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Dungeon, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Labyrinth, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, Maze, Minotaur, OSR, RPG
Mazes. You would think that, as a dungeon cartographer primarily, I would love them. But mazes as dungeons generally suck.
That maze in the top photo is, absolutely, something I would never use in an actual RPG session. Not like this.
There is no easy way to convey the sense of isolation and being lost in a maze when working with a map. The whole “take a wrong turn, end up in a hallway that feels just like the one you wanted, but isn’t” confusion.
Generally speaking when I have a real maze in a game, I ditch mapping it entirely and game play switches to what is essentially a skill challenge, and the longer it takes to succeed, the more things you run into along the way.
The Minotaur’s Maze
This maze is still larger than any I would run as a traditional mapped dungeon, but the design is more to my liking. It includes 8 chambers with statues in them breaking the whole structure into 9 segments. And I’ve pierced the walls in multiple places so there are many different routings through the maze instead of just a single right way to solve it. This fixes a lot of the problems of running a traditional maze in a game.
Further, this maze (as well as the practice one I drew that appears below) is specifically designed to prevent the “right hand rule” or “left hand rule” from working to get from the entrance to the centre. This isn’t one maze, it is two mazes nested within each other with no walls connecting the inner maze to the outer maze. If you stick to hugging one wall the whole way through, you will eventually return to your point of origin, but will never reach the centre of the maze.
A real maze
This second maze was my “test maze” as I was practicing to make the final one presented above. The double maze design is a lot more obvious here and the whole thing would be a chore to play out at the table, in my opinion.
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Dyson's Dodecahedron 
Agreed, mazes don’t really work too well in standard RPGs. Now, confusing dungeons that are a mapping challenge, those are more to my liking. But some players hate that, too.
I’ve seen three methods of running a maze, one traversing the whole thing as in a typical dungeon (which can be a chore), another narrating only the points of interest (which can nullify the existence of its labyrinthine corridors), and third using dice to randomly determine whether the party reaches a keyed room or a dead-end (which can have unpredictable outcomes).
I believe a (relatively easy) maze is best used when placed as a backdrop to another puzzle, increasing therefore its challenge. In your map, for instance, the puzzle is to interact with all the statues in order to gain access to the main chamber (or activate a certain object within). The maze serves as an extra challenge to navigate through each statue.
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
There was a section in one of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths that described mazes in terms of time – not maps. I think it was by Sean K. Reynolds.
A maze is a tool for slowing the PCs down – so don’t map it out, instead have the PCs roll to figure out the maze, needing X number of successes – and each roll also being an encounter.
So, the faster the PCs figure out the maze, the fewer encounters there are,
A large, but simple maze might need six Knowledge (Dungeoneering) successes at DC 10. Assuming they fail three times would mean having nine encounters – whether combat, hazard, or trap. In part to make Knowledge (Dungeoneering) useful, considering how little it is used in most campaigns.
Failing by 5 or more means needing one more roll – so that six would become seven. Succeeding by five or more means lowering the number of successes needed by one, so only five would be needed.
I am making it sound a lot more complicated than it is in play. Last time I used the method, I had ten maps/encounters – with the least significant digit on the die determining which one was used. Rolling a D10 would have worked just as well, but I was feeling ‘clever’. (Yes, those are sarcasm quotes.)
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