How do you design a maze in Dungeons & Dragons? The traditional way is to draw the map of the entire maze, and have the players explore it. Unfortunately, this tends to lead to your players getting more and more frustrated as they randomly turn left or right, hoping to get to an interesting encounter. Or they could try to map, which then significantly slows down the game.
Another way of designing mazes is employed by Shawn Merwin in this adventure. In this method, you design only the main encounter areas, and provide an abstract system for moving through the corridors. In this adventure, each area contains a puzzle showing the correct way forward. If the characters make the wrong choice, they get lost for a time before returning to the chamber and attempting to find the right way again. I like this method!
Halaster’s Maze of Madness, as the name implies, is set in the great dungeon complex of Undermountain. The story revolves around a lich’s attempt to reconstitute himself after a magical disaster destroyed his body. Halaster, whose soul has been splintered in that same disaster, does not want the lich to succeed, and gets the adventures to aid him prevent the lich from succeeding.
The adventure begins with a healthy portion of role-playing, as the adventurers try to understand Halaster’s message. As bits of Halaster’s soul have ended up in numerous people, getting the full story requires interaction with more than one NPC.
The best parts of the adventure are found in the maze; in particular, its chambers and their puzzles to escape. Unusually, Shawn didn’t give set monsters for each chamber, instead allowing the Dungeon Master to mix and match; several monster groups are included, each of which can be used in one of the puzzle areas. The monster groups range from new monsters – five arcane zombies – to new takes on existing foes – two gauths, who the party discover fighting each other for “mastery of the maze”.
Unfortunately, less material is provided for when the adventurers make the wrong decision on which way to go. Shawn gives some very interesting suggestions (such as the characters become out-of-phase with others in the group so they can’t directly interact), but these aren’t developed. It makes for an interesting comparison with The Rise of Tiamat. The maze in that adventure also uses the puzzle method, but instead of putting combat encounters in the puzzle areas, it makes them the penalty for going the wrong way. Honestly, I want the two methods combined: combats in the puzzle areas, and more details as to what happens when characters make the wrong choice.
This adventure proceeds from the assumption that the characters should make the right decisions; the interest lies in the struggle to make those decisions while they are dealing with another situation.
The main problem I have with this adventure comes from the way it describes the NPCs and the general situation. The text is quite verbose, with important information being scattered over several sections. I’d probably also slightly modify the beginning of the adventure. As written, the character who introduces the characters into adventure isn’t the one that guides them through the later sections. I’d remove the initial encounter in favour of just introducing the players to Rrult, a goblin ally, and using her as the primary NPC and source of information throughout the adventure.
Overall, this is a fantastic adventure with inventive ideas. I estimate it will take about two sessions of play (8 hours) to complete. Shawn rates it as an adventure for 5th-7th level characters, but it’s likely the final encounter is going to be very difficult if the characters are at the lower end of that scale.