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Why am I still here instead of getting ready for work

  • Gibmaker
  • 05/10/2013 05:09 PM
  • 2249 views
It is hard to justify drawn-out, multi-step objectives to accomplish some technical task for the story when in other places you can just roll Operate 3 and do anything. I hate sci-fi.

Does anyone know any good stock RPG puzzles along the lines of "guess-the-right-combination-of-switches"? Ones that are maybe less done-to-death than "each switch adds a particular number and you have to add it up to the correct sum."

Posts

Pages: 1
look at a game called Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corner of the World. I think their puzzles they came up with were good. maybe they'll give you some ideas.
Gibmaker
I hate RPG Maker because of what it has done to me
9274
Ah yes. I just meant, I specifically have a room full of toggle switches that are supposed to be important but I don't know what sort of puzzle to make out of them.
a puzzle where you have to slide a toggle switch under a locked door and push another switch (which serves as a key) onto it by pushing a third one into the lock
Gibmaker
I hate RPG Maker because of what it has done to me
9274
Your comment is two tons o' fun.

Although I've reconsidered and I'm striking this puzzle entirely since it's really just padding. :(
I think the only way to make a switch puzzle not stale is to include a high degree of emotional investment in it. This is pretty much the basis for "No One Has To Die." Once the switches are contextualized as a decision--a decision that the player can care about--they become a whole lot less routine. Portal also did this pretty effectively with its puzzles (by giving identity and personality to the companion cubes,) but you don't have to take things that far for a simple puzzle. It could just be "for every wrong switch you flip, an entire family of howler monkeys is wiped from existence." That engineers plenty of emotional investment.
Gibmaker
I hate RPG Maker because of what it has done to me
9274
Well yeah, that's also part of the reason I decided to strike the puzzle. Because it would have just been filler on the way to GETTING TO the main challenge of the chapter, it wasn't even incorporated into the main challenge.
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