Stanley Woo
QA Ninja
Joined: 17 Oct 2001
From: The BioWare Compound
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 Posted: Tuesday, 29 June 2004 09:59PM
I played many RPGs growing up, and my brother and I would tag-team the game, with one controlling the action and the other drawing maps or making notes on people, places, things, and clues.
One aspect of the "type-your-riddle-answer" that we hated was the need to type the answer exactly. If the answer was a synonym that the designers didn't account for, or a British spelling, or misspelled in the game code, the game would register an incorrect response. This got very frustrating, and for one seemingly easy riddle in particular (I think it was early in the Might & Magic series), we spent days trying to figure out how to precisely phrase or type the answer to get a positive result.
I've got no problems with riddles (indeed, riddles were one of the reasons my brother and I enjoyed RPGs), but I feel they should be relatively easy to figure out. This could involve hints found nearby or in conversation, simple mathematics (including rudimentary algebra, since it's taught as early as grade  , or insight as a result of a character's stats or skills. Any way is fine as long as it doesn't rip the character out of the game, as I accept riddles as part of the same RPG experience that includes lots of dialogue, lots of walking from place to place, and character stat and ability advancement.
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