I’ve been reworking an old module that includes sphynx-style riddling that PC’s must solve. The published riddles are, at best, rather lame and I would like to upgrade them.
Does anyone know a few good (preferably fantasy-themed) riddles? I found innumerable bad riddles using Google- are there any good ones out there?
Will any riddles span sessions, or otherwise give the players a chance to look them up? If so, you’ll want to avoid any standard ones you can find easily online.
Yes, one of the riddles will probably span sessions (sort of as a prophecy). Most of the players wouldn’t try looking it up online.
Basically, one of the important NPC’s was a bit riddle-crazy and I’m hoping for a few obscure, but solvable puzzles. Most everything I’ve seen online has been aimed at children, or is too obscue even for this group.
Thanks!
Could you try taking regular riddles, and gussying them up with flowery, archaic language?
Though you might get lynched if your players realize that the answer to your three-stanza olde englyshe poem-riddle is “Fred Asparagus.” (Although you’d also accept “Elvis Parsley.”)
A skull on fat body with scales to each side winging through the dusk. He comes for you.
Deaths Head moth
Here are a bunch of riddles from Betrayal at Krondor. The answers are spelled out in slightly grey letters.
The excellent 3E adventure Of Sound Mind (written by my friend and amazing GM Kevin Kulp) has the following riddle, which I hope Kevin doesn’t mind my reproducing here:
A battle field?
I was going to say cemetery until I got to the ‘iron grain’, then battlefield seemed right.
To the OP,
Cloud Kingdom Games has the best free D&D themed riddles I’ve seen. You can also subscribe to get an email with the riddle of the week. I sometimes change their riddles around to make them better, usually by removing the most obvious clues or changing the construction to get rid of the cheesiest rhymes.
http://www.cloudkingdom.com/
For the players in my game, riddles can’t be enormously hard or they won’t get them. I’ll post a few of my faves with spoilers.
Always smiles or maybe frowns
Sinks in water, never drowns.
Catches prey on its barbed teeth.
Hunts all day but never eats.
Fishhook
More powerful than all the gods
Worse than pure evil
Wetter than water
Poor people have it
Rich people need it
And if you eat it you’ll go hungry
Nothing
I have no fearsome claw or bite
Yet all flee from my black and white
To provoke me makes bad sense
To them that knows my best defense
Skunk
I can be found in the tornado’s path,
I’m partners with death, harm, and hate,
I delight in the hurricane’s harrowing wrath,
But 'tis not in destruction I sate.
What am I?
The Letter H
Woeg, I came up with an answer that is at least equally correct:
the letter A
While visiting Gollum’s Lake, the party in What Exit’s? Middle-earth game tossed around several here, from posts 1999 through 2032: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=496173&page=40
I’m sure you could use or adapt any of them as you wish.
Thanks, everyone. There are a lot of good ideas here. Both the bee and battlefield riddles will be very easy to work in, and there were some fun ones in the links, too. I’ll write in later if anyone’s interested in how these were received. That being said, the players have always been good at solving puzzles, so please keep posting if you want- they eat up ideas as fast as I can come up with them.
I try not to be too corny; there were mass groans when they met an NPC bard named “Elfus”. Of course, it started a whole theme of music-related puns, so maybe they just *claim *to dislike corny jokes.
Explosive Runes.
Boom! Riddle solved.
Two beautiful maidens approach the village matchmaker to be matched. The matchmaker is impressed by their beauty, but even more impressed is she by the fact that they both look exactly alike.
The matchmaker asks each maiden where she lives, and their answers are the same; they live in the same house. She asks each who her father is, and their answers are the same; they have the same father. She asks for their birthdays, and they have the same birthday.
“Ah,” says the matchmaker. “You are twins.”
“No,” say the maidens. “We’re not twins.”
How can this be?
They are two of a set of triplets; the third sister is at home.
I guessed it right!
Adapted from an ancient Roman riddle:
Born of Earth, strengthened in fire
I sit on high, master of water
A roofing tile
I prefer this way:
What is it men love more than life,
Fear more than death or mortal strife?
The poor man has, the rich require,
What is the contented man’s desire?
The miser spends, the spendthrift saves,
And all men carry to their graves.
An old favorite from the excellent comic Adventurers.
“Not of man,
But by man,
Rising above all,
But rising above nothing,
In the eye that greets the darkness,
You will find the mage Rannon.”
A quick scaling of the walls by Nightwind revealed that the interior of the city they were in is laid out in the pattern of a skull. The sun sets in the west, so Rannon’s tomb is in the eastern eye.
The idea of skull pattern can be made as complex as necessary. It can be plain, or a baroque tribal knotwork. The shape of the skull can be made by unconnected landmarks miles apart.