Update: An improved PDF with new art is available for free at DriveThruRPG.

This is the proudest dungeon I’ve ever built, and now that I’ve run it for everyone I run games for lately, it’s finally safe to post.

She might not look like much, but that’s partly that its an old sheet of paper glued to old cardboard and partly that its too big to scan all at once and my photoshop isn’t the best. All the same, please consider what I’m presenting here. There are seven rotating circles in this maze, and they overlap.

The biggest circle is the one that gets the player’s attention, but doesn’t cause a whole lot of confusion. The confusion comes from the circles that can break apart and leave pieces of themselves scattered across the maze. There’s nothing quite so bothersome as finding something you’ve seen before completely surrounded by things you don’t recognize. The most important, though, are the small circles contained entirely within the largest circle. They are how the Game Master can control the players’ progress, giving help or hindrance.

The current arrangement is unfortunate for a couple of reasons. Worst of all is that the treasure room is right at the front of the dungeon. Ideally the treasure room would be hard to find. It contains a chest for each character with an item specialized for them. This is fun because if I do it well it lets me outfit each player with a useful tool for the coming final battle and make them feel like their character is important to me. However, it should take a little work to find.

As it stands, by rights the helpful, hint-giving statue at the entrance would, when asked “which way should we go?” would say “Left.” Ideally, he can give more cryptic answers. The last group walked in on a random dungeon where dead ends had them temporarily trapped. The statue was able to say “It matters not at this time.” and they got a good look at the final encounter from the safety of magical glass.

The final encounter was a Lucifugi. This encounter was a bit much for 5 level 5 characters, as I started them off, but with their preparation and equipment, they’ve got a pretty good shot. If they end up wandering enough, encounters with other occult devils brought in by the Lucifugi in order to release him can gain them a level before the final battle.

Most of the chests in the dungeon contain green keys that match up with the green doors throughout the dungeon. There are more doors than keys, and when a key is used it returns to the chest from which it came. The last group to play through had their fighter carry one of the chests, allowing them to open all the doors they wanted.

The other three chest contain utility items meant for the maze: a helmet that makes the wearer aware of motion (including the dizziness inducing rotation of the planet, solar system, and galaxy), a wand that allows the user to stop the rotation of the labyrinth circles, and four light “grenades” made of a bright, magical liquid in glass vials.

In the end, random dice rolls to rotate the dungeon pieces make this an easy dungeon to run while providing interesting obstacles for the players. It would be all the better if I ever get around to finishing the map display and other game functionality necessary, that’s the goal for this year.

How’d you like the dungeon? Would you like to run it? If so, I have some advice to build it out of cardboard that should make the rotation easier than the way I did it, including a document outlining how to run it.Want to see more types of dungeons? Let us know in the comments below.

Update: And just in case you weren’t going to read the comments, some of the great folk down there have put in a lot of effort in the last month to make the dungeon walkable in 3D, you can find out all about that here: Crowdsource Results. They did great work and it’s worth checking out some of their other stuff.

Previous Dungeons:

The Temple of Zemail

The Sleeping God Cave

Crem, a Coastal Town