Going beyond the twists and turns
Every group as their favorite characters, NPCs, and sessions they’ve played, of course almost every group as their least favorite thing about the game as well.
In my group’s case it was mazes.
Looking back on it I probably didn’t run the few I used as well as I could have and Mediaprophet over at Run a Game gives some pointers on just how to do that.
One of the big takeaways from the post is that everything should cost the party something, in particular time. When everything the party does costs them that precious commodity you can then avoid the tendency of a party to explore every nook and cranny of the maze rather than just solving it and moving on. This works especially well when there’s an unavoidable time based penalty – like a rising river.
I think that’s where most of us go wrong, both as players and GMs, we want to explore the WHOLE maze, not just figure a way out, or find what we need to and then get out. After all, we’ve got plenty of time! We just know that there’s more treasure to find, more monsters to defeat but then before we know it we’re in the midst of “the grind” of mapping the whole thing.
Mediaprophet goes on to give some other suggestions that should help including things such as teleportation, shifting walls and rooms, and let us not forget that dungeons can be three dimensional.
A final word, and these are ones I know I missed
- Don’t make the players solve the maze, and
- Remember, not every dungeon needs to be a maze either
May your dice roll well.