D&D 5E How to run a small, shifting maze

[Malmuria]

Two rpg products that do this, but not 5e-specific

Labyrinth Adventure Game (based off the movie)
Gardens of Ynn

Both basically use a "depth-crawl" model. Instead of creating a detailed exact map, you randomly generate a series of areas as you go forward. It's sort of hard to describe; here's a video review.

 

[Laurefindel]

Cool, I'll look into the Labyrinth game & how it works. And thematically, that's definitely part of fthe vibe I'm aiming for.
(It's one of those boardgames I've never played, but has been on my radar forever.)

In a nutshell, its a labyrinth made of tiles, each being either a straight corridor, a L-corner, or a T-junction, laid in a 6x6 matrix (or is it 7x7? going on memory here). Only certain tiles are attached to the board, allowing you to "push" a whole line or column of tiles in one direction or another, therefore changing the layout of the labyrinth.

The point of the game is to create a path to certain objectives while trying to deny a path to you adversaries' objectives, but in your case, it makes a changeable labyrinth that follows a certain logic. Players that could see the whole maze would figure an easy way out but with some kind of fog of war, it could be a challenging puzzle.

Knowing how the game works, you could easily print your own, make your own tiles somehow out of cardboard or LEGO or small ceramic tiles from your local hardware store.

 

[Quickleaf]

I've tried a whole bunch of methods for relatively similar ideas, and by far my most successful attempt was repurposing the Tomb of Annihilation board game for portraying the changing Dungrunglung Thorn Maze.

 

[jgsugden]

Building Dungeons with Mathematics! | Forum. If you can follow that, a 4D dungeon doesn't shift, but it is confusing as all heck.

As a lighter version: In the past, I created a dungeon that consisted of seventeen 20 by 20 by 20 rooms. There was a circular 10' wide door on each wall, floor and ceiling of each room. Each doorway appeared black, like a darkness spell, and was actually a portal to another pocket dimension (each room was a pocket dimension). Each room shifted color every 6 seconds (round) going through the following sequence: Black, Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, White. The rooms were numbered 1 to 17. PCs entered the dungeon through a door that led to room 1.

With the door that you entered the room being 1, the opposite wall's door 6, the floor 2, the ceiling 5, the right wall 3, and the left wall 4, I was able to map out a way for each door and color to be mapped in a sequence to head to another room. I had an excel spreadsheet that charted out all the combinations for each room (there were 48 color/door combinations for each room, and 16 rooms with combinations for a total of 768 potential options. As you traveled through the rooms, there were traps, monsters (which had different recharge mechanics, and were often powered by magic stolen from your vigor, making them reflections of your power level), and clues to be found. There were also exits that could take you out of the dungeon, although the destinations were not great options. If you searched long enough you'd find the clues that would indicate that you had to bleed in a corner of each of the first 16 rooms to gain access to the 17th room - which was, a room that contained the MacGuffin the PCs needed (once you had blood in a corner of each room, the room you were in would flash quickly between all of the different colors for 6 seconds and any door would take you to room 17 ... but if you didn't go in a round, then you were back to square one). However, the walls absorbed the blood after 2 minutes (20 rounds), so you had to be quick and know the pattenr you wanted to follow.

It took the PCs 4 years in real world time to solve it. I was called a plethora of unsavory names, but I asured them (using in game clues) that there was a solution.

They gave up with the first party after two sessions in the dungeon. They came back to it with another party two years later. That party gave up at the end of the session, but came back several times and used powerful magic to further figure out the tricks of the dungeon. Once they figured it out they tried several times to execute on the design, but failed to plan ahead and ended up not being able to get all 16 rooms done within 20 rounds by any of the PCs. One of them took it home as homework to plot it out - and 6 months later they tried it again, with PCs about ready to retire, and beat it. The MacGuffin ended up being the hook I used for the next campaign main storyline.

That group doesn't play together anymore, but we still use reference to that dungeon as short hand for a thing that just can't be solved, but has to be.

 

[J.Quondam]

Building Dungeons with Mathematics! | Forum. If you can follow that, a 4D dungeon doesn't shift, but it is confusing as all heck.

As a lighter version: In the past, I created a dungeon that consisted of seventeen 20 by 20 by 20 rooms. There was a circular 10' wide door on each wall, floor and ceiling of each room. Each doorway appeared black, like a darkness spell, and was actually a portal to another pocket dimension (each room was a pocket dimension). Each room shifted color every 6 seconds (round) going through the following sequence: Black, Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, White. The rooms were numbered 1 to 17. PCs entered the dungeon through a door that led to room 1.

With the door that you entered the room being 1, the opposite wall's door 6, the floor 2, the ceiling 5, the right wall 3, and the left wall 4, I was able to map out a way for each door and color to be mapped in a sequence to head to another room. I had an excel spreadsheet that charted out all the combinations for each room (there were 48 color/door combinations for each room, and 16 rooms with combinations for a total of 768 potential options. As you traveled through the rooms, there were traps, monsters (which had different recharge mechanics, and were often powered by magic stolen from your vigor, making them reflections of your power level), and clues to be found. There were also exits that could take you out of the dungeon, although the destinations were not great options. If you searched long enough you'd find the clues that would indicate that you had to bleed in a corner of each of the first 16 rooms to gain access to the 17th room - which was, a room that contained the MacGuffin the PCs needed (once you had blood in a corner of each room, the room you were in would flash quickly between all of the different colors for 6 seconds and any door would take you to room 17 ... but if you didn't go in a round, then you were back to square one). However, the walls absorbed the blood after 2 minutes (20 rounds), so you had to be quick and know the pattenr you wanted to follow.

It took the PCs 4 years in real world time to solve it. I was called a plethora of unsavory names, but I asured them (using in game clues) that there was a solution.

They gave up with the first party after two sessions in the dungeon. They came back to it with another party two years later. That party gave up at the end of the session, but came back several times and used powerful magic to further figure out the tricks of the dungeon. Once they figured it out they tried several times to execute on the design, but failed to plan ahead and ended up not being able to get all 16 rooms done within 20 rounds by any of the PCs. One of them took it home as homework to plot it out - and 6 months later they tried it again, with PCs about ready to retire, and beat it. The MacGuffin ended up being the hook I used for the next campaign main storyline.

That group doesn't play together anymore, but we still use reference to that dungeon as short hand for a thing that just can't be solved, but has to be.

A tesseract would be sweet! I remember reading about a 4D dungeon a long time ago, maybe a Dungeon article? And have wanted to run one ever since, but never had the chance. It's probably a bit overkill for this particular adventure... Although... with only 7 "rooms," it might actually be an interesting way to model the maziness of the thematic sections of my hedgemaze. Hmm...

Nevertheless, at the moment I am actually planning on doing a 4D crypt in a pocket domain somewhere in Ravenloft, to be the place where the "real" souls are kept.