D&D 5E (2014) How to Build an Interesting "Mouse Puzzle Maze" Challenge?

[PoleVolt]

Remember the scene from the Dungeons and Dragons movie? The party is in a maze, hunted by displacer beasts, competing with others, and the maze changes on some frequency. Each piece creates a more elaborate puzzle.

Having the maze change up sounds interesting. Keeps everyone on their toes. Or if I feel it's going a bit too easy half way through.

Could have fallen ghost maze runners chase The Fighter and latch onto them until the cleric casts Turn Undead a couple times.

 

[Stormonu]

Maybe do it as a stacked maze, consisting of two or more levels?

Fighter in the narrow corridors of a maze below, the rest of the party is in a gallery-sized room above with a glass floor so the top group can watch the progress of the character below. The maze is divided into sections, so the person below has to reach certain points in the maze to open valves/doors that allow the group up top to enter a new gallery themselves.

Could be complicated by shifting walls, sections of mist-filled corridors, elevation changes, pits and other traps, etc.

Further, it could be the party in the section above has to figure out puzzles to aid the character in the maze below (buttons that open certain doors/move walls that could impede, open or alter the path - or even release monsters; a rubik's like cube that when solved transports a beneficial object to the character below, but if not solved quickly enough adds some element of danger to the mazewalker's trek; a dumbwaiter/chute that allows the party to pass down or extract an object - such as a key - if the mazewalker can reach the object, etc.)

The movie Labyrinth, Maze Runner and Cube (especially Cube Zero for your scenario) may have ideas worth pulling in - most of these have the concept of the "moving maze" in them as well.

 

[aco175]

Maybe do it as a stacked maze, consisting of two or more levels?

Somehow I'm thinking of that cooking show where food comes down through three levels of chefs and the bottom level has to make something with the scraps. There was some prison movie like this but did not watch.

 

[PoleVolt]

Maybe do it as a stacked maze, consisting of two or more levels?

Fighter in the narrow corridors of a maze below, the rest of the party is in a gallery-sized room above with a glass floor so the top group can watch the progress of the character below. The maze is divided into sections, so the person below has to reach certain points in the maze to open valves/doors that allow the group up top to enter a new gallery themselves.

Could be complicated by shifting walls, sections of mist-filled corridors, elevation changes, pits and other traps, etc.

Further, it could be the party in the section above has to figure out puzzles to aid the character in the maze below (buttons that open certain doors/move walls that could impede, open or alter the path - or even release monsters; a rubik's like cube that when solved transports a beneficial object to the character below, but if not solved quickly enough adds some element of danger to the mazewalker's trek; a dumbwaiter/chute that allows the party to pass down or extract an object - such as a key - if the mazewalker can reach the object, etc.)

The movie Labyrinth, Maze Runner and Cube (especially Cube Zero for your scenario) may have ideas worth pulling in - most of these have the concept of the "moving maze" in them as well.

I actually like the idea of two sections of the maze on top of one another. Keeping both sections unique to themselves, but connected enough for group puzzle solving.

What you describe is exactly the type of things I envision this scenario to be. I'll definitely look into all those movies too. Some I've heard of, but others completely new to me. Those will no doubt give me more inspiration and probably even help with my thoughts on the maze's structuring.

 

[Clint_L]

For some reason, and I don't know if this is clever or stupid (such a fine line!), my immediate thought was to literally model it on the mouse trap game, as a kind of Rube Goldberg-esque maze trap where the fighter inevitably triggering stuff as they go, so they are constantly trying to outrun their own cascading consequences. And having written that, I think I am going to use it myself.

 

[PoleVolt]

For some reason, and I don't know if this is clever or stupid (such a fine line!), my immediate thought was to literally model it on the mouse trap game, as a kind of Rube Goldberg-esque maze trap where the fighter inevitably triggering stuff as they go, so they are constantly trying to outrun their own cascading consequences. And having written that, I think I am going to use it myself.

Haha!

If the party rogue died earlier. I would have had something like that happen instead.

Party: "Fighter, we really need the item at the end of this maze. With no rogue, you're the only one tanky enough to probably survive them. Just use all your Actions and Action Surges to Dash past them all. We'll just stand over here. Good luck".

 

[GMMichael]

At first I thought you were suggesting putting an illusory Matt Colville in the maze as a jump-scare.

The maze will have safeguards in place for blatant cheating like dimension door or other-like spells. Although I do want the "roof" of the maze open for the onlooking party to see down upon. Firstly covered by an ever present "darkness" spell or some other hindering mist. Perhaps only after some skill challenges of their own, will portions of the darkness clear as one such example.

I was thinking about adding a cannon that needs to blow up a wall for a shortcut. Which needs to be operated and fuelled only by magical fire, but more powerful than a cantrip. Lower level spells won't be powerful enough to deal enough damage in a turn, taking up more time. Or higher powered spells will take less amount of turns.

These are fun ideas, but each fantastic idea that you add is another logical step the PCs need to (successfully) take to 1) be able to solve them, and 2) reach the end of the maze.

Look at it this way: you're starting with a maze. If it's complex, it's already enough to fill a game session, with X players who have the map and one player who has to trust they're telling her to go in the right direction. Next, the maze is magical, which means that most real-world assumptions are out the window. If you want to confuse someone, make sure most of that person's assumptions have a chance of being invalid - that's what a magical maze does. Now we're at the cool ideas: the darkness, magical fire, the cannon. If the players are veterans, they might still have hope for the maze. I expect any casual players to be nonplussed, so you can still go crazy, but as GM, you're going to need to offer a serious helping hand if you want the players and the characters to have a shot of getting through.