PDA

View Full Version : An Evil Maze to make players hate you: What to do?



Collin152
2009-02-21, 06:58 PM
So, suppose, entirely theoretically, I wanted to design a lengthy maze with the intent of screwing over the players through sheer frustration. Entirely theoretically.
What kind of traps, monsters, and other such elements, would you suggest I incoorperate and why so as to make the entire experience as frustrating and grating for the poor saps subjected to it? Kinda like Tomb of Horrors, but less "Instantaneous Death" and more "Prolonged Torment, that, since you've still got a chance, it might take you a while to say 'I Give Up!'"
Entirely hypothetical, honest.

See, the idea spawned from the idea of putting a trap of Maze inside of a maze...

Graymayre
2009-02-21, 07:03 PM
backtracking is the best friend of annoyance.

Have them collect pieces of a key (or item) that opens up the next level. But, when they collect the pieces and try to activate the door, either tell them there is another door behind it or these pieces go to a completely different door.

Either way, make the next pieces of the item they need to collect even harder to find.

It also doesn't hurt to have the maze constantly morph, thus negating standard methods of mapping the place.

Satyr
2009-02-21, 07:03 PM
Is there any horror known to mankind greater than the lair of Rambozo the Clown Lich? He may be immortal, but he has the sense of humor of a drunk, fifteen year old clown. The whole dungeon follows a strong circus / clown theme ( including the music and the permanent sickenly sweet smell of too much popcorn), while he uses Magic Mouth spells to constantly mock the players and tell fart jokes.
Include some deeply embarassing (and crotch-targeted) traps for addtional cheap laughs.

Dogmantra
2009-02-21, 07:09 PM
Invisible walls, and illusionary walls.
Twice as many illusionary traps and "key pieces" as there are real traps and "key pieces"
Traps that look like one kind, but are actually another (i.e. swinging blade trap that's really a poison gas trap)
Illusionary floors over pits that go down (or lifts that go up) to the previous level.
Teleport traps.

Graymayre
2009-02-21, 07:12 PM
Teleport traps.

Those traps should bring you to the end of a completely different maze, forcing that person to work there way through it to even get back to the previous maze.

Xuincherguixe
2009-02-21, 07:13 PM
Is there anything so fun as sneaking up behind Euclid and punching him? The maze should have various points where the players are essentially "teleported". And they might not teleport to the same place.

You could also do various spooky stuff. If any of your players know anything about the Cthulhu Mythos, feel free to put in some depictions of tentacles. And as they walk past it, the depictions might become more detailed. Eventually resulting in actual tentacles sprouting out of the walls.

There would of course be nothing particularly terrible in the place. Just strongly hint that there is. The person who made the place just likes messing with peoples heads.

Personally, I'm fond of the idea of having some swords that constantly follow the players around. Just kind of floating there.


Of course, that's not so much frustrating as deeply unnerving. I suppose the only real difference is that instead of creepy events, you toss in really stupid ones. Instead of swords, nerf bats. Instead of tentacles, tentacle porn. And every so often you can have someone leap out screaming, "ARE YOU HAPPY YET?!"

Dogmantra
2009-02-21, 07:15 PM
Those traps should bring you to the end of a completely different maze, forcing that person to work there way through it to even get back to the previous maze.

And after throwing a couple of them at your players, have one that's just an illusion trap, that makes it look like they teleported.

BRC
2009-02-21, 07:15 PM
Put some gold statues (Actually, stone with a thing layer of gold leaf over them, not worth very much considering how heavy they are any how much work it would take to move them), The statues are electrified. You can do the same thing with, any metal treasure.

MammonAzrael
2009-02-21, 07:21 PM
Moving walls.

No actual exit.

Doors, or better yet, random segments of hallways that function like a portal. They turn on and off randomly, and looking through them looks just like normal, so no visual indicators. And they're one way.

Also, needs moar Mind Rape.

Make it the "wrong" maze. (i.e. They have to go through a maze to find the McGuffin. Turns out this isn't that maze).

Spheres of Annihilation.

Unnecessary puzzles. (a room is clearly designed to move levers to open the giant locked door. The dey is under the potted plant next to said door. The levers do nothing. Except maybe trigger traps or summon monsters)

adanedhel9
2009-02-21, 07:23 PM
Provide a subtly incorrect map. It should be close enough to the real thing that the players will begin trusting it, but just when they need it the most, that left turn to safety will instead be a dead end.

A slight variant (taken from the old module Needle): let the players see the entire (or nearly entire) maze before they go in. What they can't see, however, is the invisble walls blocking most paths.

Invisible walls in general could be frustrating (I can see the key! But how do we get to it?). Once the players successfully navigate around an invisible wall, throw in an illusion of an invisible wall with goodies behind it; the players would probably try to navigate around it only to find an empty room or a deadly trap.

Throw some multi-part puzzles in, but don't enforce any order to how the players encounter them. They could very well spend a lot of time trying to solve the last part without having even seen the rest of the puzzle. And once they do have all the clues, they'll have do some serious backtracking.

One-way doors also come to mind; always provide a way back, but make it very circuitous (and, optionally, lethal).

Split up the party? Though this can be just as frustrating for the DM as for the players.

Broler
2009-02-21, 07:23 PM
find monsters able to use spells like passwall

Yukitsu
2009-02-21, 07:28 PM
The invisible spell feat, shadow walls, real invisible walls, semi real invisible walls, figmentary walls, invisible figmentary walls, dimensional anchor everywhere and nothing but shadows to fight.

The Glyphstone
2009-02-21, 07:29 PM
Or incorporeal enemies.

MeklorIlavator
2009-02-21, 07:30 PM
I think the hypercube trap suggested here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-79135.html) would work. The first post:

This is an elaborate trap I once concieved to make my players rage and sweat. It was a great success, if I remember it, and my players were lost in it for a whole gaming session.

If you have seen the movie Cube 2: Hypercube, you'll be somewhat familiar with it.

The party, while exploring the abandonned ruins of [random] climb a ladder into a strange cubic room, which is 15 feet x 15 x 15. The trapdoor trough which they enter the room is at the center of the floor. The floor is painted black with golden scripts 5 feet around the trapdoor, while the rest of the floor is white. All of the sides of the cube seem to be painted the exact same way, and each of the other side seems to have the same trapdoor.

When the last party member has entered, the door closes behind him, and the Cube closed on them.

The Cube is a semi-plane, which is finite (27 cubes), but there aren't any edge. (if you keep going forward, you will simply go back to the room your started in at your 3rd room-transition.

Gravity is subjective, so the characers can always walk on the floor/walls (much like a perfect Spider Walk spell). It can be very, very, very disorienting, so, Sadic GMs, non-intellectual PCs should get maluses over time. I would also say that PCs may get tired (intellectually) quickly during the first days of travel.

The golden writing is the scripts upon which the whole HyperCube demi-plane exists. A wizard can try to decipher them, and if not, use another prisonner of the plane to inform them of the riddle. To free itself, someone has "To walk his own steps three time".

Which means, the party has to get into a room, and go back into the door it just got in. Then, when in the room, go back trough the same door. And then one more time

You may invent whatever good riddle to get out of the HyperCube, but make it hard.

One more thing.. there is a reason why it's "Hypercube", and not merely "cube". The scripts reveal that every time a door is open, it leads to the other room. But if the spatial movement is determinate, there is a random temporal movement. Technically, HyperCube always existed, and will always exist. You can mess your player's mind by making them meet NPCs that have encountered them in their past, them make them (later) encounter them again. Or make them find their own piece of equipment (hey! that's my family's sword! But.. it.. looks 5000 years old...)

The "temporal randomness" can help them encounter ennemies, other poor souls trapped into HyperCube for centuries.. even if mere days happened outside. Or, on the other side, they could have entered centuries in the past, but spent a mere hour in the HyperCube..

You can make them encounter wizards who are there to study this.. magical marvel, or other prisonners who have fell to cannibalism to feed and drink.

Sometime, it's possible to make your players see furniture that have been created/summoned by a wizard long dead/eaten. It's possible for them to encounter themselves..

My favorite encounter should be a somewhat early one. It's a dusty skeleton of a man who had his throath cut cleanly. He is dressed in [your choice], but hold a piece of paper.. upon which is writter (I hand-wroted in a hurry this piece. It's supposed to give a desperate feeling to the PCs):

I'm gonna die. I know it. I had hope to get out of this wretched labyrinth, forsaken by the gods.. but now, I know I'm gonna die. As I wrote it, my hands are covered in blood... mine.

I learned to prey upon other prisonners.. to get their food. Sometimes, it's a wandering beast, and I can eat it's flesh. So, when I saw a sleeping man on the floor of a room, I just went ahead, and cut his troath. When I saw his face, I recognised him. I've always knew him.. because he was me. He was an older me.. but he was me.

I will kill myself. I know it.

I cannot even leave this wretched place.. Because what will happen if I change what will be..?

PEACH and propose random encounters..

AmberVael
2009-02-21, 07:36 PM
I think some of the best puzzles and tricks are mundane, or only enhanced by magic.

Make a few consecutive hallways that are completely identical. Every time someone goes through this hallway and to the next one, describe them entering a hallway that looks exactly the same.
It's also good to have their minds on teleporting magic during this- have some kind of hint of that while they're doing this. They'll likely conclude that they're being teleported or otherwise transported back to the beginning of the hallway each time, when in fact they're just moving between a number of entirely identical hallways. Watch them try tons and tons of magic tricks to get past the hallway, only to finally realize all they need to do is walk.

A number of spells can enhance this, such as some kind of illusions to keep the hallways identical (no matter what PCs do to them) and various tricks to keep teleportation and gates in their minds.

BRC
2009-02-21, 07:42 PM
I think some of the best puzzles and tricks are mundane, or only enhanced by magic.

Make a few consecutive hallways that are completely identical. Every time someone goes through this hallway and to the next one, describe them entering a hallway that looks exactly the same.
It's also good to have their minds on teleporting magic during this- have some kind of hint of that while they're doing this. They'll likely conclude that they're being teleported or otherwise transported back to the beginning of the hallway each time, when in fact they're just moving between a number of entirely identical hallways. Watch them try tons and tons of magic tricks to get past the hallway, only to finally realize all they need to do is walk.

A number of spells can enhance this, such as some kind of illusions to keep the hallways identical (no matter what PCs do to them) and various tricks to keep teleportation and gates in their minds.
That's nasty, especially if you say "This hallway is perfectly identical to the last", as opposed to "This hallway looks just like the last one"

afroakuma
2009-02-21, 07:43 PM
I have just the thing: this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5749075#post5749075).


The Thief King's Palace is a wandering phenomenon that possesses important locations.


The Palace can perceive foes within the structure it occupies, and will send shadow creatures to harass them, often diverting them into confusing intersections or away from visible doors. If enemies actually find its room, the Palace will likely pretend to be inert, allowing foes to enter and engulf themselves. Should it be forced to fight, it will attack only long enough to inflict some inconvenience on foes before slipping away and dispatching more shadow servants. Ultimately, it would prefer that hostile entrants be lost forever within its grasp than to simply kill them outright.

Paramour Pink
2009-02-21, 07:45 PM
I really hope Proven Paradox never sees this topic...

Anyway, poison. The contact kind. Put all over various doors. They don't have to be lethal, but that's going to put a real damper on your players. :smallsmile:

AmberVael
2009-02-21, 07:49 PM
That's nasty, especially if you say "This hallway is perfectly identical to the last", as opposed to "This hallway looks just like the last one"

I had fun when I introduced that to my players. It took them ages, and I was just sitting there giggling at them the whole time.
^-^

littlebottom
2009-02-21, 07:51 PM
simple, put them through "the worlds largest dungeon" its designed to take players from level one to twenty... and at a session a week that lasts 4 or 5 hours, will take approx 5 years to complete... so yeah, they would either love that or give up, and trust me some of it is horrific, it has some winding maze like areas, and other wide open areas too, some completly underwater sections, areas covered with lava, and is just simply the most wrong invention ever :smallamused: i do intend to force my group to go through it though, some day, when i read the 3.5 rules again, as at the moment only 4th ed ever comes to mind :smallannoyed:

Shalizar
2009-02-21, 07:56 PM
Just make sure that you have a wall or something protecting you so then they dont start throwing dice, bottles or what every they have on them at you.

Collin152
2009-02-21, 08:24 PM
Alright, so invisible walls, backtracking, and things not being what they appearing to be.

I've also decided to include an area of pitch darkness, in which they are likely to be eaten by a Grue.

Starscream
2009-02-21, 08:29 PM
I suppose the only real difference is that instead of creepy events, you toss in really stupid ones. Instead of swords, nerf bats. Instead of tentacles, tentacle porn.

You don't find tentacle porn creepy?

And a tesseract dungeon will drive you players mad. Especially if they try to map it. Unless you have a mathematician in your group, it should take them quite a while to figure out what's going on.

If you really want to be cruel, use some sort of illusion magic that prevents them from marking rooms effectively. If they carve their names on a door in room A, an illusory copy of the carving appears on every door in the place.

This'll drive them to tears, guaranteed.

RTGoodman
2009-02-21, 08:30 PM
I think the hypercube trap suggested here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-79135.html) would work. The first post:

I came here to suggest the EXACT thing. Man, I love me some Cube and Hypercube (but NOT Cube: Zero).

Olo Demonsbane
2009-02-21, 09:02 PM
Here is a mass of ideas:

Use traps that reroute the players: for example, a giant trap door that drops the players down a long chute.

Use invisible walls in many different ways. For example:
A small pit of lava the characters could jump over. On the opposite side is an invisible wall. Works best if the characters just exited a passage with only invisible walls, so they will hit themselves multiple times.

Use illusions, invisibility and other spells to confound the players. For example, put a pit of lava in the character's path. It is actually water enchanted to look like lava. Above this, where the characters would try to fly, is an antigravity field holding up a mass of invisible lava :smallbiggrin:. Good times.

Make invisible walls with spell turning. Then put monsters on the other side. When the characters try to fireball the monster(s), they will get fried. After this, they will be cautious, letting any monsters they encounter get the drop on them.

Put a thick illusionary wall in the characters way. Inside of it, put a monster with continous true seeing.

To open a treasure door, there are three levers. There is a riddle telling which of the levers open the door. If a character attempts it and fails, he/she will never be able to try again and must undergo a random permanent restriction (you must never eat meat, you must never wear clothing, whatever you want). None of the levers open the door.

ericgrau
2009-02-21, 09:15 PM
Mazes are particularily annoying because players must deal with poorly drawn areas. When you redraw when you shift from area to area it might not be clear what used to be where. It's also very time consuming. If you don't be careful to get around all that then your players might hate you in the wrong way. As in "This game is annoying and boring" kind of way not "Dang this is hard and scary but challenging". Just like you could be afraid to watch a horror flic but that's only a good thing if you're on the edge of your seat not if you're afraid of the bad acting.

Basically try to make the challenges as clear as possible so that the main obstacle is the challenges themselves not the player's ability to understand dry erase markings. And then after all that you still need to make it fun like any campaign.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-02-21, 09:17 PM
The invisible spell feat, shadow walls, real invisible walls, semi real invisible walls, figmentary walls, invisible figmentary walls, dimensional anchor everywhere and nothing but shadows to fight.This. In the maze, there are 5 types of walls: Invisible walls, real walls, illusions of walls, Walls of Force, illusions of walls over Walls of Force, and any or all of the walls have traps if you touch them. And secret passages. Also, the maze is 3d. And the entire thing is covered in Magic Auras. Also, the entire time the party is being chased.

Starbuck_II
2009-02-21, 09:19 PM
So, suppose, entirely theoretically, I wanted to design a lengthy maze with the intent of screwing over the players through sheer frustration. Entirely theoretically.
What kind of traps, monsters, and other such elements, would you suggest I incoorperate and why so as to make the entire experience as frustrating and grating for the poor saps subjected to it? Kinda like Tomb of Horrors, but less "Instantaneous Death" and more "Prolonged Torment, that, since you've still got a chance, it might take you a while to say 'I Give Up!'"
Entirely hypothetical, honest.

See, the idea spawned from the idea of putting a trap of Maze inside of a maze...

Ban the spell: Find the Path? (Spell tells them exactly how to get to exit otherwise)

Collin152
2009-02-21, 09:28 PM
Ban the spell: Find the Path? (Spell tells them exactly how to get to exit otherwise)

Oh, don't worry about that. Specific problematic spells including Teleport, Find the Path, Divination, Augury, and so on, are not going to be problems.

The Deej
2009-02-21, 09:35 PM
Just the other night my party was in a maze-like area where all of the walls were reflective. As in light, sound, AND magic. I tried to shatter part of one wall but ended up shattering some of a party member's stash of alcohol.

And then there was the invisible basilisk (or something) that kept us busy for 3 hours. :smallfurious: All we had to show for it afterwards was some expended healing and a petrified arcane monk.

P.S. - I hate getting power word stunned

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-02-21, 09:50 PM
P.S. - I hate getting power word stunnedYou have obviously never faced Blasphemy. If I hadn't been undead...

MickJay
2009-02-21, 09:58 PM
Include some riddles, and make about half of them give false information/harm players when solved correctly. Not every obstacle is a test of something, some people (especially maze designers) are simply jerks. Just make sure you won't make players ignore the riddles altogether, they still need to want to solve them. Maybe the second riddle will hint that without solving other riddles they can't get out at all :smallwink:

MCerberus
2009-02-21, 09:58 PM
Put an invisible wall right after an illusionary barrier. This would be after a dead end that they've been traveling down for a long while.

Collin152
2009-02-21, 10:01 PM
Include some riddles, and make about half of them give false information/harm players when solved correctly. Not every obstacle is a test of something, some people (especially maze designers) are simply jerks. Just make sure you won't make players ignore the riddles altogether, they still need to want to solve them. Maybe the second riddle will hint that without solving other riddles they can't get out at all :smallwink:

How devious. I'll totally use this.
The first riddle will hint that the riddles aren't there to help you, the second one will say that you still can't get out without them.

Darrin
2009-02-21, 10:05 PM
I've also decided to include an area of pitch darkness, in which they are likely to be eaten by a Grue.

Of course. Right next to the gazebo.

MickJay
2009-02-21, 10:11 PM
The darkness could even be in the gazebo. The horror...

GAThraawn
2009-02-21, 11:41 PM
I concur with the notion that false puzzles are a lot of fun. One that I once did for my players was as follows:

Beforehand, I took some time to write out an accurate map of the room they found themselves in. It was completely tiled in square tiles, each with a colour and number/letter/arcane symbol inscribed on it. The side walls of the room had lots of arrow-sized holes in them. By the door they came in was an unclear riddle mentioning the danger they faced if they didn't tread carefully, and some cryptic clues as to how to cross the room.

Having seen such puzzles before, they spent about fifteen minutes trying in vain to figure out how they were supposed to cross without being skewered. They would have been there much longer, but the barbarian was too in character and got bored, opting to simply charge across to the other side instead. There was a wonderful moment of horror on their faces as they waited to hear how they were about to die, while I just sat and smiled at them. Then it slowly dawned on them that the room was completely devoid of traps, and the barbarian had found the only possible solution to the riddle.

On the same topic, there was a thread I remember reading somewhere about a trap a DM set up for his players: a tall room with arrow slits in the roof, and a single stand with a button on it in the centre of the room. Both doors locked shut when the players came in, along with a countdown from ten highlit on the button. The DM counted down in real time, and at "two", one of the players panicked and hit the button, which reset the countdown.

Apparently they spent a couple of real time hours in there, complete with a sand timer they kept flipping every ten seconds, trying to figure out how to escape. Eventually, they gave up and prepared to face their fate. When the countdown reached zero...both doors opened. (And, I imagine, the players murdered their DM, but that's the risk you run...)

Jack_Simth
2009-02-22, 01:13 AM
Let's see... if you want your players to hate you, the dungeon is:

1) Unmappable. Maybe it's a 4-d maze, and each door is secretly a portal of some form to a different section. And they alter how they're lined up regularly.
2) Unrestable. Teleportation and related effects don't work for some reason. Rope Trick, Magnificent Mansion, and similar effects fail. The place is always vibrating, and there's lots of incoherent noise. Once you're in, you can't rest up until after you're out.
3) Big. Goes with 2. By the time you're done, the Sorcerer should be out of spells and burning wands, scrolls, and quarrels from his light crossbow.

Plus the stuff the other people said, of course. Much of that will do the job.

rampaging-poet
2009-02-22, 01:16 AM
Most of the things I would point out have already been suggested. Do whatever you can to mess up divinations, make teleportation risky, and otherwise prevent the casters from pushing the easy button. The more complex your map, the better (provided you can understand it yourself).

The other thing is that not all traps have to be aimed at their hit points. Force the party to spend spell slots repairing ability damage or undoing unusual magical ailments. Permanent symbols of weakness are always fun, as are symbols of insanity.
You can also use traps that make things more difficult later rather than doing anything now. For example, someone might unknowingly step on a pressure plate that causes a room three doors back to fill with acid, making it that much harder navigate on the way back. Reverse traps are another idea: disabling one trap arms another.
Finally, trap your traps. Nothing say pain like a harm spell cast on anyone trying to disarm the lava-filling room.

Most monsters should likewise be designed to weaken the party or drag them farther into the dungeon. Shadows and wraiths strike through walls unexpectedly. A number of chaos beasts wander the halls. Enemy spellcasters use bestow cures, baleful polymorph, flesh to stone, and insanity. Trained ethereal filchers snatch much-needed magic items or hard-won hints, leading adventurers aross dangerous traps. A large predator picks up the party mage and runs away with him, forcing the group to either follow the beast now or lose their friend.
In any annoying maze, ambush is key. You'll want your worried that they could be attacked by anything at any time. Mimics are great, but everyone will be prepared for them. To really catch people off guard, you've got to get creative. Make a floor out of gelatinous cubes in suspended animation, ready to be animated should anyone walk through without speaking an obscure command phrase. Everyone expects undead to rise and attack in a crypt, but I doubt very many people would be expecting the tombstones to come alive and lash out at random passers-by. Include a room with "magical lanterns" filled with will-o'-the-wisps under the effects of a geas spell. Maybe that statue isn't a stone golem, but the pillars beside it are. In general, anything that could plausibly be a monster is half the time, and most of the other half it's an illusion of a monster.

Hopefully something I've said is useful. Good luck!

Xuincherguixe
2009-02-22, 03:48 AM
You don't find tentacle porn creepy?

Everything I suggested was creepy. And stupid.

And also, generally not really. It's hard to take it seriously.

Kyouhen
2009-02-22, 04:34 AM
Here's my suggestion, it's a bit of an adjusted Cube/HyperCube maze. Have a single square room with a door in each wall. Each door leads to a straight hallway. Each hallway is a dead end, but at that dead end is a portal to the hall on the opposite side. (East hallway portal leads to the west hall and vice versa, same goes for north/south) Once all living things are in one of the halls or the room, all the doors will close. Once closed any areas with none of the PCs (or any other living thing) will have the floor soak everything into a large area beneath it. Items, corpses, etc will be disposed of this way. Then the areas self-repair any damage or marks on them. No more than one door can be opened at a time, so the players can't split up the party, nor will any door close until all the players are in one area.

Then to really piss them off stick a summoning trap in the room that triggers whenever the players pass through one of the portals. They'll find a new enemy in every room of the 'maze' they go through, but will actually never get anywhere. Then see how long before they realize something's wrong. :smallbiggrin:

Heliomance
2009-02-22, 05:55 AM
Fourthing the Hypercube idea. I was going to link it myself, but I got ninja'd.

TSED
2009-02-22, 06:32 AM
The best ways are to pressure your players without actually putting them in danger. Unless they react to the pressure.


My absolute favourite trick involved a permanent darkness. The PCs cautiously walk in, aaaand... one of them feels a button click beneath their feet. Every one else hears it, too. A loud rumbling, like a rolling boulder, is heard from behind them.


The stone was just a repeatably triggered ghost sound trap.
The real danger? A 6" ledge with a 6' drop. Inside of the drop is a gelatinous cube.

Make sure your party has a way to get out of this, as they're all about to dive face-first into a vat of hungry acid. (yay).


A variation of this: if you want to be reaaaaally cruel, make it unleash a boulder for real. From the other end. With a silent spell on it. The ghost sound still triggers.


The point here is: sound is the key. Nothing unnerves a player more than hearing something he doesn't want to hear, or alternately, hearing nothing.

SoD
2009-02-22, 07:20 AM
A variation of this: if you want to be reaaaaally cruel, make it unleash a boulder for real. From the other end. With a silent spell on it. The ghost sound still triggers.

*snip* Stolen for my own purposes. Cheerio, pip pip and thank you.

Kyouhen
2009-02-22, 01:02 PM
Actually, speaking of boulder traps, that gives me an idea. Have it so every hallway in the maze has a trap on both ends that creates a boulder behind the PCs no matter which side they're coming from. Have the wall at the other end enchanted with a very visible Disintegrate trap for disposing of the boulders in a clean, efficient manner. Laugh when the players try to find their way out of the maze while running from a constant stream of boulders. :smallbiggrin:

Just make sure none of the boulders chase them into a dead-end. We wouldn't want to ACTUALLY kill them now would we?:smallamused:

Orak
2009-02-22, 02:18 PM
Two words: stat damage.

Every wrong turn has a trap or a moster that does stat damage. Undead, oozes, demons, diseases, poisons, etc. There are a ton of options.

I ran a dungeon like this for my player group. They still bitch about it 2 years later.

Most fun as a DM.

Stun and then touch attack strength drain is good times.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-22, 06:55 PM
Traps? I got your traps right here (http://www.thievesguild.cc/traps/index.php?p=1). :smallbiggrin:

Another fun thing to do is make it a 3-D Maze. Try mapping that, suckers!

Jack_Simth
2009-02-22, 07:02 PM
Traps? I got your traps right here (http://www.thievesguild.cc/traps/index.php?p=1). :smallbiggrin:

Another fun thing to do is make it a 3-D Maze. Try mapping that, suckers!
A 3-d maze is mappable. It's tricky, but it's doable (you just, you know, use an entire pad of graph paper, rather than a single sheet). 4-d is also doable (multiple pads) if you can get the compressed relationships right. It's just annoying, and difficult if you don't know the tricks to it.

Collin152
2009-02-22, 07:09 PM
Problem with difficult to map things is mapping it out as a DM.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-22, 07:17 PM
It's just annoying, and difficult if you don't know the tricks to it.

Which is rather the point, no? If it weren't mappable at all, it wouldn't work well for the DM either.

And yes, while it is more difficult for the DM to plan originally, it will definitely make your players hate you - particularly if you make judicious use of Reverse Gravity on a slowly twisting floor so that the PCs don't notice that they are now walking on the underside of the maze, not its top. :smallbiggrin:

The easy way to do this is the random-teleporter trick. Design your maze in unconnected sections (mini-mazes) and have teleporters which randomly teleport you to another portion of the maze.

And then have the exit be a hidden teleporter.

EndlessWrath
2009-02-22, 09:56 PM
book of challenges is an entire book about screwing with players.
lots of fun

horngeek
2009-02-23, 05:20 AM
A glass maze. You don't need anything else.

TSED
2009-02-23, 05:36 AM
An idea I've had that I've not been able to put into practice (yet, supposedly starting a new D&D group in the summer. Don't really want to DM but I am the one organizing it and can't find some one else so I'll just suck it up) is to get a big room with a giant door.

The giant door is actually just a door carved into the wall. There's no actual hall or anything behind it.

There are four levers in the room, one on each side. Just have each one make a ghost sound 'deep rumbling coming from behind the door' in different manners.

The real exit is, say, a trap door under the Welcome! mat. Something like that. I'll figure it out later. I just like the idea of the players smashing their heads in frustration on that door. (Will not work at higher levels, thanks to things like "I cast stone to mud!")

magic9mushroom
2009-02-23, 08:03 AM
Each room contains the following.

PPSPP
PPPPP
PEPBP
PPPPP
PPSPP

5 feet gap everywhere, so you can navigate the room freely.

P is portal. Each portal leads to another room. Each room is on a different demiplane, and shielded against scrying and planeshifting with epic spells.

E is where you pop out from a portal.

B is Bad Guy. Monster.

S is statue. Make it a statue of Vecna, since his portfolio is secrets, and this is one major secret.

Each room restores its Bad Guy every time you enter it. It also removes all identifying marks on it.

The rooms are connected in a 5-cube pattern. The portal in the center of the room leads to the room directly opposite in the 5-cube, while the other 20 portals lead to the 5 adjacent rooms, 4 to each. The exceptions are the entrance room and the room directly opposite it, whose central portals lead out: The entrance room to back outside, the opposite room to the next region. The next region, however, is another perfectly identical maze. The central portal in the second maze's first room leads back to the first maze's final room. The central portal in the second maze's final room leads out.

Perfectly symmetrical maze, and perfectly logical too. The players won't like it though.

And only 64 rooms total in the double maze, so you can actually write everything down.

EDIT: Forgot to include a system for where the portals go and how to speed up DMing it.

Ok. Assign every room a set of coordinates. You'll need 6 coordinates.

The first room is 0,0,0,0,0,0.

The portals are as follows.

45S43
32152
1E*M1
25123
34S54

The number of the portal is which digit in your coordinates it flips (from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0). The * portal flips all of the first five, unless you're in:
0,0,0,0,0,0 (the first room): its portal leads back out.
1,1,1,1,1,0 (the last room of the first maze): its portal leads to 0,0,0,0,0,1.
0,0,0,0,0,1 (the first room of the second maze): its portal leads back to 1,1,1,1,1,0.
1,1,1,1,1,1 (the last room of the second maze): its portal leads out to the other side.

Tyrmatt
2009-02-23, 10:25 AM
Don't know how to stat out one of these but my particular favourite was a type of labyrinthe guardian who was actually part of the wall. He would leap out of the walls, savage a player and as long as he was within a 5 foot step of the wall, he could melt back into it as a free action.
This was a tactic by our DM to get us to think outside the box. Our two number crunchers were sure they could solve the maze, replete with algebra and calculus in hand. I eventually decided "Screw it" and started to blow the walls apart. The guardian eventually ran out of walls to hide in and we pinned him down in a circle and beat him with pointy sticks.

Yep. I disassembled Rubik's Cube too ¬¬

KillianHawkeye
2009-02-23, 10:56 AM
I was going to take a page from Zelda and have an enemy that brings you back to the beginning of the maze, but everybody else's ideas have been so much better. Plus, it's actually more frustrating if you can't get back to the entrance for whatever reason.

Saph
2009-02-23, 11:17 AM
A simple one I ran at the end of a mage self-game campaign was a skymaze.

Step 1 - Front Door

The players flew up to the Skymaze's front door to find a written note placed there by the BBEG. As soon as I handed the written note to the players I pulled out my watch and started counting. The players figured out why when the player reading the note got to the end and read aloud, "By the way, the door behind this note will explode thirty seconds after you start reading it. Have fun!"

Step 2 - Into the Maze

The slightly scorched PCs advanced into the maze. They started off using the left-hand rule. This lasted a good 5 minutes before they figured out that the walls were moving. Good luck mapping that. (If you're wondering how I was mapping it, I wasn't. I just had the PCs roll checks to navigate and had them run into things whenever I felt like it.)

Step 3 - Gatekeeper

The PCs finally reached the doorway to the inner region. It was guarded by a spectral being which materialised in front of them and said, "Speak the password". (The first words out of the character's mouth thereafter were assumed to be their answer.) On a wrong answer, the character was teleported to a random room within the Skymaze . . . on their own. (Roll of a d8.)

The trick was that each room they were teleported to had a clue of some kind as to what the password was . . . but the players didn't start to put that together until they'd each been teleported two or three times.

Oh, and one thing I didn't mention was that a larger group of NPCs had also entered the Skymaze at the same time, and they were getting randomly teleported around the maze too. So as the PCs tried to run back to the inner region gateway, they started bumping into them. The NPCs ranged from friendly to unfriendly to hostile.

Oh, and one last detail: the Skymaze materialised every day at dawn, and disappeared every day at sunset. And it was taking the players at least an hour to make their way through the outer maze with each try.

More of a chaotic-dangerous maze than an evil-dangerous maze, but man was it fun to watch.

- Saph

Radar
2009-02-23, 12:37 PM
There are some things, that can be good depending on the overall theme for the maze. If it's some sort of an ancient temple/tomb/whatever, then the walls can be often inscribed with some obscure unreadable text (mostly erased by time), some fragments of pictures showing an advanced society or somtehing like that. Give the general impression, that guys, who built the place were rich and powerfull. Then let your players find a library room or an ancient armory, in which everything is so old, that it crumbles on the slightes touch (especially good for old scrolls and such). Other variant can include treasury, that was allready looted by someone.
The key point is to properly build up the feeling, that the place is really old and abandoned - fallen passeges, traps that don't work properly (obviously not all of them). There could be signs of some other more primitive inhabitants, that came after the creators, but went away as well. In general make it a monumentaly run down maze.

If it's a bit about frightening your players, then i would agree with the idea of traps and monsters springin out of the wrong palces - it really is scary, when a random placeholder item attacks you. Make your mosters squeez out of the walls - those can be some wicked slime things or swarms of insects or worms. There is nothing as scary as being suddenly surrounded by an army of gruesome thingies. They don't have to be strong - just unexpected.
If you plan for moving walls and such attractions, give the whole maze a bit of an organic appeal - the more, the deeper they go. Start with deformed walls and curvy hallways. Then the walls can start to pulsate or slightly glow in weird patterns. Add some ooze and a warm, humid atmosphere (with regular gusts of slight wind here and there) and build up from there. A good example of building up a wicked atmosphere is a freeware platform game called Eversion (http://zarat.us/tra/offline-games/eversion.html) (it really is scary - just play it to the end and have the sound on).

edit: also this (http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=27&issue=14). :smallbiggrin:

Alysar
2009-02-23, 12:48 PM
Identical nested sub-planes.

You think you're going in circles, but you're actually moving deeper and deeper through the sub-planes, and you have to move back through in the opposite direction to get out.

quick_comment
2009-02-23, 08:39 PM
Ooh, I like the identical nested sub-planes.


Other ideas: Illusionary enemies. Non-euclidian sub-mazes.

Illusionary Walls. Illusions on real walls. Walls of Force. Walls of Force glamered to look like real walls. Real walls glamered to look invisible. Etc.

Traps that arm traps behind them, so when they backtrack, there are more traps.

Traps that move.

Rooms with illusionary air.

Make the macguffin in a jar by the entrance.

Make elemental themed areas in which all the traps are energy-substituted. So you have fireball traps that fire acid-substituted fireballs.

Pull a joker on them - in some level of the dungeon they find a group of peasents about to be sacrified by fiends. Except the peasents are polymorphed, undetectable alignmented fiends, and the fiends are polymorphed, dominated, undetectable alignmented peasents.

Illusionary spheres of anhiliation. Mixed with real ones. Mixed with real ones with illusionary spells cast upon them.

Statues that are trapped.

Statues that are animated and trapped.

Statues that are animated and helpful.

Statues that are animated and pretend to be helpful but kill the party in their sleep.


Incorporeal enemies that flit to and fro near the party, not attacking them, but always fleeing before the party attacks them.

Powerful cursed loot (more powerful than weapons they would ordinarily get) with curses on them.

rampaging-poet
2009-02-23, 09:41 PM
Traps? I got your traps right here (http://www.thievesguild.cc/traps/index.php?p=1). :smallbiggrin:


Don't forget about this thread (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=674705). Some of them are a little complicated (not to mention outright lethal), but you'll never run out.

If those somehow aren't enough, there's also some stuff in the traps section (http://www.mortality.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Files&file=index&do=showgall&gid=4) of Mortality.net, which also includes the Netbook of Riddles.


Powerful cursed loot (more powerful than weapons they would ordinarily get) with curses on them.

This.

That, and cursed items with very subtle and/or delayed effects that you can throw away without any difficulty once you figure out which of the ten shiny new magic items you picked up carries the curse.
Or better yet, cursed items that trigger when you try on some other item, and then weld that item to your skin and curse you. Remove curse would let you take off the non-cursed item, but to actually end the effect entirely you'd need to cast it on the item that actually is cursed.

Also, I was just recently toying with the idea of cursed items that don't curse you until you get rid of them. I don't have any specific examples yet, but I intend to whip up a few at some point.

EDIT:


I was going to take a page from Zelda and have an enemy that brings you back to the beginning of the maze, but everybody else's ideas have been so much better. Plus, it's actually more frustrating if you can't get back to the entrance for whatever reason.

While you're right about keeping them in the dungeon, do not discount the idea of drag-you-away enemies. Just because they shouldn't take you to the beginning of the dungeon doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. Maybe have a few different places they can drop you, like the heavily trapped dead-end corridors smack dab in the middle.

Jack_Simth
2009-02-23, 09:51 PM
Also, I was just recently toying with the idea of cursed items that don't curse you until you get rid of them. I don't have any specific examples yet, but I intend to whip up a few at some point.
Sticky items.

+1 (above the player's current) Fullplate. When you pick it up, it's great. You can't take it off, though, so you end up with the Fatigued penalty due to sleeping in it. When you want to upgrade your armor, you've got a problem. You also get quite stinky after a day or so... (possibly sooner, if you fail a save vs. a Fear effect...).

+1 (above the player's current) Weapon of Choice. When you pick it up, it's great. You can't put it down, though, so you have difficulties climbing walls, opening doors, eating meals, getting in to "civilized" areas, and so on. When you want to upgrade your weapon, you've got a problem.

Basically, anything you'd normally take, that's better than what you currently have, but you can't get rid of, becomes cursed two levels down the line (and some are highly annoying even in the interim).

quick_comment
2009-02-23, 11:53 PM
For lots of fun, items that only curse you at certain times.

For example, a flaming longsword that against creatues with the [cold] subtype instead deals cold damage.

A set of armor that appears to be +4 fullplate but also paralyzes you whenever you try to flee from an opponent

Boots of haste that turn into boots of slow the first time you use them in an enounter of CR > Party level

A pendant that makes the clerics healing more effective until it is used on a character with less than a quarter of his health. It casts poison at this time.

A +5 Flaming, Shocking, Freezing, etc sword. However, its actually intelligent, and the malevolent LE intelligence in it is smart enough to wait for the worst possible moment to posses the wielder. Maybe when its his turn to keep watch.

Gloves that help the rogue disarm traps. Unfortunately, when they are actually the trigger for the final, giant trap at the end of the dungeon/floor.

A wand of mass haste that makes it so that no matter how far you go, you dont actually move. Spot checks to notice that you arent moving.

An animated shield that when loosed in combat will shield whoever hit the current wielder of the shield. So it gets passed around alot.

dspeyer
2009-02-23, 11:58 PM
http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/08/the_dungeon/

I spent a long time studying this one and never even came close to the right approach. Mostly, I was distracted by the red herrings in the flavor text, but I also missed the fundamental insight that

there is no geometry. Going in a "direction" is really taking an action.

Yarram
2009-02-24, 03:33 AM
The best I've ever screwed with my PC's was in a maze, putting up a wall, blocking off a corridor. (strength check DC 22) It took them about an hour of searching before they went back to town and grabbed some random dwarf to help them out.
Ironically, there was no treasure at the end of the tomb. Just a quest item they were looking for. :smallbiggrin: