Puzzle for Paranoid Settlement

[Grog Logs]

***CEPHALON CAMPAIGN STAY OUT***

I'm looking for help coming up with a puzzle for a settlement in my homebrew D&D 5e campaign. This settlement has been plagued by a Paranoia curse.

TOWN DETAILS: The settlement is composed of 12 smaller settlements, which each contain their own local leader. There are about about 4,000 citizens total, with most being tieflings and dwarves (but all PHB races are present to some degree). Since the curse began each smaller settlment distrusts all the other settlements as well as the outside region/world.

PUZZLE TIME: The Party needs to gain the trust of at least 7 of the leaders, with a bonus achieved for gaining the trust of all 12 and reuniting them. My initial thoughts were to have each leader assign a quest to gather/retrieve an item that has gone missing or rescue a creature. However, wouldn't that be pretty standard quest giving? Where is the paranoia flair? Is the paranoia only in the RPing of NPCs? Or, can it be added to the actual task at hand? Is there anyway too make the Party more paranoid about what's going on?

EXTRA CREDIT: Does anyone know of any websites that are good at generating logic puzzles? I'd be looking for easy to medium difficulty. Would there be a way to have there be 12 things that need solving at once without making it hard? Should I separate the 12 settlements into 4 clusters so that there are 3 smaller puzzles rather than one large puzzle?

[Lapak]

The obvious paranoid quest is "find out what the [dwarves/tieflings/humans/tailors/masons] are plotting, and stop them/report back to me."

By the third such mission, the PCs should have an idea that something is up, but then they have to get creative about how to satisfy the leaders (or undo the curse.)

Maybe they can't be convinced that Those Guys aren't plotting, but can be convinced they are plotting something good or harmless - the farmers are planning a surprise feast, or the tieflings are negotiating with a traveling carnival to celebrate the town's founding, or the dwarves have struck a new vein of ore but are keeping it on the down-low so bandits do not target the town.

Edit: if your PCs are naturally suspicious types they may buy into the paranoia rather than solving it. If they take it all at face value they may assume that the village is run by a bunch of competing gangs a la Yojimbo, or that everyone is in fact out to get THEM. Or if they misplay their hand everyone may in fact end up out to get them.

[Grog Logs]

The obvious paranoid quest is "find out what the [dwarves/tieflings/humans/tailors/masons] are plotting, and stop them/report back to me."

Edit: if your PCs are naturally suspicious types they may buy into the paranoia rather than solving it.

Very interesting idea. I'll definitely give it some thought. Thank you

[TheStranger]

Seconding Lapak's idea about paranoid quests. But several of the quests should be, at least on the face of it, mutually exclusive. The idea would be that the PCs can get seven factions by playing things pretty straight and picking sides, but they'll have to think outside the box to get all twelve.

As an example, Faction X is led by a ruling council of three, and one of the seats is up for election. Each of the current councilors of Faction X has their own preferred candidate, and has promised you the support of Faction X if they win. Faction Y wants a third candidate, who is actually their agent, to be elected. Faction Z wants you to disrupt the election so it doesn't take place.

I don't know the solution that gains the trust of all three factions. I wouldn't think of it as a "puzzle" though. This isn't logic, it's relationships and roleplaying. Create twelve factions that want things, and let your players figure out which ones to work with. If they come up with something creative to get more factions on board, let it fly if it's any good.

[Beneath]

No matter how paranoid they are, they probably have some idea of how their neighbors act; strangers could be anyone. So getting the level of trust that even gets you an audience with one leader could be difficult, though then, especially if they're turned against eachother, the other leaders will likely follow up with their own audiences to try to get you working for them.

Because it's a curse, you'll want to show that by having their paranoia having them work against their own interests, possibly even to the point that wheels they set in motion, ostensibly to protect themselves, turn into conspiracies against their next move.

Remember that leadership hierarchies are fractal. The town has 12 leaders and you need seven to work together (difficult because of the curse). The each have subordinates whom they both lead and rely on. It's possible that your players might be able to replace some of them with underlings as a trade in favors, but that might cost you free passage with the others (and, ofc, they might get double-crossed).

[Friv]

Another thought - rather than item or person retrieval, quests could be about defending themselves pre-emptively:

"I need you to go and get a whole bunch of phoenix feathers which we can use to fireproof our walls, because we know those tieflings are going to try to burn them down."

"Those runty bastards in the mines are going to cut off our supply of iron! We need you to map the hills and find back entrances into the natural cave system so that we can start doing our own mining."

"We're preparing alchemical healing potions to protect our guards from raiders, but we're badly short on a particular herb, and the woods where it grows are dangerous. Can you gather a crapton of that for us? Like, more than would seem reasonable for the amount of healing we're likely to need before the potions expire?"

"Those big *******s are going to try to kill us and take our mines. We need you to help us lure some murder ant nests to the back ends of the mines so that when they try to sneak it, they'll be killed by giant ants."

"We need you to use your magic to obliterate everything along this road so that bandits and mercenaries won't have any cover or siege weapons if they approach, and also build us some good fortifications."

[jayem]

Perhaps to add a spin to the item retrieval, they give you a lot of details about who's stolen it. But when it actually comes to it it's just fallen off the behind the stand (it might even be that you can see the item before the quest is fully given, and the issue is of faking the quest)

[Grog Logs]

Another thought - rather than item or person retrieval, quests could be about defending themselves pre-emptively:

Thank you Friv. I like the way you think a lot! *DM laughter becomes gradually louder*

Thanks also go to TheStranger, Beneath, and jayem.