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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1891372" data-attributes="member: 3146">It seems to me that the vision point would be somewhat challenging to implement properly since it would allow PCs to see through walls whenever they came to a corner. Not necessarily a huge problem, but it does somewhat ruin the flavor.I think the real problem with mazes is inherent in the concept. You see, in the stories, the hero--when not too smart to get stuck in the maze or cheating (like Theseus)--will often experience frustration and boredom as the primary emotional content of being in the maze. When translating that into a game, it will yield (you guessed it) frustration and boredom when not solvable within an acceptable amount of time. That's not just an accidental feature of mazes, etc; it's inherent--one might even say it's the point of a maze. (It's certainly true of computer games, etc featuring complex mazes: for the first while, it's neat, after the a bit, they're getting old, then they're annoying, then they're frustrating, then the fun of playing the game isn't worth the frustration of banging my head against the maze).Ordinarily, what RPGs do with boring and frustrating tasks is gloss over them. How many times do PCs discuss who's doing the dishes after breakfast in camp and roll dice to resolve how well they're washed and how much crock is broken? So, with a maze, you're deliberately introducing an experience of the type that you usually gloss over.So, why does it work sometimes? After all, the classic dungeon is a lot like a maze. Diablo II was pretty fun and a lot of it is basically mazes filled with monsters. (Come to think of it, the classic anti-D&D film's title: Mazes and Monsters, is an semi-accurate description of the game). I think the first feature is variety. Moving from room 1a to room 1b moves you from a rich, haunted bedroom with a ghost into a rat-infested kobold midden. The visual description and interest of discovering new areas adds interest to the exploration of the maze. (It's probably no coincidence that, the Kurast jungle section of Diablo II which was almost universally critically decried, was the most visually boring section of the game. Areas like the dungeons of the Rogue monastery were also maze-like, but were shorter and more visually interesting). The challenge of fighting monsters through the maze also interrupts the task of mapping and adds interest to the task. Classical dungeons like Eye of the Beholder, etc. also had tasks to complete within the maze. Consequently, even if the maze was not too complex, there were tasks within it that The mechanic you have suggested seems reasonable for glossing over the maze (though you could also arbitrarily describe "you go through a maze. It's frustrating as the vine-covered walls all look nearly identical but, eventually, you find your way to the center/exit in XYZ minutes" to a similar effect.) If you want to make it a fun feature of the game  I think the key is keeping it somewhere between "complex enough to be challenging" and "simple enough to keep the players' interest." (My own solution is to pull out the adamantine pick or the disintegrate spell when a maze is complex enough to be frustrating rather than challenging or when, in-character, the time pressure mandates that a maze be overcome quickly rather than solved.) Other important methods would include features and puzzles within the maze (perhaps one of the pit traps was set off and there's some treasure on the mold-covered body of a former adventurer at the bottom) to interrupt the tedium.</blockquote>

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