Building Fun Mazes

[JDL]

Hi all,

I'm currently building a Pathfinder adventure path for my players designed for level 6 to 9, with a theme of mazes and fey.

I'd like advice or guidance on how to build an interesting and fun series of encounters inside a maze without having the party get bored of exploring or feel like it's too generic.

Background: The players will learn that three days ago a nobleman's manor was surrounded by a hedge maze overnight. No contact has been made with the inhabitants, and the few who've gone to investigate have returned to report that the entrance was guarded by a half-man, half-bull creature. Our adventurers are tasked with finding out the fate of the noble and his household.

Behind the scenes: A gateway to the First World recently opened near the manor of our missing noble. A Blodeuwedd has taken up guarding this portal, and erected the hedge maze overnight using her at-will Plant Growth SLA. A Stroke Lad and Huldra have replaced the Lord and Lady of the house, disfiguring the servants into hideous monstrosities. Meanwhile, a Blackwood Satyr and his cronies have kidnapped the most attractive females from the manor, taking them back to the First World as their playthings.

The intent I have is to have the players traverse the hedge maze to reach the manor house, then discover the truth of the events from the Stroke Lad or Huldra, rescuing the noble and his household. From there, they can optionally pursue rescuing the kidnapped women as well.

In order to make the maze portion interesting, I'd like input from both DMs and players. What have you found that works well when playing through a maze in Pathfinder? What strategies keep the experience interesting? Also, what have you found makes the game boring our tedious, or what doesn't work well?

[Florian]

Mazes are a fun concept but boring in their execution. Best thing you can do is prepared some of the highlights and hand wave the rest, maybe sprinkle it with some skill checks.
"You reach a T-junction. Where do you want to go, left or right?" is simply..... boring.

[DarkSoul]

Are any of your players obsessive mappers? Is there any reason to believe they're not going to just carve a straight path through the hedge maze to the manor?

Assuming they actually follow the maze, either have it be semi-sentient or just programmed to shift along a set pattern every x amount of time (rounds, minutes, randomly, whatever). Design several sections into the maze that shift every so often, changing the path to the manor on them. Maybe it's once an hour to give them a sense of urgency to get through the maze before it shifts again and they're lost. If you can find some tileable maze geomorphs online you could use those for your map, and rotate one of the tiles 90+ degrees once in a while.

I agree that leading them through the maze turn-by-turn does get a bit boring, and only using the maze as a backdrop for encounters will likely be more entertaining. Only using a small portion of the maze as an encounter area would make the fights interesting. You could have the maze react by closing off pathways behind anyone that gets too far away from the group, so the PC's stay in the same encounter area rather than splitting up.

[Gildedragon]

This an in person or online game?

In person: get a few packs of cards (standard four-suit cards work well, though if you have a large mtg or similar collection that works well too). Shuffle them well. Divide them into 4 piles for each direction they can go in. Each time the party (or individual) moves, have them flip a card from the adequate pile.

Each card has an encounter or description tied to it. If an encounter is defeated then the card is chucked (or kept by them for reference) if the encounter is avoid it, keep it in a discard pile for later.

Survival checks to navigate the maze, or scouting ahead, allow them to flip 2+ cards and pick the one they face (either looking through one same pile or seeing the top card from two piles).
If they get lost: shuffle the discards into the top half of the deck. Or they have to roll for which direction they go.

Hearts are diplomatic/healing encounters/events. Combat may ensue but have these be npcs that start neutral or friendly

Clubs are traps or stealth friendly encounters

Diamonds are treasure affecting encounters. Either because they are high treasure, wandering shopkeepers, guards that can be bribed, or the like.

Spades are aggressive encounters. They attack the party; though they might be reasoned with.

Have the DC increase with the number of the card.

You can mix in a joker or more into one or several piles to indicate special encounters, like the minotaur.

[Gallowglass]

I love that idea!

But that being said, with the level of your PCs and... well... with them being PCs.... don't be surprised when they just burn the maze down or fly over it to get to the castle. Be prepared with how your evil fey are going to react to non-traditional maze-crashing.

[Gildedragon]

I love that idea!

But that being said, with the level of your PCs and... well... with them being PCs.... don't be surprised when they just burn the maze down or fly over it to get to the castle. Be prepared with how your evil fey are going to react to non-traditional maze-crashing.

Bursting through the walls: that is still moving in one of the four directions >:3

To make that choice feel more significant you might need some Q Cards and 2d4 (or 3d4, color coded). Roll 1d4 indicating how many exits there are from that particular room: 1 dead end, 2 hallway (roll 2d4 for which directions the stretch of hallway connects), 3 fork (1d4 for which direction is wall), 4 open Plaza
In the Q Cards (sorted in 5 piles) have brief description of the type of room: an open Plaza with a fountain, a twisting corridor that slopes dangerously, dead end with a secret door... With some terrain modifier notes. 5th Q card pile is wall and floor info (riverine, metal, masonry, scrub)
You could also roll a die for the wall type... But the deck makes it more immediate
Note1 use this only when they ask for terrain description, otherwise just assume similar terrain as before
Note2 halls and forks are of indeterminate size
Note3 improv. A small-narrow hall when the deck says a minor minotaur is there. Mino is stuck. Free Mino and he might be friendly now instead of aggressive

[JDL]

Thank you so much to all who took the time to respond! I'll try to address some of the questions and concerns raised to hopefully clarify the intent for the game I'm planning.


Mazes are a fun concept but boring in their execution. Best thing you can do is prepared some of the highlights and hand wave the rest, maybe sprinkle it with some skill checks.
"You reach a T-junction. Where do you want to go, left or right?" is simply..... boring.

Agreed, I don't want the maze to become tedious and repetitive, so I thought I'd prep well before trying the adventure to get ideas from others here. Do you have any suggestions for a particular skill check or challenge you think would be fun for this setting?


Are any of your players obsessive mappers? Is there any reason to believe they're not going to just carve a straight path through the hedge maze to the manor?

Assuming they actually follow the maze, either have it be semi-sentient or just programmed to shift along a set pattern every x amount of time (rounds, minutes, randomly, whatever). Design several sections into the maze that shift every so often, changing the path to the manor on them. Maybe it's once an hour to give them a sense of urgency to get through the maze before it shifts again and they're lost. If you can find some tileable maze geomorphs online you could use those for your map, and rotate one of the tiles 90+ degrees once in a while.

I agree that leading them through the maze turn-by-turn does get a bit boring, and only using the maze as a backdrop for encounters will likely be more entertaining. Only using a small portion of the maze as an encounter area would make the fights interesting. You could have the maze react by closing off pathways behind anyone that gets too far away from the group, so the PC's stay in the same encounter area rather than splitting up.

To address the first concern, that the players will carve through the maze, I planned to have a few surprises in store for them. Entering the hedge maze, I'll tell them something along the lines of "You hear things moving inside the nearby hedges." If they try to push through the hedge, burn it or cut it down, it will trigger an encounter with either 50% chance of 1d4 Twigjacks (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/fey/twigjack), or 50% chance of 1d2 Living Topiaries (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/plants/living-topiary). Since both of these creatures have a teleportation ability that works inside hedges, they should be enough of an annoyance that it will quickly become clear to the players a brute force approach will cost a lot of resources.

I'd like to avoid the maze itself being shifting or morphic, since it doesn't make much sense given the source was an immediate spell effect. Of course, proximity to the First World portal could be used to explain any activity along this line, so it would still be possible to do so as a method to encourage the group to avoid splitting the party up too badly.


This an in person or online game?

In person: get a few packs of cards (standard four-suit cards work well, though if you have a large mtg or similar collection that works well too). Shuffle them well. Divide them into 4 piles for each direction they can go in. Each time the party (or individual) moves, have them flip a card from the adequate pile.

Each card has an encounter or description tied to it. If an encounter is defeated then the card is chucked (or kept by them for reference) if the encounter is avoid it, keep it in a discard pile for later.

Survival checks to navigate the maze, or scouting ahead, allow them to flip 2+ cards and pick the one they face (either looking through one same pile or seeing the top card from two piles).
If they get lost: shuffle the discards into the top half of the deck. Or they have to roll for which direction they go.

Hearts are diplomatic/healing encounters/events. Combat may ensue but have these be npcs that start neutral or friendly

Clubs are traps or stealth friendly encounters

Diamonds are treasure affecting encounters. Either because they are high treasure, wandering shopkeepers, guards that can be bribed, or the like.

Spades are aggressive encounters. They attack the party; though they might be reasoned with.

Have the DC increase with the number of the card.

You can mix in a joker or more into one or several piles to indicate special encounters, like the minotaur.

Great ideas Guigarci, thanks! To answer your first question, this is a weekly game with 5 players and myself that I host at my house, complete with beer, pretzels and minimaps. I like this system not just for the maze but as a fun way to prep any kind of longer adventure arc, and I'll definitely put it in my notes to use for something!


I love that idea!

But that being said, with the level of your PCs and... well... with them being PCs.... don't be surprised when they just burn the maze down or fly over it to get to the castle. Be prepared with how your evil fey are going to react to non-traditional maze-crashing.

Yeah, and aside from the above disincentive to brute force the maze at ground level, I'm fairly confident that the party won't attempt to fly over, given that it's unlikely they'll have sufficient resources to perform this kind of action at level 6-7. A wizard would only have 3-4 level 3 spells at that level, and whilst theoretically they could attempt to blow their entire wad on transporting the party across, it would spend almost all of their higher spells to do so, at the cost of missing out on a good chunk of experience available if they went through the maze. I trust my players will likely decide to instead attempt to murder as much stuff in the maze as they can for loot instead.

A few other ideas I was tossing around: hidden features inside the maze that grant bonuses to experience, for example finding the seven ugly garden gnomes would grant a CR appropriate experience bonus. Good idea or bad?

[Gildedragon]

How would they go about finding the gnomes?
The bonus to XP doesn't make much sense. Them finding the gnomes is very dependent on you giving the gnomes to them. Maybe each gnome is petrified, and they find a wand of stone to flesh, freeing the gnomes (each a wizard or artificer OR adept or magewright) mmagewright them give boons to the party. Think how much xp you'd give for it and have that XP be given in magic items.
Examples:
A pearl of power, a weapon crystal, a handful of utility-enchanted arrows, a little wind up gnome (made of garishly painted adamantine sheet metal) that walks in a line up to 90' (with a speed of 5' or 10' per round) and after 5 rounds it starts banging little golden cymbals together (better yet: a little box that produces one such a gnome when opened, the gnome exists for a minute or two before vanishing with a poof and a cloud of colored smokem box can only produce one gnome per hour or half hour), three small gemstone garden gnomes that when set on the floor ward the area inside the circle they describe with alarm and a dawn spell when the perimeter is breached, a 1/day wondrous item of rope trick: either something like a portable hole you toss up in the air, or a coil of very strong self-knotting rope that can do the trick once a day

[ganondorf50]

I am a sucker for the classics, so I would put in some minotaurs the area itself is under the confusion spell, permanency, and only the minotaurs know their way around. Also throw in some weird traps that teleport them to different parts of the maze, ie ceiling with spikes pits all kinds of stuff.