Puzzle lock for treasure chests.

[PrismCat21]

I've posted this in the Gaming (other) forum a few days ago, but I also want to test these ideas out on my players before I build a large scale version of them for my larping group.

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.

[AceOfFools]

Buy a few puzzle boxes from your favorite online realtor and put keys inside them. Lame, but effective.

Buy a 100 piece jigsaw puzzle and write a bunch of arithmetic on the back. Have it work out to the numbers: the combination to the lock on the box.

I had a nasty puzzle box as a kid that had some springs hold tabs in a slot that ran all the way aground this circular container. You could turn the outer part around the the inner part as much as you wanted to no effect. But if you held the inner part straight up and spun the outer past really, really fast (probably more than 100 rpm, it took some doing to get it going) the centripetal force would compress the springs and the outer part fell right off and then you could open the inner part to get what was inside. (The inner part was a plastic mouse, and the outer part was bright yellow cheese. You can probably find the spinning mouse cheese puzzle box on YouTube, to help that he more clear). Just give the hint they need to find the Whirlwind Key.