So here's the situation. My acolytes are currently held prisoner along with another set of acolytes and their inquisitor on board an Adeptus Mechanicus vessel. This specific vessel belongs to a rogue order of the Mechanicus known as The Order of the Matrix Lost . They're not too original in that they exist to hunt down and aquire archeotech. They have no qualms whether the tech is xeno or not, nor do they care who gets in their way. Their symbol is a skull covered in circuitry, overlaying a swashtica. In my next session the acolytes will be making their escape, and obviously will be having several encounters with combat servitors, hereteks, and flagragants(sp?), but I also wanted to split up the action with some puzzles. The way I figure it lore-wise, is the order values intellect above all other attributes so their mobile headquareters is designed to rely on this. As such the vessel has been departmentalised so that sections can only be accessed if a puzzle is solved. The higher in the order you are, the more advance puzzles you're able to solve, and more secretive parts of the ship are at your disposal.

Now I've never been very good with integrating puzzels into my campaigns, but I'd really like to get some in there fore variety. So, I was wondering if anyone would have any suggestions of puzzles I could use, or give me some advice on how to come up with my own. One factor needs to be kept in mind though, time is of the essence, as our session is tomorrow night.

I assume that you want to use puzzles rather than riddles which unfortunately restricts your choices a bit. The main problem with puzzles (or riddles for that matter) is that the persons solving the puzzles aren't always as smart as the character they're playing are supposed to be, so something that should be rather easy to solve for the character might just baffle the player. To solve this problem you could uses puzzles that require intelligence or logic skill tests, such as giving them a holo-rubik's cube that reqire a predetermined number of consecutive successes, or the classical 4 black bishops and 4 white bishops (the chess pieces) puzzle. The drawback of using puzzles like that is of course that they are not as immersive and interesting in an RP setting as something the players really have to think about and discuss with eachother.

I love puzzles and riddles myself and have often used them when I'm running RPGs, so if it were those kinds of puzzles you had in mind I can always suggest others as well. And did you plan to use skill tests or just relying on the players wits to solve them?

what i tend to do if i am using puzzles is give it to the players, if they struggle to solve it then i may give the player whos character has the highest Int a little hint. I tend not too use puzzles too often as it can sometimes slow the game down too much. I did have one good puzzle that stumped the players for almost 90 minutes, even with me giving them a few hints.

I had a good puzzle that i actually programmed as a flash game, i'll see if i can find it kicking around in my files somewhere and post it if i do.

A short trip to your FLGS, or just a toy shop, for Brain Training Puzzle type things.

Cubes that dissasemble and reassemble in a different combination, 3d star things that need to be taken apart to "access" the center, say, where a key is placed or a code and so on.

And hen theres Soduku and Kakuro as well...

Well, I did mean brain teaser puzzles not riddles. The way I figure it, it should be some form of puzzle that would have the group using critical thinking to solve. I wasn't going to have them do int checks to see if they knew each step, but I wouldn't be against giving them the option to try a difficult roll to get a hint or a step. The shapes puzzle idea is good except that it requires giving them a physical example outside of the game which I feel would detract from the experience. Perhaps some form of math-based puzzle. I have been taking a course this semester in Graph Theory which has had some interesting possabilities.

On a side note, I'm very interested in hearing about the chess puzzle, as I'm unfamiliar with it. Also any other puzzles would be welcome.

You could try Kenken. It's very similar to sudoku but requires a fair amount of simple math to complete.

The 8 Bishops works as follows:

4 bishops on either side of a 4x4 chess board, white on one side, black on the opposite. The purpose of the puzzle is to move the white bishops to the black side, and vice versa. The bishops may only diagonally, just as in chess, and they may never be place on a diagonal line that a bishop of the opposite colour occupies. The puzzle was used in, among others, an old computer game called 7th Guest, here's a video link of a possible sollution to the puzzle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CzjvR6F13s (the puzzle starts at 6:15)

There are other chess-based puzzles as well, such as "The 8 Queens", in which you must place 8 queens on a regular 8x8 chess board and no queen may share a line with another, that is in any direction the queen may normally move. It doesn't sound very hard, but people can get stuck on it, and if you're using some form of time constraint it could get rather frustrating.

Many science magazines have brain teasers in them as well, so if you have any lying around you might want to search through them. Most popular is number series puzzles, math puzzles, and shape puzzles like you might get in an IQ test. Here are a few I found after a quick glance through my collection:

Which is the next number in the series:

1 11 21 1211 111221 ?

Answer: 312211

Why? The system works like this: every number (with the soon to be obvious exception of the very first) describes what the previous number looks like. 11 means "one 1", 21 means "two 1s", 1211 means "one 2 and one 1", 111221 means " one 1, one 2, and one 1", therefore 312211 means "three 1s, two 2s, and one 1". It would be easier to explain in my own language because of some slight differences in how we refer to numbers, but I hope you understand what I mean.

Here's an easy one:

If 1 = X, 2 = C and 3 = M, then what is: 3/2 + 2/1 = ?

Answer: 20

Why? Because X, C, and M are the roman numerals for 10, 100, and 1000, so 1000/100 + 100/10 = 20. Should work in the 40k universe since they obviously still use roman numerals.

Another fairly easy:

What numbers should replace A, B, and C?

3 9 A

B 2 2

C 5 6

7 8 2

3 5 10

9 1 9

Answer: A = 2, B = 11, C = 5

Why? Because the rows should add up to 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19. The last three should be an obvious clue to that.

And another, a little harder, or more correctly, a little more time consuming:

(There should be lines connecting every circle with every other circle around it) Place the numbers 1 through 19, each in its own circle so the sum of each horizontal and diagonal line is the same.

O O O

O O O O

O O O O O

O O O O

O O O

Answer: from left to right, top to bottom 18, 17, 3, 11, 1, 7, 19, 9, 6, 5, 2, 16, 14, 8, 4, 12, 15, 13, 10. There are 12 possible sollutions to this but they are all rotations or mirror images of the same. The sum in each line is 38.

Oh, and here's a fun little math puzzle I found:

http://thinks.com/puzzles/bubble-puzzle/bubble-puzzle.htm

Those are great! I came up with a couple last night myself. Granted, they're nothing great, but I think they're challenging enough to get the point across.

The first puzzle plays off the order's insignia and I call it the Four 6's

6

6 o 6

6

This display appears on a data display next to the door. The hint the players recieve from the person helping them out is "These teste shall lead your through many twists and turns." Essentially each six can be rotated clockwise. The optimal configurement is with the point of each six pointing away from the spoke at the center. Once this is accomplished the circles of the sixes merge onto the spoke forming a form of swashtika, and opening the door.

The other puzzle I based on the primary colors (for electrical displays, since this is a Mechanicus ship) where there are six statues with a screen on them. Each statue holds two orbs of the same color. Two statues hold two red oirbs, two hold two blue, and the last two hold two green. The displays of each statue is the solid color of the orbs that they are holding. The hin the players recieve is "When al are individual, the whole shall light the way."

I call this the Orb Spectrum. Essentially the players have to mismatch the orbs until they get all six colors of he primary spectrum, red, blue, green, yellow, magenta, and cyan. The screen on each statue will change its color accordingly. once all are displayed, all the screens will turn white and the door shall open. The twist is they have to figure this out without talking because there are a pair of blind Gun Servitors patroling the area and will fire on the sound of voices.

Then I also decidedc to use the 8 Bishops as well. What do you guys think, do the two I came up with sound challenging enough, or do you think they're too easy?

They both sound good. But I think you can expect the Four 6s to be solved fairly quickly, even if they don't consider the clue, when they see that the 6s can be turned they'll most likely start to form patterns and may accidently solve it through simple trial and error. With a puzzle like this I would suggest that they'd have to push a button to confirm each pattern they want to guess is the correct (maybe that was your idea all along) but also that they'll have certain number of tries before something nasty happens.

The Orb Spectrum sounds harder, and could certainly be difficult, especially if they won't be able to talk about it.

Seems like some interesting puzzles. Another video game that had some good tech puzzles was system shock 2. Several of the puzzles dealt with a 'wire' diagram that you had to reroute power from one side of the diagram to the other.

Salcor

There's a new Nintendo DS game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, that is apparently full of logic puzzles and brain teasers. There are also a number of books on the subject that you can find at your local library/bookstore. You might also look for something in an issue of "Games" magazine (although it features more crossword-type puzzles than anything else).

Math sequences are good, but you should space them around a room or complex of rooms, to make them less obvious. For example, you could number doors in an area, and make the safe (or relatively safe) passage through a complex lead through doors 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, etc. (i.e., prime numbers). A puzzle like this allows for characters to blunder through, if they can handle the damage from traps, security devices, etc., without knowing the sequence, but if they're perceptive, they get through with less difficulty. For more perceptive players, you can change the sequence (Fibonacci, musical scales, hyperbolic curves, etc.). I would suggest leaving some hint in the surroundings or in the character knowledge/briefing.