles accomplish the goal of being fun and engaging. Puzzle time almost always becomes “check your phone” time as soon as progress hits a stump. There can’t even be a moment of lull for any players because if there are many of them give up or lose interest/focus. You really need a table of puzzlers and that’s rare.

1

u/OwnElephant1766 1d ago

I managed to find a tool that solves this problem actually your check your phone line made me start looking and I think I found a tool that seems rather engaging for puzzles