Zak

I believe Mandy.  

If you're reading this blog, you're probably already familiar with the people that have come forward in condemned Zak, but just in case, here's Vikva, Patrick, Scrap, Cavegirl, Skerples, Fiona, Kiel, and Kenneth Hite.  

Add me to the list, I guess.  I'm cutting ties with Zak, and I encourage you to do the same.  

I've dragged my feet because Zak was one of the first people to welcome me to the OSR, and because of all of the good discussions that evolved around him.

Those are good traits, but it's possible to have a few good traits and many shitty ones.

Zak is a manipulator and a narcissist.  He is very good at arguing people down.  I'm not referring to anyone else's allegations--I'm saying this based on my personal experiences, and nothing else.

After Patrick's Fuck All of You post, I wrote a few thousand words condemning Zak's behavior.  I also talked to Zak about it, hearing his side of it, and he eventually talked me out of posting it.

So here's a quick recap of that unpublished post:

Zak likes to divide people into a binary of rational creatives and insane people who don't contribute anything useful.  This is ridiculous and reductive.

It's good to hold people accountable for their words, but Zak has taken that instinct to the extreme by demanding that everyone answers all his questions to his satisfaction, or else admit that you were trolling all along.  Also ridiculous.  

And lastly, he always insisted that rational speakers paid no attention to tone (since definitions of tone were variable), even when it dipped into arrogance and abuse.  Anyone who argued otherwise was doing so in bad faith.

He strives to turn conversations into a strict dialectic, with rules defined by himself.

Zak also wins many debates by sheer attrition.  At a certain point, you realize that it's just not worth sinking another hour into an internet argument.

. . . anyway.

What to do now?

If you believe Mandy (and the other victims): support them.  Say something.

If you want to hear Zak's side of it: here it is.  I don't believe it holds up, but you should still read it as part of the truth-seeking process.

If you want to talk to Zak directly, I don't recommend it.  Debate is his preferred battleground.  I'm not advocating that you don't seek out the full story--just recognize that Zak will distort and spin things.

If you are one of the gleeful trolls looking for an opportunity to shit on Zak: hold your fucking tongue.

If you are Zak: I dunno, man.  You've got a lot of good ideas in your head.  Stop viewing everything as a combat to be won.  There was a time when you were less aggressive, less controlling, and I think a lot of that online harm can be rectified someday.  (I can't speak about the offline actions.)

If you want to know more: click those links up in the second paragraph.

If you want to build a better OSR community: 

• This week's lesson is to never tolerate abusers.  More broadly, don't tolerate shitty people who are making your community worse.  The shittiness very quickly outweighs past actions and contributions.

• Hold people accountable for their statements.  Ask for sources.  Research your own claims.

• Cite sources.  Give people credit.  Especially artists.

• Post something.  Even if you don't think it's that good, I guarantee that it will be of use to *someone*.  Don't denigrate reviews or remixes--those are also extremely useful things.

• Talk to people that are writing stuff you are interesting.  Bang ideas together.  Collaborate on something.

• If you see something that sparks joy, reshare it.

• If an online comrade hasn't posted in a while, check in on them.  It helps keep the community alive, and even if it doesn't, everyone appreciates a friendly voice.  I'm not just a name at the bottom of a blog post--I'm a human.  And so is everyone else on your blogroll, on G+, and on Reddit.

I know G+ is dying soon, but we aren't.

And whatever strange form the OSR takes in the future, I know I want to be a part of it.

Some Traps

Chris wrote up a list of some traps that don't suck.  I'm going to write some more, since that seems like a good thing to make a list of.

What makes a good trap?  

It should follow good OSR principles (similar to the obstacles post I wrote way back).

• No obvious solution.
• Multiple possible solutions.
• Solution depends on common sense (rather than system mastery).
• No specific tool required (no McGuffin, no singular spell, etc).

What is a trap?

A trap can be obvious, such as an open pit.  With obvious traps, the puzzle becomes how to best get across the trap.  Traps don't have to be difficult.  Easy traps can be fun, too.  AND easy traps can become weapons that you later use against monsters in the dungeon.

Obvious traps are probably the hardest to write, and the most fun.  They kind of blur the line between obstacle, puzzle, and trap.  An obvious trap needs to have (a) a reason to engage, (b) a visible mechanism, and optionally (c) an explicit risk.

A trap can be surprising, like a subtle pressure plate.  With subtle traps (where the PC is likely to stumble into it) make sure that you give the player a chance to react before the trap goes off.  We want to give the players interesting choices to make, not just tax their HP.

A boulder rolling towards you is good.  You still have options.  Compared to. . .

A subtle pit trap in a random location sucks.  It sucks because the "solution" to them is to spend your time tapping on the floor with a pole, or pouring out water and seeing if it seeps between the stones.  (I know there is a whole branch of old-school play that enjoys this style of play, but it's never appealed to me, since I believe that there are more interesting ways to challenge players.)

Where should subtle traps be hidden?

Please don't hide them willy-nilly.  Putting a pit trap in the middle of a well-traveled corridor threatens verisimilitude (since aren't orc patrols passing over it every thirty minutes?)

Place traps in logical places.  A kitchen cabinet is probably not going to be trapped, but the chest in the shaman's room probably is.  

If you are going to hide damaging traps, try to build up to them.  Telegraph the possibility before the traps appear.  Before you have complicated double pit traps and slides, it's good to have a room with a small pit trap (to inform players that hidden pit traps exist here).  Or better yet, a room with a broken (exposed) pit trap.

You don't have to telegraph the danger, just the mechanism.  

For example: a lever might open a hole in the ceiling, dumping spiders down onto whoever is below.  A smart party will pull the lever with a rope lasso from 20' away.

This is a good trap.  A player who dies from spider bites will (hopefully) sigh and say "I guess I deserved that.".  

That's what you want from a trap.

Some Traps

Not all of these are technically traps.  Some are just interesting dungeon features.

Horrible Hallways

1. Wall of fire.
2. Zone of unconsciousness.
3. Climb a diagonal shaft, rotating.
4. Crush hallway.  Find a way to survive the crush, or at least move really, really quickly.
5. Portcullis that slams shut to split the party.  You can reunite 1-2 rooms away (don't split the party for too long).
6. Obvious pit trap.  The correct path is hidden at the bottom of the pit.
7. Insanely hot hallway (or room where you have to perform some activity).  Anyone trying to sprint through it unprotected is probably going to burn their feet and die.  Things that reduce damage: being soaking wet, air circulation, walking/standing on soggy leather.
8. Subtle pressure plate.  The trap triggers when weight is taken off the plate.
9. As above, except there are several pressure plates in a row.
10. Goblin barricade staffed by several bow-wielding goblins.

Wretched Rooms

1. Obvious trigger: taking the sword off the pedestal.  Two copper spears shoot out of the wall, impaling an incautious explorer.  A round later, lightning begins to arc between the spears.  A round later, the room begins to fill with water.
2. Poisonous gas seeps from a crack in the wall.
3. Lake of acid.  Get to the island.
4. A dripping wet door.  Opening it floods the room with ancient, rancid water and 3 zombie sharks.
5. Lock that can only be opened at a certain minute each day.  Adjacent, a lock that can only be opened at a certain minute each week.  Adjacent, a lock that can only be opened at a certain minute each year.
6. Archway.  Anyone who passes through it is transposed with a ghoul in a nearby room.
7. Climb a frictionless wall.  (Have fun collecting large furniture.  Shitty tables are treasure now.)
8. The floor of this room is laminated with symbols of disintegration.  If a symbol is touched, all non-stone material in the room will take 3d6 Con damage each turn.  In the room, an (unsupported) pedestal with a stone McGuffin on top.  In the ceiling: spiders and spiderwebs.
9. Everything appears distorted in the mirror.  Humans appear to be orcs, swords appear to be hammers, etc.  The trick is to notice that the pen appears to be a key, and the mouse skull appears to be lock.  Inserting one into the other will cause the door to open.
10. Huge wooden bowl, lined with thin, insoluble gold foil.  Filled with horrible, fuming acid.

Obnoxious obstacles

1. The magic stein can only be carried by someone who is colossally, totally drunk.  They have to carry themselves--no one else can help them.
2. Carry a baby out of the dungeon.  No, carry ten babies.
3. When the lid of the sarcophagus is placed back on top, the bottom of the sarcophagus opens.
4. Sign says "teleporter" but it's really just a big blender.
5. The dragon is sleeping!  Steal things quietly.  (Common sense: it's quieter to carry a chest away than it is to open it, a sack of coins is guaranteed to clink, etc).
6. As above, except some goblins just showed up.  They want to kill you quietly, but if the dragon wakes up, you're all probably going to die.
7. Crossing an underwater lagoon.  Hope you brought a canoe.  Of course something attacks during the crossing.  A fast boat can escape it, a floating table is easily capsized.
8. Functional teleport brings organic material to one place, and inorganic material to another.  Allow teleported people to communicate this (possibly by shouting, roll for random encounter) so they can make a more informed decision.  An incipient threat hastens plans.
9. The door can only be opened in your dreams.  If you open it in your dreams, you can pass through it in real life.  While your body sleeps on the altar, it is inhabited by the spirit of an ancient wizard.
10. Before you can run through them, you need to observe the swinging pendulums to determine their pattern.  Anyone observing the pendulums is hypnotized by them, staggers safely through them, and begins to self-mutilate by dancing in the middle of all of them (1d3 damage per turn).

d14 Trapped Chests

Trapped chests.  A classic feature of the dungeon, and yet one that is often as much fun as spilling a box of cereal.

I'm writing this post under the assumption that you're running an OSR game, and that there is no Perception or Disable Device skill or whatever.  All traps and shit like that is done with the old-fashioned "I like under the rug." "You find a trap door." method.

(Digression: Finding and disabling traps is a goddamn dungeon staple.  It's bread and butter.  And yet Perception + Disable Device is the shittiest fun way to handle it, because you're just throwing those skills at problems like a robot.  It becomes a test of the character sheet, rather than the player.)

First warning: before you start throwing trapped chests at your players, make sure that they know that trapped chests are a possibility in this place.  You can warn implicitly, by throwing some gently-trapped doors at them early on, or showing the corpses of people killed by trapped chests, or explicitly, just by telling them "You heard that dwarves often trapped their funereal chests."

Second warning: no pixel-bitching.  Having players exhaustively search every chest they find is exhausting.  No surprise there.  Make the clues obvious.  Make the solution obvious.  And by obvious clues I mean "give them the information they need easily".  And by obvious solutions I mean "solutions should be apparent that they are solutions."  (Especially with traps, which sometimes carry big costs for failure.)

Shark Fact: traps don't have to be hard.  They don't have to kill players.  They can (and should) but a trapped chest can be an enjoyable experience even if it doesn't fuck people up.  It's okay for a trap to simply be an interesting feature, or an interesting decision.  

1. Skeleton slumped out in the hallway.  Needle sticking out of the keyhole.  Covered with some blackish grease.  (This is poison.)  Chest cannot be opened until the needle is pushed back into the keyhole and the trap reset.  A player with a shield or gauntlet could easily push it back into the keyhole.  The poison needle could also be broken off; this yields a useful poison needle, but makes it awfully hard to unlock the chest (since you have to push the mechanism back into place).

Shark Fact: This first trapped chest is pretty harmless, but it's interesting.  An accurate investigation of it (or a successful Disable Device check) will yield the information about how it works, but the players still have to decide for themselves if they want to break off the needle or push it back in.

2. In a room with a metal floor, a stone plinth holds a copper chest.  The chest is electified, of course.  Just knock it off the plinth with a quarterstaff.  (Live wires run up through the center of the plinth.)

Shark Fact: Chests often contain fragile things like potions, scrolls, and art objects!  Each of these has a 50% chance of breaking if the chest is smashed open or dropped!  Yay!

3. There is a chest on a plinth.  A pressure plate beneath the chest is triggered when the chest is picked up, or if it is lightened.  The trap can be thwarted by putting items in the chest of an equal weight.  Anyone who starts picking up the chest or emptying out its contents will hear the mechanism start to click beneath the chest, and will have a chance to put the put it back down.

Shark Fact: Give your players the benefit of the doubt.  Unless they tell you otherwise, always assume that they are doing it carefully, slowly, and observantly.  (If you are using the old rules where it takes a 10-minute adventuring turn to do anything at all--this is why.)

4. After opening the chest an inch, a tripwire is visible on the inside.  If the chest is opened more than an inch, the wire is tripped and the vial of flesh-eating gas inside the chest is broken.  (This isn't really a trap, it's more like a second treasure.  What's the chest going to contain that's cooler than a pre-made flesh-eating gas bomb?)

Shark Fact: Even though you are giving your players the benefit of the doubt, there's still going to be some idiot who announces "I'm going to open the chest as fast as I can while standing behind it!" or "I'm going to throw it down the stairs!" so don't be too sad; your flesh-eating gas will probably still get to kill someone, even though that isn't its primary purpose.

5. Chest is full of bee golems.  Or just one big bee golem.  It buzzes angrily when you shake the box.  And if you open the chest, you can shut the door in time if you win initiative.

6. Chest is part of a support pillar.  Smashing the chest will collapse the pillar, and bring down the whole ceiling.  Attempting to pick the lock and failing will have the same result.  There's a key later in the dungeon, but players are pretty much guaranteed to be hasty and fuck it up anyway.

7.  Chest is covered in green slime.  Chest is made out of a highly explosive ceramic.  (You might want to preface this one with evidence of exploded chests, or even better small containers made of explosive ceramic.)

8. Chest stinks of chemicals.  It is full of acid.  All of the treasure is metal.

9. Chest is a chest of non-detection.  Always appears empty.  Actually contains gems and shit.  (Alternatively, contains a ghoul assassin taking advantage of the chests effects.)

10. Chest of contrariness.  Chest has a tinted glass window that allows you to see it's contents.  When the chest is open, the contents become locked in a force field.  The chest is solved by just leaving it closed and then reaching through the (now intangible) window.

11. Chest is only visible in a mirror.  To open it, you must insert the key into the keyhole (by watching yourself in the mirror).  The chest is silver and awesome looking.  There is also a fake chest in the room, covered in blood and spikes.  Inserting the key into the false chest causes it to shooting out ninja stars.

12.  Chest is chained to the wall.  Beside the chest is a bloodstained butcher board, complete with a cleaver.  (The chest is actually a mimic.  If you feed it some tasty meat before you approach it, it will let you take items out of it.  It'll probably purr while you do it, too.

13. Wall of gripping metal hands.  Hands will only allow you to take an item if you give them an item of the same time.  For example, they won't release the magic sword until you give them a different sword (of any time).  There is at least one item that is difficult to replace (like what do you have to give them in order for them to release the creepy doll)?

14. Chests with particular opening conditions.  The blue chest covered in painted fish can only be opened underwater.  The chest depicting witches flying over a clock can only be opened at the witching hour (between 3 and 4 am).  The chest covered in painted birds only opens at the touch of a bird.  (You can invent a million of these, I bet.)

Building Houses for Murderhoboes

This is partially a response to Zak's essay about murderhoboes over here.  It's very good.

I agree with that post.  You can have murderhobo games with excitement, drama, and epic arcs.  Murderhobo games need to be recognized as a successful, independent genre, not just "the kind of game you when you try to play Lord of the Rings and fail".

from here

Murderhobo games aren't essentially bad, but they are different.  In this essay, I want to talk about (a) what makes them different, and (b) how to accommodate murderhobos..

This is why people don't like murderhobos:

• Murderhobos often act unheroic, selfish, and/or cowardly.  If the DM expected his game to generate Tolkeinesque behavior, the DM's genre expectations have been frustrated.
• Murderhobos often pass through the game without interacting with much of it.  They are only interested in things to kill and/or steal.  If the DM expected them to talk to the innkeeper and learn about the innkeeper's cursed pony, and they passed it by, the DM's expectations are again frustrated.

I say "the DM's expectations" because the DM is the player who has the most (they wrote/prepared the future paths they game might take) and has the most to lose when those expectations are not met (all that prep work), but really, any player at the table can be discontented, even one of the participating murderhobos.

This is only a problem if the people (a) wanted their game to generate something more Tolkeinesque, and (b) if the game doesn't accommodate their murderhobo playstyle.

If you are DMing a murderhobo game and don't want to be DMing a murderhobo game, you could try:

1. Talking to your players like fucking adults.  A horror module isn't going to be scary unless the players let themselves be scared a little.  This requires them to stop making Monty Python quotes and dick jokes (just remember that there is a cost to sacrificing levity at your table).  Talk what the goals are for both the game and for their characters.

This is the best option and I cannot recommend it enough.

2. Make sure that their actions have consequences.  Innocent people die.  Innkeepers charge extra.  Shopkeepers won't let them in the store (because what sane person would?).  Consequences are important in any game, but if you are using them as a stick to beat your players back into line, be careful you aren't being a dick about it.  

3. Mechanical reinforcement.  The nuclear option is to only award XP for roleplaying or story goals.  This rarely works as well as the DM expects.  At a certain point you might be better off switching to a different system.

4. Accept it and run with it.  There are a lot of things to recommend a murderhobo game.  

• The game is player-driven, because players have a lot of autonomy in what they want to do and how they want to do it.  
• Characters are free to die, because the game is less about their personal story arcs and more about the situations that they get themselves in, and this allows you to keep death as a real and ever-present threat, like any good adventure story.  
• And players are forced to rely on their wits, because pre-plotted games are incapable of challenging player's wits (since you can't give players logic problems they can't solve) and murderhobos usually get themselves into exactly as much trouble as they can barely handle.  (I'm assuming that there is more to do in your game than just combat.  If you're playing 4e or something I don't know what to tell you.)

Now, if you are DMing a murderhobo game and want to DM the best fucking murderhobo game you can, here are some things you can do to accommodate those murderhoboes.  You gotta build a house for 'em.

1. Murderhoboes are like water; they run through the fingers of the plot.  This is why your game world needs to be engaging as fuck.

Make it personal.  The plot cannot be about saving the world, because murderhoboes don't want to save the world.  It needs to be about the PCs.  The heavy handed way to do this is to make it about saving themselves, because murderhoboes always want to save themselves.  This is an option, just remember that you don't have to make it deadly, you just have to make it personal.

Rival adventuring parties are a great way to make it personal.  Opening the chest and finding a mocking note instead of the Emerald Eye of Zuul will chill even the embittered soul of a murderhobo.  And there's a lot of satisfaction to be found later on, when prying a fat emerald from the cold fingers of your dead rival.

2. Make the NPCs more like noir characters.  Everyone wants something from the party, and everyone has a secret (sometimes trifling, sometimes important).  

The whole world needs to have hooks, and NPCs are great motivators, because they are free agents with goals of their own and means to achieve those goals.  A powerful noble that wants them to come to dinner and refuses to take no for an answer.  Someone from the PCs background shows up, recognizes them, and takes immediate action.  PCs who are targetted by a mass pickpocket campaign that is something much greater.

And yes, these are just adventure hooks, but they are sharp adventure hooks.  They stick their hand right into your pocket and rummage through your chestnuts.  They aren't just "some farmers saw a thing, go talk to them" or "here's a handbill with a bounty on it".  Make the hooks things that the players cannot ignore.

3. Give adventure no matter where they wander.  Random tables can help with this.  This may lead to the party feeling like the world is insanely dangerous and full of treasure.  This is correct.

Murderhoboes will often flee from overwhelming odds with no significant reward attached.  This is normal and human and you would do the same thing.  Just don't expect them to be committed to a certain plan of action the way that some idiot like Superman would.  And there may be consequences: someone else will loot the dungeon, or the village may burn down and all the villagers transformed into moaning worm-people.  That's okay.

This is why murderhoboes are better suited for sandbox-style gameplay.  It does require more flexibility from the DM.

4. Give them things to do that aren't limited to the heroic.  Heists, NPC assholes who need to die, rumors of great treasures, a death curse that is slowly turning your heart into treacle.

Find out what they want and then give them a clear path to it.  Was the party impressed by the airship flying overhead last session?  Show them an airship that they can win/steal and make them work for it.

5. Give them things that they can't fight or steal.  Negotiating with a superior force is always fun.  When the goblin armada says, "Give us 75% of your treasure or we'll kill you." the party sometimes comes up with interesting solutions.  Or have Strahd invite them to dinner, and make it plain that there will be terrible consequences if they offend their host.

6. Keep the risks high, and the rewards high.  When in doubt, escalate both.

1d124 OSR-Style Challenges

I while ago I put out the call on G+ for some OSR-style challenges.  These are obstacles that meet the following requirements:

• No obvious solution.  (Straight combat is always obvious.)
• Many possible solutions.
• Solvable via common sense (as opposed to system mastery).
• No special tools required (no unique spells, no plot McGuffins at the bottom of a dungeon).
• Not solvable by a specific class or ability.  

These have a lot in common with lateral thinking and thinking outside the box.  They usually require some off-label solution (something not printed on your character sheet) and therefor benefit from a ruleset that supports rulings (as well as rules), which is why I consider them OSR-style problems, although there is nothing that really limits these types of problems to OSR games.

I originally just imagined dungeon-type situations, but a lot of the suggestions involved social and moral challenges.  Overlap exists.

All of these are open for your usage, so steal away.  Credit for ideas at the bottom of the post.

1. There's a circle of mushrooms with a girl inside it.  Everything inside the circle of mushrooms will do everything in their power to get more people inside the circle (no save).  The girl is already their thrall.
2. There's a tiny octopus inside your stomach and it's biting you.
3. The bad guy cannot be hurt by any weapon forged by mortal hands.
4. This glass sphere (3' in diameter) is filled with gems and horrible undead snakes.
5. The party needs to climb this wall. There's a field of unconsciousness halfway up. Anyone who climbs through it passes out, and then revives fully healthy as soon as they leave it.
6. Carbuncle turtle. You need to pop the gem out of its forehead, but the turtle clams up as soon as it sees you. If it ever takes even a single point of damage, the gem crumbles into worthlessness.
7. This good cultist sacrifices a virgin every full moon to assuage the Demon in the Pewling Pit. Stopping the sacrifices will unleash the Demon's fury on the nearby town of Wattledaub. (does this count?)
8. The cowardly, but good, headman of Village A asks the party to stop the headstrong, but good, headman of Village B from raising a righteous revolt against the tyranny of the Knight of the Black Mace, because the Knight would probably just massacre all the villagers of A and B with his legion.
9. This treasure chest only opens when it falls at least 1000' vertical. Alternatively, a strong giant could hammer it open or something. Contains a mattock of titans.
10. This chest only opens when it is inside a stomach. Inside is a livingstonetree nut.
11. An enemy wizard is immortal because she magically obliterated the possibility of her ever actually dying.
12. The only person, who could teach you the spell you want, was turned to stone by a curse 200 years ago. The only way to break the curse is a kiss by his/her true love. Who died 180 years ago.
13. The room is proofed against magic. The door only opens when a bowl is filled with water from a spring down the hall. The hall is long, vented to volcanic heat, so the water will evaporate before reaching the bowl.
14. In the Chamber of the Turtle every turn you can move only half as far as you moved the last turn.
15. The shadow-creature beckons to you from the other side of the mirror. When you peer in from the left or right you can see extra rooms, doors, people. This room/dungeon is otherwise a dead-end and you have not yet found the artifact for which you search.
16. The door only opens when sunlight shines on it, even a tiny amount. The door is on the second floor of the dungeon. Maybe try mirrors?
17. Visible key on the bottom of an acid lake.
18. The sage stone only awakens when it hears the call of a paralophasaur, who have been extinct a long time. Blowing on the skull might work, if you have a skull. An imitation learned from someone who has heard one before might work. Time travel might work. Druids have ways of reviving dead species.
19. A second Ancient Evil/Dark Lord offers PCs their aid in destroying another... but this will leave their new 'ally' in a far stronger position.
20. There is a shrine full of murdered monks on the side of the road, just tucked back into the woods a little bit. In the back of a shrine is normal cat, locked in a cage. One monk still clinging to life tells the pcs that the cat is actually a terrible monster/demon/whatever but it was cursed. If cared for like a kitty king, it will die in 3d4 years of natural causes. If left uncared for, it will change back into a demon.  Do they take the cat? Leave it? And who was just here killing all the monks anyway?
21. The honorable orc clans and the alcoholic hill giants are meeting to discuss a truce. IT MUST NOT HAPPEN.
22. Ogruk the Flatulant, a hill giant bandit, is known to wear a paralophasaur skull around his nethers. His pet dire honey badgers, Cruncher and Humpy, will run away in fear when air is forcefully and repeatedly propelled through the skull (because they have learnt their lessons). However, blowing air through the skull requires an escalating series of saves to avoid collapsing with nausea (the vile stinkyness is "baked" in hard). If this happens the little bastards will rip the hapless and vomiting player to bits. Companions can carry nauseous comrades away, but they will also have to carry the skull as Cruncher and Humpy will not abandon it within sight of Ogruk's corpse. The corpse will quickly decompose and, eventually, explode attracting 1d8 + 2 other dire honey badgers whereupon a frenzied and viscous fight for dominance and mating rights will begin, ending when only 1 disappointed and confused dire honey badger remains. It will then lurk in the vicinity of the skull and attempt to mate with any living thing that passes within sight. The likely outcome is death from significant blood loss.
23. You have to cross a mud flat to reach <your goal> before <your opposition> does. You have no boats or rafts, and no clue when the flood is coming in.
24. Morlock books ignite when exposed to light. You must find a way to read them. Darkvision is insufficient. Possible solutions include true seeing, exploiting differences between the ink and the paper (specific heat, adhesion to another dye), transmutation into a more stable material, or the painstaking and risky process of just sitting in a dark room, feeling the letters on the page.
25. A porcelain sculpture, 20 beautiful angels all supporting each other atop a a pinhead 20 feet on the air. (Like the brige in Shadow of the Colossus, or that thing where 20 people sit in each other's laps, in a circle). Could be solved with immovable rods, covering the floor with trapeze artist nets, or just a lot of carpentry to build supports.
26. The ice bridge is rebuilt by the ice-tilter every evening. Every night it is covered with sticky super spider cemen(t). Every day it melts.
27. A long underwater tunnel. Level one solution: pig bladders full of air.
28. Two titans are blocking and important path with an immense, esoteric game of strategy. They say you can pass once the game is done. The second titan has been deliberating their third turn for 79 years.
29. A giant glyptodon guzzles gasoline in the ghostly glen, claims it is the firewater and wants more to let you pass.
30. A witch has is the only person with access to important/valuable knowledge. While generally reasonable and willing to negotiate, everything she truly values is terrible (or icky at best).
31. Treasure is guarded by a huge, ferocious, and narcoleptic monster. It sleeps pretty soundly, but not that soundly.
32. Followers of a niche cult are sincere, good, and upstanding, but their god is a mindless automaton with a chance of going berserk and murdering everything it can find.
33. There's an enormous gem in a volcano temple. Removing it will make the volcano erupt. There's a pleasant town with famous hot sprints on the slopes of the volcano.
34. A richly decorated temple, absolutely opulent. Just encrusted in gems, gold, statues, and other highly valuable things. But practically zero mobile wealth. And the temple is in regular, active use.
35. A richly decorated temple, absolutely opulent. Just encrusted in rhinestone, foil, replica statues, and other beautiful but not very valuable things. The temple opens a portal hole to the Philosophical Egg of Croesus when a True Priest of the Rich Hegemon makes the proper sacrifice. The temple is abandoned as all the True Believers of the Ascenscion of the Self Through Labour and Artifice were slaughtered in the Deathcult Crusades two-hundred and two-score years ago. For some reason, the temple has not decayed since.
36. There is a ghost pumpkin, it is so small and cute and sad. SO SAD
37. What can change the nature of a man? Is it drugs? It's drugs. 
38. The gate to the diamond room of diamonds is closed by diamond ghosts when intruders approach. They are blind themselves but can see through the eye of any non-sentient animal within 2 kilometers that is fly-sized or bigger.
39. The beast's hide is impervious to all weapons, including magical ones.
40. One thousand ultrarare jewels that self-annihilate if they touch another jewel.
41. The monster automatically copies (no save) every spell in nearby casters' minds, and will cast them as soon as possible.
42. The door's pneumatic workings run on saltwater. (Use the salt from preserved meats? Teleport to the sea? Use tears?)
43. This dude! He cannot be hurt! And he has ALL THE STUFF YOU WANT BUT he can be hurt but no weapon that has not struck a death blow by the hand , fin or paw of a dumb beast
44. Gold dust is mixed in with flour or corn or something - lots of it. The total amount of gold is actually pretty high, but nobody will take it mixed with other stuff.
45. Speaking of flour, part of the dungeon is the hobgoblins' mill - the air of it and several rooms around it are filled with flour dust, making open flame extremely dangerous. No problem for the hobgoblins, who use darkvision anyway.
46. The treasure is large, cumbersome, and edible (like big wheels of cheese or outsized mushrooms or slabs of rare mammoth meat), and the place is infested with things that eat that treasure (mold, rats, hyenas, whatever - preferably small and numerous enough that if the party tries to just stab every one individually, they'll have a bad time).
47. The ogre tribe is ready to let you pass their teritory. But only if you leave one party member behind for dinner.
48. The treasure is a new cultivar of potato, resistant to the Seven Blights of the Lean Cows.
49. Magic tomato seeds that send a tomato stalk up to the top of the magic mountain.
50. The Prophet of Vision: Has true sight (e.g. can see invisible, etc.) and has power over everything she can see. Is guarding something important. (So like... can only be hurt by stuff she can't see)
51. The medusa has retreated to a room where she keeps SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS MONSTERS she has petrified. Kill her, and they will all come to life. But you can only get THAT THING YOU NEED if she is out of the way.
52. The Tomb of Time: In these cursed tunnels, anything, or any external part of a thing, that moves faster than like a snail ages at a massively accelerated rate. Put simple, innocuous hazards like a 3m chasm or a muddy, steepish riverbank in there. Add gelatinous-cube like things, or timeless, magical beasts. Swinging a sword a few times means your arm emaciates etc. Also don't blink.
53. Low ceiling'd cave, large pool of lava. Treasure is on the other side. Lava too hot, ceiling too low to climb over. Ropes, organic stuff, catch fire when close to lava for too long. Adding sufficient water to solidify the lava creates enough steam to liquify the people. Lava is sucky and sticky - even resist fire types likely to get stuck/drown.
54. Any damage done to your evil double is doubly done to you. But the double has a tiny octopus in its stomach that is eating away at its insides. Your double cries in agony using your voice and prepares to throw itself in the sea to escape the pain.
55. Halls of Forfeit: Each door requires the sacrifice of a living humanoid eye, hand, or tongue to open. Each door has a little grate so you can see what's on the other side. Each door automatically closes after 3 rounds.
56. The Silent Grotto: The water and rocks here are arranged in beautiful, noneuclidean arrays. Any sound will cause reverberations that will destabilise, liquify or disinitegrate the source of the sound. Louder sounds are more likely to destroy themselves, tiny sounds may only cause mild damage.
57. There is a sword in a stone that only the true king can draw, OH WAIT that whole family died because of an asshole vizier.
58. Cross a moat filled with crocodiles.
59. Symphony of Limbs: In a secluded chamber, The limbs of three hundred creatures play a haunting symphony on makeshift instruments of stone and bone. On a nearby throne, the Worm King schemes, writhing to the music. Anything hearing the songs will have their limbs slowly turn on them, one at a time. Enchanted limbs will do what they can, including separating themselves, to join the choir of limbs. Excess limbs in the chamber will defend from incursions, attempting to remove earmuffs and plugs and such, grabbing, tearing, bludgeoning...
60. Mute room - no noise works in this room. Among other effects, characters (and their players) can't talk. Throw in a fight or a countdown of some kind so that they can't just take as long as they want writing conversations. And maybe something that they've gotten used to solving with a common spell.
61. Important Quest Treasure was created in aeons past, before humanoids crawled from the dreams of animals, when Bears were Kings. Treasure can only be carried by a Bear. Bears want to keep the thing.
62. Mud god. Stats as a level 3 fighter, can only be permanently killed by things that would kill a god. Everything he touches turns to soft, wet mud, eventually spreading to any wagon that he rides in. Bring him 200 miles to the king, who desires an exotic execution for his unfaithful, lowborn wife. The mud god is scared of fire.
63. Only under the full moon, at midnight, will the Ghost of the Pheasant Queen of Charmingwood appear. In the ages since her life, the woods have grown older, and the stains of man and death have left their mark. At night, ten thousand undead sparrows hop, stalk, and wing through the woods. They do not accept the living in their wood, and they cannot be easily fought. They flee only natural sunlight, and will locate anything in the open in D100 seconds.
64. A tinderwisp knows the secret to the thing, and must be taken to it. She is captive in a deep, dark place, locked in a crate. Any nearby fire will turn her to ash and smoke, dead, to be reborn in another age. Any nearby magic will release her to the winds and leylines, and she will be lost. (If fire or magic gets close, roll 1D100 - if the roll is > than the distance in yards, she is lost).
65. The Akashic Stone: A simple stone, wrought from the fabric of time. Any who speak in its presence lose their memory, and will likely go mad. It is in a distant, dangerous place. A sage needs it to answer some question about something important for your quest.
66. Curse Of Terror: Develop a phobia of the next thing you touch, or are currently touching.
67. Harlequin's curse: Anything solidish (soup, but not beer) that you put in your closed mouth becomes a tiny jester or harlequin of similar size, and it is in the middle of a performance.
68. Infernal Atrium: Any metal within these halls will turn to lava in D100 seconds. Also there is lots of fire and lava in here, and things that set wood on fire, etc.
69. Rare and delicious honey with mild pyschedelic properties useful to magic types. Not only are the hives way up on a mountain (like these: http://www.espritsciencemetaphysiques.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1200x6002.jpg) but the bees are insanely poisonous and aggressive.
70. Half the dungeon is in the astral plane, and successfully navigating it requires moving around and manipulating objects in both planes. Guarded by scissor-happy monks looking for your astral cord.
71. For every five feet you walk in this tunnel, you grow five years younger. The tunnel is 200 feet long.
72. Your blood is replaced by liquid copper. You can bleed yourself for pocket change, and it "clots" faster, but you're being slowly poisoned and are even more conductive than usual.
73. The inhabitants of this city recognize a friendly, normal dog as their king. The politics of the city revolve around what can plausibly be claimed to be the will of the dog-king. Attempting to influence the dog-king is a capital offense.
74. After angering a trickster god, your party's normal spokesperson is unable to make an utterance without gravely insulting the listener. There's got to be someway to break that curse...
75. Bards.
76. Flooded chamber filled with breathable fluid. (Torches don't work here.) You need to read some runes. The only source of light are some horrible anglerfish fuckers.
77. King A has hired you to clear the field of suitors for Princess B, so Prince A can court her exclusively. You'll be paid handsomely once Princess B and Prince A are married. Halfway through removing the other suitors you learn Princess B and Prince A hate each other.
78. You;re offered a job stealing sentient inanimate object out of a castle where everything is sentient (and vocal). Is it kidnapping? How can you avoid raising the alarm when the damn rugs yell at you and the chairs want to engage in debates?
79. The map to the treasure of the Sierra Madres has been found! The finder has escaped from everyone who wants to kill her/him for it by taking sanctuary inside Doppelganger Abbey. You do have a flyer with his/her picture, though.
80. You arrive in a city that doesn't exist on any map. The language they speak is unrecognizable by even the most intelligent of scholars. And it turns out this city has a taboo against nonverbal communication. Even an attempt at charades will result in horror, distasteful avoidance, or possible imprisonment. 
81. You arrive in a village you had just left yesterday. Nobody recognizes you. Everybody speaks a language you can't understand. The cats look at you knowingly. Every day there is a 50% chance that one of the PCs faces becomes (1: the opposite gender, 2: smooth as an egg, 3: elven, 4: orcish, 5: genderless, 6: a mirror). At night, the moon now has glyphs inscribed on it.
82. Get a cat down from a tree without hurting it. It's on a tiny branch, too small to support a man's weight.
83. Cast a spell that is only castable when in freefall. (At least 6 seconds of freefall.)
84. The Iron Kappa Golem can only (easily) be defeated by spilling the water in its head, or else defiling it.
85. The Holy Paladin can only be defeated once he (or his armor) is defiled by sin.
86. Catch the dungeon snipe. It's extremely alert, runs away faster than you can move, and will not set off any traps. Other dungeon monsters will not attack it. At least it's no smarter than a typical bird.
87. The important magical thing has been eaten by a regular duck and there are lots of ducks on the lake. You need it by tomorrow night.
88. Get the treasure from the Hall of False Memories in the Dungeon of Circles. Avoid the ghostly horde of the legion of adventurers past. They run around the dungeon screaming and waving their swords and axes. As they are phantasms, they don't set of traps. They don't really notice living creatures, stuck in their own hell, but their weapons and trampling still cut the chords of life binding the living to the false illusion of the material world.
89. This bad buy can only be permanently killed if its corpse is ENTIRELY eaten within 24 hours of its death. Most people are unwilling to eat this bad guy.
90. In this dungeon, fire turns into poisonous black smoke (only illuminates 5') while noise causes the crystal walls to vibrate, creating illumination.
91. The thing you need is too heavy to move by hand, and the tunnels are too cramped to fit a bunch of people around it.
92. That bad-good penny can only be gotten rid of if it is willingly ingested by your nemesis. The bad-good penny, while possessed, gives immunity to disease, aging, wounds and death. But every 1d100 days one person close to you dies a horribly grisly and random death (no save). When there are no people close to you left, random intelligent creatures in your vicinity start dying gruesomely. Note that your nemesis counts as someone "close to you", so they may well die before you can get them to eat the bad-good penny.
93. An anti-gorgon must be kidnapped and returned alive. If she is ever seen, she turns to stone.
94. The dungeon-pyramid-castle was literally built around the platinum pyrocophagus of Mu Patuti. The platinum pyrocophagus is too big to take out through any one of the tunnels. Cutting it up destroys its magic.
95. Inside a room, on a table, there is the thing you want. Anything that enters the room is reduced in size: -50% for every foot into the room.
96. You must get Lucifer to wear this necklace. The necklace will hide its true nature from all of Lucifer's divinations.
97. Bad Guy can only be killed by the Child's sword. Sword can only be wielded by a child (age 11 or less). There may or may not be a few potions of youth nearby (reduce your age by 1d20 years).
98. The demon crown must be brought across the dungeon to the Slouching Forge. The demon crown possesses anyone that wears it (no save). The demon crown is capable of teleporting atop any head within 20'. The person wearing the demon crown has laser eyes.
99. The entrance to this dungeon is underwater, and you must not get any water into the dungeon itself. The simplest way is just to hire a bunch of villagers to drain the swamp, but there are many other solutions.
100. In this dungeon, if two people are ever in the same room, they begin taking small amounts of psychic damage each turn. Most of the monsters are immune to psychic damage. One monster is immune to everything except psychic damage.
101. One of these villagers is actually a master swordsman. Everyone in this village is dedicated to hiding the master swordsman's identity.
102. You must put the One Ring someplace where no one will ever find it, despite the fact that the Ring can gradually call people to it via psychic emanations. There is no Mount Doom.
103. An earth demon is feeding on the villagers through the ground. You need to get all of the villagers off the ground at the same time (get them all standing on furniture, or on roofs). Then the demon will emerge from the ground and you can stab it in the gonads. Evacuating the town also works.
104. Halls of Elemental Fuckery: In this subsection of dungeon, air functions like water, water functions like air, and fire turns into bubbles, and love turns into light. If you open a door and there's just a wall of water. You go in there and swim around, and you'll need to breathe from your water flasks. Acts of love generate light.
105. All of the surfaces of this dungeon are electrified metal. Touching them with a conductive material will shock your balls off. At the back of the dungeon is the switch to turn this off. Thick leather boots are an obvious requirement. Leather armor is a good idea if you plan to do any falling down. Water is impassable. Picking locks in leather gloves is difficult or impossible. 
106. Transport a very large number of balloons.
107. The bomb that will destroy your <reward> will blow up in a few minutes. There is no easy way to defuse it.
108. Six torches and a chest in the chronomancer's treasure chamber. Chests exist in 2 dimensions. Notes/speak with dead, indicate all reality is a shadow of true 6 dimensional space time. Lights in chamber can be adjusted, casting shadows from the 2d chests that are more real than the chests themselves. Also unleashes flat vampires. By standing in the chamber and adjusting the lights, PCs can empower their shadows to fight back. 
109. Friendly flesh golem's head is separated from its body. Body used as invincible weapon by troglodytes (they keep it on a long adamant chain). After finding head, pcs can question it to figure out the body's location (the head feels everything the body does) and re-attach. Head can't control body unless attached but won't attack anyone holding the head. 
110. Party enters an area of reality damage. Any steeds/pack animals become anthropomorphic, can now speak and are fully sentient. They see the characters as bosom companions and will not understand why they are shunned by right thinking folk. They want to fuck normal animals. Capable of reproduction.
111. Frozen in the ice, is a character's long dead mother. Holds important (but non vital) key in hands. If melted, will act as if nothing ever happened, cannot remember how they got in ice, etc. Will rot into skeleton mum in d12 months.
112. When a certain magical herb is smoked, the smoke becomes solid, as long as the PC remains positive. Can be used to form ladders, keys, weapons... any solid. But stay cool or you'll make something bad out of smoke. Or it'll vanish when the rest of the party are 500 feet up.
113. Paranoid tree requires every animal in the wood to have an identification numerical (they can all talk). Badger secret police. Paranoia caused by roots absorbing water from poison pool beneath tree. Loggers want to cut it down. 
114. Local tribe has religiously/magically important feast coming up. The PCs are invited as honored guests, which means they get the distinction of catching and cooking the main course - a giant crawfish big enough to stuff the whole village and a few neighboring ones too. As with their smaller cousins, these guys dig small tunnels in mud banks and are pretty likely to cause awful food poisoning if you don't cook them live. And they have big grabby claws and thick armor.
115. There is a snake that's seven miles long. It's breath is psychadelic. There is a powerful medicine in its small intestine that is only secreted while it is alive. This medicine is needed to stop a plague. Killing the snake destroys the medicine, this is known, for the medicine is spiritually linked to the living essence of the snake that's long seven miles.
116. A dungeon, ruled by two medusae. One's gaze turns to stone. One's gaze turns inanimate matter to flesh. There is a door that disintegrates living cells. Beyond the door, something sweet. Both medusae have problems. Stone never wants to use her power. Flesh hates her sister.
117. Race of cat people primarily recognizes things based on scent - sight is only good for telling you where things are, not what they are. Players need to track down a spectral serial killer that is visually distinct but odorless.
118. Figure out which of these three manticores is heaviest.  They live on three adjacent hills.
119. The king has hiccups but refuses treatment.  Scare him in a way that won't get you killed.
120. In three days, the God of Meteors will fly 20' over the mountain top going 300 miles an hour.  He sometimes slows down to get a better look at interesting or beautiful things.  Catch him, because his power is proportionate to his velocity.
121. A talking frog has taken a vow of silence.  You must get it to speak again.
122. A giant has become possessed by a powerful spirit of evil.  The curse is only broken when he laughs, but now he only smiles at tragedy and schadenfreude.  (Tickling him is a dangerous, but viable option.)
123. You learn The Artifact(TM) you need is somewhere in the elven village of Elfville. When you arrive they welcome you graciously and show you their sacred really old ElfTree(c), impervious to all magical harm and the lifeblood of the village. The tree is impressive, but not what you are looking for. After a few days in the village you discover The Artifact(TM) is in the heart of the tree, and in order to retrieve it you need to cut the tree down (not impervious to regular old axes). The elves may kill the human race, starting with you (they'll definitely kill you), if you harm their ElfTree(c).
124. A bunch of magic pools of various liquids.  Experimentation is required to identify the properties of each one.  Good examples are water, milk, fractal wine (causes instant drunkeness), deadly poison, acid, healing potion (loses magic 10 minutes after being removed from pool), purple dye, invisibility oil, transforms copper to silver, portal to somewhere else, lamp oil, green slime, apple juice.

If you like these problems, +Joel Priddy has put together a G+ group that is collecting even more of them.  You can find it HERE.

Credit for all of these ideas belongs to:

+Luka Rejec +Jeff Russell +Handy Haversack +Reynaldo Madriñan +Trent B +Anders Nordberg +Ben Milton +Michael Julius +Rob Brennan +Dan Voyce +gregory blair +Kyle Maxwell +Rogue Prismatic Golem +Zak Sabbath +Ezekiel Lake  +Klaus Gerken  +Nick Alexander +Ahimsa Kerp  +Scrap Princess and me.

If you have more ideas, leave them in the comments, or in the G+ group.

OSR-Style Challenges: "Rulings Not Rules" is Insufficient

I was a Pathfinder guy who got inspired by blogs, and then spent some time trying to figure out what the fuck the OSR was.  I read stuff, like Matt Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, which is where I first heard about Rulings Not Rules.

The idea is that the OSR encourages a sort of innovative, ad-hoc gameplay where players are always innovating and solving problems with outside-of-the-box solutions.  They're thinking with their heads, not their character sheets.

But saying Rulings Not Rules is merely a description of the system, which is only a small chunk of what actually contributes to gameplay.

What Contributes to Gameplay

1. The system.
2. The adventure.
3. The DM.
4. The players.

The DM and the players could be bundled together, because the DM operates by a social contract, sort of like a charter.

Anyway, it's not enough to have a system that allows for rulings and improvisation.  If you want OSR-style gameplay, you need to encourage/allow it at all levels.

System Level

Like Mr. Finch says, this is about getting players to stop thinking with their character sheets.  (This is why skill lists are potentially so poisonous--players thinking about solutions sometimes start and end by looking at their skill list as if it were a list of permissions.)

(1) And to do that, you need an incomplete system.  You need to have room for rulings, and that means that there have to be gaps between the rules.  To put it another way, if I wrote up a game system that included two pages of rules on how to attack tiny animals in your stomach, I've codified the acceptable options and excluded more esoteric solutions.  (I've also complicated the game by introducing a fiddly and highly-situational subset of rules.)

If a players is familiar with the game system, they'll think back to what they know about the rules as a first resort.  Only when they've exhausted everything they remember from the How To Attack Tiny Animals In Your Stomach page, will they start to innovate.

For an example of a more complete skill system, all you need to do is look at the skill descriptions from 3.5th edition.  The more complete a ruleset is, the more tempting (and valid) it is to say "well, it's not covered in the rules, so you can't do it".  Or worse "this is covered in the rules, and if we add up all the situational modifiers, you will do so at a -14 penalty even though I personally agree that this task shouldn't be that difficult".

This is why I like running games without Perception checks, Find Trap checks, and social skills.  It leaves more room for player innovation.

(2) You also need a system that supports rulings.  There are two parts to this.

First, the system cannot have too much interdependence between the moving pieces.  Some mechanics are isolated (XP) while others touch on many other mechanics (Ability Scores).  The more interconnected a mechanic is, the more knock-on effects you'll have when you modify it.  If you want to just make a quick ruling and get on with your game, you usually want to make sure that your quick ruling won't have any unforeseen consequences.  For example: 

DM: "Alright, you all manage to tread water for 18 hours, but the act was so exhausting that you've all lost all of your healing surges."

Player: "Wait, I can't use any of my class abilities without any healing surges.  In fact, I turn into a pumpkin without any healing surges."

DM: "Well, we've already established that exhaustion drains healing surges.  That's been a house rule for months.  And treading water for 18 hours is definitely exhausting."

Player: "But that was before I picked up the Pumpkin King prestige class.  It's unfair now."

A little caricatured, but you get the point.

Second, the system needs to have simple ways to adjudicate rulings.

My first resort is to just ask a player to roll under the most relevant ability score. 

• It's fast.  
• The player already knows what I'm talking about because their ability scores are written down right at the top of their character sheet.  It's an associated mechanic, so it makes intuitive sense.

If it doesn't seem tied to any particular aspect of their character (i.e. it's entirely luck-based or dependent on some external variable that the character has no control over), I usually just ask for an X-in-6 roll, which I make up on the spot.  I like using a six-sider for these, because even a 1-in-6 chance is likely enough that it'll happen every once in a while.

For more extended efforts, I like some variation of "you need to get X successes before some other limit is hit".  But I only use these extended rulings very rarely.

Bad rulings are ones that are slow or confusing.  But the worse rulings are the ones that are ultimately unsatisfying, in the sense that they don't give results (or chances of results) that mesh with the player's expectations of how the world works.  If your make some rulings, and the consequence is that halflings are more intimidating than orcs, that's (probably) a bad ruling.  If you make some rulings, and the consequence is that even the most untrained peasant has a 90% chance to track anything, that's a bad ruling.  Just as players use common sense to come up with stuff that requires a ruling, use common sense to make rulings (as opposed to precedent or some other analogous rule you saw somewhere else).

Adventure Level

You also need to give players problems that are best solved through innovation.

If you give them a problem with three orcs in it, they're probably going to solve it through an already-established method: initiative and attack rolls.

Here are some good examples of OSR-style problems.

• Get over this moat.  It's full of crocodiles.  (I think I first heard this example from Zak. S, and it's been stuck in my head ever since.)
• There's a circle of mushrooms with a girl inside it.  Everything inside the circle of mushrooms will do everything in their power to get more people inside the circle (no save).  The girl is already their thrall.
• There's a tiny octopus inside your stomach and it's biting you.
• There's a bowl built into the ground.  It's lined with gold but full of acid.  (From ASE.)
• There's a smooth glass sphere, 100' high, with an opening at the top.  It doesn't roll easily.  Inside is something you want.  (From some LotFP product, I forget which one.)
• The bad guy cannot be hurt by any weapon forged by mortal hands.
• This glass sphere (3' in diameter) is filled with gems and horrible undead snakes.
• Pretty much all of the dungeons that +Chris McDowall writes.  He's like a laser pointer when it comes to writing interesting problems.

Writing a good OSR-style problem is tougher than it sounds.  It needs to be something that. . .

• has no easy solution.
• has many difficult solutions.
• requires no special tools (e.g. unique spells, plot devices).
• can be solved with common sense (as opposed to system knowledge or setting lore).
• isn't solvable through some ability someone has on their character sheet.  Or at least, it isn't preferentially solvable.  I'm okay with players attacking the sphinx (a risky undertaking) if they can't figure out the riddle, because risky-but-obvious can be a solution, too.

The fun thing about OSR-style problems is that they often require rulings-not-rules.  (Try to solve the tiny octopus in 4e with RAW.)  So there's a benefit in having a system that's easily hackable.

But at the same time, OSR-style problems aren't dependent on system.  You could plop them into any system and then players will still have to innovate to solve them (and probably have a lot of fun in the process).

It's also important to give your players OSR-style tools.  (This is an idea I've half-articulated before.)

The anti-examples of this are going to be things like a sword +1, or a cloak that gives you +4 to stealth.  Anything that gives you a numeric bonus is not an OSR-style tool.  Anything that gives you a known, established ability is not an OSR-style tool (like a potion of healing).

These are tools that allow for innovative problem solving.  They stretch the brain.  Good examples include:

• Immovable Rod.
• Polyjuice Potion.
• Ring of Cadaverous-but-Reversible Sleep.
• Love Potion.
• Psychic Paper.
• Sovereign Glue.
• Cursed Wand of Enlarge, only enlarges one part of an object.
• Bag of Infinite Rats.
• Some of these items.
• And some of these items, too.

I especially like to make these types of items single-use or limited-use.  It prevents the item from becoming a known solution to an established problem (which is pretty much the antithesis of OSR-style problem solving).

DM Level

There's two things you gotta do.

First, talk to your players like adults.  Tell them that this game will have problems that aren't obviously solvable, and that some of these problems will have solutions that aren't on the character sheet. 

Actually, if you're dealing with complete newbies to tabletop RPGs, the less stuff that is on their character sheet, the better.  A level-0 funnel can help get new players thinking about common-sense solutions to problems.  Adding skills to the game after one or two sessions can also be a big help (if you ever add skills at all).

Second, you need to reward creativity when you see it.  When players ask you if something is possible, say yes.  (Or "yes, but".)  When you are devising a ruling for some ridiculous player shenanigans, lean in the player's favor.

I'm not advocating that you should allow stupid ideas to succeed, but solving an OSR-style problem is usually going to involve some kludgery, so be lenient when deciding how likely crocodiles are to eat a bomb disguised as a pig.

Player Level

I'm writing this article with the assumption that everyone enjoys the same types of game that I do.  This is not always true (unfortunately).  Talk to your DM and each other about your expectations.  Give feedback.

When it actually comes to solving these problems, I can't really help.  It's just you and your brain.  Here a few pointers, though.

• Think about all of the resources at your disposal, including resources in other rooms.  
• It helps to take notes.
• Make the hireling do it.  
• See if any of your magic items can do cool stuff if used in combination--sometimes the answer is spread across multiple peoples' inventories.  
• Take it to someone who knows more about it.  
• If it looks like it might do something horrible, pick it up on the way out.  
• Come back later with the right tool.  
• Experiment, experiment, experiment.  
• Before you do anything, ask the DM lots of questions.  
• Before you touch the dangerous parts, learn as much as you can about the non-dangerous parts.