Puzzle/Riddle locked chest for LARP

[PrismCat21]

I'm designing a few treasure chests and encounters for our next big LARP event, and am looking for some ideas on treasure chests. I need them to be able to be unlocked by a team while unsupervised, and simple enough to figure out after some time working with it. They can be mechanical in nature, magnetic, simple electronics, but must able to be opened unsupervised.

So far I've come up with a few puzzle locks I like and am looking for more ideas to build. Here they are:

A sliding tile puzzle on top of the chest with different images on the tiles, including a key tile, and a riddle suggesting that the key must be moved under a certain tile. This is a trick, the actual key will be placed on the bottom of that certain tile, and the player will have to remove the tile to find it.

A chessboard top with 8 queens on the board, and a riddle explaining that each queen must be moved so that no queen is directly threatened by another. Only certain queens will be movable. Those queens will be magnet pieces that control the sliding locks underneath the lid.

A puzzle from the Goblins Webcomic is the third one. Here's the pictures.

Spoiler: Puzzle and solution

Show

Fourth panelLast two panels

I have more advanced and interactive puzzles in mind that I'll need to be there for in order to manipulate and open the chests/doors. What else can you lot come up with to help make this a good experience for the players? The event is combat oriented, so they may attacked at any point in opening the chests, and/or they may be stolen by a different team. I expect they'll take them back to their bases first and someone spending time to figure them out before the final battle.


I'm also designing traps and hazards for the demon encampment if anyone has suggestions for that. Though I think I'm already set there.

[Trekkin]

How large do you need them to be?

Probably the most robust solution would be to use a combination padlock on a normal box and make the combination the solution to some puzzle on the lid. It can be a bit boring, but it's easy to replace the puzzles (or go set up more) without needing to change any hardware.

If you want specialized hardware, there are all manner of small interlocking puzzle box plans available. I would advise caution with anything that has separate pieces or is more complicated than a mechanical lock; if they are to open it unsupervised, it'd be a real shame if they were missing a piece or a problem with the magnets meant the box failed to recognize the right answer.

[PrismCat21]

Thank too. :)

Mostly they'll just be the size of a small cooler, to the size of a big cooler. :D

The biggest treasure chest will likely be the size of a dresser. It'll have a large custom shield to be used in the final battle, and some useful props to be used against other players. I have a roleplay encounter set up for this one but am willing to change it around if I find something cool enough.

[JeenLeen]

If you find any tutorials for Escape Room events, those could give you some ideas. I don't know if folk post tutorials/spoilers for Escape Rooms online or not, but I did one recently and it had some nifty puzzles.

Some ideas:
1. write out the combination to a combination lock in glow-in-the-dark ink, with a line like 'only in darkness can the solution be found'. You could write the combination on a piece of paper with the riddle, or on the lock itself. Probably better if you have ink that glows in a special light, and replace one of the bulbs in the room with one that emits that type of light.

2. have the lock be a fake. Instead of needing to unlock the lock, they just need to take apart the box; it appears to be a solid box, but one of the walls is just held on by Velcro. This might be hard to make it look right, but I saw it done with a crate--one of the wooden bars was loose. Of course, have some hints.

3. Have a bookshelf with the encyclopedia entries for a few select letters. Have them spell out the name of a city. Elsewhere in the room, have clocks for different time zones. The time displayed on the clock matching the encyclopedia is the combination for a lock.