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braveheart
2017-12-05, 02:57 PM
The next arc my players are going through will involve them navigating an intricate and tight labyrinth, where timing matters and conflict is an ever present risk. I have my map drawn out that I will keep behind the GM screen, but I don’t want the players to see an obvious layout, even as they run through. I plan to maintain rounds through it so that they can clearly track time, which will matter for sentry patrols (which increase in number over time). To get to my point I need ideas on here w to describe the part of the maze that they are in without drawing the whole thing or getting bogged down in repetitive descriptions.


TLDR: how do I show my players the part of a maze that they can see, only, without tediously large amounts of verbal description

Calmer
2017-12-05, 03:17 PM
I have a few suggestions:
- If you have one of those whiteboard mats with grids for miniatures, you could use a whiteboard marker to draw only the parts the players can see. If you don't own one, it's definitely not a waste of money. Just make sure not to use a permanent marker, I have been present during one of those mistakes.
- You could have the players draw their own map on a large piece of paper or posterboard, sold at pretty much any craft store.
- Use an online D&D service, like Roll20. I've used it to run dungeon-crawls before by turning on fog-of-war and only revealing the parts that the players can see.

Segev
2017-12-05, 04:37 PM
Is this a labyrinth with just corridors, or is it a labyrinth with rooms?

There are two ways to run a maze-like dungeon. One is to track their location and direction on the map, yourself, and just tell them when they come to junctions. Describe any significant changes in the walls, floors, and ceilings, and just track where they are and where they turn. It's all on your end. You know where they are. They can try to map it if they want.

The other usually works best with particular rooms. You do a conceptual map that shows what rooms can be reached from what door, and allow Survival checks to navigate paths already travelled. Failed checks result in a random destination of those possibly reached from the last door exited.


...I think I have a post somewhere on this forum with an example map like this, but heaven help me if I can find it again. >_<

2D8HP
2017-12-05, 04:39 PM
...What my DM used to do was just cover the parts of a map that our characters couldn't see with paper.

Later he used dry erase mats that had squares on one side (for corridors/halls) and hexes on the other (for caves/wilderness), and he would draw and erase as we went.

If we thought about it and wanted to trace our way back we'd make notes and sketches, but mostly we just kept going....


Like these mats (http://www.chessex.com/mats/Battlemats_MegamatsReversible.htm)

Airk
2017-12-05, 04:45 PM
Gonna be the jerk here and say "Don't."

Labyrinths suck. You don't have any meaningful decisions to make - "Left or right?" "Uh....let me flip a coin." or any real control over when you get through the thing. Time pressure and threat of conflict won't help because fundamentally, unless you've designed a labyrinth in such a way as to give them some chance of figuring out some key, there's nothing the players can do to get through it faster or slower.

If you MUST do it, yes, draw it on a piece of paper or a whiteboard or a battle mat or whatever as they go through it, but seriously, no don't do it.

Nifft
2017-12-05, 04:59 PM
Gonna be the jerk here and say "Don't."

Labyrinths suck. You don't have any meaningful decisions to make - "Left or right?" "Uh....let me flip a coin." or any real control over when you get through the thing. Time pressure and threat of conflict won't help because fundamentally, unless you've designed a labyrinth in such a way as to give them some chance of figuring out some key, there's nothing the players can do to get through it faster or slower.

If you MUST do it, yes, draw it on a piece of paper or a whiteboard or a battle mat or whatever as they go through it, but seriously, no don't do it.
This.

If it's a puzzle disguised as a labyrinth, then it might be a good idea.

If it's just a plain labyrinth, then my advice is to admit that you're not David Bowie and don't force anyone to navigate it.


This is how labyrinths play out:


You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> NORTH

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> UP

Invalid input. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> DOWN

Invalid input. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> SUICIDE

You are in an afterlife of twisty little passages, all alike.
> ALT+F4

Lord Torath
2017-12-05, 05:50 PM
I had a labyrinth with two paths through. One was a left-left-right-right pattern given in a rhyme at the entrance, which had a room with an encounter after every four intersections. The other way was just random turns that avoided the set encounters, but still had random ones. My players opted for the first route. Even so, it was still a long, tedious, crawl. I wouldn't do it again.

Ashtagon
2017-12-05, 07:28 PM
I'd make it a skill challenge. Pass ten DC 20 Survival/Navigation/whatever checks to find your exit. Each time to flub the roll by a certain amount, you get a wandering monster/trap/whatever.

John Campbell
2017-12-05, 07:54 PM
Honestly, my recommendation is: Don't. Mazes are a lot more fun to create than to play through.

The last couple of times I've run mazes of twisty little passages, all alike, I didn't even make a map. It didn't matter what direction the players chose, except in the general sense that their reasons for picking a direction influenced what they found and how quickly. They happened upon hostiles and areas of interest as was dramatically appropriate for the pacing of the game, not through tediously winding their way through a fixed map.

The players marked their way, so they could backtrack to areas they'd already been to just by saying they were doing so. If they hadn't, I would have had them make Intelligence checks to find their way back.

This is not how I usually GM things. I don't typically run the "player decisions are meaningless; whatever they choose is retroactively the choice that furthers my narrative" railroad. But I've experienced - from both sides - mazes with a fixed map and encounters that the players had to find their way through, and it sucked. Boring, tedious... in one case, the players managed through sheer improbable happenstance to miss every avoidable encounter in the maze, so the entire session was just a lot of picking a tunnel and nothing interesting happening, until oh hey they found the exit.

Seriously, don't do it. If you've got to do it, keep it fluid so you can keep it interesting.

Reltzik
2017-12-05, 08:04 PM
Some advice:

(1) Don't do this (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0339.html).

(2) Making a large labyrinth that's timing based down to the round is.... probably not a good idea, unless you know your players are super into that sort of thing. At best, you should make that type of timing a single-encounter gimmick, in either a single room or a complex of adjacent rooms. Alternatively, you COULD make the entire dungeon timing dependent... but on a much longer count. Like, certain magically-secured doors open at night and close during the day.

(3) Timing shouldn't be time-critical. Like, MAYBE they should learn that they have to throw Switch J three rounds after they press Button Q, or that the Green Door opens exactly 30 seconds after the Blue Door closes, but they should have a bunch of opportunities to puzzle that out through trial and error. Players will do stupid things, they'll come up with theories that are exactly wrong and they'll invent strategies that might be dumb or might be genius but either way will play holy hell with your schedule. So don't have a schedule. Bottom line, its the PCs that should move the game forward, so they shouldn't have to do so on your schedule.

(4) Look at some alternative ideas for labyrinths. Normally we think of labyrinths as mazes, perhaps with some traps and puzzles. They're obstacles between your origin and your objective. But the original Greek myth of the labyrinth was a confusing tangle of hallways designed to entrap the Minotaur. This wasn't an obstacle; it was a location hazard and a prison. And modern labyrinths are paths, with no branches, designed to extremely lengthen a walk between point A and point B, allowing and requiring time for spiritual reflection and meditation. This.... probably isn't the best plan for a dungeon, but putting pieces of a riddle along the way for the players to collect in order to overcome the final puzzle (through learning and applying some sort of spiritual lesson) might be an idea. If you've read Weis and Hickman's Death Gate Cycle, you'll know that THAT Labyrinth was meant as a series of lessons to reform the prisoners which slowly navigated it, but was twisted into a series of death traps by the creators' unconscious intent and hatred.

(5) Ask three WHY questions. First, WHY was this labyrinth built? What was the original purpose? Artistry? Security? Showboating? Religious? Competitive sport? Second, WHY are your PCs there? Fetching a thing? Fetching a person? Trying to get to the other side? Trying to lure a villain in and set up an ambush? Third, WHY are you, the GM, sending them through there? In what way does this enhance the story and give the players a fun evening?

Jaelommiss
2017-12-05, 10:46 PM
This.

If it's a puzzle disguised as a labyrinth, then it might be a good idea.

If it's just a plain labyrinth, then my advice is to admit that you're not David Bowie and don't force anyone to navigate it.


This is how labyrinths play out:


You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> WEST

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> NORTH

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> UP

Invalid input. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> DOWN

Invalid input. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
> SUICIDE

You are in an afterlife of twisty little passages, all alike.
> ALT+F4


Just two days ago I was playing in a game with a maze like that. After two and a half hours of "we keep our right hand on the wall and follow it, yes including for this intersection we gave you our SOP over an hour ago stop asking us every four seconds" the DM finally realized that it was a giant waste of time. He might as well have rolled a die to see if the random direction we picked to start was the right one.

A decision is only as meaningful as the information we have to help us make it. In a maze, every single intersection is a decision point. If you want the maze to be meaningful, you must make the intersections in it meaningful. This means that you need to give information about those intersections that the players can use. Look at the number of branches in your maze. Are you willing to make meaningful information for each and every one of those possible paths?

THIS is the problem with a labyrinth. If you're willing to put all the work into it, then it's fine. It works. It can even be enjoyable for the players. If you're not, make a random encounter table, include "escape" as a result, and roll through it until the party either dies or gets where they want to.

Whatever happens, don't recount every five feet they walk, every turn they reach, and ask them to pick a path when they have literally no information on it. Absolutely don't tie it to combat movement mechanics, expect us to simultaneously fight off enemies every round, and forbid us from making a map because "you have no time to create one while running" on top of everything else.

Reltzik
2017-12-06, 12:09 AM
Oh, and one more piece of advice:

Bone up on the rules for hardness, HP, or whatever's appropriate for your system for inanimate objects like walls, floors, and doors for when your PCs inevitably decide to just cut the Gordian Knot. And also things like stonecrafting skill, stonemasonry skill, break checks.... basically every way imaginable of going THROUGH a wall rather than AROUND a wall.

Airk
2017-12-06, 09:38 AM
Yeah. I mean, think of it this way:

When was the last time you thought "Y'know what was fun? Those mazes I used to do on paper when I was kid. Those things were awesome. I should totally go back and find some because they were so much fun."? Because that's basically what a labyrinth is in an RPG, only worse, because you're constantly being interrupted, you have to draw the whole thing yourself (or watch someone else draw it for you, which is slightly better, but still slow.) and there are penalties for failure/taking a long time. It's a rotten experience.

Jay R
2017-12-06, 10:18 AM
A labyrinth works well on the same basis that a ruined castle, or an enchanted forest, or anything works well - the encounters are interesting to encounter, and they have a good reason to be there.

You are correct that failing to get the description across to the group quickly and easily is your biggest concern.

A simple way to avoid verbal descriptions is to put the map on cardboard or 3x5 index cards. When they reach a corner, simply hand them the next part that they can see.

If there are any possible map changes - shifting walls, rotating rooms, or some such, then I recommend making that clear to them fairly early on. I'd include a situation in which they go back to where they've been before, and see that a wall has shifted, or some such, just so they know the situation they are in.

But make the adventure about the encounters and the goal, not merely the labyrinth.

Airk
2017-12-06, 10:41 AM
A labyrinth works well on the same basis that a ruined castle, or an enchanted forest, or anything works well - the encounters are interesting to encounter, and they have a good reason to be there.

I'm not convinced this is true at all; In a ruined castle, there should be a sense of layout. The dining room probably connects to the kitchen. The royal chambers might have a secret passage to somewhere, etc. You can make guesses about where things would be (we'd like to find the treasury) or what connects to what to guide your exploration. None of that is present in a labyrinth. Even an enchanted forest should have some sort of sense of "You are moving deeper within" and signs that certain areas might be inhabited by certain creatures or whatever. A labyrinth does not lend itself to these things. Indeed, labyrinths, in world, are designed to AVOID having these things.

Segev
2017-12-06, 02:42 PM
Good news! I found my abstract maze. Bad news! I need to upload it somewhere, and can't do that from here.

There's an example of a maze in chart form in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519073-how-to-make-a-maze-labyrinth-interesting&highlight=maze+labyrinth), though. Post #24. The diagram I hope to remember to upload tonight isn't for that, as that one was just off the top of my head and probably before I made the diagram version.

(That thread also has a picture of a maze without dead ends I put together when I was bored one weekend. Not something one could run a dungeon with, but still neat in my opinion.)

Segev
2017-12-06, 07:45 PM
Here's an abstracted maze for use as a dungeon. It's not populated nor described, but the mechanical bones are here. I recommend having an entrance leading into one of the rooms, maybe through the ceiling or floor, but you could also add an entrance line to any of the M# sections.

If the party wants to navigate to a specific room, they either must have a map to it or must have been to it already. They make a Survival check whose DC is the sum of all paths they wish to take, and they can't take a path they haven't already traveled unless they have a map. Possession of a map AND having traveled it gives a +2 tool bonus to the check. Essentially, unless they have a map, they can only retrace paths they've already taken, under normal circumstances. For example, if they're in Room 1, and just leave through Room 1's Door 1 (R1D1), they enter M1. IF they have no map and haven't been anywhere, they pretty much roll % to see where they wind up after a few minutes of travel. (In D&D, I'd say the time it takes is essentially the time until you check for the next random encounter.) Consult the M1 table to see where they end up after you check for a random encounter on the way. It's possible they're still in M1, but they might also wind up in M2, M4, R1 (having made a circle), R3, or R4.

Keep track of this "path" as they build it. To retrace their steps is the sum of all DCs of the paths they traveled. So if they wound up circling in M1 for three encounters before finding their way to R4, the Survival DC to retrace that path back from R4 to R1 (or, if they find themselves in R1 again later, to retrace the path back to R4) is 7*3+6 = 27.

It also allows for 4 checks for random encounters on the way. One fewer check for every 5 by which they beat the DC (as they go faster with more surety).

If the check is failed, then roll randomly to see where they wound up. They don't know where in the path they thought they were tracing they went wrong, only that they should have been to R4 or R1 (whichever way they were going) by now.
http://stormlord.us/Images/AbstractMaze.png
For advanced rules, you may allow them to take longer than they have to when they beat it by 5 or more in order to remove one extraneous "leg" from the trip in the future. Reducing the DC and the number of encounters for future attempts to trace that path.

Also, with a map that includes at least a path from where they are to where they want to be, the DC and travel time is set by the shortest path.


When they fail or cannot make the survival check, then you roll randomly after every check for a random encounter. You need not even tell them where they are if, for example, the stone corridors of M1 and the stone corridors of M2 are much the same.

Airk
2017-12-07, 09:39 AM
How does that actually improve the player experience of the maze though?

It makes it less work to PREP one, in that you don't have to draw a maze, but I'm not seeing anything there that makes it suck less to go through the maze, which remains my #1 reason that mazes are a bad idea.

Jay R
2017-12-07, 10:34 AM
How does that actually improve the player experience of the maze though?

It makes it less work to PREP one, in that you don't have to draw a maze, but I'm not seeing anything there that makes it suck less to go through the maze, which remains my #1 reason that mazes are a bad idea.

As we have shown, we do not all agree about what is a fun idea. I would enjoy a labyrinth designed by any of the last four DMs I've played under. And in fact, one of Wil's adventures was not significantly different from a labyrinth.

You don't want to? OK, fine. Then don't. But you need to recognize that your personal tastes aren't universal requirements.

LordEntrails
2017-12-07, 11:49 AM
One thing to do is come up with a standard way to describe corridors and intersections.

For instance, "The hallway goes thirty feet and then turns left." Assuming a ten foot wide hall, is the left wall 30 feet long and the right wall 40 feet? Or is the left wall 20 feet long and the right 30 feet? Or perhaps you mean 25 & 35 feet?
Get that down so it's easy for everyone. Same goes with "T" intersections etc.

Make sure your players know they need to map it, and provide them with graph paper large enough to do so.

Use a dry erase mat (like suggested before) to draw rooms and confusing intersections.

Don't use real time for meaningful events. Doing so means all that communication between you and the players that may take minutes but takes a character seconds becomes a factor.

Make sure that if they choose left or right at an intersection it is a meaningful choice, even if they don't know it when they make the choice.

If their are teleporters or rotating doors or halls, make sure the players know that early on.

Segev
2017-12-07, 11:58 AM
How does that actually improve the player experience of the maze though?

It makes it less work to PREP one, in that you don't have to draw a maze, but I'm not seeing anything there that makes it suck less to go through the maze, which remains my #1 reason that mazes are a bad idea.

It turns the navigation of the labyrinth from being something the players must tediously map out into something that their characters are doing. It makes it part of the game world, rather than a metagame or minigame for the players that is divorced from their characters' abilities. It eliminates a lot of the tedium of "you come to a corridor branching off to the left. Thirty feet ahead is another one branching to the right, and then another 100 feet along, there's a wall. If you walk all the way there, you can see it's a T-junction."

Walking a maze can be fun. Even in a video game or something. Having one described to you is a lot less fun. For much the same reason that watching somebody run a maze on TV or in a movie can be gripping, but reading about the specific details of every path and passage in a novel would not be.

By abstracting it to "zones" and having the maze's difficulty be a problem for the PCs to solve rather than the players, while leaving the controlling choice of where they (are trying to) go up to the players, it gets the feel of a maze, preserves what challenge is meant to be there, and dodges a lot of the lengthy tedium of "and then we walk back to this turn-off, then we travel this far long it to THIS turn, and then..." in making the players trace a maze over and over again, specifically describing their actions and trying to match their mental map and its inaccuracies to the DM's map and where he THINKS they are.

braveheart
2017-12-07, 12:41 PM
Alright, lots if good suggestions and I thank you all for them, I am planning to use a dry erase mat, but the one I have isn’t large enough so I’ll leave it to the players to map out the maze themselves as I erase portions to make room for others. As for keeping the decisions meaningful, I have designed the full maze already, plenty of rooms, that make contextual sense, but many more intersecting hallways that can get someone easily lost. The reason for keeping combat rounds is to remove the option of “right hand on the wall” tactics because the time it costs will result in more combat encounters that can whittle away at their endurance. While it is larger than my dry erase map it is fairly small (fits on 8.5x11 graph paper with extra room) so it may be 1-2 hours but it shouldn’t be much more.

Segev
2017-12-07, 01:39 PM
Alright, lots if good suggestions and I thank you all for them, I am planning to use a dry erase mat, but the one I have isn’t large enough so I’ll leave it to the players to map out the maze themselves as I erase portions to make room for others. As for keeping the decisions meaningful, I have designed the full maze already, plenty of rooms, that make contextual sense, but many more intersecting hallways that can get someone easily lost. The reason for keeping combat rounds is to remove the option of “right hand on the wall” tactics because the time it costs will result in more combat encounters that can whittle away at their endurance. While it is larger than my dry erase map it is fairly small (fits on 8.5x11 graph paper with extra room) so it may be 1-2 hours but it shouldn’t be much more.

Sounds like a plan. Your "right and on the wall" comment reminded me of how I would suggest handling that with the abstracted maze, which I felt like sharing now that it came to me. I'd suggest resolving it by, the first time it's done from one location to the next, rolling as if they were wandering at random or lost, and tracking what the "right hand on the wall" path from one place to the next leads to. Then, if they choose to follow it exactly, they can.

Jarawara
2017-12-07, 03:29 PM
I've only ever seen three Labyrinths that played out well. Technically, they were probably better called 'mazes', as Labyrinth implies huge dimensions.

1st one was a simple maze used as a defense mechanism. If you know the safe path you can enter freely. If you don't, there's pit traps and gas leaks and arrow slits. You can run that concept several times over - maybe the players can find the secret to the safe path from someone in town, or in the case of ancient ruins, maybe there are clues to be found, a puzzle to be solved. Or even have all the traps previously triggered, the whole 'labyrinth' is simply a backdrop to show that this structure is long abandoned. The real threat is whatever has moved in and prowls the crumbling walls now. Point is, it's not a hard maze, it's just a series of traps to be circumnavigated to stop or delay whoever is go through.

2nd Labyrinth that worked is from the old adventure module B2 Keep on the Borderlands. A Minotaur resides in a small cave complex that has a magical confusion effect going on. Every time you see a Y intersection and choose your next path, the DM rolls to see which direction you really travel in but doesn't tell you and describes it from your perspective. Once the Minotaur is dead the magic collapses, revealing a cave complex that really is nothing more than a double figure 8, but you can feel like you're lost in there for hours if it goes right. Personally I would have like for the cave to be a bit bigger, otherwise every few minutes you should logically be back at the entrance again just by random chance, but I would totally use the concept over again in future games.

The 3rd one that worked also came from a published adventure, but it worked because of the changes I put into it. Party goes down into the basement of the church, and low and behold there is a maze. It's a small maze, no real chance of getting lost, no real traps or special things to find, not much chance of delaying the party to badly (and there was no time limit to this part of the adventure anyway). Only thing of interest was a few Troglodytes down here that give the party proof that the church is in cohoots with the Evil Naga in the swamp. I looked at the whole thing and thought is was boring, but if I removed it then so too would the whole reason for the basement existing! Then I thought to myself - what if it's just a crawlspace, like you'd find under a modern house, to keep an airspace under the floorboards of the church? Then add in simple plasterboard walls and allow the Troglodytes to hide down here?

Party gets down on all fours and begins crawling through the narrow pathways, trying to see down the long and low passages, light reflecting off of small puddles of fetid water (that we hope is just water). The comes the first loud 'bash', then another, and another. Loud crashing sounds, echoing down the narrow pathways, indicating movement, but from where and to where you cannot tell... Well the Troglodytes weren't bothering with the narrow pathways - it was thin plasterboard walls, remember? They just shoved their way through and laterally bypassed the party and surrounded them. Suddenly down every narrow pathway, even the ones they just cleared, rushed Troglodytes on all fours (animal-like as they are, they're built for a fast paced crawl!). It was like the Aliens in the crawlspace scene of the movies!

That... was a good use of a maze. The players were irritated with themselves for not listening more carefully to my description of the 'thin plasterboard walls'.

VenerableWizard
2017-12-08, 12:39 AM
Just make another large combat map of the labyrinth, even just sections of it, and use black construction paper with a hole cut in the middle, party members travel in radius, and radius follows party.

Segev
2017-12-08, 10:07 AM
Just make another large combat map of the labyrinth, even just sections of it, and use black construction paper with a hole cut in the middle, party members travel in radius, and radius follows party.

A simple and elegant solution. It'll never work.



More seriously, good idea. Probably does have some complications, but it's a good idea. Heck, it's probably a good idea for a number of fog-of-war scenarios.

Pelle
2017-12-08, 10:14 AM
Just make another large combat map of the labyrinth, even just sections of it, and use black construction paper with a hole cut in the middle, party members travel in radius, and radius follows party.

Suggestions for what to do when the party splits up or spreads out?

Segev
2017-12-08, 12:15 PM
Suggestions for what to do when the party splits up or spreads out?

Level 20 Plutonium Dragons for everyone!

I kid, I kid. But splitting the party is dangerous. It's quite possible they'll die if it happens in most dungeons.

Kadzar
2017-12-14, 04:41 PM
If I ever run a labyrinth in-game, I plan to use a copy of The aMAZEing Labyrinth board game (also known as Labyrinth (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1219/labyrinth)) or something based off it, and let the players have some sort of magic item or whatever that shows the board. Then the players could (or maybe even would be required to) place a tile to push all of a certain row over(basically how the board game itself works), while I as a DM would have a turn (probably several, and maybe after each player's turn) to place tiles down in the same manner. The goal would likely be to complete some sort of objective in the labyrinth rather than escaping.

I prefer this approach, since it incorporates player choice while still keeping the theme of the labyrinth. I wonder how it would work for combat, but I suppose I could have larger grid tiles corresponding to different tile shapes, and then, if you're on a different tile when it moves, you're stuck there. But how would initiative interact with the turns, especially if you have monsters that get killed off?

I'll have to think about it some more, but I do think it could be a fun scenario.