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The Minotaur's Maze
🕑 Added 2020-04-13 18:43:44 +0000 UTCMazes. You would think that, as a dungeon cartographer primarily, I would love them. But mazes as dungeons generally suck.
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.
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 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.
This maze, as well as a more traditional double-maze are both available here at 1200 dpi: https://dysonlogos.blog/2020/04/13/minotaur-maze/
Comments
I always enjoyed running mazes for my campaigns - minotaurs with abilities were the 'big baddies' in my campaigns. My solution to having a map as a reference so they could solve it was to introduce errors into the renderings. If I knew we would be getting into a maze scenario, I would roll either a percentage dice or a d20 - this would determine the error rate per 1/4" segment. The maps NEVER lined up and they were always confused. :)
Similarly, I've always loved the concept of mazes in RPGs, but they just don't play well. I love some of your solutions: the 9 sections thing adds real interest. And it's not too big. And I'm glad you added the wall -creeping mechanic: been wanting someone to do that for ages. I reckon I might use it in my current campaign, for a thorn-hedge maze in my Grimm Forest kingdom.
