Garnfellow
Explorer
Mazes are awfully fun to design and look at, but often, they are terribly boring to run in a role-playing game.
Background
In one of the first dungeons I ever made, fueled by descriptions of old-school labyrinths in my copy of Best of the Dragon Vol. I, I had an entire level that was all one big maze, complete with teleport traps, shifting stone blocks, one-way doors, spatial distortion spells, and all sorts of other fiendish devices. Took me a whole day to draw out, and filled up a whole piece of graph paper with almost no voids.
So next session, I dropped my players into my prized creation. What followed was almost a full hour of dull, grinding, tedium, punctuated by occasional bickering over mapping nuances. "No, it was 15' before the first turn, then 20' at a 45 degree angle southeast. No, 15'! Dammit, let me draw it for you . . ."
Fortunately, somewhere in the small, reptilian back of my DM brain, I realized that the whole enterprise was botched and no fun for anyone -- and that I needed to switch gears, FAST. The players soon after providentially discovered a length of twine that led them to the secret exit to the next level. And we went on to have a great time.
So after that experience, I’ve been pretty wary of mazes ever since. But I have an upcoming scenario that suggests -- nay, demands! -- the presence of a twisting, deadly labyrinth haunted by a mummified minotaur. I considered mapping it all out, but I then decided to use d20 to abstract the whole process. I think the resulting mechanic will be a heck of a lot more fun and will still capture the feel of the situation -- and with no mapping required.
The Mechanic
The basic mechanic, similar to "Complex Skill Checks" from Unearthed Arcana, can model player characters navigating through mazes, trackless wilderness, back alleys, snowstorms, alien planes, etc. It involves a series of d20 rolls -- typically ability checks or skill checks, but maybe you could even use saving throws or attack rolls, depending on the situation.
The players choose one leader to roll for the entire party. The leader rolls until he or she get three consecutive successes, which indicates they have successfully "exited" the situation. The leader gets cumulative bonuses to the roll in order to prevent the PCs from being stuck in their situation forever. The party can change its leader at any time, but the cumulative bonus then resets to zero with each change in leader.
If you set the DC of the situation so that players will succeed 50% of the time, and they get a cumulative +1 bonus on every third check, it takes on average 9 rolls before they exit. Now, they could get lucky and get 3 consecutive successes right off the bat -- or they could get unlucky and require 20 rolls. The nice thing about this mechanic is that you can easily lengthen or shorten the process by adjusting the DC and/or the interval between bonuses.
Example
So here's how I've modeled my maze using this mechanic. It's a magical maze with a powerful disorientation effect, so the Survival skill isn’t as helpful as raw Intelligence in finding the exit. The smartest PC in my group is a wizard with a 19 Intelligence, so I’ve set the Intelligence check DC at 15. Other characters could be the leader, but it will take them longer to find their way out (although, with the cumulative bonus, even the stupidest character will eventually find the exit). Similarly, if the wizard uses a fox's cunning spell on himself he should reach the exit even faster.
Each check represents 10 minutes moving through the maze. (In a wilderness or city setting, each check might represent 1 hour.) Starting on the fourth Intelligence check, the leader gets a +1 bonus. This bonus increases by +1 every third check thereafter (so on the 7th, 10th, 13th, etc.). Three consecutive successful checks indicate that the leader has successfully navigated the party to the heart of the maze, where lies the exit -- as well as the terrible guardian of the labyrinth.
One really needs to add some tension to the process, so the players feel "incentivized" to complete the maze as quickly as possible. For my maze, I made the following table to roll after each check, starting on the third check:
2d6 - Results
2 - You see a stone statue, four feet high and made in an alien style, of a cow-headed woman holding a scepter.
3 - You hear heavy stones moving on other stones somewhere in the distance.
4 - You find the desiccated corpse of a ruck-man, its skull crushed and its ruckblade broken.
5 - You hear faint moaning, somewhere in the distance.
6 - You feel unsettled, as if someone or something is watching you. [DC 15 Will save or take 1 point of Wis damage.]
7 - You do not trust your companions -- in the darkness, their eyes gleam strangely. [DC 15 Will save or take 1 point of Wis damage.]
8 - You feel like you may have already been at this intersection.
9 - You hear shuffling footsteps somewhere behind you.
10 - You see a pile of ruckish chainmail mail heaped up on a small mound of dust. A rusted ruck-blade lies nearby.
11 - You can faintly smell something musty and fetid, like moldering spice.
12 - You find a stone cube, 3 ft on side. Written in Tynan, Herachean, and an unknown language are the words "As your Tynan masters bound you centuries past, so I, the mighty Hecatesseus, now bind you.”
Other ways to heighten the tension would be regular increments of damage, increasingly harsh fatigue or fear effects, or have them racing against the clock (You need to find the kidnapped merchant hidden somewhere in the grand Bazaar of Greyhawk before midnight, or he will be killed.).
Clever players will attempt to add circumstance bonuses by making maps, laying down markers, or so on.
Background
In one of the first dungeons I ever made, fueled by descriptions of old-school labyrinths in my copy of Best of the Dragon Vol. I, I had an entire level that was all one big maze, complete with teleport traps, shifting stone blocks, one-way doors, spatial distortion spells, and all sorts of other fiendish devices. Took me a whole day to draw out, and filled up a whole piece of graph paper with almost no voids.
So next session, I dropped my players into my prized creation. What followed was almost a full hour of dull, grinding, tedium, punctuated by occasional bickering over mapping nuances. "No, it was 15' before the first turn, then 20' at a 45 degree angle southeast. No, 15'! Dammit, let me draw it for you . . ."
Fortunately, somewhere in the small, reptilian back of my DM brain, I realized that the whole enterprise was botched and no fun for anyone -- and that I needed to switch gears, FAST. The players soon after providentially discovered a length of twine that led them to the secret exit to the next level. And we went on to have a great time.
So after that experience, I’ve been pretty wary of mazes ever since. But I have an upcoming scenario that suggests -- nay, demands! -- the presence of a twisting, deadly labyrinth haunted by a mummified minotaur. I considered mapping it all out, but I then decided to use d20 to abstract the whole process. I think the resulting mechanic will be a heck of a lot more fun and will still capture the feel of the situation -- and with no mapping required.
The Mechanic
The basic mechanic, similar to "Complex Skill Checks" from Unearthed Arcana, can model player characters navigating through mazes, trackless wilderness, back alleys, snowstorms, alien planes, etc. It involves a series of d20 rolls -- typically ability checks or skill checks, but maybe you could even use saving throws or attack rolls, depending on the situation.
The players choose one leader to roll for the entire party. The leader rolls until he or she get three consecutive successes, which indicates they have successfully "exited" the situation. The leader gets cumulative bonuses to the roll in order to prevent the PCs from being stuck in their situation forever. The party can change its leader at any time, but the cumulative bonus then resets to zero with each change in leader.
If you set the DC of the situation so that players will succeed 50% of the time, and they get a cumulative +1 bonus on every third check, it takes on average 9 rolls before they exit. Now, they could get lucky and get 3 consecutive successes right off the bat -- or they could get unlucky and require 20 rolls. The nice thing about this mechanic is that you can easily lengthen or shorten the process by adjusting the DC and/or the interval between bonuses.
Example
So here's how I've modeled my maze using this mechanic. It's a magical maze with a powerful disorientation effect, so the Survival skill isn’t as helpful as raw Intelligence in finding the exit. The smartest PC in my group is a wizard with a 19 Intelligence, so I’ve set the Intelligence check DC at 15. Other characters could be the leader, but it will take them longer to find their way out (although, with the cumulative bonus, even the stupidest character will eventually find the exit). Similarly, if the wizard uses a fox's cunning spell on himself he should reach the exit even faster.
Each check represents 10 minutes moving through the maze. (In a wilderness or city setting, each check might represent 1 hour.) Starting on the fourth Intelligence check, the leader gets a +1 bonus. This bonus increases by +1 every third check thereafter (so on the 7th, 10th, 13th, etc.). Three consecutive successful checks indicate that the leader has successfully navigated the party to the heart of the maze, where lies the exit -- as well as the terrible guardian of the labyrinth.
One really needs to add some tension to the process, so the players feel "incentivized" to complete the maze as quickly as possible. For my maze, I made the following table to roll after each check, starting on the third check:
2d6 - Results
2 - You see a stone statue, four feet high and made in an alien style, of a cow-headed woman holding a scepter.
3 - You hear heavy stones moving on other stones somewhere in the distance.
4 - You find the desiccated corpse of a ruck-man, its skull crushed and its ruckblade broken.
5 - You hear faint moaning, somewhere in the distance.
6 - You feel unsettled, as if someone or something is watching you. [DC 15 Will save or take 1 point of Wis damage.]
7 - You do not trust your companions -- in the darkness, their eyes gleam strangely. [DC 15 Will save or take 1 point of Wis damage.]
8 - You feel like you may have already been at this intersection.
9 - You hear shuffling footsteps somewhere behind you.
10 - You see a pile of ruckish chainmail mail heaped up on a small mound of dust. A rusted ruck-blade lies nearby.
11 - You can faintly smell something musty and fetid, like moldering spice.
12 - You find a stone cube, 3 ft on side. Written in Tynan, Herachean, and an unknown language are the words "As your Tynan masters bound you centuries past, so I, the mighty Hecatesseus, now bind you.”
Other ways to heighten the tension would be regular increments of damage, increasingly harsh fatigue or fear effects, or have them racing against the clock (You need to find the kidnapped merchant hidden somewhere in the grand Bazaar of Greyhawk before midnight, or he will be killed.).
Clever players will attempt to add circumstance bonuses by making maps, laying down markers, or so on.
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