In Vanished, I gave the kids a Vigenère cipher with a five letter key and they managed to crack and think it was really cool. The key to making it not require statistical software to break was that I allowed them through other challenges get decoded versions of about 30% of the cipher. From there they figured out the pattern and were about to do the rest even though they didn't know the type of cipher it was or how it worked. That made me really pleased.
Also, I've always been a fan of the Rail Fence cipher. It's simple, but fun to figure out.
The Vigenere cipher sounds really neat and the basic principle doesn't sound crazy difficult. Of course, it may depend on whether the players want to do a mild two-layer decoding with a partial cipher. A lot of people dislike anything that resembles crytography, but love deciphering. However, kids doing it in Vanished is amazing.
The Rail Fence is nice and simple- really perfect for smaller messages. The website has a bonanza of material that I'll have to plunder.
There are simple things that can be done to ramp up the difficulty of a simple substitution cypher. 1) No space breaks, or regular breaks every 5 letters. 2) Backwards! 3) Make 2 letters actually use the same symbol.
I personally strongly dislike larp cyphers that have no space breaks/false space breaks. For me, that takes solving to the realm of cryptography rather than a puzzle, and what I enjoy is the puzzle aspect, with a extra bit of finding out what it says. I'm sure there are people who enjoy cryptography-type codes, but I think it would be useful to find out who those PCs are and keep in mind that that may not be an entirely overlapping group with people who like puzzle-solving-type cyphers
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I concur on the "no spaces" thing. I have really, really hated the crap out of no spaces - or worst ever: A single space is A, and a double space is B!
Now imagine the first word in a paragraph is "Battle".
I do agree on the special characters for double letters or things like "ch" "th" or "nk". That can add a lot of flavor.
Nothing ever breaks my immersion with a fun code like going, "aheh. Yeah. Plot misspelled 'atrocity'. And the periods are all wingdings that look like happy faces."
And ideally, don't just have them break the cipher -- actually translate the thing, or at least part of the thing, and see how long that takes. If your test-solver throws the thing across the room screaming after a couple of hours and has only gotten part way through it...take it into account.
It also can matter a lot how divisible the problem is. If there are ten people who love doing ciphers and you send out a 20 page document with 5 different codes, with the different codes on different sets of pages, that's awesome! If you send out a single long page that can't be split up, it will take a lot longer and won't entertain nearly so many people. Same as if the few people who get initial access to the document are told to keep it secret, and/or there are limitations on who can read it/work on it depending on skill.
Such limitations can make people feel really cool; just make sure that there are people who both fulfill the limitation and actually enjoy working on ciphers.
Excellent suggestion on breaking up documents. Mine tend to go for pages. Several pages with different ciphers can lead to a Team "Aha!" when they put it altogether.
I like the puzzle-solving logic-puzzle aspect of them, and I like decoding things in general. It's also fun to see a story getting revealed a little bit at a time.
- What should be avoided for fear of causing pain and sorrow?These are mostly things that bug me, though I imagine they bug most people
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Also, I've always been a fan of the Rail Fence cipher. It's simple, but fun to figure out.
My favorite cipher website: http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Black_Chamber/home.html
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The Rail Fence is nice and simple- really perfect for smaller messages. The website has a bonanza of material that I'll have to plunder.
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1) No space breaks, or regular breaks every 5 letters.
2) Backwards!
3) Make 2 letters actually use the same symbol.
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Now imagine the first word in a paragraph is "Battle".
I do agree on the special characters for double letters or things like "ch" "th" or "nk". That can add a lot of flavor.
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Nothing ever breaks my immersion with a fun code like going, "aheh. Yeah. Plot misspelled 'atrocity'. And the periods are all wingdings that look like happy faces."
Reply
And ideally, don't just have them break the cipher -- actually translate the thing, or at least part of the thing, and see how long that takes. If your test-solver throws the thing across the room screaming after a couple of hours and has only gotten part way through it...take it into account.
It also can matter a lot how divisible the problem is. If there are ten people who love doing ciphers and you send out a 20 page document with 5 different codes, with the different codes on different sets of pages, that's awesome! If you send out a single long page that can't be split up, it will take a lot longer and won't entertain nearly so many people. Same as if the few people who get initial access to the document are told to keep it secret, and/or there are limitations on who can read it/work on it depending on skill.
Such limitations can make people feel really cool; just make sure that there are people who both fulfill the limitation and actually enjoy working on ciphers.
Reply
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I like the puzzle-solving logic-puzzle aspect of them, and I like decoding things in general. It's also fun to see a story getting revealed a little bit at a time.
- What should be avoided for fear of causing pain and sorrow?These are mostly things that bug me, though I imagine they bug most people ( ... )
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