Van Richten Tower

Tower Approach:

File:Van Richten Tower.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/TJBLy0m.mp4 (reddit)

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I finished running CoS almost a year ago. It was mine and my groups first DnD adventure, and hooked us all on this wonderful game. Much of the success of the campaign I contribute to resources that other people game up with, guides, etc, and so I wanted to give a little back to the community. (reddit)

When I ran it, I saw the puzzle door and was immediately excited. I Love puzzles, and so do a few members of my group. My excitement dulled, however, when I saw the actual puzzle. "That's it?" (reddit)

I felt that a simple gesture based puzzle using clear humanoids was going to be far to simple and so I set out to create a more detailed and exciting puzzle. I succeeded, and have run this same puzzle in different contexts for 3 groups since then with success. Without Further Ado, here is the puzzle. (It requires a functional visual aid to be produced for it to really work, I'll give advice on that at the end.) (reddit)

"You come to a door, on which you can see several engravings. They Look like this: (The original door puzzle, with 3 changes- the lines are in a circle contained in the larger circle, and there are divots at each of the corners where the line gets larger. I also included small guide arrow markings after each divot to help guide them. Unlike the original, direction matters.) (reddit)

Below this design are several more features. 3 glass orbs are ingrained into the wood, looking closeley, each has a curved arrow inlaid inside. The glass is dark right now. (reddit)

Beneath those, a wooden roller is embedded into the door. You can see that is has numbers engraved around it, and should you "spin" the roller it would allow you to present different numbers. (The rollers are currently locked, they are unable to spin the dancing poses, etc). (reddit)

The puzzle beings as normal for Van-Richten's- you do a dance, beginning at the first pose. As they do it, the divot next to it lights up in a soft white glow. As they follow the arrows, and preform the next pose, the divot lights up a different color. The interior of the puzzle (the one with the guidelines) spins faster than they can see (direction= whatever the gem above the spinner points, either clockwise or counter-clockwise), and comes to a rest in a new location, with the divots aligning to different poses. At this point, the first gem lights up, and the roller unlocks. The correct number to be selected is equal to the number of positions the indents changed in the direction of the gem. So, if you rotated the lines 4 points clockwise, they need to roll it to a four. Once they do this, the little light glows a nice color to tell them it was correct and the spinner locks. Note: This can never be greater than "8", becuase an answer of 9 is the same as 1, due to the number of poses. (reddit)

In order to proceed, they will need to do the next pose on the spinner According to it's new position. The indents stay lit up, and so they need to do the next pose that is not lit up. The second one they do (4th total) will set off the spinning again and unlock the second roller. Repeat until the puzzle is done. (reddit)

I will go ahead and note here that there are punishments for getting the puzzle wrong- but only at certain times. Trying the roller, for example, and discovering it is locked, does not result in punishment. In order to receive punishment, you have to do the wrong "thing" of the right "type" of the phase you are one. So doing the wrong pose when you are supposed to do a pose, or choosing the wrong number at the number phase. Posing during the number selection does not result in punishment, nor does exploring the puzzle in other ways (like pressing on the gems). In my game, the punishment was being paralyzed in place (often a silly pose due to the puzzle) until the puzzle was completed or reset. This led the group to sacrificing members to figure it out. Once everyone was paralyzed, lighting did some damage and the puzzle reset. (reddit)

This puzzle was been a massive hit with my group due to it's complexity, but also it's learning curve. Many groups may not get through that first section on the first try. But, as they figure out the pattern and get better at it, they get the satisfaction of mastering it by the end, usually completing the last roller in complete confidence and feeling success at their fingertips. While this seems relatively simple when described as I have, I wouldn't be fooled- I haven't had a group pass it in less than 45 minutes real-time. (reddit)

For the Physical Aid, I cut two circles and used a pushpin to secure the smaller one so that I could physically spin it. A used a rectangle sheet of paper and drew the likeness of the lower half, but did not write numbers., Instead of spinning the rollers, I had them write the number they spun in to on the "Front" face of the roller. I used colored pencils so color the changing glow of the vertices and gems throughout. (reddit)