Puzzle RPGs

[NotAI]

This is really an offshoot of the "traps" in RPGs discussion from a while back. How to possibly bring back puzzles in a good way, if there is one.

Instead of fighting, talking, buying and selling loot, etc, you play a puzzle in each case, in the sense of tetris or candy crush.

It gets harder for harder fights: like reaching near to last feasible levels in the puzzle.

If you lose, your character gets injured, usually doesn't die, and retreats.

If you lose, you can't make that dialogue choice successfully.

No dice rolls, other than randomness inherit in the generated puzzle. Enemy types change how the puzzle generated. You can see them in the distance, so running past them still an option.

Different loot changes the selling or buying puzzle in a predictable way, but no direct control. You play the puzzle and just get an score: you sold this and that for so much and bought the new gear you noticed and were able to get a good price for: it's now in your inventory, based on how far you got in that puzzle.

Ironman, no saving, just bonfires,

No hitpoints, deck of cards for health. Lose arm means losing the arm card. You lose it when it gets stacked with a few injury cards. If you level up, your arm card can support more injury cards without being deleted. Something like that.

Boring, annoying, or could be good?

Would presumably depend on the quality of the different puzzles, that become harder with faster speed? Or is speedup actually not so fun, if it's in an RPG, not a standalone puzzle game, and causes you to fail to persuade in a dialogue?

Now you can also bring back dungeon exploration with really powerful hidden traps that the character might or might not detect?

[rusty_shackleford]

Going to need you to backup here.

I hate puzzles and consider them antithetical to RPGs, as RPGs are at their core about problem solving. Gygax agreed, Europa #9(1975) he discusses role-playing games(AFAIK the first time he acknowledges D&D as such), and what makes D&D so popular.
https://f.rpghq.org/1GU1TA320Krt.avif?n ... opa_1.avif (really big so I'm not embedding)

It is my opinion, however, that there is another explanation for the popularity of the game. It is simply that it is a constant challenge. A never-ending exercise in problem solving, with a variable knowns and suddenly-known unknowns.

I was amused when I stumbled upon this as it has been my position for a while that the core of RPGs is solving problems.

For anyone wondering what the difference between a puzzle and a problem is, this writeup is rather good, it's in two parts:
https://theangrygm.com/puzzles-suck/
https://theangrygm.com/bring-me-problems/

TL;DR: Puzzles suck, present players with problems. An example of a puzzle is untying the Gordian knot, an example of a problem is Alexander pulling out his sword and cutting the knot. Puzzles are entirely fabricated with arbitrary rules, very rarely ever having a good reason to exist in the game world beyond "let's have a puzzle".

This is why you'll have games that seem, at first glance, to be RPGs actually be called puzzle games. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is one such title. When you begin heavily restricting how a player can act, how the enemies act, and enforcing other rigid rules it starts becoming a puzzle.

---

So, would I play an "RPG" entirely about solving puzzles?
No. I don't even like RPGs that have regular puzzles. If you give me a party capable of sundering earth and slaying dragons then expect me to follow arbitrary rules for pushing blocks around instead of using my party's actual abilities, you've lost me.

[logincrash]

Going to need you to backup here.

I hate puzzles and consider them antithetical to RPGs, as RPGs are at their core about problem solving. Gygax agreed, Europa #9(1975) he discusses role-playing games(AFAIK the first time he acknowledges D&D as such), and what makes D&D so popular.
https://f.rpghq.org/1GU1TA320Krt.avif?n ... opa_1.avif (really big so I'm not embedding)

It is my opinion, however, that there is another explanation for the popularity of the game. It is simply that it is a constant challenge. A never-ending exercise in problem solving, with a variable knowns and suddenly-known unknowns.

I was amused when I stumbled upon this as it has been my position for a while that the core of RPGs is solving problems.

For anyone wondering what the difference between a puzzle and a problem is, this writeup is rather good, it's in two parts:
https://theangrygm.com/puzzles-suck/
https://theangrygm.com/bring-me-problems/

TL;DR: Puzzles suck, present players with problems. An example of a puzzle is untying the Gordian knot, an example of a problem is Alexander pulling out his sword and cutting the knot. Puzzles are entirely fabricated with arbitrary rules, very rarely ever having a good reason to exist in the game world beyond "let's have a puzzle".

This is why you'll have games that seem, at first glance, to be RPGs actually be called puzzle games. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is one such title. When you begin heavily restricting how a player can act, how the enemies act, and enforcing other rigid rules it starts becoming a puzzle.

---

So, would I play an "RPG" entirely about solving puzzles?
No. I don't even like RPGs that have regular puzzles. If you give me a party capable of sundering earth and slaying dragons then expect me to follow arbitrary rules for pushing blocks around instead of using my party's actual abilities, you've lost me.

The Temple of the Sacred Ashes puzzle and the one in the wizard cellar of the village where you find Shale in Dragon Age Origins grind the game to a halt and have you fiddle around with positioning and doing inane ******* ********.

[NotAI]

...

Good point and good essay to that I didn't know about.

I should probably add that I hated the puzzles like in early Tomb Raider games that, indeed, grind gameplay down to a halt until a stupid blocks puzzle was solved. This might waste an hour, was boring, and often required looking up the answer the developer had in mind.

When I mean puzzles, I mean specifically things that are already fun by themselves and could be played for hours for its own sake, like high level Tetris.

The argument, even to that, that an RPG per se, at its best, is a continuous puzzle of its own simulationist kind, hence any others nested instead, like minigames, are artificially just breaking the pacing in the main puzzle, is a rather good one.

[logincrash]

...

Good point and good essay to that I didn't know about.

I should probably add that I hated the puzzles like in early Tomb Raider games that, indeed, grind gameplay down to a halt until a stupid blocks puzzle was solved. This might waste an hour, was boring, and often required looking up the answer the developer had in mind.

When I mean puzzles, I mean specifically things that are already fun by themselves and could be played for hours for its own sake, like high level Tetris.

The argument, even to that, that an RPG per se, at its best, is a continuous puzzle of its own simulationist kind, hence any others nested instead, like minigames, are artificially just breaking the pacing in the main puzzle, is a rather good one.

I don't think it should be a requirement or a part of the main story, but side quest minigames, like well-implemented fishing or something, work just fine.
If I'm forced to learn some ******** minigame that has nothing to do with the core gameplay loop, then I'd rather just quit the game.

[NotAI]

Well, on the other hand, it could put a hard stop to the modern trend of endless romance arcs.

Maybe, if you can't beat tetris to level 19, your character just can't come out and tell the horse he loves it. Neither can it get it up for the bear. No matter what the main storyline says. And that's the game. What a shame. The hollywood quality motion captured scene that was to follow, then actually doesn't.

You also no longer have to worry about deciding what to do with trash loot. It's now a side effect of your tetris game? Your character just can't part with the "broken tree branch +2" after all? It gets sold or not, automatically.