Phantom Paths
Phantom Paths is a mirrored motion puzzle that requires collaboration among three players. Ready to be inserted into pretty much any dungeon or setting.
This puzzle consists of a tiled etching. The surface initially looks like normal tiled stone, but with three symbols (uppercase) engraved on one end. Replace A, B, and C with arcane symbols of your choice.
Standing on a marking (uppercase) causes it to glow with an inner light. A shadow-copy of the activating player appears in the opposing space (lowercase), and the tiles under both the player and the copy begin to glow. Three players must participate in this puzzle.
Two spaces in the grid are permanently activated; these begin to glow whenever the puzzle is started.
A player may navigate the grid by moving forward, back, left, or right to a neighboring unactivated tile. The shadow-copy mirrors their movement, moving left and right with the player and towards the player if the player moves forward and away if the player moves back. If this motion would cause the shadow-copy to leave the grid or enter an activated space, it makes no motion instead.
If the shadow-copy and the player would enter the same, unactivated space, then the move is invalid and the puzzle deactivates.
If the player enters an activated space or leaves the grid the puzzle deactivates.
When the puzzle deactivates all shadow-copies vanish and all tiles cease to be lit. Players must re-start by stepping on the start spaces once more.
The puzzle is completed by reaching a state where all tiles are lit. What that does is up to the DM - unlock a door, activate a mechanism, etc.
A solution (non-unique) is shown below.
Some Variations:
A very easy reflective puzzle.
A straightup reflective puzzle with a barrier in the middle. Fairly easy.
A more complicated reflective puzzle.
A wide, somewhat complicated puzzle similar in structure to the original.
I'm going to have the door open to the capital letters. Across the room the images will appear but their pedestals will be raised up in the air. The floor between them is flat and level with the PCs. As the first PC steps on the the next tile it will elevate to be one step higher as the mirror image steps over the edge to the next tile that will shoot up out of the ground to meet him.
When everything is done, they will have a stairway that leads them to the next room, and completing the puzzle will open the door.
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? Responses (15)
Another nice dungeon room puzzle. Great visuals as usual help. I got it all on the second read-thru. Those gray boxes are key.
This was the last thing I read last night before passing out, so naturally I dreamed of it. Somehow I ended up battling my shadow-twin as we lunged from tile to tile, but that's a different story.
I remember when the 'ancient modules' all had at least one such puzzle room to solve in every dungeon. Miss those.
designing puzzle rooms is not a strength of mine as a gm, so I can greatly appreciate your skill at creating them.
Mageek the Puzzle-Master!! More!!!
There is a definite lack of puzzles on the Citadel. This fills it in, and like Muro said, this is excellent and totally old school.
A very neat puzzle and easy to understand with the pic illustrations. This might just be me but how does the pic before the solution come about? I thought that if player b turned onto an activated grid (one of the grey cells) which I presumed was that move that he made, the puzzle would deactivate but in the pic it showed that the shadow player B would step onto the mirror grid to the always-active grey grid?
Update: Updated text per Moonlake's comment. To clarify, the uppercase squares are the marking on which players step. The lowercase spaces are the opposing ghost squares.
oh I see, I got it the other way around. Ah it all makes sense now.
Thanks for the comments guys!
I made the graphics using Tikz and can post the source file if anyone is curious.
Outstanding puzzle. Bonus for introducing me to Tikz.
Great graphics makes it easy to follow along. Well done!!
You could probably add this to the Old School Quest if you so desired. It would fit in there wonderfully.
I was looking for something _just_ like this. Awesome.
4.5/5 Outstanding!!!!!!!!!
Update: Testing whether gifs work - should make the solution more clear.
Would like to put up several alternative problem configurations of varying difficulty.
wow, great stuff here - surprised I missed it first time around.
And the use of GIFs... Cool!
Update: GIFs work!
I posted some puzzle variations.
Wow, the updated graphics are really cool (like Val said)!
Update:
re-uploaded images