Running mazes in adventures

[CarlZog]

You know, thinking about that - Tact Tiles would be great at the job...

My thoughts exactly. This is what Tact Tiles were made for!

Carl

 

[ThirdWizard]

My mazes are black boxes.

There's no map, no left/right, nothing like that. Just some Int checks, some encounters based on those rolls, and getting out whenever the rolls say so.

 

[deltadave]

If I'm running a complicated maze I'll draw it up on a paper and hand it to the players, then time how long it takes them to finish it. If they do it from beginning to end, I multiply the time by 100 and if they go end to beginning I multiply the time by 500. If they draw a line into an area that has an encounter, I stop the clock and run the encounter, then start the clock again.

really simple mazes I'll do things the normal way.

BTW - the best way to solve a maze is actually to follow the 'right hand rule' if you keep your right hand on the wall and walk, eventually you will get to the exit of any maze.

 

[Fieari]

I've only run one "maze" which wasn't really a maze at all. Just a cavern system that amounted to a standard fare dungeon romp. The players were chasing a demi-god with the mind of a 7 year old little girl wanting to play hide and seek (if they caught her, they'd earn a wish, which they desperately needed in order to prevent one of the characters from losing his soul in a month, but enough backplot). She ran THROUGH a stone wall, and they needed to go around the wall. They were mapping very well up unto this point.

So, going around the wall leads to a cavern with 6 (it's been a while, might have been 8) passageways, all in a circle. They just came in one of those passageways. Another would lead them towards the exit, and back to the chase. The other four (or six?)... linked to each other. But not to adjacent passages... there was looping above and below (and those passages also led to incidental other locations which has a bit of minor treasure and a minor encounter or two which incidentally lead to the death of a character and the loss of a powerful magical item, because I'm a RBDM)

It made my players REALLY angry until they finally worked out the trick. They were mapping it out, and marking the passageways, and when I described their new perspecting on the room upon coming out, they'd insist I was lying, that I was reading my copy of the map wrong, because they thought they KNEW how things "should" map out. When they finally got it, there was a great big sigh of relief and they informed me that they enjoyed it after all. It was such a simple "Maze" but it presented a decent challenge in its own right.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

If I'm running a complicated maze I'll draw it up on a paper and hand it to the players, then time how long it takes them to finish it. If they do it from beginning to end, I multiply the time by 100 and if they go end to beginning I multiply the time by 500. If they draw a line into an area that has an encounter, I stop the clock and run the encounter, then start the clock again.

really simple mazes I'll do things the normal way.

BTW - the best way to solve a maze is actually to follow the 'right hand rule' if you keep your right hand on the wall and walk, eventually you will get to the exit of any maze.

I like this one! I might require the players to not lift the pencil from the maze while they did it though, and draw the map on graph paper and use the squares they cover to determine how long it takes in game.

Following the left hand wall became tradition with Dante I think.

The Auld Grump