How to solve it
Concentric engraved rings sit around a lens, with a fixed window at the top. Each ring has one marked glyph. Line every marked glyph up under the window and light floods the lens.
Nothing is hidden. You can see every mark and every gear. The trick is that the rings are geared together, so turning one ring turns others along with it, sometimes the other way. Working out how they're linked is the puzzle.
- Turn a ring by dragging it around the centre, or use the turn buttons beside it. It clicks round one notch at a time.
- On the keyboard, each ring has its own slider that the arrow keys turn.
- Press the keystone to test the arrangement. Set back undoes the turns you've made since the last press.
A ring that lines up lights its beam and a gem appears beside it, so you always know how many are aligned. Press the keystone while any ring is out and the rings grind, you lose an attempt, and the rings stay where you turned them. In a puzzle everyone can operate, there's no keystone. It opens the moment the last ring lines up.
Two things help. Gears don't chain, so turning ring A moves ring B, but B's own gears don't fire. And the order of your turns never matters, only how far each ring turns in total.
Setting it up
- Rings runs from 2 to 6 and Glyphs per ring from 4 to 24.
- Engravings are constellations, runes or alchemical sigils.
- Gear links are the heart of it. Each link names a turning ring, the ring it also turns, and by how many notches. A negative number turns the second ring backwards. Bookwyrm refuses gear setups that would leave some arrangements impossible to reach.
- Scramble is how many notches the rings are thrown out of line when the puzzle starts, from 1 to 60. Every scramble can be undone.
- Marked glyphs are yours to choose when you write the solution. A generated solution picks them at random.
- Clue is optional text shown to the party.
Difficulty sets the rings, glyphs, links and scramble together, from 3 rings with 8 glyphs and a single link on Easy to 5 rings with 16 glyphs and 6 links on Deadly. You can also turn the rings to the answer yourself with Set the solution by playing.
No skill check helps here. This one is for the players, not their characters. When they're stuck, Rule out a wrong option releases one gear link, and its gear fades away. The DM's view of the puzzle shows exactly how far each ring still needs to turn.
Where it fits in a campaign
- The observatory lock. A star-map door in an abandoned tower. Line up the constellations that were overhead the night the wizard vanished.
- A gnome's practical joke. A Deadly set of rings guarding a broom cupboard. Every link turns two other rings, and the cupboard holds exactly one very good broom.
- The planar compass. Each ring stands for a plane, and the marked sigils for the party's destination. Get the alignment wrong and the portal stays shut. If you want it to open somewhere worse, run that from the puzzle's outcomes.
Running any puzzle
Every puzzle type is built and run the same way. The guide above covers what's particular to this one.
Write it once
A puzzle is a compendium entry. Create a new Puzzle in one of your compendiums and choose its type. The form has four tabs. Overview holds the type, a spoiler-free flavour line, an optional cover image and the settings below.
- Who operates it is one player driving while the party watches, everyone operating it, or you operating it while players watch. You can always operate it yourself, whatever you pick.
- Difficulty is Easy, Medium, Hard or Deadly. Changing it rewrites the settings that tier controls and leaves your solution and text alone, so pick a tier first and fine-tune afterwards.
- Solution is either written by you or generated each time the puzzle is placed. Generated is the default, so players who own the puzzle can't look up the answer. Reroll the solution each session gives a recurring puzzle a fresh answer every session.
- Limits set a maximum number of attempts, a time limit (with the option to show players the timer) and a lockout. With a lockout, running out of attempts locks the puzzle for a while. Without one, the puzzle fails.
The other three tabs are Mechanism, which holds the settings described above, Hints, where you write up to ten hints to reveal from the board when you choose, and Presentation, for the skin, the title, an intro and the text players see on success or failure.
Put it on the board
At the table, open the Puzzles tab in the dock and drag a puzzle onto the map, or click it to drop it in the middle of your view. That makes a copy for this table only. Its progress lives with the table, and the compendium entry stays untouched. Most puzzles sit on the map as an object. Pressure plates and rune sequences can also lay tiles on the scene for tokens to step on.
There's no separate step to start it. The first player to touch it starts it. In single-driver mode, that player takes the controls and everyone else watches every move live.
Run it live
Right-click a placed puzzle for the DM's controls. The most useful ones:
- Reveal a hint and Rule out a wrong option for a party that's stuck.
- Open it by magic (Knock) or Force it open when a spell or a crowbar should simply win.
- Give one more attempt, Pause the timer and Reset.
- Approve the solve or Reject the solve, with an optional reply, if you asked to approve solves first.
- Set up… to change this table's copy and choose what happens When it is solved and When it fails. Outcomes can open or unlock a door, reveal a token, object, handout or another puzzle, play an effect, post to chat, roll damage or start combat.
Skip the minigame
Not every table wants to play every puzzle. Set a placement's Just roll option to Always and the puzzle shows a single Roll to resolve button instead. Players roll the puzzle's Just roll skill against its DC, which defaults to Investigation at DC 15. A pass solves it and a fail costs an attempt. Set it to Never to make the party play it out.
