With Myst being 25 years old this September (24th but maybe this should launch on 24th/25th) I'm inspired to do something inspired by that kind of puzzle game, not based in the Myst worlds as I've already given myself the challenge of learning all about Mennara (it's much harder- sometimes and surprisingly- learning all the lore etc of an existing setting versus creating your own as your own doesn't have all that extra research.)

This could lend itself to different types of worlds, maybe based on a novel I've been plodding away at for some time- it has a rich vein of potential to be mined for an RPG.

I like bringing in an idea from Myst though that the players could actually play a part in creating the worlds they experience, even seeding new ones (in Myst, ages - the 'worlds' of Myst- are written) so might use my take on this- the novel's set in a virtual world that's used for everything from academic research to social interaction to gaming (luckily not the same as 'Ready Player One'- was really worried that movie was going to kill off my ideas in an OK, it's been done now kinda way, but thankfully the two are quite different, the only overlap being the gaming aspect).

And of course the puzzles.

What do people think about this idea and how would you address the challenge of bringing player creation of worlds/environments and having to solve puzzles (often in Myst you can only get to or unlock things needed to access new places by solving puzzles which can be anything from codes to diverting water flow to using nature......) in to an RPG?

For some background on Myst (I would really like a Myst RPG, its makers should do one or FFG should work with them or get the rights to do one for Genesys. That would be epic on a legendary scale.):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst

http://dni.wikia.com/wiki/Myst_(Game)

Myst 25th anniversary and #Myst25 (they do have a fan fiction based community goal so maybe it might be dubiously OK for a fan RPG but I'd prefer to see an official, really well-made, on canon one)

As far as creating new worlds, I'd make a new worldbuilding skill and give it a few purposes, probably along the lines of: making new worlds, understanding the cornerstones of existing ones and perhaps "hacking" existing ones.

Then I'd use some sort of crafting check inspired from the magic system, make a list of diffrent effects the world may have and state how it affects the dicepool, upgrades in dif, adding purples and blacks etc. If i remember correctly stability of the ages was a thing in Myst lore, so taking some undesirable effect into your world could make it easier to write and so on.

Atrus never knew exactly what kind of age he'd end up with, so I'd compile a list of tables with "effects" in the world and group them into tables representing the diffrent dice symbols, and roll on the appropriate tables for the symbols generated on the crafting check. Either that or just add effects based on what the players are trying to accomplish. As an example, if a player is trying to create a world they want to use as a vacation resort or whatever, they might want a world that's almost always sunny and has nice weather. But they've generated a despair while creating the world, so they've created a world that's always sunny, but it NEVER rains so they have to solve the problem of getting water to their resort. That's my initial thoughts atleast.

Regarding puzzles in RPGs, I'd say it's fine and dandy as long as you have a group that likes to solve puzzles. Since a puzzle only works if the person solving it accepts the inherrent limitations posed by the puzzle, you might run into a Gordian Knot problem if your players are unwilling to do so. I don't use skill checks to solve puzzles, instead, I give out clues to the players based on what skills they posses and how much intelligence their characters have. If you're going to use puzzles as content gates and you're not letting your players solve the puzzles, you might as well just put a locked door before them and give them a set of lockpicks, but that's just my personal opinion.

I'm also thinking with puzzles and worldbuilding a few possible points

1. Although in Myst you had to solve puzzles through (often a combination of) trial and error, testing and checking and finding clues/ brainstorming logic, and you could build that into an RPG so that those players who wish can solve them the old school puzzling way, the puzzles are effectively only switches - the puzzle's solved the switch is on, it isn't solved the switch is off (or vice-versa), or sometimes it's the combo of options that determines the current status or statuses of something. So unlike the games, puzzles in an RPG can have alternatives that can both be built in and left to what comes out of the dice and the roleplay of the results.

Thus there are most likely different ways of resolving the puzzles beyond those you'd have as a character (player) in such games, the character in an RPG might be able to solve a puzzle without needing to solve a puzzle using any of various skills that fit what's available in that place, be it asking someone, waiting for someone else to 'flick a switch' as it were, say it's a puzzle that makes a bridge to cross a ravine perhaps finding some other way (which is a kind of lockpicking- it's been designed with the puzzle to cross it as a kind of security barrier, but is there a way without the puzzle or tampering with the bridge), that kind of thing, or maybe even a slower 'long way round'- anyone designing such a setting would have to decide the rules and think about how they might be broken (even if you don't want them to be breakable your players might try so not considering this and allowing potentially for alternatives gets quite railroady), if it's a force field round something or a similarly effective barrier maybe it has less (and more difficult) alternatives, it would be up to the designer of the setting how difficult they wanted to make things, and of course if their players were OK with it should they choose the 'have to solve the puzzle' heavily railroaded approach.

If they did I think the puzzles would have to be simpler than some in these kinds of games, and if there were any big 'core puzzles' they'd have to somehow break down into smaller, simpler parts- games like the Myst series and that series especially have some very complex, sometimes multi-switched, puzzles that are just way too knotty to work in an RPG- some of them took me a fair few hours to crack and others I'm still going back to and scratching my head over, so you'd want something most players would at least have a chance of working out and not over many hours of frustrated pondering.

You could always link them to session bonus XP and have the option to pass narratively if they've really hit a dead end, perhaps then they've dropped a bonus XP point but it's one way you could avoid an unsolved puzzle locking the players in a location should that be a real possibility in your setting, or allow a story point spend for a 'eureka moment - hey we finally sussed this out' (with a little help from the GM) progress point, there are others but again it's however you'd want to design such a setting. "I know it's 3a.m. but we want that extra XP. We're not giving up just yet. Hmm, how's your strain doing?" : )

2. Again as it's an RPG and you're giving the players a world to explore and interact with you don't have to make every world-link puzzle a conundrum to crack, some of them can be gifted to the players and there ready to make use of (basically in games logistics they're just portals!) and keep the puzzles for where they're most interesting and fit the story development/progress. Plus in the same ways players can access the initially unknown information of an adventure as I've suggested you've got all the options you might wish to use such as willingly or otherwise getting the information from someone, reverse engineering a key part of a mechanism, searching for stuff and finding something useful such as the plans, maybe even defeating a nemesis and finding they carry something to remind them of the solution to one of the puzzles- their own kind of 'password prompt' if you like, that might just be the moment the penny drops with what else the players already know, a GM could decide the players have enough to solve a puzzle and ask if they want to finish the jigsaw themselves or have the GM do the Agatha Christie and explain how this new information unlocks the puzzle. This way the players are neither being forced to solve a puzzle where they really don't want to nor conversely being given the answer in full where they'd actually quite like to do the brain work themselves.

3. I like your idea of tweaking magic for the worldbuilding skill a lot (I'd actually not thought of that) as it is (cue Queen song) a kind of magic being able to make worlds that are actually real- you could probably do a lot of interesting things game-wise with that, and as with the different kinds of magic in RoT there could be different kinds for the different kinds of worlds you get (in Myst worlds had a sort of flavor- a core style that made them unique, so one might be nature and wildlife, another based on metals and minerals etc) There are many ways to utilize this and give the players some choices- do they specialize or go for balance at the expense of ability levels? As with magic if you're a novice, your end result might be a bit imperfect, even if you're an expert it probably won't be flawless. If you're totally unskilled you're not even going to make a basic world.

4. But worldbuilding can just as easily be set up to be 'findable' in the same way as puzzle solutions- you find ancient instructional texts or art or get tutored by someone etc (again a reason your 'tweaked magic' idea would work really well for this.) If you decided that was the case you'd need to balance it out so that this didn't make it too easy, and probably tie it in with developing the skill/talent set so that you still need to build up some sort of understanding of what you're working with.