Inspired by this thread, I figured I’d ask something similar.
I’m currently DMing a Ravenloft 3E campaign, and I got myself in a bit over my head. I created a character who’s a dead clockmaker who left behind an encrypted journal. (Think Da Vinci).
The players have already decrypted the first page by means of a large gear they found in one of his clocks.
(I printed out the gear on a piece of paper, with holes punched in semi-random places. When lined up on the journal page, the message shows through the holes. There are actually 3 messages on one page, decrypted by turning the gear to 12:00, 4:00 and 8:00.)
Now the problem:
I cheated on the rest of the journal pages. They’re just random letters in interesting patterns. I plan on substituting them for similar looking pages with hidden messages as the campaign progresses.
But I need to come up with new puzzles to unlock the patterns.
I’ve already got one:
The letters on one page each have dots next to them pointing up,down, left or right. They’ll next find a small gear, that when rolled in the direction of the dots will end up on subsequent letters of the message.
But I need more ciphers of this nature.
Any ideas? Anywhere I might find puzzles or ciphers related to clocks?
By googling I’ve found:
Basic descriptions of substitution cyphers.
Public key/Private Key encryption pages.
Lists of riddles for DM’s a la the Hobbit.
Lists of ridiculously silly traps for DM’s that trap players in spherical rooms with no gravity, or levers that summon instant death, or other such nonsense.
In my first campaign, I created a cipher that boggled the players for weeks, and amused me to no end. I hope it’ll be helpful in your case.
I gave the players a sheet of parchment with a series of numbers on it, laid out like so:
3/98 8/02 2/01 5/04 11/99
etcetera. (The above is just an example, and doesn’t say anything meaningful, to my knowledge.) At the top of the sheet was a circle.
Any ideas?
The numbers were month/year combinations. The players had to figure out which day of the month was needed by finding out when the full moon for that month took place. That would give them a number between one and thirty-one; any numbers over 26 were spaces.
Keeping with the clockwork/gear mentality, you could get some more mileage out of it by using different-sized gears and gear ratios.
For instance, at the top of the page you have 3-1-5, then a sequence of letters that is the code. Somewhere else (different page, or a real device), have all available letters arranged in two circles. The player has to figure out that he needs 3 gears with the given ratio – 3 times normal size, normal size, 5x nomral size. Hook them together, turn the 3 gear until it points to (or reveals) the letter from the cipher; the result will be the letter that the 5 gear points to or reveals.
Another version could work like this: print out the message on a page. Then, split the message into however many segments you want, five or six, as long as each segment is indecipherable on its own. Put each segment on its own page at some random orientation, then put a number from 1-12 (or 1-60, depending on how much effort you want to put into this) at the top of the page, for example 6 if the orientatation is upside-down, 3 if it’s at a 90 degree angle, etc. The player has to realize he needs to combine the segments and orient them correctly to read the complete message.
MrVisible - No offence, but how on earth were they supposed to figure that out? Were those the only clues? Did they have a calendar that showed the full moons? Was this real world years or fantasy world years? Neat idea, but I’m not surprised it stumped them.
SolGrundy - I really like the gear-ratio idea. This is exactly the sort of thing I’m looking for. I’m not sure how to implement it though. I don’t have the time, expertise, or energy to actually build something with gears. How could it be done on paper without heavy-duty trigonemetry?
I don’t quite understand your second idea. Would the fragment be hidden by other random stuff or would it be the only thing on the page? (I think the latter would be easy enough to solve even without the numbers. ) If it’s hidden, is it the only thing on the page with that orientation?
Why do you actually need to make the props for this? Wouldn’t it work just as well to just tell the players “You found his journal, but it’s apparently filled with nonsense”, and “There’s a gear in the clock with holes in odd, seemingly random, places”. Then, when a player says “We try overlaying the gear on top of the first journal page; does it reveal anything?”, you say yes and tell them the message.
The advantage of this is that it lets you produce puzzles far more elaborate than what you (a non-eccentric-watchmaker) could actually implement, and it saves you a lot of time, to boot.
Seriously, you raise a good point, but this is a classic case of “it seemed like a good idea at the time.” The 1st gear idea came easily, and although the execution of the idea was a bit painful, it worked splendidly in the end. The players were really into it, and complemented me on it afterwards.
Also, it gave them something to actually figure out, rather than just give them the message. I’m trying to keep the campaign low on combat, and high on problem solving. (Example: they faced a ghost last time, but never actually fought it. They put it to rest by completing it’s unfinished business instead.)
Just handing them the gear wasn’t enough to solve the puzzle. They actually had to figure out which journal page to use, how to line up the holes properly and which direction to read the message, etc. So it dragged out the problem and made it more worthy of awarding experience for.
Oh, and it gave me some time to get a drink and a snack, and think about the next encounter.
For the 3-1-5 problem, I suppose it might be sufficient to abstract the problem to a generic code wheel. They’d find an assortment of gears, and have to assemble the correct ones “in game” and then when they try to use it to decode the message, I hand them a code wheel. (If I want to be devious, I can prepare an incorrect code wheel and give that to them if they choose the wrong gears.)
Well, have you considered the Enigma code? It’s pretty clockworkey, not to mention hard to break…of course, no human can break the code without a machine, much less the proper key. But at least it’s someplace to start.
Ranchoth
(Well, maybe Dustin Hoffman or Temple Grandin could. But I’m guessing they don’t play D&D that much)
Actually, the players had several weeks of real time to figure this out. The real world/fantasy world years coincide; in the real world, it’s 2001, in the D&D world, it’s 301.
They were able to get the full moon calendar from the local astrologer, of course. And even after that, it took them a while to figure it out.
Once they had it decoded, they found out it was a series of riddles.
A fairly simple one, a series of times and maybe dates, part of a schedule or dairy type thing (10:35:23 Mr. X arrived, 10:46:20 Mr X left)
The cypher is the variation of the time, the above would be 11-3=8 letters past the previous character.
Were those the only clues? Did they have a calendar that showed the full moons? Was this real world years or fantasy world years? Neat idea, but I’m not surprised it stumped them.