Do some DMs just wake up and wonder how best to inflict their unique brand of suffering upon their players? There are plenty of options, but what might be the worst for your specific group? It’s not the combat slog, or the scheduling collapse. For this group, the real agony begins the moment the DM says:
“There’s a puzzle.”
Because nothing fractures a party faster than a riddle. Dragons unite a group. Puzzles expose their deepest incompatibilities. A puzzle is the psychological equivalent of tipping a box of mismatched Lego onto the table and asking six people to build a cathedral. It’s not a challenge. It’s a stress test.
The DM Who Loves Puzzles Too Much
Oh, Every group has one. Picture them now, just beaming with pride as they describe the mechanism. They have diagrams. They have contingencies. They have spent more time designing this puzzle than the entire rest of the dungeon. They say things like “It’s really simple” and “You’ll get it immediately,” which are the DMing equivalent of saying “Don’t worry, it’s just a small favour.”
They are wrong.
They are always wrong.
The Player Who Solves It Instantly (And Makes Everyone Hate Them)
This is the worst person at the table. They stare at the puzzle for three seconds, shrug, and say, “Oh, it’s obviously a substitution cipher based on the lunar calendar.”
They are correct. They are insufferable. The DM beams. Everyone else contemplates murder.
This player doesn’t mean to be smug. They simply exist in a different cognitive dimension, one where riddles are fun and not a form of psychological warfare.
The Player Who Overthinks Everything
Give them a simple lock and they will invent a conspiracy. They start drawing diagrams, and asking about the tensile strength of rope. They start referencing lore that does not exist. “This must be connected to the prophecy,” they say, about a door that opens when you pull the handle.
They are not helping. They are generating lore fan‑fiction in real time.
The Player Who Underthinks Everything
This might just be the barbarian who says, “I punch it” to every puzzle, every time.
Riddle? Punch it.
Magical lock? Punch it.
Ancient dwarven mechanism? Punch it.
And the worst part is: sometimes it works. Nothing breaks a DM’s spirit like watching a lovingly crafted puzzle get solved by blunt‑force stupidity.
The Player Who Panics
This is the one who immediately decides the puzzle is impossible. They immediately begin to spiral and catastrophise. They insist the DM is being unfair, saying things like “We’re going to die here” and “This is just like the escape room incident,” which raises questions no one wants answered.
They contribute nothing except vibes, and the vibes are bad.
The Party Meltdown
God, it’s all so predictable. It always goes the same way, and I hate it:
- Five minutes in: curiosity.
- Ten minutes in: frustration.
- Fifteen minutes in: accusations.
- Twenty minutes in: someone says “We should have brought a wizard.”
- Twenty‑five minutes in: someone else says “We should have brought different friends.”
By the thirty‑minute mark, the puzzle isn’t the problem anymore. The puzzle is a mirror. And the party does not like what it sees.
Stop Putting Puzzles in Your Game (But Also Don’t)
Look, puzzles reveal the truth. You are not a cohesive adventuring party, You are six incompatible operating systems trying to run the same program. D&D sucks because it forces you to collaborate. Puzzles suck because they force you to collaborate efficiently. You suck because of deep-seated flaws in your terrible personality.
The thing is, puzzles can also be hilarious. There’s nothing funnier than watching a group of people who can slay actual gods get emotionally defeated by a wooden door.
If you wanted harmony or emotional stability, you wouldn’t be playing D&D.
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