How do you run a Maze in dnd? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

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Srasy

2014-04-05, 02:10 AM

GoblinGilmartin

2014-04-05, 03:34 AM

2E Phoinex

2014-04-05, 03:34 AM

Might not hurt to get some visual aids for this one-

Obviously you don't want to present the players with a copy of the map, but you could mark their progress on your own map with a highlighter or pencil and then use a dry erase board (paper and works fine too I suppose just a little more difficult to manage) to depict the specific scenes. So on your map you, as the DM, know that they have moved through seven corridors taking the right path at each juncture(or whatever), but on the visual aid that you draw for the party you only present the current corridor and each entrance to alternate paths. If you have a big enough board or paper you can plop down the minis, have your encounter, then let them select a path and you make the note on your personal map and draw the next corridor and repeat.

Alternatively you could assign one of your players to be a cartographer and you could give simple descriptions such as "this cooridor extends 80ft North with offshooting paths on the left at 20ft, 40ft, and 80ft; with offshooting paths on the right at 15ft, 60ft, and 80ft." At this point your assigned cartographer, equipped with a pencil and grid paper, fills in chunk after chunk of the party's own map. This could be an easier solution if you don't want to have to step from behind the screen and draw stuff yourself, which admittedly can get awkward and interrupt game flow, but it also slowly gives your players a permanent map which will make the maze easier to navigate.

I prefer option one personally, and I find that as long as you are quick about your drawing and the encounters are exciting it shouldn't detract from the sense of tension you are trying to create. I see no reason to cut the maze: I suggest you give it a shot and if it sucks butt then you know that you won't want to run a maze again in the future, but more than likely if it's a feature of the dungeon that you are excited about I'd say its worth breaking out he dry erase board.

Also if soon after the party enters the maze you discover that it does in fact suck a lot of butt and it was actually a terrible idea to include it- simply put a map of the maze in the loot from one of the minotaur kills and let it lead the party to a swift exit from your horrible mistake. A cheap move perhaps but who cares?

oxybe

2014-04-05, 04:43 AM

the problem with mazes is that, in truth, they're not hard to navigate if you know a few tricks:

-first, choose left or right and always hug that wall.
-at branching paths, put a -- mark along the path in chalk/paint/something to show that you've been there. if you hit a dead end, backtrack to the last path choice and mark that branch of the maze with a cross showing that you've been down this path and it's a dead end.
-now, when you're travelling along the maze and find yourself at a junction you'll know
1) paths without line are unvisited and may lead out
2) -- paths are some you are currently trying but allow for backtracking
3) + paths are proven dead ends
-so pick an unmarked path and forge ahead. should this lead you back to another marked path, treat it like a dead end (mark it with a cross) and backtrack to the previous intersection.

eventually you'll not just find the exit, but also have a clear path through the maze from entrance to exit by following the -- paths.

now if critters like a minotaur, kobolds, etc... live inside, you might need to use less conspicuous markings so they don't muck up your progress.

all this to say that mazes are more of a time sink then a challenge. applying the correct logic and you will escape... it just depends on your luck in picking the right path.

mazes are just logic puzzles. really, really big logic puzzles. unless the PCs are being entirely random about how to solve it it's just a matter of time. now, if you want to treat the inhabitants as random encounters or planned ones in certain sections is up to you, just make sure you keep track of time, and if the maze is large enough, resources like food, water, torches, etc.

Rhynn

2014-04-05, 01:32 PM

I'd make them map it without any corrections from me as GM, provided the PCs have tools to map it; if not, they'd have to make do with "it turns right, then left, then splits into two" type descriptions.

If you're just using it as setting dressing, rather than a challenge, then who cares how you present it? Do whatever you usually do.

the problem with mazes is that, in truth, they're not hard to navigate if you know a few tricks:

Now do that while a minotaur is catching up on you the whole time.

A dungeon is just a bunch of rooms - until you add things that can kill you.

oxybe

2014-04-05, 02:45 PM

@Rhynn

thing is, the minotaur doesn't really fit in the equation of maze solving. if the minotaur is something i perceive as a viable threat, unless i honestly believe i can exit the maze (assuming here i cannot backtrack to my original entrance point and leave the area for whatever reason: it's blocked off, minotaur in the way, etc...) through blind luck before i'm found, i'm probably better off setting myself up for a last stand VS the minotaur, kill him/subdue him/remove him as a threat (think teleporting or kicking him to a different plane of existence) and recover as much as i can, then continue my maze beating strategy or die then and there rather then prolonging my stay in the unknown area.

Envyus

2014-04-05, 06:19 PM

Online table tops are pretty good for this as you can use fog of war.

Thrudd

2014-04-05, 11:13 PM

I have this portion of a dungeon that I want to have a maze like feel with minotaurs running around and every step may be your last but running a maze seems really hard and monotones because you have to convey to the players what is going on without showing them a drop down perspective of the entire map... Should I cut this part of the dungeon or how should I make it more player friendly? (It's basically just a simple maze I found online filled with monsters)

What version of D&D are you playing? Mazes are what D&D was made for.

You describe to the players what their characters see and hear. The players tell you what actions their characters take based on what you tell them. The players should not know what's going on, except for whatever their characters can actually see and hear (and smell and touch).

It's like this- "There is a ten foot wide corridor which extends straight ahead thirty feet. Just at the edge of your torch light you can see that the corridor splits and you will need to choose to go either left or right."

You keep track of where they are on your own map. Hopefully they know that someone should be making a map. You will need to tell them that if they've never played this way before. There should be no hand-waiving like "we go back to where we started" or "we leave the dungeon". They have to tell you which way they go, or there is no point to the maze.

If it is a maze, it probably has many twists and turns and intersections which will quickly get confusing for the players, which is exactly the point of a maze. With luck, the map they try to draw will look all messed up and probably won't fit on the piece of paper they are using, and when they decide they need to backtrack and get out of there they will completely go the wrong way and end up deeper into the dungeon. They will well and truly be scared for their lives when they all have single digit HP, very few spells, and can't find the way out.

SimonMoon6

2014-04-06, 02:35 PM

It also depends on what your typical play style is like.

I've played with people who don't use maps or miniatures or anything (common in 1st edition days). There, you can just describe things, talking about the claustrophobic feel as the walls seem to be closing in on you. Will you ever find your way out? And just as you start to slowly meticulously make maps, a monster appears, causing you to run away in terror! (Just kidding, PCs never run. Never. From anything.)

I've played with people with dry-erase maps, drawing the dungeon map as the players discover it. In such a case, it might be helpful to be able to cover up (with pieces of paper or whatever) the parts of the map that they're not currently in, so they don't immediately see how everything connects. And then, when they're part of the way through, you run a combat so they might forget exactly where they are and where they've been. Oh, and also feel free to turn the map sideways after they've explored for a bit. That can easily cause some orientation confusion.

And personally, when I ran a maze chock full of minotaurs, I found it important to throw in plenty of illusionary walls, moving walls, etc so that people can't get too cocky. ("There's a wall there? There can't be a wall there! It's not on my map!") And of course, the minotaurs know the illusionary walls are illusions, so they can see right through them and wait for the PCs to pass by and then "surprise!".

NichG

2014-04-06, 04:12 PM

First of all, are you sure what you want to run is a maze, as opposed to a dungeon with a complex layout? The difference is that a maze focuses on disorientation and many many branching paths, only a few of which (or even one of which) should actually be explored for any benefit, whereas a complex dungeon layout may have branching paths, but ostensibly those paths go somewhere that there is productive action/exploration to be had.

This is why mazes are generally better in computer games than tabletop RPGs whereas complex dungeons work just fine. It's because the tabletop format means that every 'step' in the maze takes awhile to compute - one minute, perhaps, compared to 1-2 seconds in a computer game. That means that you want each 'step' to be more meaningful. But with backtracking/etc in mazes, there's a lot of meaningless motions being performed that still have to be run through the DM, which makes the thing become somewhat tedious. On top of that, making 'random' decisions tends to not be as satisfying as making decisions in response to some sort of clue or hint, so 'do we go right or left' gets tiring more quickly than 'do we go down the musty passage or the clean one with frost on it?', even if those are very obscure hints.

So that said, there are a few options. One is to abstract the maze away entirely and say 'there are many branching passages that fold back on eachother' and give the party a random die roll to see if they get lost whenever they try to go to a specific location within the maze, which can be modified by any mapping they're doing in-character, if they mark the walls, etc. The way this would play is 'we go back to the ritual chamber. (DM rolls 1d100, where 80+ means they get lost, or 95+ if they're mapping - gets an 82). DM says: On your way to the ritual chamber, you realize you don't recognize these corridors. An acrid smell is coming from somewhere nearby, and your torches flicker and spark occasionally. (Then, for them to leave this area of the maze, they are forced to pass through a set-piece room with, say, an acid vat and an otyugh or something like that).'

Another option is to make it so each branch of the maze does in fact have something interesting to it. This can be pre-generated in place, or based on a deck of random rooms that you draw from whenever they go the wrong way. So for example, as long as they take the correct branch, you go forward normally, but whenever they take a wrong branch you 'skip ahead' to when they get to the end of the branch and draw a random room. In this particular case, I'd suggest drawing _before_ they visit the branch, and then giving faint clues about what lies down each passage, so that there's more of a meaningful feeling to the decisions. In this case, I'd completely eliminate 'running' the backtracking and have it simply be assumed that the players can point to the map and go there. In any event, this begins to look more like 'complex dungeon' than 'maze'.

A third option is to actually run the maze as one huge combat, and just have the battle map contain the twists and turns. Since a player may be taking multiple branches within a round, and stuff is constantly happening, that should help keep things paced well. This kind of thing would be best with computer aid, such as MapTool's automatic vision calculations, so the DM doesn't need to constantly update stuff.

Qwertystop

2014-04-06, 04:29 PM

Also, the stick-to-the-right strategy only works in mazes that have all walls connected. If there's a continuous loop of path anywhere in the maze, sticking to one wall will never get you across it.

NichG

2014-04-06, 04:40 PM

Additionally, stick-to-the-right, while guaranteed to solve certain kinds of maze, may involve you actually following every single pathway in the maze so it can be incredibly inefficient if there is some form of attrition going on (e.g. random encounters). In general, maze-solving algorithms can all be defeated (in the sense of being made to be very inefficient) by specific maze design if you know what algorithm is being used, but the right algorithm can solve mazes of a specific type efficiently as well.

Airk

2014-04-06, 05:13 PM

Are you SURE your want to do this? How many hours of "Okay, we turn left." "The corridor goes thirty feet and turns left." "Okay, we turn left at the end of the corridor." "The corridor runs for 10 feet, and ends in a T" "Okay, we turn left again." are your players actually going to want to do?

Coidzor

2014-04-06, 05:30 PM

Well, you can make a table so that you roll and then they run into X portion of the labyrinth next. You can map out the entire thing and place the threats and challenges.

Instant Death gimmicks don't really work very well with the number of people involved & the time investment unless you've already got some kind of meat-grinder schtick going.

prufock

2014-04-07, 06:57 AM

Airk

2014-04-07, 08:55 AM

Having players map in real time is incredibly boring. There are better options. What you should do is have a big map prepared on a whiteboard, large piece of poster board, or a computer with an external monitor they can see. Cover the unexplored portions with black construction paper and reveal it piece by piece as they enter a new room (cut the construction paper appropriately so you can uncover a whole room or hallway at a time). In the case of a digital map, use a layer of black over the map and an erase tool to uncover where they go.

This, of course, requires a lot more prep time on your part.

While you are right that mapping in real time is incredibly boring, I wouldn't even recommend doing this. There are a few different scenarios here:

#1: It's JUST a maze. If so, this is the most boring thing imaginable. I mean, mazes aren't even fun for most people if you have it all drawn out on a piece of paper in front of them and they just have to find their way through, nevermind making their own map while someone describes what the maze 'looks like'.
#2: It's a maze, but has traps. If so, I lied about the previous item being the most boring thing imaginable, because now not only do the players have to play the super boring maze game, but they need to do it EXTRA SLOWLY and check for traps everywhere.
#3: It's a maze, but has random encounters. This is only very marginally less boring than #1, because it's basically a slew of random encounters while the party slogs through #1. Random encounters, being random, tend to not be very interesting because they need to be able to pop up anywhere in the 'dungeon' and still make 'sense'.
#4: Combination of 2 and 3. About as boring as #3.
#5: It's a maze, but it has 'interesting locations' where things actually happen and real describing gets done. This is better, but it begs the question - why have the maze at all if it's just busywork?

Mazes are not fun in D&D.

Rhynn

2014-04-07, 09:25 AM

Having players map in real time is incredibly boring.

Nonsense. My players spent probably half of the last session poring over their hand-drawn (with my help, since the mage has the Mapping proficiency) maps of B4 The Lost City, searching for the hidden tomb, and finally found it (and looted it); fun was had by all, and the mapping player volunteered for the duty and likes it. They were pleased to have "defeated" the hidden tomb (several times over, given how it's multi-layered with deceptions and traps).

It'll be even more fun with wilderness maps, I think, because the players will get to very concretely discovered the world.

Mapping slows down play hardly at all (it helps to take the time out of combats by playing a game where they don't run for an hour or more), and turns the game into dungeon exploration, with the players pondering tactics and approaches and where to go and where things might be, etc. Also, managing their light sources and other supplies. "We're down to two torches, we'd better head back..."

Scrupulous usage of the rules for searching (10' per turn per person) and random encounters also creates time pressure and requires the players to choose where to search and when.

Edit: Now I really want to do a huge dungeon-maze, with lairs, tiny societies, its own mini-ecology, and power politics, sort of Labyrinth style...

Airk

2014-04-07, 10:09 AM

Nonsense. My players spent probably half of the last session poring over their hand-drawn (with my help, since the mage has the Mapping proficiency) maps of B4 The Lost City, searching for the hidden tomb, and finally found it (and looted it); fun was had by all, and the mapping player volunteered for the duty and likes it. They were pleased to have "defeated" the hidden tomb (several times over, given how it's multi-layered with deceptions and traps).

So your players like poring over a map and going "Okaaaay, it looks like there might be something in this empty space between the big room here and the hallway here... how can we get there?"

Really? 'cause I HATE that in video games...

Rhynn

2014-04-07, 11:34 AM

So your players like poring over a map and going "Okaaaay, it looks like there might be something in this empty space between the big room here and the hallway here... how can we get there?"

Yup! It's all a big puzzle. The searching is punctuated by random encounters (and really, between the reaction rolls and having an imagination, I have a hard time producing boring random encounters), which help create a sense of broader strategic concerns (dwindling resources, needing to stop and get to safety before being weakened too much, etc.).

Obviously your brain's mapping enjoyment center is damaged. :smallbiggrin: I love CRPGs where I have to draw my own maps. I've got a folder of graph paper maps next to me right now (for Eye of the Beholder, multiple gold box games but especially the Buck Rogers ones, Legend of Grimrock, Wizardry 6, etc.) and have very recent maps on my computer for all the dungeons of Ultima IV and Ultima V. I've even converted some of my graph paper maps into PNGs in Dungeonographer. (Drawing on paper is easier & faster while playing.)

Airk

2014-04-07, 11:55 AM

Yup! It's all a big puzzle. The searching is punctuated by random encounters (and really, between the reaction rolls and having an imagination, I have a hard time producing boring random encounters), which help create a sense of broader strategic concerns (dwindling resources, needing to stop and get to safety before being weakened too much, etc.).

Reaction rolls HELP, but if it's just "a maze" as set forth above, how many logical encounters can there even be?

Obviously your brain's mapping enjoyment center is damaged. :smallbiggrin: I love CRPGs where I have to draw my own maps. I've got a folder of graph paper maps next to me right now (for Eye of the Beholder, multiple gold box games but especially the Buck Rogers ones, Legend of Grimrock, Wizardry 6, etc.) and have very recent maps on my computer for all the dungeons of Ultima IV and Ultima V. I've even converted some of my graph paper maps into PNGs in Dungeonographer. (Drawing on paper is easier & faster while playing.)

I think it's just atrophied. I used to enjoy this. Or, rather, I used to DO this, and I thought(?) I enjoyed it. Then as games started taking this stuff away, I realized that I didn't miss it at all. Playing Etrian Odyssey 4 (where you draw your own maps on the 2nd screen of the 3DS) really drove home how much the bookkeeping of drawing lines on a map really bored me. This has not been improved by "Well, maybe there's a secret door here...nope. Here? Nope. Here? Nope. Here? Oh, yes! You get to a new area and can draw a new map!"

Well, different stroke for different folks, but I think the fundamental lesson here is that you need a LOT more than 'a maze' to keep the players entertained, and be aware that the maze may bore some of them stupid.

Rhynn

2014-04-07, 12:03 PM

Reaction rolls HELP, but if it's just "a maze" as set forth above, how many logical encounters can there even be?

Well, I mentioned The Labyrinth above...

Depending on what exactly your maze is, you could run into so many things. You could have rooms or complexes of rooms in there. You could have undead. You could have lost wanderers. Golems, traps, puzzles, treasures, messages and clues, partial maps (correct or not), inhabitants, a society of the lost who survive by eating things they come across... and that's all in addition to the exit and/or whatever's at the center.

NichG

2014-04-07, 12:38 PM

The best mapping experiences are when somehow it goes from being a process to something where the structure behind the dungeon actually begins to make intuitive sense. For example, you're raiding some caves and you discover hewn-stone walls and rooms. As you explore, you discover that the rooms near the entrance were visitor's quarters, the rooms further in are workshops, even deeper are the quarters of dwarves who used to live there, etc. Once you start to get the idea of how the place is organized, you can start figuring out 'if I go here, it will be where the treasure is' or 'hey, there must be a hidden sluice that carries water to everywhere in this complex, if I can get access to that...' or whatever. The process of drawing lines on paper isn't so interesting, but the process of those lines congealing to be a 'place' is somewhat interesting.

Thats why a 'dungeon with a complex layout' tends to be easier to make fun than a straight-up 'maze'. The context is what makes the mapping/navigation compelling, and a maze tends to lack context by design.

Airk

2014-04-07, 12:47 PM

Well, I mentioned The Labyrinth above...

Which, when you get right down to it, had only a VERY LITTLE bit of ACTUAL "maze work" in it. Enough to set the context of "Hey, this place is a Labyrinth".

Depending on what exactly your maze is, you could run into so many things. You could have rooms or complexes of rooms in there. You could have undead. You could have lost wanderers. Golems, traps, puzzles, treasures, messages and clues, partial maps (correct or not), inhabitants, a society of the lost who survive by eating things they come across... and that's all in addition to the exit and/or whatever's at the center.

Which is all more interesting than actually dealing with the maze, which makes one wonder what function the actual maze is serving...

SimonMoon6

2014-04-07, 01:43 PM

Thats why a 'dungeon with a complex layout' tends to be easier to make fun than a straight-up 'maze'. The context is what makes the mapping/navigation compelling, and a maze tends to lack context by design.

Not to mention the fact that once you've found the way through a maze, you generally don't have any reason to explore the paths not taken. So, if someone detailed lots of interesting encounters that would only happen if the players took one of those paths, those encounters would be wasted.

NichG

2014-04-07, 06:18 PM

Not to mention the fact that once you've found the way through a maze, you generally don't have any reason to explore the paths not taken. So, if someone detailed lots of interesting encounters that would only happen if the players took one of those paths, those encounters would be wasted.

I should mention though, that there are DMing techniques to deal with this. For example, lets say I make a list of things like the following:

Food Stockpile

Layout: 25ft x 15ft rectangle, plus three 5ft x 10ft cubbies making an E shape.

Contents: This room was used by the inhabitants of the dungeon to store food. However, the food has long since rotted and has been overgrown by molds. In addition to Brown Mold, this room contains 1d3 appropriate scavenger creatures. Amidst the rotting food (and mold), there is a 25% chance to find a few small jewels amidst the corpse of a traveller/merchant, a 50% chance to find plants/molds/etc that could be harvested to produce 1d4 doses of an appropriate poison (DC 20 Survival check), and a 25% chance to find nothing but rotted food.

Hints (pick one randomly):

- A foul odor wafts down this corridor
- You hear the sound of something rustling through debris down this corridor
- You see runes here painted in luminescent fungus in (language) - Translates to 'Larder'
- This passage is covered with small patches of mold

If you make a deck of things like that and draw them when PCs get to an intersection, then you can re-use rooms they didn't visit; but since they have randomly chosen hints, it won't be obvious that you're re-using them.

LibraryOgre

2014-04-07, 07:05 PM

SimonMoon6

2014-04-07, 08:58 PM

sometimes you'll turn a corner and run into 8' of steak and axe.

This brings up a very important question:

Is it considered wrong to cook and eat a minotaur? What if you just cook the head?

Coidzor

2014-04-07, 09:39 PM

In a Fourthcore game I was in, the maze was done with a game of Memory. Lay out an 8*8 grid of cards, and the party chooses 2 each turn. If they match, they get a success towards solving the maze. If they don't match, they've wasted time. If the minotaur shows up, they have to deal with him.

Complication? Every few turns, the GM picks a row, shuffles it, and puts it back down.

It avoided the need to draw a real map, and forced the party to deal with the fact that sometimes you'll turn a corner and run into 8' of steak and axe.

That does sound like a much more... visceral experience than rolling off of a table. I really like that. :smallbiggrin:

Though your description of minotaurs just makes them sound delicious more than anything else... :smalleek: Also, I'm somewhat surprised that none of my groups have ever thought to eat the durned things now... :smallconfused:

DigoDragon

2014-04-08, 09:03 AM

My favorite maze that I've run was in a mansion. I took heavy cardstock and drew rooms and halls using a 1" square grid. As the PCs explored the maze, I'd "build" the mansion one room at a time. I used an encounter chart to see if the PCs ran into things like the cleaning staff (ninjas), non-osha compliant furniture (animated objects), the rabid pet dog (hell hound) or the butler (don't ask). The goal was to find three pieces of a key and each piece was in a specific room.

Some rooms that did not have a piece of key or an encounter might have a hidden switch. The switch would cause one or more already explored rooms to change (usually at random, but already explored rooms are removed from play, except for key rooms). Thus the PCs could change the layout in order to find the key pieces faster. Once they assembled the key, they can use it on any door to open their way to the attic where the boss encounter was. :smallsmile:

Old scary mansions are my favorite "maze". Even just a standard large house (I've used Clue boards at times) can mean lots of running around and exploring with traps, encounters, and secret rooms. Plus, they're usually not too big that the PCs take forever to solve, yet not necessarily a cake-walk either.

Coidzor

2014-04-08, 04:17 PM

Old scary mansions are my favorite "maze". Even just a standard large house (I've used Clue boards at times) can mean lots of running around and exploring with traps, encounters, and secret rooms. Plus, they're usually not too big that the PCs take forever to solve, yet not necessarily a cake-walk either.

Now there's a thought. :smallbiggrin:

VoxRationis

2014-04-08, 04:35 PM

To me, it seems that a maze is almost the default kind dungeon, unless you have a dedicated and competent party cartographer or a generous visual aid.
Describe at any given point what the players can see from that point, in precise terms that are nonetheless relative to the current facing of the character. Don't refer to past places or events; let them remember it, or try to. Keep your own map behind your screen and mark where the players are and what changes they've made, but don't reveal it to anyone.