3d maze puzzle - the more brain ache the better

[oliverhenshaw]

While reading this forum I've had an idea for a difficult maze that can somehow only be successfully navigated by seeing parts of it from sub mazes.

Something like a 3d escher-esque maze with reverse gravities all over the place so that the path that takes you to the prize in the middle can only be seen by wandering another maze wrapped around that one.

It's hard to describe, but I've almost visualised it. I'd like some help in describing something like this, finding a visual aid or using some kind of check to help the players along. The best I can think of atm is giving players new pieces of a physical puzzle or sections of map once they break thru to new areas. But what exactly?

I'm thinking of using this puzzle to guard an item that wards against scrying/detection, so something hard or impossible to navigate by magical means is necessary (e.g. Find the path would always point straight to the center, because it's fooled into thinking that flying or falling would get you there, even if the item didn't block the effects of FtP)

Can anyone give me ideas? Or advice on a similiar puzzle that doesn't hurt to think about? Or any others that do?

 

[Crothian]

First, that's a really interesting idea and I hope you have the best of luck with it.

Second, I'm not sure how you can do this. My only suggestion I can think of is a movie that is not close to what your thinking of, but it's the best I can come up with: Cube. It's about people in a 3-D maze that moves around and has deadly traps.

 

[Magic Rub]

I've done this, my players were confused like I've never seen before. I used AutoCAD & 3D Studio MAX to plan out the maze in actual 3d space, so it wouldn't confuse me. The party understood that the maze was 3D but not how it worked exactly. The maze was connected by a typical hallway system, rooms, with some glass type hall ways, stairs, ladders, bridges, ect. . so they could see & get to key parts of the maze. The side kicker was that not all the doorways leading into rooms would lead into a room that was on the same level as they were. Some doorways were actually portals to rooms on higher/lower levels, they could see through the door portals in to the room as if the room was on the same level. Some doors being just one way. This made for mapping insanity. To top off the confusion my maze contained a sentient (& hidden) Wand (the prize at the center), who would speak to them constantly & try to confuse them even more, Lead monsters to them, and generally try to screw with them at every turn. It was a head trip. I had recorded sound bites of my voice all supa' Evil enhanced, ahead of time (it took a few days to get all the sound bites) but it was worth it. On top of all this, there were insane traps, Poison pins on some of the doors, ethereal marauders, Iron golems the players needed to bring to life in order to get to other parts of the maze, parts of the maze that they need to flood to get to others (and in doing so forgoing some treasure), a never ending hallway (in both ways), Rooms that when mapped out seemed to over lay existing rooms, all manner of buttons-levers-pull strings & some with no purpose. The list goes on, & on. Go for it, it'll be fun for you & the players (if they like puzzles).


Ps. CUBE, what a cool/well done movie! Check it out. . .

 

[phoamslinger]

Here's an idea.

Put the maze on the inside a hollow sphere.

The maze has extremely high walls and the party can't climb over them.

The interior of the sphere is well lit.

By looking directly up, the party can see the maze directly above them, but their view is restricted by the high walls. As a rule of thumb, I would use a x3 multiple. In other words, in a 10' wide 40' long stretch of maze corridor, the opposite 30' wide 120' long section could be seen.

You might make some of the maze covered and other parts open, so that they only received snapshots of the opposite walls of the sphere.

The group would not only have to plot the map that they weren't in, but realize when they'd reached a part of the map they'd already seen.