How to make a maze work?

[Woas]

best maze I ever did was located in a huge spherical room. Mind you, this was a sort of extra planar room and the room was basically the inside of a ball. The maze went all around it and if you looked up you could see the other parts of the maze. Gravity always pulled you to the 'floor' of the maze.

But the maze wasn't the important part. I forget what creatures I used... but this "3d" maze was actually just the battle grounds for an Escher-like battle where people were jumping through space and landing on the other side of the maze attacking these flying things.

 

[Hejdun]

Have the characters get chased by something big and dangerous, but slow. Something that they won't want to fight, like a dragon, giant, or behol... ok, scratch that. Have them be chased by a rust monster or a vampire or something that characters will actually run from instead of fight (losing equipment or levels are feared far more than death). Then have your players make snap decisions on where they go on the run.

"Straight, right or left. You have 2 seconds."

Keep track on your DM map on where they are. Don't clutter their path with other monsters, but "traps" that will slow them down. Maybe they have to jump over a pit trap, or a greased floor, or something else, and of course have dead ends.

If gives a sense of tension and excitement, gives you a reason not to map it (and thus avoid perfect direction finding), and gives them a reason to rush through it.

 

[Rechan]

Have the characters get chased by something big and dangerous, but slow. Something that they won't want to fight, like a dragon, giant, or behol... ok, scratch that. Have them be chased by a rust monster or a vampire or something that characters will actually run from instead of fight (losing equipment or levels are feared far more than death). Then have your players make snap decisions on where they go on the run.

"Straight, right or left. You have 2 seconds."

Keep track on your DM map on where they are. Don't clutter their path with other monsters, but "traps" that will slow them down. Maybe they have to jump over a pit trap, or a greased floor, or something else, and of course have dead ends.

If gives a sense of tension and excitement, gives you a reason not to map it (and thus avoid perfect direction finding), and gives them a reason to rush through it.

This is a great option, too.

Might I suggest the monster is something that isn't easy to fight just by looking at it. Like, say, a wave of green slime.

 

[Steel_Wind]

This is going to come across as a thread crap. For that I apologize.

But my first - and second and more sober reaction - to this question is simple: don't do it.

Mazes are things which might have worked in Original D&D or First edition where the entire game was new to the participants. As an excuse to have encounters and as a mapping exercise - it may once have been a staple for the first few go rounds.

But it gets very old, very fast - and it's just not 1975 anymore; and no amount of wishing it was so changes that. Mazes are things that DMs love to design and read. They have a certain elegance to them on paper. But in game? Players hate to play em.

The last opportunity to run a maze I had was in the Age of Worms, Ch. 2 - Three Faces of Evil. I declined to run the encounters in the labyrinth and moved them all out in the Great Hall - all at once.

It was an epic fight, about 5 CRs higher than the party. Very tense, very memorable.

The Labyrinth of Vecna - had I chosen to run it - would only have been memorable for being boring as hell.

 

[Ambrus]

I once inadvertently created a a maze-like experience out of a regular dungeon simply by enlarging a Dungeon Magazine dungeon map (up to 1-in. = 5-ft. scale) and printing the entire thing out of a series of 8.5" x 11" sheets of paper. I believe there were 80 or 90 such sheets. I numbered the backs of all the individual sheets with a simple A,B,C rows and 1,2,3 columns grid system so I could keep them all organized behind my DM screen. Since our gaming table was only large enough for a half-dozen sheets at a time, I'd only lay out as many as were needed to display what was within the PCs' field of vision. If they started exploring down a side corridor or they backtracked we'd sometimes reorient the sheets 90 degrees one way or the other so they'd more easily fit down the center of the table. After a few fights and a few turns all while exploring the dungeon, the players quickly lost track of where they were, where they'd been and which way was out but all the while they could clearly see the dungeon layout as they moved their miniatures around the map in front of them. Inevitably, one of the players started drawing her own complete map based on the areas they moved through. It was the first time (in fifteen years of DMing) that I'd ever seen players acting as one would expect explorers in a maze to act. Since the dungeon had rooms to explore and enemies moving around the map trying to find/outflank them, the mapping and exploring aspect of the maze never got boring or tedious, even if they backtracked. It also allows the entire map to be drawn beforehand; making for a faster and more exciting gaming experience at the table.

I'd strongly suggest doing the same section-by-section mapping to illustrate the confusing and disorienting nature of the maze. Rotate the map on the table when necessary to further confuse the issue, but allow the players to map all they want so that their diligence is rewarded when they start using the maze-layout and terrain to their advantage. Pepper your maze with plenty of distinct and colorful areas; trapped areas, a puzzle room, a magic fountain room, a riddling statue room, various monster lairs, etc. Throw in various wandering maze-savvy monsters to waylay the party, to inhabit previously cleared areas or to erase/confound the PCs' attempts to mark their route. Throw in a few neutral or helpful NPCs for the PCs to rescue or from whom to receive help along the way.

There are also ways to confound the simple right-hand-wall mazing technique; throw in some disconnected wall "island" sections that they need to pass through to find the exit. The right hand technique will lead them all around such islands, but will never lead them through that part of the maze. Likewise, a few hidden corridors (a great place for ambushers to hide), sliding and or illusionary wall segments are simple ways to keep the maze dynamic. Use the latter sparingly however; if the entire maze regularly changes configuration then mapping becomes entirely pointless and the players will feel like their movement choices are unimportant; a disheartening and tedious exercise.

I believe mazes can still be fun to play through, even in this new millennium.

 

[Huw]

Randomly. Roll d20+Int bonus. 20+ you get to the other side. 15+ you're back at the entrance. Low numbers result in traps. "Follow the left/right hand wall"="Take 20 and find half the traps" (unless of course the goal is the centre of the maze, or the maze is 3D, or has one-way doors, or has teleporters, or anything else which any half decent maze designer will put in to stop that strategy.)

The purpose of a maze is to delay, not stop. Get the players through quickly to avoid boredom, and give whatever's waiting for them several hours of prep time.

 

[Pat]

Most players probably know the "I only turn right" trick to follow the wall to the exit. Sure it takes longer, but they know they will find the end.

That trick doesn't work once you introduce the third dimension. All it takes is a few sets of stairs.

Mazes should be a modified version of a chase scene. Instead of lots of explosions, gunfire, and screaming pedestrians, use sniping kobolds, traps, and twisty tunnels, all alike. Don't let them sit, keep them moving, and use skill checks instead of requiring the players to do all the mapping and work everything out themselves.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Use one-way doors periodically in the maze. The party goes through one way, but cannot return the exact same way. This will only work once or twice before someone starts propping open the door.

As someone else said, use three dimensions. I like to have long, gently sloping tunnels in places. I enjoy the look on the face of someone who is mapping when they suddenly start crossing corridors that are actually above or below them. The most fun I had with this was when the players were convinced I had some kind of teleport effect in the dungeon, rather than just backtracking and figuring out that the corridors were not level.

 

[Squire James]

Part of the trap teleports each party member to a different section of a maze. It is not a "real" maze, but an empty room that you describe as a "maze too complicated to draw, and it changes every couple of seconds anyway".

Put the Minotaur (or Minotaur Golem, or whatever) in the center. The Minotaur moves normally. The PC's, however, must navigate the equivalent of minor Maze spells in order to move each round (movement speed = result of Intelligence check rounded down to nearest 5 ft increment). The Minotaur, of course, heads for the PC least capable of handling it.

 

[Scribble]

How can one make a maze work in a game of DnD? Drawing the whole maze on the battlemap (or even drawing it as the PCs discover it) is painstaking, and it gets rid of the feeling of "I don't know how to get back to the entrance."

In particular, I'm planning a combat in a 150 foot diameter circular room. The room is one gigantic maze with 20 foot stone walls. Flying above the walls is an Ice Rook Swarm (Elemental Lore), which is essentially a swarm of flying water/ice elementals that shoot magical ice javelins. The whole point is that the PCs must get through the maze to get to the next floor of the dungeon, and will have to deal with the Ice Rook Swarm.

Any ways to make this work, or should I abandon the idea?

Well, since they will probably be fighting throughout the maze they can't map... Get a few sets of hallway "tiles..." either dungeon tiles or etiles or something you make yourself... Make sure you have enough to put together the hallway the players are in, plus the previous turn and the next turn(s) plus a few more (in case they split up or get separated...)

Instead of drawing out the maze on the battlemap, as they enter different parts of the maze, plop down that part of the "hallway" that they can see. As they enter a new one, change the layout to what they now see...

So if they turn a corner and see a 10' hallway that ends at a turn heading east, plop down a 10' section and a small section to represent the turn heading east... Once they make the turn remove what was behind them...

Thus they only ever see on the battle map what their characters would see... (Does that make sense?)

If they split up, you can even do two sections on different areas of the table...

A lot more work then simply drawing it on the mat... But could be fun.