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Puzzles

During free play, player characters can earn XP via the completion of puzzles. In Last Odyssey, a puzzle is a task that requires a significant amount of thinking on behalf of the players to solve, as opposed to the player characters solving it within the narrative or through another of the game’s mechanics. In terms of XP, each puzzle is divided into stages, which are discrete problems that the players have to solve in order to advance to the solution. Each time the players complete a stage of a puzzle, they will earn 5 XP, both as a reward for clever thinking and also to indicate that they are on the right track. Here are a few examples of possible puzzle stages:

• Persuasion. When the player characters need to convince someone to do them a favor, this counts as a puzzle. The solution to the puzzle will be an argument that wins them over. GMs should think about what the character being persuaded wants, and what sort of tactics might make them more or less likely to come over to the players’ side.
• Cryptography. Decoding a message or interpreting a set of symbols using logic is a classic RPG puzzle. GMs might provide the players with a written sheet of paper to decode, or finding the key to the cipher might also be a matter of discovering Lore.
• Object A/Object B. Finding the correct object, piece of information, or person to interact with another object or person in order to create a particular effect is an object A/object B puzzle. Examples include finding the combination for a padlock and figuring out how to douse the fire in a flame trap.
• Riddles. A riddle, in its most abstract terms, is a series of obtuse or abstract clues that hint at the players needing to perform a specific action or set of actions. The difference between a riddle and cryptography is that riddles are not meant to be decoded, but rather understood metaphorically or through wordplay.
• Hide and Seek. When the players have to figure out the location of a hidden object such as a trapdoor or hidden lever, this counts as a puzzle stage. There should be some way for them to find it based on environmental clues. Noticing these clues can be the subject of an investigation roll if necessary.

Clues for solving puzzles can be gathered via investigation rolls. In this case, the result of an investigation roll does not constrain the number of clues that players can uncover, but rather the number of clues that their characters are able to uncover without direct player narration. Once the players have asked questions as a result of their investigation rolls, if they want to uncover more clues they will have to do so entirely via in-character roleplay. For example, if a trapdoor is hidden underneath a rug, and players do not find evidence of it as a result of an investigation roll, they can still do so by narrating how their characters search the rug. There should not be a point at which players are unable to learn more about their environment through additional actions, regardless of the results of any rolls they have made.

In reality, most stages of a puzzle will count as more than one of the examples given in this section, so GMs shouldn’t worry too much about strictly assigning a category to each one they create. When creating a new puzzle, the GM should decide how many phases there are in advance, and also come up with at least one canonical solution for each stage. Players will earn all of the XP involved in completing a puzzle regardless of their solution.

In some cases, players may attempt to brute force a puzzle via a skill challenge or combat. For example, they may try to defeat a guardian in combat rather than answering a riddle, or use Emotion to persuade someone rather than making a good argument. If the GM deems it possible, all of the rules for combat and skill challenges apply as normal, but players will still earn the same amount of XP as though they had solved the puzzle normally.