D&D 5E Running Maze of the Blue Medusa for 5e

[Staccat0]

I've been looking to plug a mega dungeon into my play schedule. I've never done one and I think they sound appealing.

My wants are:
- The barest minimum of prep
- Interesting roleplaying opportunities

A few people have directed me to Maze of the Blue Medusa which seems to basically be what I want.

I have a few questions:
- Have any of you ran it in 5e? How did that go?
- Have you ran it as a PDF? How did that go?
- Does the dungeon provide ample opportunities for players to leave and return? To skip earlier areas upon return?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I haven’t run it, but I have used it for inspiration a number of times. I haven’t had an issue with converting stuff to 5e. Couldn’t speak to the logistics of using a PDF to run it, but I could see that convoluted map being troublesome. Then again, I could see it being troublesome printed, too!

 

[MonkeyWrench]

I've been running Maze of the Blue Medusa using 5e off and on for the last few months. The group has consisted of:

- Kenku Raven Queen Tomelock
- Tiefling Kensai
- Half-Orc Samurai
- Half-Elf Whisper Bard
- Yuan-ti Pureblood Immortal Mystic

They are rarely all present at once and much of the game has been with 2-3 PCs present at any given time. We started at lvl 5 and are currently lvl 9. I own the book.

I converted monsters on the fly either by choosing their nearest equivalent in the MM or by matching them thematically to a certain monster. (Ex: I converted the Orchidmen found in the Gardens as half-strength Mind Flayers). Most of the time though I used the stats in MotBM as is making only minor adjustments before an encounter. My prep time was usually 15 min or so for a 4 hour session.

The biggest thing about the dungeon for me was the nature of the portal that leads to it. Depending on how you interpret the portal, the party might not have a reliable way of leaving and re-entering. The book itself seems to assume that the party will enter and have trouble leaving (and depending on the encounter in the first room, they might not have a choice if they can leave), but it never states outright which way to interpret the portal. I devised a background plot to explain how the party could enter and leave week to week. The party also has numerous ways to reach the various themed regions of the dungeon and they layout of the dungeon feels very maze-like and sprawling.

I had a fun time running, but I do think that 5e characters make some of the challenges of the dungeon trivial. There are many rooms where the floor has some magical effect that low-level teleports and short-range flight made superfluous. I think while the Maze is designed as system agnostic, it would work best with a version of D&D where the characters have less innate magical resources. If I ran it again I would definitely use a retroclone.

I ran it using the physical book and I think using a PDF would have been more difficult. Each region's layout is a small map with brief descriptions followed by longer room entries with a full dungeon map in the front of the book and a seperate section for npcs. If you're good with bookmarking your PDFs it might not be a problem, but I found myself slipping through the book a lot during play and would have had a tough time with a PDF.

 

[Staccat0]

I've been running Maze of the Blue Medusa using 5e off and on for the last few months. The group has consisted of:

- Kenku Raven Queen Tomelock
- Tiefling Kensai
- Half-Orc Samurai
- Half-Elf Whisper Bard
- Yuan-ti Pureblood Immortal Mystic

They are rarely all present at once and much of the game has been with 2-3 PCs present at any given time. We started at lvl 5 and are currently lvl 9. I own the book.

I converted monsters on the fly either by choosing their nearest equivalent in the MM or by matching them thematically to a certain monster. (Ex: I converted the Orchidmen found in the Gardens as half-strength Mind Flayers). Most of the time though I used the stats in MotBM as is making only minor adjustments before an encounter. My prep time was usually 15 min or so for a 4 hour session.

The biggest thing about the dungeon for me was the nature of the portal that leads to it. Depending on how you interpret the portal, the party might not have a reliable way of leaving and re-entering. The book itself seems to assume that the party will enter and have trouble leaving (and depending on the encounter in the first room, they might not have a choice if they can leave), but it never states outright which way to interpret the portal. I devised a background plot to explain how the party could enter and leave week to week. The party also has numerous ways to reach the various themed regions of the dungeon and they layout of the dungeon feels very maze-like and sprawling.

I had a fun time running, but I do think that 5e characters make some of the challenges of the dungeon trivial. There are many rooms where the floor has some magical effect that low-level teleports and short-range flight made superfluous. I think while the Maze is designed as system agnostic, it would work best with a version of D&D where the characters have less innate magical resources. If I ran it again I would definitely use a retroclone.

I ran it using the physical book and I think using a PDF would have been more difficult. Each region's layout is a small map with brief descriptions followed by longer room entries with a full dungeon map in the front of the book and a seperate section for npcs. If you're good with bookmarking your PDFs it might not be a problem, but I found myself slipping through the book a lot during play and would have had a tough time with a PDF.

Thank you for this tremendously thoughtful response.

Is there any small chance you might have a suggestions for similarly “pick up and play” adventures? I wanna run something different with a new and unreliable group, but I think my wife will kill me if I spend more time preparing anything each month haha.

 

[Daern]

I agree that 5e would not be as rad for Blue Medusa, though it is certainly full of RP possibilities.
I run Barrowmaze with zero preparation. There is a 5e version. Not set up to be very RP heavy, but you can always improvise.

 

[MonkeyWrench]

Thank you for this tremendously thoughtful response.

Is there any small chance you might have a suggestions for similarly “pick up and play” adventures? I wanna run something different with a new and unreliable group, but I think my wife will kill me if I spend more time preparing anything each month haha.

Let me start by saying that MotBM required very little prep time. I'd read through each section once, then it was 15-30 min prep time, tops per session. Many times less.

So the key to the maze is that a certain painting has to be placed on a north wall, in moonlight, on the night it was stolen (I'm assuming you don't have the book). The book makes it unclear how the party is supposed to get in on the night after it was stolen though, and I took the conditions for entering the portal very literally.

So i set up a background "plot" where several mages were each trying to get the painting and would steal it from each other with various third parties getting in on the action as well. In between sessions, I'd roll a d6 to determine the number of days that passed between each theft, as well as had the players roll on a "what happened since last session" table. I'd also alter the random encounter tables to reflect who'd been in possession of the painting most recently. The party would then start each session having just stolen the painting and thus able to enter, sometimes with enemies on their heals. (They were hyper-paranoid about being caught in the maze without an exit)

This setup worked well, but a lot of the danger in the maze is the weird time dilation, its impact on food spoilage, and the need to eat. A whole faction in the maze is driven to cannibalism because of this and there encounters that center around the need to eat to avoid a negative condition (I imposed exhaustion for hunger). With the party able to resupply between sessions, it blunted the impact this hazard and made the dungeon feel less exotic and dangerous. Lots of RP possibilities though and I eventually had factions within the maze venture forth into an unknown world which the players had to deal with.

Hope that helps.