Mazes

A lot of old-school dungeons had a part of the dungeon that was a maze, but there weren't any encounters in there. It was just there to fuck with mappers. Nowadays most players wouldn't tolerate it and I don't blame them. The times I've tried to run players through a "maze," they were bored and so was I.

There are a couple of things you can do, though. Having a chase might be interesting but it could be long if you're going round by round, and you also run into a problem if the enemy knows the maze, as it gives them a total advantage. And how will you run it if the enemy doesn't know the maze?

However, the idea of an intense "divide-and-conquer" running clusterfuck battle in a maze sounds fantastic, where the players keep getting cut off from one another, the monsters seem to be coming out of nowhere, everyone's lost, and the situation is chaos. Some players would hate that, but I think it could be fun if done right. Make sure the enemies are pretty weak but high in number, Make sure the maze isn't too big, has few dead-ends but several secret doors, maybe some shifting walls. Play up the confusion.

I once ran into a PDF online (can't find it now) that had neat ideas for running a maze dungeon in a more abstract way. It was for Savage Worlds but the ideas could easily be applied elsewhere. Here's what it said (apologies to the original author, since I don't know who it was):

Maze Abstraction Table

Process 1. Determine the number of "forks" in path
2. Draw first card
3. Let the players guess if next card is higher or lower
4. If right go to next fork
5. If wrong lose one fork

Modifiers
• A bennie may be spent to ignore drawn card
• A smarts roll may modify next card by 1 up or down
• A raise on smarts roll allows a modifier of 2

Spades
1: Minor environmental effect
2: Animal encounter
3: Intelligent species encounter
4: No encounter
5: No encounter
6: Trap. Natural or man-made
7: No encounter
8: No encounter
9: Trace of inhabitants
10: No encounter
J: Shortcut found
Q: Major environmental effect
K: No encounter

Hearts
1: No encounter
2: Trace of inhabitants
3: No encounter
4: No encounter
5: Minor environmental effect
6: Intelligent species encounter
7: Unusual plant
8: No encounter
9: Food/water supply
10: Trap. Natural or man-made
J: No encounter
Q: Trace of inhabitants
K: No encounter

Clubs
1: Intelligent species encounter
2: No encounter
3: Trap. Natural or man-made
4: No encounter
5: No encounter
6: Animal encounter
7: No encounter
8: No encounter
9: Trap. Natural or man-made
10: Trace of inhabitants
J: Minor environmental effect
Q: Food/water supply
K: Trace of inhabitants

Diamonds
1: No encounter
2: Minor environmental effect
3: No encounter
4: No encounter
5: Minor item found
6: Trace of inhabitants
7: Unusual plant
8: Major environmental effect
9: No encounter
10: Food/water supply
J: No encounter
Q: Intelligent species encounter
K: No encounter

Red Joker: Beneficial Wild Card
Black Joker: Hostile Wild Card

/r/rpg Thread