Arcane Lock is a supplement book with many different types of riddles, totaling over 200. They are ready to put into your game with no prep work. The book also has step-by-step instructions for how to make your own riddles for each type, as well as tips from a professional Dungeon Master.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of Arcane Lock. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

Review:

Arcane Lock is a collection of riddles and puzzles for TTRPGs. There are hundreds of options to add some intellectual challenges to your role playing game. The puzzles are designed to be easily dropped into any campaign. I found the collection to be simple to use and unique enough to provide real value to my campaign. 

The book starts by giving a rundown of how to use riddles in your game. I found this section really helpful. It provides some good context to consider before putting riddles and puzzles into your game as well as practical advice on how/where to place them in the world. One important piece of advice was not to lock away content that is critical to the plot behind riddles. Riddles and puzzles should always be optional, with opportunities to earn cool rewards or shortcuts. 

There are 5 main sections of the book which each detail a different type of riddle: 

Classic Riddles are your typical “What am I?” type language riddles. These are pretty straight forward, but I did appreciate the presence of some riddles specifically referring to fantasy RPG standards like gold and silver piece currency values. 

Kobold Circles are a word spelling puzzle that uses a graphical representation. I found these very fun and think they have a lot of potential. They allow you to implement word riddles of varying complexity. Once your party understands how to use the circle it opens up a lot of room for interesting riddles and puzzles. And it feels very arcane and mystical. Handing one of these puzzles to your party as a handout is sure to pique their interest. 

Environment Challenges are ideas on how to make any encounter more interesting by adding environment elements like quicksand or a frozen mist. None of these are really encounters by themselves, but they add flavor and variety to an existing area and give the players one more thing to think about as they navigate an encounter. I think these would be most helpful in combat to add an additional element that keeps things interesting. 

Alchemy Puzzles involve selecting the correct ingredients to create a potion. The players are provided with a list of alchemy ingredients that each have 3 attributes. Each of these attributes help to categorize them in different ways like roots vs seeds. These attributes can then be used to give clues about what ingredients are needed in a given potion. Players are given a series of clues and have to deduce what items to add to the potion. I found this to be very fun to figure out. It is a very thematic puzzle that makes players feel like they are wizards or alchemists mixing toxic brews. 

Math Cross Puzzles are basic math problems that are arranged vertically and horizontally similar to a crossword puzzle. These challenge players by presenting math problems that also have a spatial element. Personally my game group hates math and these felt a little too much like homework. But they do present a unique challenge, for the right group they might be fun. 

Review

Overall I think this book is a good supplement that is nice to have. I will say that there is a lot of free material out there on the internet for riddles and puzzles that you can put into your game, so this book is by no means necessary. But it is nice having a large amount of useful content quickly available in one place. The Kobold Circles and Alchemy Puzzles specifically are pretty unique puzzles and I haven’t found anything really comparable online. So if those sound interesting definitely check out the Kickstarter. 

As of writing the Kickstarter Campaign has ended, but late pledges are enabled so it isn’t too late to get your copy.

Do you find that you’re missing too many reviews as we drop them? Provide your name and email below and we’ll keep you in the know of what we reviewed that week as well as other hot news!!!!!