Tags
Dungeon, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Labyrinth, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, Maze, Minotaur, OSR, RPG
The minotaur was rarely capturing those sacrificed to it – which causes problems when those sacrifices return to town seeking revenge against those who tied them up and dumped them at the labyrinth. So the king summoned help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of sages was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The sages then returned to the palace saying to the king, “We have the solution, but it works only in the case of spherical minotaurs in a vacuum”.
Circular “Maze”
Originally I started this piece as a very compact circular maze with a single access route that would get to the centre. An honest to goodness “maze”. The exact kind of thing I find incredibly “un fun” in actual play. So many walls were omitted, almost all dead ends removed, and multiple pathings were created that can lead to the central section. Now we have something that FEELS like a maze when you are in it, but that plays like a dungeon – some narrow corridors, some big rooms, and difficult to map because everything is in arcs instead of straight lines.
I honestly don’t think I’d ever use this myself, but there was a lot of interest in it when I was drawing it. I’d love to hear how you end up using it in your games.
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Dyson's Dodecahedron 
Nice concept, Dyson, but wouldn’t “spherical” require multiple levels of decreasing circumference both above and below this main level? Or am I anticipating the next few posts? 😉
Only if I weren’t trying to make a joke.
I think what has occurred in that the n=3 dimensional case (sphere) is too intractable. Instead, simply collapse the space Minotaur (this is a vacuum) to a n=2 dimension (circle) and solve it trivially.
Tesseract (n=4) Minotaurs are only to be attempted by advanced adventurer/mathematician parties.
I find myself amused in that giving the labyrinth multiple pathings and almost no dead ends, you’ve also ensured that one of the classic methods of navigating a maze- placing your hand on the wall and following it, or making every and only left turns, will result in circumnavigating the labyrinth without ever reaching the minotaur’s lair at the center.
Whether that counts as a relief or a failure, I suspect, depends on what you’re doing in the labyrinth in the first place.
(A relief or a failure for the theoretical maze-wanderer, I hasten to add, not our distinguished host).
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.