how to make a maze/labyrinth interesting?

[flamewolf393]

As a DM, how do you describe a maze/labyrinth so it doesnt devolve down to a tedious montage of "a 30 foot corridor, turn left, a 20' corridor, then an intersection, left or right?

[Sapreaver]

As a DM, how do you describe a maze/labyrinth so it doesnt devolve down to a tedious montage of "a 30 foot corridor, turn left, a 20' corridor, then an intersection, left or right?

rather than making it just a bunch of hallways try making it rooms with various exits dead ends and challenges that may or may not be fatal.

The movie cube2 might be interesting to get ideas. Heck if you put enought time in to the lab it could take as long as a sub arc.

[daremetoidareyo]

Skill check it. Bonuses for architecture, survival, scent, and anything else you can think of. Hand out mazes to players.

[Psyren]

Skill check it. Bonuses for architecture, survival, scent, and anything else you can think of. Hand out mazes to players.

This - I'd design it as something closer to a Chase scene (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/chases/) than an actual maze, where multiple skill and ability checks are needed to make progress.


You can even combine this with the Cube idea mentioned above - throw in various encounters (monsters, traps, obstacles etc) or just have the walls shift periodically in a pattern/puzzle that the players need to figure out.

[Remuko]

Less hallways more rooms. Rooms have puzzles or fights or loot.

[jmax]

Obligatory JourneyQuest scene link (https://youtu.be/ke8utd-VB_g?list=PLB600313D4723E21F&t=126) (YouTube video)

[Mendicant]

I definitely second rooms rather than hallways and "dead ends" that are hazards and resource sinks rather than just boring dead ends. (Don't do this with *all* the dead ends though, or it's not a maze. At least once or twice in the adventure, the players should feel lost or frustrated, or the adventure wont feel like a maze and escaping won't feel like an accomplishment.)

In addition to the good advice already given for livening things up and keeping the game from stalling some things I've learned about puzzles more generally. A puzzle needs a couple things to be good in an RPG:

It needs to be visible to the players. They should know they're in a maze or a labyrinthine dungeon, so they have some idea of what they need to do about it. They also need to be able to map it accurately.

It needs to be solvable with some amount of player (not character) skill. A maze that is solved with a series of checks is not a puzzle, it is a skill challenge/set dressing. (That doesn't mean it's bad! It just isn't a puzzle.) Ideally, this skill involves a decent amount of using in-character abilities in a smart way, the same skillset that makes 3.x combat fun.

Solving it should be a team effort. It should both require varied skills to get through and have several partial solutions that can present themselves so different players can make different deductions or intuitive leaps that contribute to solving the puzzle. IE: letting them bumble around, make a map and then have the guy who is best at mazes trace a line through the map is ... ehh. Adding in a minotaur who can be tracked or a system of secret doors that let them bypass part of the maze creates an opportunity for different sorts of thinkers to shine and some additional character abilities to get trotted out.

[jmax]

Hmm, has anyone tried doing a teleport-pad (or portal) dungeon - along the lines of Sylph Tower from the original Pokemon games - but with the teleporters having multiple possible destinations? You'd have to make the behavior consistent, but there could be some randomness to it (i.e. 50% chance of this room or that). It would allow you to have the map done out in advance and even visible without spoiling anything.

I'm not sure if this would be really cool or just incredibly annoying. I suppose it depends on the complexity of the puzzle. Keeping the behavior consistent would be absolutely critical.

It might be especially interesting if the party manages to split itself by accident.

[PrismCat21]

Hmm, has anyone tried doing a teleport-pad (or portal) dungeon - along the lines of Sylph Tower from the original Pokemon games - but with the teleporters having multiple possible destinations? You'd have to make the behavior consistent, but there could be some randomness to it (i.e. 50% chance of this room or that). It would allow you to have the map done out in advance and even visible without spoiling anything.

I have.
The destination changed depending on which direction you entered the teleport tile from. They eventually figured out that it sent you to the next closest teleport tile in the direction opposite from how you entered it.
They were split up for awhile and had to face challenges by their lonesome. 2 out of 4 of the characters leveled just from those challenges. :)

One player got pretty frustrated because he couldn't figure it out when everyone else did. The first player to figure it out did so from paying attention to the other players, but couldn't justify to herself that her character figured it out until a few turns later.

Be careful. Some players can't handle puzzles they can't easily solve. My one player pouted the rest of the day.

[Ualaa]

There's a teleportation maze in Rappan Athuk...

There are pads on the floor, in various dungeon rooms on that level.
Upon investigation, these may be lifted an inch or so, and then rotated... some of the pads have alternate down places, which essentially set the direction they can teleport in.

So a given pad may be... Northward to room 12, South East to room 19 and West is broken.

Some of the pads were one way... the room they went to, could not regress to the room you came from.
Although that is not to say that you could not point the pad to the east, after arriving in this room from the east, and not have an east destination (they did a few of those, where east was not the original destination).

The pads had the quirk that they could take one person at a time.
And had a recharge time of d6 rounds.
Activated by stepping up and down... so that would eat round per level buffs quickly.

Most of the rooms were safe upon arrival.
But not all of them.

Some had numerous small things, that were afraid of numbers but were happy to attack 2-3 targets with their 30+ number (insect-like things sort of like spiders, that crawled on the floor, walls and ceiling).
One of the rooms had a high stealth lurker like mob... pretty deadly, that wanted to kill a victim and drag it away.

It was a very interesting level.

[Gemini476]

As a DM, how do you describe a maze/labyrinth so it doesnt devolve down to a tedious montage of "a 30 foot corridor, turn left, a 20' corridor, then an intersection, left or right?

Easy answer: include a Minotaur or other thing that makes the maze more than just, well, something they could just as well do with a print-out and a pencil. Something interactive, be it traps or monsters that need to be avoided through whatever method or optional doors that you need to waste time opening (and may not even be a shortcut) or... well, whatever.

Also, include rooms and chests and other hidden things within the labyrinth to keep it less samey and give some variety in the experience. Give them a carrot for getting hopelessly lost so it's not a complete waste of time. Maybe there's a shady merchant camping out in the middle, selling completely legitimate goods.

Also also, include multiple points of exit. Don't force them to find a particular way out of the maze - give them multiple ways to go so there's actually some meaningful choice (and to increase the likelihood of them "solving" it). Make sure that the exits are also meaningfully different - have them exit into separate areas that perhaps interconnect somewhere further down the line but not too quickly. Maybe they even lead to separate levels - one exit just goes down a floor, one is an elevator that goes upwards, one is a gate to hell, one is a chute to China...

And make sure to include some way to skip the entire thing, even if it's just something that's revealed after getting through the maze. You don't want the players to have to waste time retracing their steps. (This ties in well with having hidden things within the maze - make it an optional trek for additional rewards.)
Maybe there's a spot near one end of the maze that's adjacent to the beginning, so they can just knock down that section of wall to create a shortcut. Maybe they can just do that the moment they first come to the maze, or just luck into it while poking around with shortcuts/divining stuff, but then they might miss the shady merchant or minotaur's lair or gate to hell.
Maybe there's multiple layers to it, so there's overlapping bridges and tunnels, and enterprising adventurers can climb up the walls to "sequence break" in sections - but that just means that they've discovered a loop in the path of the maze. Maybe there's sections where the walls don't reach the ceiling and the players can clamber over the top of them, but that also just adds another dimension. Maybe that big flat area over there is the roof of an enclosed room, or maybe it's just an empty spot in the labyrinth - maybe that big flat room is a combat arena, or maybe it's just the (thin and breakable?) roof for a more subterranean section of maze.

Maybe there's just outright doors in the walls that can't be seen from above. Maybe some of those doors are secret, or one-way, or fake. Maybe there's an invisible teleporter, maybe there's a visible one. Maybe there's slanting passageways and sliding walls and all those other fun mapping tricks.

Maybe there's a bunch of cats infesting the maze that mess up any loose threads that are lying around, I dunno. There's a lot you can do to make things more interesting.

Really, just look at old megadungeon maps and ask yourself "is this a maze?" Because mazes can be more complicated than just a grid of hedges.

[jmax]

I have.
The destination changed depending on which direction you entered the teleport tile from. They eventually figured out that it sent you to the next closest teleport tile in the direction opposite from how you entered it.
They were split up for awhile and had to face challenges by their lonesome. 2 out of 4 of the characters leveled just from those challenges. :)


Ok, that's really cool and clever. I love it! Way better than my initial idea, which was to roll for one of a few random destinations.




Easy answer: include a Minotaur or other thing that makes the maze more than just, well, something they could just as well do with a print-out and a pencil. Something interactive, be it traps or monsters that need to be avoided through whatever method or optional doors that you need to waste time opening (and may not even be a shortcut) or... well, whatever.


If including a monster to spice things up, make sure it's a serious threat to the PCs - possibly even unbeatable (i.e. it has infinite temporary hit points until the PCs smash a magic orb at the center of the maze). Nothing quite so anti-climatic as one-shotting the minotaur.

[Pleh]

My groups have used a few mazes recently.

Far and away the best tool is a spreadsheet map. Having a map for the players to gradually uncover is half the fun of doing a maze. The player's ability to see parts of the map they've explored represents the character's ability to remember where they've been.

Be very careful what the players get to see, because any wizard who sees the end of the maze from afar will just Tele-stomp your maze. Make plans if you want to shield the maze from scrying, but if you are taking away the wizard's toys, try to make sure the wizard can use some of their other toys in the maze. They can probably still make a few holes in the walls with their magic, just as the barbarian with a sledgehammer.

Use a random generator. Do not waste hours building what a computer can do in less than a second. (http://www.mazegenerator.net) Get a random maze, then edit it. Add three dimensions where the ground rises and falls. Explain dead ends with collapsed structures. Add traps, clues, wandering monsters, and places where a solid skill check will give the players a shortcut.

Next is maze size. You DON'T want a very large maze. The amount of time it takes to navigate a maze by exploring it from the inside can very easily take up an entire session by itself. Remember that a dungeon with rooms is not so different from having a maze with a few special locations scattered through it. The only difference is that a maze makes the dungeon structure itself a challenge as it was made to be confusing to a person's sense of direction.

The next important thing is time. If the characters have no time constraints, they can just take 20 on survival, mark the walls with chalk, and beat the maze by trial and error without the maze ever actually existing for the players or DM. Psyren gave a good example with the chase scene as to how to limit the time the players have, although the idea was half recommending to skip having an actual maze and use it as a general frame for having a chase. Remember the classic maze villain is the minotaur, who can hunt the heroes with impunity with their immunity to getting lost in mazes. If minotaurs are underleveled for your party, give them waves of minotaurs so the party has to escape the maze before they run out of resources from fighting off the minotaurs.

Finally, what's wrong with hallways? People say, "use rooms, they're better" but hallways are just rooms with a specific purpose. Remember that the point of a maze is to confound people traversing them. Making every hall look the same may be boring, but it's half the danger of the maze because every place in the maze looks the same. This makes it important that the party think of ways to mark their environment in case they return to a part of the maze they've been to before (intentionally or unintentionally). But, my own experience is that the danger of a blank wall maze is outweighed by the frustrating boringness. Usually it's better to make them more asthetically appealing, like a hedge maze or abandoned city ruins (where the maze wasn't part of the original design, but erosion and successive inhabitants have modified the ruined streets and alleys), so the players have something to think about besides "solve the maze to continue."

Hallways also introduce very unique combat scenarios. Movement is often limited. Nothing levels the playing field between casters and noncasters better than a corner taking away line of effect. Traps can be devestating in such limited environments; they can come from any direction and leave very little room for escape. Hallways come in all sizes, too, since some halls are made for expedience, some for maintenance access, some for heavy traffic in multiple directions, and some to protect travelers from hazards just beyond the walls.

Finally, have a plan to get the players out of the maze quickly if plans fall apart and what was meant to be frustrating for the PCs starts squashing the fun for their players. Mazes can be hard to make fun and some players just aren't going to enjoy it (after all, they probably didn't build their character to be a maze solver, so don't make them spend time trying something they weren't meant to be good at).

[Gemini476]

If including a monster to spice things up, make sure it's a serious threat to the PCs - possibly even unbeatable (i.e. it has infinite temporary hit points until the PCs smash a magic orb at the center of the maze). Nothing quite so anti-climatic as one-shotting the minotaur.

I'd say that you shouldn't make it too unbeatable - having it be a bit overpowered in comparison to the party might be useful if you want them to focus on running away and generally not doing anything that can attract its attention, but IMHO you should totally let them "break" the maze. You can have something unbeatable as long as it's slow enough to outrun, though.

Also, well, you can get away with weaker monsters as long as it's plural. Just have something to break up the monotony - you can't just leisurely follow the right/left wall, because then you'll run into more monsters as time goes by and even weak hits can add up over time.

On the topic of following a wall, include some loops in the design of the maze.

Oh, and remember that it's OK if the players don't find everything. If you include anything hidden within the maze, prepare yourself for the eventuality that they'll just miss it.

[jmax]

I'd say that you shouldn't make it too unbeatable - having it be a bit overpowered in comparison to the party might be useful if you want them to focus on running away and generally not doing anything that can attract its attention, but IMHO you should totally let them "break" the maze. You can have something unbeatable as long as it's slow enough to outrun, though.

Sufficiently clever players will break your maze whether you let them or not :-P

But yes, any unbeatable monster needs to be just a hair slower than the party. It's not actually there to kill them - it's to force them to keep moving. Ideally it should be terrifying rather than lethal. Respawning is another good option, although take care that they don't turn it into an XP farm.

If you're going with a chasing monster, you should probably have its movement go according to real time rather than game time so the players can't discuss endlessly. If also doing puzzles, they should be fairly simple puzzles.

[Stealth Marmot]

David Bowie.

Aside from that, you would have to consider your players. Do you have players who like puzzles and notetaking? If so, then make a complex maze and constantly erase the sections that are out of sight. Let them use chalk, or twine, and maps and notes to find themselves through the maze.

Include trap sections where suddenly balance checks are needed for example (the floor falls away and the players are caught on nothing but a 4 inch wide sliver of stone). Have sections where the walls open and close and maybe require careful use of levers or pressure plates.

Do your players instead like combat? Have sections guarded by various beasts. Include some puzzles with hints on how to defeat the beasts, or potential alternative methods to defeating or bypassing the beast without straight combat (lure it into a nearby trap where it gets crushed by rocks or falls into the pits) or even without killing it. (Have a riddle that hints that music makes the beast go to sleep)

If you want to add some flavor, have them find the corpses of long dead adventurers with incomplete maps and notes giving hints to certain puzzles.

[Segev]

In the spirit of "challenge the character, not the player," I would actually abstract the maze itself.

Have a set of rooms, and (if you care) a tree diagram graphing what rooms CAN be reached from one to the other without going through others. Have a difficulty assigned to each 'link' to represent how hard it is to deliberately find a particular destination room.

Make percentile tables for each exit from a room; if people randomly wander, the percentile table tells you where they wind up after, say, 5 minutes of walking. Enough time to count as "between encounters."

These tables should reflect the graph mapping room-to-room connections; the odds of randomly winding up in a particular destination room should be inversely proportional to the difficulty of finding it on purpose.

Include significant portions of the tables that are "still lost in this part of the maze," and be sure to include the same door they wandered INTO this maze from on the table! Mazes can turn you around, after all.


Survival checks (using Int instead of Wis) of the "deliberately find my way" DC can retrace previously-trod paths (so keep track of how many rolls - and thus how many 5-minute periods of walking - it took to go from one room to another). Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) checks at those DCs can trim 5-minute intervals off one by one. Maybe allow every 5 by which the DC is exceeded to trim an extra one off. To a minimum of one 5-minute interval from one room to another.


Random encounters every 5-minute interval wandering the maze. These should range from interesting architectural features to secret doors that lead to a new percentile chart with its own DCs for new rooms to monsters to traps to any other notable things...like the corpses of people who got lost/killed in here before them. With or without their loot.


Otherwise, use +2 Circumstance Bonuses to represent any other mechanics the PCs invoke to help them navigate. Know direction, craft (cartography), a compass, etc. are +2 each.

Remember that things like leaving marks and the left-hand-rule are just part of a Survival check. Sure, they're great fluff, but they're not going to give bonuses by themselves.



All of this makes it a challenge for the PCs, rather than an exercise in tedious map-making and maze-solving for the players.

[jmax]

In the spirit of "challenge the character, not the player," I would actually abstract the maze itself.

Have a set of rooms, and (if you care) a tree diagram graphing what rooms CAN be reached from one to the other without going through others. Have a difficulty assigned to each 'link' to represent how hard it is to deliberately find a particular destination room.

Make percentile tables for each exit from a room; if people randomly wander, the percentile table tells you where they wind up after, say, 5 minutes of walking. Enough time to count as "between encounters."

These tables should reflect the graph mapping room-to-room connections; the odds of randomly winding up in a particular destination room should be inversely proportional to the difficulty of finding it on purpose.

Include significant portions of the tables that are "still lost in this part of the maze," and be sure to include the same door they wandered INTO this maze from on the table! Mazes can turn you around, after all.


Survival checks (using Int instead of Wis) of the "deliberately find my way" DC can retrace previously-trod paths (so keep track of how many rolls - and thus how many 5-minute periods of walking - it took to go from one room to another). Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) checks at those DCs can trim 5-minute intervals off one by one. Maybe allow every 5 by which the DC is exceeded to trim an extra one off. To a minimum of one 5-minute interval from one room to another.


Random encounters every 5-minute interval wandering the maze. These should range from interesting architectural features to secret doors that lead to a new percentile chart with its own DCs for new rooms to monsters to traps to any other notable things...like the corpses of people who got lost/killed in here before them. With or without their loot.


Otherwise, use +2 Circumstance Bonuses to represent any other mechanics the PCs invoke to help them navigate. Know direction, craft (cartography), a compass, etc. are +2 each.

Remember that things like leaving marks and the left-hand-rule are just part of a Survival check. Sure, they're great fluff, but they're not going to give bonuses by themselves.



All of this makes it a challenge for the PCs, rather than an exercise in tedious map-making and maze-solving for the players.

This is very interesting. I definitely like abstracting out the maze itself and going with a (directed?) graph to determine where everyone goes next. I'm having trouble tracking some of the pieces, such as "the odds of randomly winding up in a particular destination room should be inversely proportional to the difficulty of finding it on purpose." Can you elaborate on that a bit? Or, even better, do you have any examples handy that you've used in the past?

[Segev]

This is very interesting. I definitely like abstracting out the maze itself and going with a (directed?) graph to determine where everyone goes next. I'm having trouble tracking some of the pieces, such as "the odds of randomly winding up in a particular destination room should be inversely proportional to the difficulty of finding it on purpose." Can you elaborate on that a bit? Or, even better, do you have any examples handy that you've used in the past?

Nothing handy, but I can try to put something together tomorrow. A little distracted and too tired to do it well tonight.

[Efrate]

As opposed to making a chart, use a deck of cards. Assign suit and values to whatever. They need to pull the 4 aces, or somesuch to get out.

Diamonds, are treasures. Of worth roughly increasing value, so a 6 of diamonds is worth more than a 2.

Clubs are traps, again scaling in difficulty.

Hearts are NpCs of varying degrees of utility, or are safe places, or deadends, or unique dungeon features, or a puzzle, really you toss what-have-you here. This is a list you may wish to maintain. You could also reshuffle all hearts back into the deck which makes them being lost a possibility. Explain it away however you want: "You turn the corner and the fresco of battle angels and demons is on the wall here. The same horn is missing from the largest demon, and you are certain you have seen it before. You briefly feel dizzy and a bit of nausea (have them make a save if you want, doesn't matter but they do not need to know that. Save just means they are aware something happened and not dizzy or somesuch.) They also could represent skill challenges.

Spades are encounters, scaling again.

All Face cards are tougher than normal encounters, so a Jack of Clubs is a trap that also has a monster that works with it.

All Aces are minibosses. Higher CR monsters, with appropriate other stuff based on the suit.

All 7s are forks in the path where you get 2 cards in addition to the double effect of the card.

7 of clubs could be like a hallway with a pit trap (CR X) and a poison arrow (CR X +/- 2) trap on the far side (which may cause a reflex save or fall in the pit). You flip the 2 of spades and the 5 of diamonds, and you get a low level encounter (goblin raiding party), and some treasure in the pit (corpse of somone with goodies).

Jokers are something custom and special. Flex those creative DM muscles.

Last maze I had I ran this way and it works well, keep the pace dynamic, your players know they have a way out (worse case scenario they "know" its just until you run out of cards).

After the 4th ace they get to the final room only to find the BBEG/maguffin/exit/all of the above.

You can add more this that or the other by using a tarot deck with the major arcana or something similar. It also saves the left hand on the wall, use chalk/breadcrumbs/corpses to point the way, which make it more an exercise of tedium than anything.

[jmax]

Nothing handy, but I can try to put something together tomorrow. A little distracted and too tired to do it well tonight.

I don't have anything active right now that I need it for - I'm mostly curious. But definitely curious :-)


As opposed to making a chart, use a deck of cards. Assign suit and values to whatever. They need to pull the 4 aces, or somesuch to get out.

Diamonds, are treasures. Of worth roughly increasing value, so a 6 of diamonds is worth more than a 2.

Clubs are traps, again scaling in difficulty.

Hearts are NpCs of varying degrees of utility, or are safe places, or deadends, or unique dungeon features, or a puzzle, really you toss what-have-you here. This is a list you may wish to maintain. You could also reshuffle all hearts back into the deck which makes them being lost a possibility. Explain it away however you want: "You turn the corner and the fresco of battle angels and demons is on the wall here. The same horn is missing from the largest demon, and you are certain you have seen it before. You briefly feel dizzy and a bit of nausea (have them make a save if you want, doesn't matter but they do not need to know that. Save just means they are aware something happened and not dizzy or somesuch.) They also could represent skill challenges.

Spades are encounters, scaling again.

All Face cards are tougher than normal encounters, so a Jack of Clubs is a trap that also has a monster that works with it.

All Aces are minibosses. Higher CR monsters, with appropriate other stuff based on the suit.

All 7s are forks in the path where you get 2 cards in addition to the double effect of the card.

7 of clubs could be like a hallway with a pit trap (CR X) and a poison arrow (CR X +/- 2) trap on the far side (which may cause a reflex save or fall in the pit). You flip the 2 of spades and the 5 of diamonds, and you get a low level encounter (goblin raiding party), and some treasure in the pit (corpse of somone with goodies).

Jokers are something custom and special. Flex those creative DM muscles.

Last maze I had I ran this way and it works well, keep the pace dynamic, your players know they have a way out (worse case scenario they "know" its just until you run out of cards).

After the 4th ace they get to the final room only to find the BBEG/maguffin/exit/all of the above.

You can add more this that or the other by using a tarot deck with the major arcana or something similar. It also saves the left hand on the wall, use chalk/breadcrumbs/corpses to point the way, which make it more an exercise of tedium than anything.

Ooh, this I also really like. It's particularly appealing because it's reusable without ever having to be repetitive - you just write up new tables for what each thing means. You could actually turn this into a whole dungeon generator and have software spit out the tables for you - and even maps - based on various input parameters (party level, trap/monster ratio, magic level, theme, %variation from theme).


Dungeon length is determined based on the number of aces they have to finish before BBEG/McGuffin/Exit.
On your tables you can choose which items reset (going back into the deck instead of being discarded) - just be sure your players can't see whether you discard or replace.
If the whole party fails the navigation checks (each PC uses the best of Survival, Search, or Knowledge[Dungeoneering]), you take a number of discards equal to the amount by which the best score fails, add those back to the deck, and shuffle.
If the dungeon is taking too long or the players are getting frustrated, you grab a bunch of cards from the top of the deck and discard them, making note of how many aces you've just grabbed.


I may have to code up a quick prototype of this - simplified initially, probably without the theme and magic - and test it out to see how it goes. This is really freaking cool. It would also be another good candidate for turning into an app, which would be especially neat because you could dial the difficulty up or down on the fly, including increasing the odds that the party stumbles on beneficial rooms like a magical healing spring.

Heck, it could even grab from different tables based on the system you're playing. 3.5? 5E? Pathfinder? Doesn't care - just point it at a new source. I'd have to look into what non 3.X things use for CR if they don't all follow that metric though.

EDIT: One other great advantage of this is that the maps never have to be connected together. You can always display just one room or hallway on the table at a time. If the PCs want to backtrack, just keep track of the discard order. Until they get lost :-D

[Efrate]

It works especially well with a teleport based maze where each exit is a teleport to next area so there is no need for a map. Don't track discard order, since it really doesn't matter. If they go back and try something, flip a card and continue. The beauty of this is it requires literally zero map making or bookkeeping other than a list of what represents X. You just design the chart which has what each card is, decide which traps are hallways, which traps are rooms, etc. They hit a diamond? Its can be a secret room they find. Have them make the check but actually just hand wave the result. It abstracts most of the physical features and all the bookeeping they just get effect X. You do not have to track anything, just fluff your description as you see fit. They want to make checks to try to figure something out? Fine, give them a little bit of something if they roll a result thats good, nothing or random information of not actual value if they roll poorly. Don't set DCs. You tell the story, give them the illusion of choice and agency, its a weird kind of railroad but it doesn't feel like it and makes it a ton simpler.

You can expand this by just having 2 cards flip for two ways if you want, opens it up a bit, but you will burn the deck 2x as fast. Then you likely need to track paths and decisions, so they run into a dead end they backtrack and take the card from wherever, but at that point you are just making an actual dungeon with RNG deciding treasure/trap/encounter, which is fine, but if you go by the flip card do thing proceed till X, it streamlines it a TON.

[jmax]

You just design the chart which has what each card is, decide which traps are hallways, which traps are rooms, etc.

This is the part I'm thinking of automating, or at least the low-hanging fruit I'd do first. I'm envisioning unlimited zero-prep dungeons at your fingertips with just a few taps or clicks to set the theme and difficulty.

I really, really like this idea. Do you make maps for the individual rooms or just do the combat without maps and minis? Or draw simple room maps on the fly?

Joker idea: Giant (antimagic?) cavern with thousands of kobolds. Zergling rush! Heh heh.

[Segev]

The cards idea is useful if you are, in fact, making a maze-dungeon on the fly. You will want to be careful to build the graph as you go, though, so that the maze remains consistent as it's explored. And I wouldn't bother with a directed graph. Unless the maze is shifting, or using weird magical effects, if you could follow a path from the Forest Room to the Lava Room, you can take the door to the Lava Room that you came through and backtrack to the door from the Forest Room that you used to get there.

But something like...

Forrest Room
Door 1 - roll d100, or a Survival check to retrace path


0-50
Still in the maze-passages


51-75
Lava Room Door 1 (DC 20 path)


76-100
Underground Lake Door 4 (DC 20 path)


Door 2 - roll d100, or a Survival check to retrace path


0-30
Still in the maze corridors


31-80
Ice Room Door 2 (DC 10 path)


81-85
Glorious Golden Vault (DC 30 path)


86-100
Golem Workshop Door 1 (DC 25 path)



Lava Room
Door 1 - roll d100, or a Survival check to retrace path


0-50
Still in maze corridors


51-75
Forest Room Door 1 (DC 20 path)


76-100
Underground Lake Door 4 (DC 20 path)





And so on, making sure that there's a closed set of doors for each table.


This probably still isn't a good illustration; I was trying to do it off the top of my head, and it's obviously incomplete. I'll try making the graph first later, then build the tables from those.

[Vogie]

You can also "buy in" to simple dungeon-style builders, such as Dungeon Explore (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1359238179/dungeon-explore-tabletop-rpg-tile-card-deck) (a funded kickstarter with a Buy Now option) or the Saboteur card game (https://smile.amazon.com/Mayfair-Games-ASI5712-Saboteur-Card/dp/B013FAC1JO) (Amazon link). Betrayal at the House on the Hill (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10547/betrayal-house-hill) (BGG link) also provides those cards if you're building a mansion or castle rather than a ye olde dungeon.

I do like the idea of using a normal deck of cards to decide if there's a puzzle, pile of mooks, treasure, et cetera.

[Mendicant]

In the spirit of "challenge the character, not the player," I would actually abstract the maze itself.

Abstracting the maze is a totally valid approach, and actually the one I usually take. That admitted, I think "challenge the character, not the player" is an illusory design goal that tends to needlessly take things off the table. You need to be judicious about how you choose to challenge the player and to what degree, but a whole lot of the fun in an RPG is the "G" part. Making puzzles that directly challenge the player expands the game part of D&D beyond the narrow zone of tactical combat and character building.

[Segev]

Abstracting the maze is a totally valid approach, and actually the one I usually take. That admitted, I think "challenge the character, not the player" is an illusory design goal that tends to needlessly take things off the table. You need to be judicious about how you choose to challenge the player and to what degree, but a whole lot of the fun in an RPG is the "G" part. Making puzzles that directly challenge the player expands the game part of D&D beyond the narrow zone of tactical combat and character building.

Certainly, and you can do it. But it is, I think overdone, not underdone, which is why I emphasize challenging the character. Challenging the character, too, helps avoid the "obvious puzzle" that the players just can't seem to crack.

Nothing wrong with puzzles for the players to tackle. But generally, you should have something for the characters to contribute.

Mazes are...not great things to use as puzzles for the players, because they get tedious fast. Most dungeon-delving has you go back over cleared areas just by declaring where you're going. Making them trace the path manually is usually dull. And the techniques they could use IC won't be doable with a play mat or map, while their perspective on the top-down map will be different from their characters'.

[Gemini476]

If you want a randomized dungeon, go see if you can buy some dungeon geomorphs. That should solve all your map problems. For a decent free version, check out the ones on Dyson's Dodecahedron (https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/maps/geomorph-mapping-project/).

And then, well, get an encounter table of some kind. The ones in the DMG will work in a pinch, I guess, but if you make a custom one that's obviously going to be better.

[Efrate]

I just think of a maze in the more abstract. Why is it there? To get players lost, to force them to muddle through, to deal with not knowing XYZ. I don't map it. Period. Defeats the purpose. I'll sketch an enco****er room/trap maybe, but nothing continuous. Erase it when that is done. Why does it matter? "I want to go back and check X" OK you go back. Flip card: Heart nothing there. Their path doesn't matter. Backtracking through a place you have gone over with a physical representation doesn't matter. It just doesn't. Its just tedium. Your card is an encounter, something got there? How? IDK mysterous. If they want to painstakingly search taking 20 every room, then it still doesn't matter and just slows the pace. If you can 100% solve it all without any actual effort just by taking time its boring, its not a maze, and it just stomps pacing into nothingness.

"You travel back through the 20 foot wide hallway with the now defunct pit trap. You go right at the intersection, back towards the room with the angel and demon fresco. You leave that room to the south to get back to the fountain that was filled with that weird yellow liquid which made Grond sick when he drank it. You pass out the left hand door, move around the minotaur corpse, and go left this time. (flip card, a club): As you travel down another almost identical hallway you hear a grating noise as the walls start to move towards you."

"You retrace your steps and take the other route. (flip card, a club): As you travel down another almost identical hallway you hear a grating noise as the walls start to move towards you.

Your result? Identical. The 2nd just keep things significantly more moving. You backtracked to X and did something else. Why map it? I prefer in no way connected teleporting mazes to help this is someone is a pain. When every room has no relation to another one in 2-D/3-D space it just obliterates that particular need to have a physical map.

Again i do this for mazes specifically because the point of the maze is wander and be lost. A normal dungeon, get to the bottom floor and whatever I will map, but especially if you use maps elsewhere NOT mapping a maze makes it just feel better and more mazelike. My two copper.

[Bucky]

I'm fond of the two-layer maze concept, although it doesn't translate easily to D&D.

The maze is impassable from the ground floor; there's a path of solid wall from the left edge to the right. There is, however, a staircase on each side. Once the players make it to one staircase, they can walk on top of the walls, seeing the entire layout of the maze. They can't just drop wherever they want, though; they need to make their way to the other staircase, descend back to ground level and head for the exit.

----

A maze has one path and many dead-ends. A labyrinth has many paths but no dead-ends, just loops. You can split the difference with traps and skill-checks; there is one perfect path that doesn't require any challenges, but each loop requires some effort or resource expenditure to close. Accomplish this by generating a maze and replacing a wall at each dead-end with a challenge. You can make the challenges harder than normal because they're all optional.

Alternatively, you can add one additional challenge on the critical path so that the party must take on one, but has options.

Challenge ideas: Monsters, traps, skill checks (including obscure ones like Forgery and Handle Animal), tollbooths (insert 10 gold to continue), lock-and-key pairs , puzzles and simple teamwork.

[Sayt]

Personally,.I always wanted to put large gelatinous cubes in a simple maze, and you need to hit , say, three levers to open the exit.

Yes, Dungeons and Pac-Dragons.

[Segev]

This isn't related to the abstract maze concept, but I made this in powerpoint a few months ago as a challenge to myself to build something that was a legitimate maze with no dead ends:

http://stormlord.us/Images/No%20Dead%20Ends.png

Technically, I don't think labyrinths in the classic definition can even have loops; they have exactly one (long, meandering) path through them. We just tend to use the term colloquially to mean "extremely complex mazes."

[gooddragon1]

Less hallways more rooms. Rooms have puzzles or fights or loot.

I like this suggestion. But maybe not so much puzzles as skill checks or maybe puzzles that are made much easier by skill checks. Certainly not knowledge puzzles where you need to know the answers to riddles. Maybe ones where you could potentially brute force it if you had to, but it would cost you.

[Stealth Marmot]

Segev that maze is a work of sadism and genius.

[Segev]

Segev that maze is a work of sadism and genius.

Thanks! On my list of "if I ever win the lottery" frivolities is building it with about 5-10 foot wide corridors, 10ish feet tall walls, and towers at each of the "circles" so people can climb up and take a look. Possibly with tokens you can collect at each tower to show you "beat" the maze when you get back out.

Edit: If I were particularly ambitious/sadistic, I'd probably make the walls all mirrors, too. Though in an outdoor maze that'd be impractical and create unpleasant glare, I imagine.

[jmax]

Apologies for my hiatus given that I asked for examples of several of the suggestions - they're excellent! Lots of great ideas here. Thanks!

[EvulOne]

On a recent adventure I ran, the players came across a valley that stretched for miles and inside the entire valley was a maze consisting of 12' high walls of weird vines with sharp dangerous thorns and odd flowers. The players were out to destroy a legendary creature simply known as the Beast Without End. When they got halfway through, they began to be assaulted by vine imbedded archers who had these vines running through their bodies. They soon realized that the maze itself, was the Beast Without End and it was enormous. After killing several of the archers, the maze started to collapse and they were forced to run to the center where a tower stood where of course the Beast's heart was kept deep underneath. While the maze was relatively normal, the fact it was interactive and dangerous with archers running along the tops of the walls made it very memorable for the players.