Riddle Rooms #1 Dungeon Dilemmas is a generic sourcebook for use with any role-playing system. The book is perfect bound with perforated pages so that the many handouts can be removed and given to the players. The handout pages, starting on page 33 are only printed on one side. While these ‘blank’ pages may bother some people, they make it very easy to give your players information for the current room only. The binding seems solid but may become an issue if you decide to photocopy the appropriate pages instead of tearing them out.

What’s Inside?

The fist two pages of the book give details on the books layout and short but complete instructions on how to understand the data in the rooms section. The index is next followed by the individual room sections. The player handouts come at the end of the rooms section.

There are 20 rooms described in the book each containing a riddle (to be solved mentally) or a puzzle (that requires some dangerous physical action by the players to solve), one room contains both. These rooms are designed to be set inside a ‘dungeon’.

Each room is description is laid out in the same format;

1) Icon(s) of a door, treasure chest, or person that tell you at a glance what solving the room reveals. 2) A description of the room to read to the players, which includes the riddle. 3) Game Master notes that give the answer to the riddle with detailed instructions on how the players may solve them. 4) A list of the People, Monsters, and Treasures that may be found in the room with appropriate notes for each item.

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5) A note on any items the characters must have to be able to solve the room. (Usually something common like “the ability to make fire” or “an arrow”.)

The riddles and puzzles vary in complexity but are generally not too tough and work out to be a short answer like ‘fire’ or ‘gold’. There are also one or more ‘hand-out’ pages for each room. These pages contain a copy of the riddle and other relevant data such as a layout/floor plan of the given room. The maps and pictures are very serviceable black and white line drawings. Some of them could actually be cut out and used as game tiles but the grid is slightly less than 1” per square.

After the 20 defined rooms, there is one “riddle item” that is designed to allow the players to find and solve pieces of it throughout an extended campaign. The book finishes with 5 additional riddles, with short answers, for you to create your own rooms and use as you see fit.

Style

I could almost give this item a 5 for style except for two things. The first is minor but I would have liked some kind of difficulty rating system that could have made selecting rooms for a given situation a little faster. The second issue is more of a problem; most, if not all, of the riddles and puzzles are English language intensive. In one case you need to know that “the mirrors of your soul” refers to your eyes. If English is not your or your players first language then phrases like this may cause problems.

Substance

This book is a lot of fun and in my opinion well worth the cover price. The only reason that I can’t give it a 5 for substance is because even though it is a ‘generic’ source book it makes some assumptions about the game world. For example, one room is filled with perpetual fire, some real and some illusion, which assumes that illusions exist. So, given the nature of the rooms in this book, they will probably work best in an old school dungeon where the players are not going to take the time to wonder who created the riddles and why they are there.

Conclusion

If you want to add a few riddles to a classic dungeon crawl this is a great way to do it.