When is speaking in riddles warranted?

A friend completed a video game that he quite liked, but it wore on him that nobody seemed able to give the Chosen One a straight answer. Their dialogue was all "follow the eye that sees. Angel's wings will open the way." when it had no good reason not to be "You should join up with the woman who's a few rooms over. She's psychic. Here, have a nice gun and a few healing potions - we don't want you to fail save the world because you ran out of these!"

What does it take to make riddling good and appropriate? Is it often a valuable dramatic tool, or almost inescapably an excuse to keep the old mentor from saying anything too valuable until the villain kills him?

This concerns all media, but I picked literature because of its abundance of old mentors.

When someone is being an asshole.

When someone is speaking in code.

When someone is looking for an opponent worthy of their intelligence.

It might work in situations where the characters have to worry about being monitored somehow, though I suppose that'd be more of a code than speaking in riddles, wouldn't it?

AHR-Ninja'd. sigh

edited 16th Apr '11 12:14:24 PM by Durazno

When somebody is delusional.

When dragons are involved.

When there the villains have ways to spy on everything.

If you're a sphinx.

When you want someone to figure stuff out on their own.

Or if you're an asshole, I guess.

These three questions together answer your own...

When tests arise and time is little,
My puzzling prose will test your mettle,
So if you wish to find your quarry,
You must be witty: better hurry.
What Am I?

My first resides in the plain, but not on the steppe
Whilst my second flows through the river, though not the Nile itself.
And, of course, my third seems to be everywhere, except in this point.
What Am I?

Here at the junction of Rome
Not roads or paths
We may be high
But never low
We may go through
But never under
Our sides may appear
Or we may become our sides
But our tops and bottoms are not so much referred
We are what we are
And here at the junction of Rome
Which of us make our appearance?

Man that third one is convoluted and easy, but hey, the first two aren't half bad...

edited 16th Apr '11 10:15:04 PM by KnownUnknown

When is riddling appropriate? When you're stuck on a crazy train.

It works better for villain who are dicking around with the hero (like the Riddler in Batman). However, when it is a mentor or helper, there need to be a really good reason for it. Like, if they are getting help from a trickster.

When you are not on the hero's side.

Annoying pretentious trickster mentors.

Among the ones for whom words bear greater weight than stone and more value than silver or salt.

When you know that the heroes will have to deal with annoying riddles that you don't have the answer for. Might as well give them some practice while you can still give them hints.

I think it's warranted whenever there's chance it might be discovered by the wrong person. The Chosen One or Only Smart People May Pass is not acceptable. Also unless there's a smart person among the group.

^ Or unless the clue to the answer of the riddle is one only the heroes would have.

The riddler tries just that in one of the Mistborn books. The right person finds the riddle and not only doesn't solve it, but fails to recognize that it's a riddle at all. The day is saved through entirely different means.

edited 19th Apr '11 1:49:41 PM by Kizor

When there is a sphinx. Or when somebody is just looking to get bitchslapped.

Only if

a)You're screwing with them and you don't care whether they find the solution or not.

b)You're trying to get information to someone when an antagonistic character can hear, and you have good reason to believe that the antagonistic character is substantially less likely to solve the riddle.

Yeah I liked the Skull's reasoning for giving bullshit riddles in The Last Unicorn. He's immortal, bored and has nothing better to do than taunt schmucks who come his way, which isn't terribly often so he'll prolong the taunting by making then jump through hoops.

So I thought about it, and found three places where riddles are put to good use.

1. 1: This.

1. 2: Vorlons in Babylon Five. These super-advanced Precursors are a bunch of self-important bastards that are more concerned with manipulation and posturing than with holding a proper conversation. Riddles are entirely appropriate. Interesting characters, too, though I wouldn't want to meet one. He'd probably blow up my legs because I am not ready for feet.

2. 3: Mycons in Star Control 2. SC 2 was one game that was content to present questions that it never answered. We know what the Mycons are like (huge volcanic fungi), something on what they are (obviously artificial), and nothing about what their deal is. They ramble, without any bearing on what's said to them, and may or may not be aware of the player's presence. It's great.

edited 10th May '11 3:19:09 PM by Kizor

The speaking in riddles thing could be unintentional. Like if the message has been translated from an ancient prophecy and was written to be straightforward. But due to differences in language it's now nearly incomprehensible.

Hey, that's a great point! Thanks. In Quest For Glory 2, the translated prophecy the bad guy is using fits your description exactly. To get past a death course, the player has to figure out that:

"By the name of Suleiman, so shall this be"

is supposed to be:

"By my name of Suleiman, so shall this be done"

That is, the name itself is magical. Then the prophecy jumps the translation's rails entirely, with the hero standing on the locomotive's roof, whooping and pumping his fist in the air.

If a character is sufficiently alien, cosmic, or otherwise other-worldly, then anything they cay to us could seem like riddles even when they're trying to communicate clearly. And if they're alien enough, it's completely conceivable that they don't want to communicate clearly with us, and the reason why is also completely incomprehensible to us.

Or, maybe the seer needs to be stoned out of their mind in order to foresee.

edited 5th Jun '11 6:20:57 PM by MetaFour

This can also be done just for teasing/amusement, especially on the part of a (usually female) Love Interest. Especially if the said Love Interest is at the same time a mentor.