When creating your "dungeon" do you really make it a "maze"?

[Ylis]

The only mazes I have in my campaign are in certain ruins. They aren't really generic mazes like you would typically have for a dungeon crawl. They are non-changing (except for the critters that might be in them), and pretty much empty. My PCs don't go into them unless they have to (or want to, for some reason...). In fact, there's one that they started to clean up under the ruins of a town...they were planning on making it "headquarters" for the army they plan on eventually raising. Of course, I think they've dropped that idea.....

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I was just thinking of the expense it would be to create a maze.

Worker: We have the sketches for your maze, oh Evil One.
Evil One: Excellent! Now I will need to find land sharks and evil man eating figs to populate it.
Worker: But we have only one problem. After building your library and your 'matrimonial suite' and those other things you want, we only have enough room in the budget for your maze OR for your ostentatious throne room - the one with all the tapestries and secret pit traps where you toss your failed underlings.
Evil One: Drat. Well, go with the throne room. The maze was only for my side amusement, anyway.

 

[Altalazar]

Mazes suck.

 

[Liolel]

I've only designed one dungeon but its basically as far away from maze as it can be. It is a crumbling abandoned fort overrun with undead. It has two levels, the first level is the crumbled ground floor consisting of about 11 locations, many of them empty. Also not only are many of the rooms empty most of the walls have crumbled leaving large open areas.

Down below is a 3 area basement which is in better condition and is basically a tunnel with a t-fork leading to the 3 different rooms. Not really maze like unless you have pc's who couldn't find their way out of a paper bag with a map.

 

[Gez]

Piratecat, why, oh why, hast thou removed the rolleyes?

You're not funny, Altalazar.

 

[Aeolius]

The problem with mazes is that they are far easier to generate than to navigate. I give you:

algae & ocean

lava & glass

gold

(All by visiting puzzlemaker.com, generating a maze, and porting it into Bryce.)

 

[Desdichado]

Does anyone still make huge labryniths or mazes to challenge their players (and possibly themselves?)

Absolutely not. In fact, in a rotating DM campaign we just did, we had a guy try that for one session and the rest of us nearly slit our wrists. Bleagh!

Then again, I don't really like to go down into dungeons very much either.

 

[Fieari]

I've made a maze once that worked really well... it was a cave system, and the PCs were chasing an extremely magical creature that they believed to be a goddess (long story). At anyrate, most of the cave was pretty much straightforeward (other than the fact that the couldn't navigate by the creature's footsteps, as it walked through walls) except for ONE ROOM, which had six passages leading from it. One led them into the spherical room, another led the forewards. The others just went in ellaborate loops and came back into the spherical room again. They had a blast trying to figure out which passages they'd already gone through, and they were working desperately trying to figure out which passages connected.

Only maze I've ever had that worked well and was fun.

 

[tzor]

For me the simple answer is no, with the possible exception of madmen who love to make mazes because ... well they are mad of course. Those mazes, however are more a question of avoiding the traps than solving the maze.

Bsically speaking, ever since I discovered the right hand rule (Just follow the maze with your right hand turning whenever there is an opning and eventually you will get out of the maze) I've stoped using it as a major plot device. Actually when we first started playing, mapping was used to find the 5' spaces where the secret rooms and halls were located. I've also given up that style of paper thin walls and measurements accurate to the nearest inch.

Advanced mazes are another matter, but since I rarely run high level campaigns they never come into play. An advanced maze is where the best path between two points is not always a stright line. Complex teleports or interdimensional/interplanar layouts are used to confuse anyone who wishes to invade the space.

 

[Storminator]

By reading Dan Simmon's Fires of Eden, I've found an excellent way of having natural mazes and tunnels, with danger aplenty! Lava tunnels. When lava runs, the outer surface cool faster and harden, while the inner lava continue to flow, and leaves behind natural tunnels this way. Then you have another eruption, which will crush some old tunnels, flood some others, and creates some new others on top of them.

And if they run to the sea, you can have them half submerged. I SCUBAed thru some fantastic lava tubes in Maui. You can have the secret entrance to the lava tunnel maze start underwater!

PS