How to make a maze work?

[Hussar]

Put me in the "don't do it" camp. It's just WAY too much of a PitA.

That being said, if you are determined to do so, I would suggest using something like OpenRPG and a pair of monitors. That way, you can simply open up the fog of war as the characters progress.

Yes, they can backtrack, but, then again, in most mazes you can do that anyway.

 

[Li Shenron]

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?

If you want to sort-of recreate the frustration and claustrophobia, you must not draw the maze at all, and don't let them draw it either. Go with verbal description and let the players try to remember by themselves if they came from the right or the left. Allow for an (untrained) Intuit Direction check to help navigating every now and then.

To prevent it to become too frustrating, just try not to go too far with it, i.e. don't make it too big. Maybe add some visual clue to better remember the way back, if they find themselves in a dead end or in front of a danger. If you use traps, they don't need to be hidden.

Add something in the maze such as a wandering monster or mobile hazard, to pressure the characters to find the exit in a reasonably short time.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Unless you know your players like mazes, I'd abstract it. Have them make a "puzzle" skill check or somesuch and base their progress on the result. Don't tell them how they are doing, but give them some indications, such as "the corridor seems brighter and cleaner than the last," or "you think you've seen this area before" or "there's the carcass of the monster you killed 10 minutes ago"

You can measure progress on a 1-10 scale with 1 being "just started" or "completely lost" and 10 being "goal" Then the check results can be

Check margin of success.......Scale result
Miss by 6................................Reset to 0, completely lost
Miss by 1-5.............................-1
Even......................................0
Make by 1-5............................+1
Make by 6+.............................+2


Have a number of encounters you want to happen along the way, maybe associate some with particularly good or bad rolls. Give a bonus if the players want to map the maze and have the skills and equipment to do so, but don't actually make them draw the map.

 

[WampusCat43]

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.

Hey SW, good to see you around. This maze was actually one of the more memorable encounters in AoW for us. I drew it out by hand as they went, which was tedious, but the sniping attacks from the kenku really got them going. Anything that causes the party to even consider splitting up adds to the tension, and the fact that they knew the sneaks were an easy kill - once they caught up with one - made it even nastier when they turned a corner and ran into a dire weasel.

But the capper was afterward - after finishing that section off and heading back out to the Great Hall, the BBEG chased them back into the maze (tight squeeze, but I was winging it). The group, low on health and supplies, split up and tried to hide in the hidden rooms the kenku had just used against them. The Aspect sniffed around, banging on walls and growling, suddenly appearing here and there, until they finally got healed enough (and brave enough) to take him on. A lot of fun.

The maze in the HoHR worked out pretty well, too. I played up the bad guys' knowledge of the area, allowing them to get away with a lot of hit and run tactics. It eventually led to the party rogue taking on one of them by himself, while his wounded friends called for him to retreat. Bad move on the rogue's part.


But I know you use a projector in your games. Have you ever tried breaking the maze up into small pieces, and adding them as layers as required? I haven't had a chance to do that with a maze yet, but it's worked really well with a regular dungeon and doesn't take that long to do (at least with Paint.Net)

 

[cougent]

You have to know your players and their play style preferences, but I will go against the naysayers and say "DO IT", if your players like challenges and a thinking game. If they simply want to hack and slash and gather loot, then avoid the maze as others have suggested. It really depends on what you and your players consider fun, not the experiences of others.

They are right about one thing though, mazes are a great deal of work for you as DM to keep track and set a pace that does not let it turn into pure drudgery. So the second issue is are you up to all that as DM.

If it fits your players styles, and if you are willing to invest the effort, then mazes can be very fun. If not, then yes they can be a nightmare for both players and DM.

 

[Cabled]

The next time my players enter a maze, I plan on using skill checks (probably Survival) to resolve it. The better the players roll on the check, the faster they navigate the maze and the fewer monsters they encounter. The worse they roll, the longer it takes and the more wandering maze-dwellers they have to fight.

This is how I've been doing them for awhile now too, and it works out well enough. I don't even map the maze as DM, I just note on my map there's a maze in that area. I generate 4 or 5 encounters that will be found if the Survival skill checks are bad...usually ramping up in difficulty so the longer you're in the maze, the more dangerous things get. I usually also come up with a couple neat "finds" or maybe landmarks that will give a bonus to future rolls if they're discovered, to give the party if they roll very well on a check.

I determine beforehand how many successful checks will be needed to navigate the maze, I guess you could view it as sort of a DC for the whole maze itself. If the players state they're actually mapping the area, I just add a couple more successful checks to the total, but on return trips the party won't need to check at all anymore. Unless my devious mind has built a maze with changing geography, in which case my players throw things at me. There are all manner of things to alter this basic formula...look to the section in the DMG that discusses changing the DC vs. imposing a skill check penalty and apply the same. Situations that force the party to be less careful, such as being chased or being on a time limit, cause a penalty to the skill checks. Things that change the maze itself, such as moving walls, change the DC (in this case altering the number of successes needed to escape the maze)

As an example, I sometimes include a lever that can be located with a very good Survival check that if pulled will move some walls to actually make moving through the maze easier, reducing the number of successes by a couple. If that results in them suddenly having enough successful checks, the shifting walls reveal the exit ahead of them, and that's exactly how I describe it. Of course, the lever could also drop a 10 ton block on someone, but that's what trapfinding and stonecunning are for.

 

[Rechan]

Somewhat unrelated. I've been pondering how to work a creature with an 'Aura of COnfusion'.

Basically, 20-30' radius of the creature, the geography twists and turns and is all together confusing. Like a shifting maze.

I've considered handling it like an isolation bubble; you can approach the monster, but you can't see (and possibly hear) your allies. And spells are limited by line of effect, meaning you can't just shoot a fireball in; it'll hit a 'wall'. You gotta go find the monster, fly above it, or drop an area affect from above (Ice storm, flamestrike, etc).

 

[shilsen]

You have to know your players and their play style preferences, but I will go against the naysayers and say "DO IT", if your players like challenges and a thinking game. If they simply want to hack and slash and gather loot, then avoid the maze as others have suggested. It really depends on what you and your players consider fun, not the experiences of others.

I'll agree with your third sentence and the first half of your 1st one, but you're making a huge, sweeping generalization in the bolded section. I know a fair number of players who thoroughly enjoy challenges and a thinking game, but who also loath mazes. It's almost purely a playstyle issue, having little or nothing to do with whether one wants 'simply to hack and slash and gather loot,' which would also bore some of the aforementioned people.

 

[Hussar]

You have to know your players and their play style preferences, but I will go against the naysayers and say "DO IT", if your players like challenges and a thinking game. If they simply want to hack and slash and gather loot, then avoid the maze as others have suggested. It really depends on what you and your players consider fun, not the experiences of others.

They are right about one thing though, mazes are a great deal of work for you as DM to keep track and set a pace that does not let it turn into pure drudgery. So the second issue is are you up to all that as DM.

If it fits your players styles, and if you are willing to invest the effort, then mazes can be very fun. If not, then yes they can be a nightmare for both players and DM.

Wow, way to insult large swaths of people. You're basically saying that anyone who dislikes spending hours and hours doing nothing but mapping empty hallways interspersed with the occasional attack is a mindless hack and slasher. Interesting.

Me, I'd much prefer spending several hours talking to NPC's, exploring the world, finding out about the setting, but, hey, what do I know? I'm just a mindless hackandslasher who thinks that mazes suck.

 

[cougent]

If you look hard enough, you can probably find an insult in any post; whether it is actually there or not.

Hussar - I am not saying anything near the words you are trying to state for me, please don't since you get it so wrong.

It is a simple truth that taking the effort to map or even note turns, distances, dead ends, diversions, obstacles, and other maze elements is going to take more concentration than many other outdoor or even dungeon elements. Saying that a thing requires more of something does not indicate that another something requires little or none.

If the phrase "hack and slash" gets under your skin then substitute "action oriented" or "combat ready" or whatever does not get under your skin instead. It's just a descriptive phrase, not an insult.

shilsen - Yes I could have chosen a better word than thinking, esoteric maybe? Obviously there are many "thinking" activities in the game that not everyone will find all of them appealing.

The other was an oversimplification to demonstrate contrast. I thought that would be self evident, apparently it was not. For some the "challenging" and "thinking" aspects of the game involve tactics and strategies, not mapping or finding directions. For these players, a combat light, direction heavy maze would probably be very boring.