Design better traps. When you treat a dungeon puzzle like a rigid math equation, your game grinds to a screeching halt the second your players get stuck. You end up handing them the solution out of sheer pity, and the pacing of your entire campaign falls off a cliff.

In this video, we break down the three laws of narrative puzzles, how to embrace open-ended design by letting your players’ creativity do the heavy lifting, and the four essential steps to a better, interactive trap: The Bait, The Trigger, The Cage, and The Mechanism.

Time Stamps:

0:00 – Introduction
0:43 – Title Crawl
0:50 – Puzzles
0:55 – Keep it Relevant
1:07 – Context Matters
1:23 – Alternative Solutions
2:33 – Traps
3:04 – The Bait
3:26 – The Trigger
3:44 – The Cage
4:11 – The Mechanism
4:50 – Recap