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Mechanics
The idea of a maze is an evocative concept, but one that is difficult to translate into RPGs. Discussions of how to run one come up now and then but usually end up with a design that’s just a series of randomly ordered encounters with some extra navigation/intelligence based rolls and a maze-like theme. So the flavour of a maze but not the experience of one. It works, but we can do better.
My initial desire was to run the session within a literal physical hedge maze. But a combination of reasons, particularly my own health issues, made that impractical. Abandoning that idea, I came up with a design with a few core components that work together to create the experience of exploring a dangerous maze. I'll describe the core components and use details from the maze I ran as examples.
Why run a maze?
What is it about mazes that we want to bring to life in the session?
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Exploration & discovery
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Mystery & secrets
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Memory & navigational challenge
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Tension & fear
Of these, memory and navigational challenge are the hardest to incorporate meaningfully. But they are also essential to creating a real maze-like experience, and if we do them right they enhance the other elements.
Component 1: The maze
Create the maze as a simple grid of tiles, each showing which directions it connects to and if there is a special encounter on it. Lay out the grid for the players with only the starting tile face up. Each time the players move, flip the new tile face up and flip their old tile face down. A grid of around 8x6 is large enough that the players will remember general paths but find navigating and remembering specific details a reasonable challenge.
(You will generally need to limit or block teleportation and flight in some manner.)
This serves as a functional core for the maze encounter, but without other components it lacks challenge and interest. It needs to matter when they take the wrong path or find a dead end.
Component 2: Time
Set up a chart on which you can show the progression of time and adjust it each time the party changes tile. For my maze I made it that each tile represented a large chunk of maze that took over an hour to navigate. I made a chart with 8 steps in each day, and 8 in each night.
Component 3: Challenges and features
Create a selection of challenges and place them around the maze. Set up the exit to the maze to require the party to have completed a certain number of the challenges. For my maze the exit door required several keys to open, each challenge awarded one of these keys.
Also include a few features that affect how the players navigate or experience that portion of the maze. For example, my maze included a mirror maze section where you couldn’t be certain which direction you would leave the tile in, a hidden underwater passage to another tile that bridged a dead-end, another secret passage that could be opened through a challenge, and a location that would show them an overview of the maze. I made sure to place this last one such that they would find it late in their exploration of the maze, but once they did I flipped all the maze tiles face up.
Component 4: You are not alone…
Add something to the maze that is hunting the players. A monster they can run from, but not defeat. The monster moves through the maze more slowly than the party. But it knows its way around the maze, the party needs to rest, and they never know where it is until it’s almost reached them. The PCs should be able to tell when the monster is almost upon them, whether by sight, sound, or smell. My monster was preceded by rolling black fog.
My monster was only active during the night. It entered the maze in the first section of each night and left at the end of the last section of the night. Returning each night to the tile it left from. During the middle 6 sections of the night the monster moved each time the party did, always moving towards them. The monster isn't really supposed to be a grave danger to the party, it’s just supposed to scare them and keep the pressure on. Ideally it should be something frightening and unknown.
My monster was a creature shrouded in black fog and formed of thousands of bones from a variety of creatures connected together seemingly at random. It had a large number of extended limbs formed by many bones connected end to end, with skeletal hands which it used to pull itself along the ground. It had a high attack bonus and dealt some necrotic damage, but more importantly anyone touched by it had to make a constitution saving throw or age 3d6 years. It’s bones could be broken and knocked away but there were always more.
I recommend also adding a target for the players to pursue, this serves a few purposes:
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This provides a proactive time-based navigational challenge to further bring the maze to life, since fleeing from the monster is inherently reactive.
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Trying to pursue this creature/target will push the party into closer contact with the monster that’s pursuing them and encourage them to take risks and choose paths they otherwise likely wouldn’t have.
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You can use the target to set up the idea of a pursuit in the maze and to establish for the players how the monster pursuing them works, all while keeping the actual monster hidden.
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The pursuit of the target can create a dynamic shift where the players can freely explore the maze during the day and chase their target. But when night falls they are the ones being hunted.
In my maze the target was a wisp of light with a key inside. Every dawn it would arrive in a bright beam of light, and every dusk it would leave the same way. So at the start and end of each day I would point to the general area of the maze the wisp was in. During the middle 6 sections of the day the wisp would move each time the party did, trying to move away from them. The wisp began each day in the tile it was in at the end of the previous day.
(Keep hidden notes of where the monster and target are as they move, I found it easiest to use grid references.)
Putting it together
The party starts off exploring the maze fairly casually, getting used to how it works and learning a part of the layout. Then, sooner or later, they run into the monster and the real challenge begins. From then on every move they make feels significant. Dead ends become frightening and remembering the right path is rewarding as it preserves precious time and keeps space between them and the monster.
My maze was created by an arch fey who found it amusing to watch mortals struggle through it. The challenges were themed around performances, games, and anything else that might amuse him. But you could use the same core components for very different mazes. All told it made for one of the more interesting and memorable adventures I've run.
(Here are a couple of photos. They're not the best quality, sorry, but they should help visualise what I described. The maze in use, The maze layout I used )
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Perfect for a green dragon's lair, since one of the regional effects is a massive, thorny maze of hedges around the lair
Very cool. The idea of exploring abstract sections of the maze over a period of time is very clever. I'm looking forward to trying this!
Absolutely love it. The pursuing monster is so key since it makes dead ends actually mean something other than annoying the players.
Yeah, without the monster I think the whole thing would fall flat. You could use external time pressure to give the navigation some significance and consequence but it wouldn't be nearly as effective or interesting.
Last time I ran a maze I printed out a stack of actual mazes and used them for skill checks to navigate the maze. Gave the players something like 3 seconds per point of intelligence to complete the maze. If the succeeded I counted it as 1 success and they needed like 3-4 successes total to finish the maze. Had a list for failures and successes. Mazes are for sure fun to run if done right.
That's a simple yet amazing way of doing so. Sounds fun and interactive, I can see my players fumbling and getting anxious over that xD
I gave them super simple mazes with a lot more time then they needed and it still had my players feeling anxious. Super fun trick to pull out.
I can see that. It can be easy, but they don't know that until they solve it. And if they think that one is easy, they might conclude the next one will be harder. I love those mental "manipulations".
Oh that's clever, I might have to try that sometime.
Interesting idea. I think point 4 is what really seals it. Point 2 actually makes this akin to a hex crawl, which is something I like.
I'd always be wary of the "find/complete X things to finish" because this can seem like a good idea until it becomes a slog. For example, I was once playing a dungeon where we had to complete eight challenges, and this info was conveyed to us early on. Turns out eight challenges is a fucking lot, and we were essentially trapped in the dungeon till we did it. All the players got sick of it after the ~5th one since most of them would individually take up an entire session. This event largely burned us out of the campaign and we ended wrapping it up early.
So my point here, if you're going to make a "complete X number things to succeed", give yourself some wiggle room. Eventually the DM fudged it and said after 6 of them, we could continue, despite the earlier proclamation. If you said "find 5 keys" but they've been in the maze wandering for three sessions and only have two keys, you/they are kinda screwed.
Yeah, that's definitely a danger to be wary of. For this maze I had 7 keys available and the exit only needed 5. (I think the party might have ended up doing everything anyway though, they have a completionist streak.) Each challenge only took about 15-30m, and I included the tile that showed an overview of the maze for the same reason.
It worked out well, though it is always difficult to be certain if that was because of good balance or good fortune.
Saving this for if anyone ever goes to the shadowfell in my games. My world's version of vecna lives in a massive maze, made up of dozens of different types of maze
I build a maze that I’m very proud of. I was running a home brew campaign using elements from the magic the gathering supplements and my own knowledge of the lore. At a certain point my players needed to navigate a maze to get to a “stargate” like structure that was missing runes that looked like the guilds from ravnica. The missing guild seals were hidden throughout the maze but I won’t bog you down with those details.
The maze itself was made up of 25 rooms in a 5x5 grid. The players entered in on the top left corner (by magical means) and the gate was in the bottom right corner. Each corner room had a door on two walls leading into the maze and every other room had doors on all four walls. Each room with four doors had a number on each door from 1 to 4. This was mostly so they could tell me which door they were going into.
Here’s where things got crazy. I made a physical version of the maze and had all of the rooms with four doors attached to a board with Velcro. I made sure to keep everything about this board hidden from the players. All they knew is I had something with Velcro behind the screen. The board also had numbers and letters going along the top and side like a battleship grid. Like the doors having numbers, the floors of the maze had the coordinates on them.
The players would enter a room, deal with whatever threat or puzzle was in the room, then choose a door to go into next. Before they moved I would pull up the room tile they were in and rotate it 90 degrees and the players would enter into the new room. The corners never rotated so they were able to start piecing clues together.
They quickly learned if they tried to move through a door that would bring them into an outside edge they would simply go to the other side of the maze. They also learned it was a 5x5 grid.
They spent a good chunk of time attempting to map out the maze and every time they thought they figured it out, they would walk through one door and it would mess everything up.
For example, they thought the odd doors went north/south and the even doors went east/west. Just out of sheer luck it worked for the first three doors but then the fourth door would ruin it.
They had the wildest ideas about the rules of the maze. There must have been a dozen or more scrap paper balls with attempts to map it.
What they didn’t realize was the more they moved around the maze, the harder it would be to navigate. I took some inspiration from the movie Cube and how the rooms were constantly moving. At first it seems random but eventually you see a pattern.
By far my favorite part of the whole thing was the Velcro. Every time they chose a door they would hear the Velcro and be convinced I had a bunch of rules I was swapping between or something.
I may have ruined Velcro for all of them but when they finally got all of the guild seals to the gate, all they wanted to know was what I was doing with the Velcro.
I showed them the board with the map tiles and showed them what I was doing and they were shocked at how simple it was.
One rule and one prop is all it took to give my players a maze they probably won’t forget. Also, sorry for the novel.
Awesome job!
I like the part about having a creature that is stalking the players, even if this is something silly at the lower levels of play (like a goblin merchant selling cookware or something).
Your design also opens up the possiblity of magical items helping with the meta. Like a divination spell that lets them flip over a tile that is far away, or a mapping tool that lets them keep a few tiles flipped over which they have already explored.
I am highly amused by the idea of the party being chased through a magical maze by a very persistent door-to-door salesman.
The divination usage is a great idea too.
"You overpaid me a few silver, and I always treat my customers well! Also, I uh... scratched this map out on this cast-iron pan... You could also swing it like a club?" - Grindle the Nimble
"I have a special offer for you as you're such valued customers. For the low low price of (2 silver) I can assure the quality of your recent purchase of [10' pole] and offer you a free replacement should it break during regular use!"
Spoken very quickly and quietly:
."For the purposes of these terms, a 10' pole is defined as a pole made of a single piece of wood of 10 feet in length whose primary purpose is purely ornamental in nature. Construction, as well as the poking and prodding of suspect corridors and dangerous creatures does not constitute regular use under these terms. A wooden pole of 9' or less, however it may have come to be so, is not, in fact, a 10' pole and is thus clearly a separate product and not eligible for free replacement under this policy.
Not bad! I'm keeping this and turning the whole BBEG's lair into a maze
Did you require that they couldn't make their own map? It seems like it would still work pretty well if they draw a map, but you definitely lose out a bit on the 'memory' component of the challenge.
Also, I really like how you laid out the design goals and focused on meeting each one. It's very good practice for any homebrew. I often look at existing rules in this light as well. Often times you'll find that they don't contribute to any of the design goals and actually hurt some. That's when it's time to remove a rule or homebrew it.
I didn't stop them from making their own map, though I think I considered it. I think they decided for themselves that would it would be more fun not to draw a detailed map (it's been a while since I ran it). I think they did end up drawing some rough notes but not a fully detailed tile by tile map. Which worked out pretty well.
Learning what you need and what is extraneous really is critical to good design. If a bit sad sometimes when you cut ideas you liked.
I run my mazes with a few simple rules.
When describing a room (and especially the halls), I give rough figures and I never give cardinal directions.
You enter into a room that's roughly 10 by 10 and made of the same smooth stone as the halls you just exited. On the far wall, and right wall there are exits.
I try and keep MOST but not all the rooms generic. Similar size and shape, with a few landmark rooms for encounters or traps or special navigation.
While navigating the halls, the character should never be able to see a dead end until they make the turn. Thats where you put the traps!
Have something in the maze, either physical or supernatural to prevent or alter as many marks as possible that the party leaves. Chalk gets washed away, and string gets moved but maybe a hammer and chisel leave more permanent marks? Or maybe the ranger makes a stealth or survival check to make their marking hard to see, that they'll need to notice themselves if they walk past it in the future.
The point of the maze is to make the PLAYERS feel lost. They must draw their own maps, and the confusion of never for sure knowing 100% if the room they're in is one they have been to before.
It's a lot of fun, but definitely something to use sparingly, and you probably want a monster they can convince to guide them in some way to be able to pull out if they're really really lost.
Strong work! The time component of this could be well-captured the The Angry GM’s Tension Pool as well.
This is awesome. Thanks for posting it.
I love that idea! Funny maze story, back in high school our DM had us make our way through a maze, so he printed off this really large and dense maze he used an auto generator for and had us all work through it together. As soon as I got hold of the paper I literally saw that the exit was right next to the start, and I think we all realized it at the same time and we all began to laugh and told him about it and he just went “oh, I guess I shoulda checked my own maze…” and we all had a good laugh about it and it was great.
I was just reading about the Labyrinth in OotA. This will help when I run it. Very great job with this~
I love this!! MandyMod, one of the big names in the Curse of Strahd sub, employs a lot of these concepts super well in the Fidatov Manor homebrew in her Fleshing Out series. I ran it and it went super well.
Playing with the tiles could be fun.
I'd probably have some of them rotate at some point (while face-down) at or against the player's control to shake things up!
So cool! This sounds like something I’d both enjoy as a player and running as a GM. Do you by chance still have your notes on what was in each tile, and possibly be willing to share?
I’ve been trying to figure out how to run a big contest between two Archfey warlocks. Unbeknownst to my player, his patron made a bet with another Archfey that their own warlock would beat the other’s in a major competition of some kind, and that’s the only reason his patron made a pact with him. But I needed something that could actually involve the whole party, and not just be a fight to the death (the other warlock is his childhood bestie). Something like this sounds perfect!!
I can't write it up nicely currently, but I'm happy to share the rough notes:
General details
Teleportation magic of any sort doesn’t function here.
There is an invisible wall at the top of the hedges (30 feet up). At the top edge you can get a glimpse of the vast expanse of maze, but you can’t actually move over the maze.
You can break through hedges, but it takes some time and they regrow swiftly. Much faster to walk around. Each square represents a large maze of passages in and of itself.
For a long rest the party has to spend 6 consecutive time sections resting.
7 dead ends. 1F is a portal leading to 3A, so there are 6 challenge dead ends, + the underwater passage, +2D-2E unlockable path, + the mirror maze.
6 keys, +1 for the wisp. So 7 total.
The exit has a row of 5 doors you need to open to get through (it has transparent walls so you can see how many doors there are).
1F has 2 doors with a portal behind them.
3A Safe zone and map
3A is safe from the monster. Additionally the floor of this area is like glass and underneath is a full miniature map of the maze. (Flip over all tiles permanently if they get here.)
Wisp and monster are visible when they’re in the maze.
5C-5D Underwater tunnel
The floor of the tunnel is covered in fake gemstones, they revert to ordinary river stones when removed from the water. While holding any fake gemstones a creature experiences strong tides pushing against them and must make a DC 16 athletics check to make it to the surface without taking a point of exhaustion.
The passage is long enough to take over half an hour to traverse. There are air pockets intermittently along it but far enough apart to be difficult. Anyone without a swimming speed or the ability to breathe underwater must make a DC 16 athletics check or suffer a point of exhaustion.
5F Mirror maze
Survival check to navigate. DC 15 to come out where you want. Below 10 you spend an hour without reaching an exit. Otherwise you come out at a random exit (potentially the one you wanted, potentially the one you came in).
2D-2E A stage
Closed door facing the stage with painted eyes on it.
3 eyes. 1 closes after each performance. The door opens when all 3 eyes are shut.
DC 14 performance to cause an eye to shut.
1A or 4A Giant dice (I don’t remember which)
2 giant dice, surprisingly light (if one is thrown without the other it becomes immovable till the other is thrown.
One die has -1,1,2,2,3,4
Other die has symbols for: gold, bleeding heart, gemstone, clock, key, key
The number die determines the magnitude of the effect of the symbol die, a result of "-1" means a reverse effect.
O: Gold coin, 10 * number gold (lose gold if -ve)
H: Bleeding heart. Xd10 damage (heal if -ve). Effects max hp.
Clock: time. Age xd4 years (deage if -ve)
G: Gemstone: gain a small gemstone: (-ve lose a gemstone of the player’s choice if they have one), 1 black, 2 pink (either), 3 yellow/green, 4 blue/red
K: Gain key progress equal to number.
The taller grass forms the shape of a key as keys are rolled. Need 12 key results to complete.
1A or 4A Hangman
Glass box with metal edges 6 feet tall, 4 feet square. Inside is a simple marble pedestal with a golden key resting on it. The closest side is a glass door, there is no visible lock or keyhole but it has a pattern of lines engraved in it. "_ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _"
A couple of feet in front of the box is a triple row of small pressure plates. Each has a letter in common on it. A B C D etc.
Yeah it’s hangman. Press a letter that is in the words and it will appear engraved into the glass in the appropriate places. Press a letter that isn’t and they take lightning damage. The first time a creature presses a wrong letter they take 2d6 lightning damage. Each time after that the damage increases by 2d6. So 2d6/4d6/6d6/8d6/etc
The answer is: JUST PUSH
If you push on the door it swings open and you can take the key without issue. There is no requirement to interact with the buttons at all. Why? Because the fey thought it was funny. He did make this place for his own entertainment after all.
3D Statues
Clearing 600 feet across. A handful of other passages in the maze connect to the clearing. Scattered throughout are hundreds of stone blocks with humanoid statues on them. A wide variety of species. The ones near the edge hold poses of calm, control, victorious, joyful. But as you progress further in the poses are more subdued, slumped shoulders, slouched, uncertain. Near the centre the statues are in poses of terror, agony, desperation and horror.
In the centre the ground dips in a small basin, lined with stone. Resting in the centre is a key. If someone picks up the key the statues all climb off their pedestals, taking on twisted postures, mouths hanging open in silent screams. And run toward the person who has the key to rip them to pieces. Once you exit the clearing they all calmly return to their pedestals and resume their positions.
Run as a loose skill challenge with players using skill checks and spells/abilities to get the key out of the clearing faster, or slow the statues. Deal level appropriate damage on failures as needed.
3E Emotion/Experience symbols
6 discs in a circle plus a central pillar. Each disc has a word written on it.
Anger, Love, Hope, Fear, Sorrow, Joy.
When someone stands on one of the circles they must think of something that gives them that emotion (reasonably strongly). For a moment, everyone else experiences that with them, then the disc clicks down like a pressure plate (and stays down so long as they stand on it) and the central pillar rises a little. Once all the discs are down the pillar rises enough to reveal an alcove with a key. (If not everyone is there/not enough players it won’t require all the discs to be stepped on.)
7B Fighting pit
Circular pit of sand 20 feet across. Need 3(?) 1 on 1 combats (as they aren’t trying to seriously injure each other there will be no need to roll for lingering injuries).
2 statues of knights, one at either end of the fighting pit. Each kneeling and proffering a shortsword. Each shortsword has +2 and grants a magical effect when inside the ring. Outside it does neither. The magical effect is randomly selected when a character takes the sword from the statue. The swords cannot be removed from the clearing.
The sword will pull you back in if you try to leave while carrying it. DC 12 acrobatics check to maintain your footing and not fall prone.
3(?) red glass orbs on metal pillars. One glows after each fight, once all glow, the key appears.
Possible effects:
-1) hasted
-2) mirror image
-3) blur
-4) invis at the start of each of your turns
7F Waterfall, and drinks
A vast column of water falls into a pool here. The constant roar of the water makes it very hard to hear anything. The waterfall creates a large cloud of mist that conceals much of the surface of the pool.
In front of the pool is a table set with three large goblets. The goblets are filled with a colourful liquid. Red, green or black.
When someone drinks from one, images appear in the mist. Red: First an image appears of them as they see themselves. Then a second appears that shows them how they want to be. (Appearing more or less as they are, if appropriate, is fine.)
Green: An image, (potentially a scene) appears showing what they most want. Or at least something they really want.
Black: A scene from their past plays out in the mist. Specifically their worst memory.
After the effect when someone drinks one, a partial outline of a key appears in the mist. When everyone has drunk once a solid key appears and drops into the water and begins to sink. The pool is seemingly bottomless.
Lurking inside the pool is an aboleth like creature (only has one big eye), driven mad. Bestial and lacking in intelligence. A few changes to the stat block:
HP: 216
All saves are DC 16
Double all dice. So 4d6+5 for tentacle, 6d6+5 for tail.
It can use enslave with 2 legendary actions.
Oh, wow, this is all brilliant! Thank you so much for sharing!! My players would absolutely love all of these. My favorites are the Waterfall (because oof!) and Hangman (because lolz).
Permission to steal? :) I'll probably need to give some of the spaces a creepier twist, since the maze will the work of both Archfeys and one of them is quite dark and horror-esque, but everything you have here is so perfect!
No worries :), steal away!
This is incredibly cool! Seems like a lot of fun for a one shot as well.
How did you handle long rests?
The party could take a long rest by spending 6 time steps in the same zone. Easy enough, unless the monster was nearby.
I feel like "time constraint" and "ominous threat" are the most important parts as they build the tension that can so easily be lost in a labyrinth.
The last time I put my players to something like this they knew that they had to be out by sunset or get swarmed by terrible horrors. They also knew that there was some kind of entity in there puppeteering these horrors. Since they didn't know how vast the complex was it got pretty tense for them.
And for my next one I'm planning an underwater maze where the scarcity of air and the fact that they are nowhere near the biggest fish in there are the tension builders.
Best maze I ever ran was done on a Roll20 campaign. What I did was use a random maze generator, and made the biggest one I reasonably could. Then once I uploaded it to Roll20 and aligned & sized it to a grid map (as best I could) I turned on the Fog of War. As they moved through it, I'd reveal just that sections they'd be able to see, along with the openings to other turns and passages, but never more than what their line of sight could uncover. That way, they'd never know what lied around the next corner, but also had the benefit of being able to see where they've been.
The map was made with a large hollow center which served as the starting point. But instead of letting the players have individual icons running through the maze, I had a single group icon they took turns moving. Throughout the maze I seeded monsters, traps, and encounters; indicated by a Red Skull on the map. And after each was tripped, two things would happen; 1) I'd switch to a battle map where they had control of their individual PCs; and 2) after it was resolved, survivors would be teleported back to the center.
There were two other things I included to help make my maze work. First, on the GM layer I drew a red line so I could see if they were on the right path. And second, halfway down the right path, I rewarded them with a Save Point, where they'd reappear after being teleported from a resolved encounter.
Overall, it worked out pretty well! It kept them in a reasonable degree of suspense, and no body was left out, as everyone had a turn navigating the maze.