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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

If you have problems with cryptography, I don't know that I'd rely on it as a tool. You may make a mistake that impacts the decryption, or you might put a lot of work into something the PCs easily solve.

Also, in the Realms, magic can be used to read unknown languages -- I'd not imagine that it's all that uncommon or difficult to use magic to decrypt an obvious cipher.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Various AD&D 2E sourcebooks offered a Cryptography nonweapon proficiency option. Sages can be hired to decrypt puzzling writings, for a price. Thieves are said to often make use of special codes and communications to obscure their criminal activities. Harpers make use of all sorts of "secret" codes. Illusionists have write their magic in an encoded form called Ruathlek. The Red Wizards, too, have somehow encoded their magical writings. Various spells (like comprehend languages, secret page, etc) specify that while they will translate actual words, they will not decipher codes and ciphers. Royalty and nobility (and their agents) also sometimes send coded messages to each other, although these tend to often be rather unsophisticated coding schemes or rely heavily on the skills of particular couriers. Mega-NPCs like Khelben and Elminster have been known to employ all sorts of "unbreakable" code methods, magical and otherwise.

Cryptography is the sort of thing I would implement through some sort of skill mechanic. Applying real-world crypto algorythms to fantasy/medieval settings seems inappropriate, especially when coding machines, higher mathematics, and computing power are basically off-limits to anyone except - perhaps - a handful of highly eccentric (and half-autistic) tinker gnomes. In perspective, great thinkers and natural philosophers of our Early Renaissance era dabbled in cryptography. So did lovers and poets (if you could call their simple ciphers and shared-context wordplay proper codes). Only late in our Industrial age did we realistically have any capability for building crypto-machinery, and only during great wars did we have enough interest (and military need) in the topic to make any fundamental breakthroughs. Arguably, it's a field of study that (until recent decades) has lagged a bit behind where it really could be, we could have had WWI-equivalent code making/breaking "computers" much earlier if pioneering computer scientists and logicians and mathematicians (like Charles Babbage and his daughter Ada) garnered more success in earlier centuries.

D&D makes much better use of riddles and puzzles and heraldric insignia and glyphs and trail markers than it does of raw cryptography, methinks.

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Originally posted by Cards77

Has there been anything written, canon or otherwise regarding coded messages and the use cryptography in general? I am interested in giving my players a puzzle to figure out in the form of a coded letter or message, where they have to locate the cipher, and then decode the message.

Have any of you done this in your campaign? What did you use? How did it go?

I've done some research on cryptography from the early middle ages and frankly even the simplest of methods I struggle to understand.

My thought was to somehow compose a letter either in Common or using Dethek or other (mostly an excuse to use the awesome fonts provided on this site), and then the PCs will need to find the cipher and use it to decode the letter to get the true message.

I would like to physically print this letter on a scroll and give it to the players, and then when they find the cipher, provide that to them and them have fun trying to solve it.

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Basic cryptography methods have been in since the early middle ages, so I feel the basics are appropriate to the time/technology and setting. Don't get me wrong the ciphers were very basic, like monoalphabetic where you just needed to replace one letter with another letter (say R with T) to get the proper message.

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Originally posted by Darkheyr

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Basic cryptography methods have been in since the early middle ages, so I feel the basics are appropriate to the time/technology and setting. Don't get me wrong the ciphers were very basic, like monoalphabetic where you just needed to replace one letter with another letter (say R with T) to get the proper message.

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Actually, it's far older, still. The Caesar Cipher, for instance.

Its certainly fair game at Realms-level of society and technology.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Although I'm sure that you'd be able to find some tinker gnomes willing to produce a mechanical steam-powered decoder ring, provided you look in the right places, and provided you don't mind the stench of alchemical smokepowder.

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