Gravity Maze

This one room-maze can be inserted into any dungeon, but is particularly appropriate as an entrance and main junction in the home of a powerful wizard or some other place where the laws of physics tend to behave like suggestions.

The room is a 40’ cube with haze-filled doorways set into each of the six smooth surfaces, each opening up onto a different face. Gravity is individualized in this room, meaning that each character’s “down” is determined by the door they enter through. The doorways are located a foot or so from the lower corner of each square “wall,” so that there are two doorways to choose from each time you enter the room: one in the floor and one in the wall across from your entrance door that can be easily climbed through.

There is a guardian here, capable of switching its own personal gravity at will, that attacks anyone who enters without escort from its master. Its form consists of dozens of humanoid arms growing out of a central hub, all carved of marble. It moves by rolling around on the “walls,” “ceiling,” and “floor.” It attacks several times per round, focusing on one target at a time. If two of these attacks land (assuming a bipedal target), the handball manages to grab both of its target’s ankles and throws them straight up. The target’s personal gravity reverses, and they take 40’ of falling damage (4d6 in Troika!). If they survive the fall, they’re separated from the rest of their party and the handball moves on to another target. 

Handball

Skill:9 Stamina:16 Initiative:6 Armor:3

Damage as Unarmed.

Special: If two hits land in the same round, the handball grabs its target by the ankles and reverses their personal gravity.

When no one is present, the handball patrols the room with no set path, apparently changing direction at random. Roll 1d6 to determine which surface it starts on.

If you have any keys or special treasure to place, the exact center of this room is a good spot, suspended in mid-air by perfectly opposed gravitational forces. 

Navigating this hub would be greatly simplified for a flying character, but that’s fine. It makes sense for the wizard who lives here to make it easy for themself.

Given all that, there are two ways to arrange the doors, and the option you choose has a distinct impact on the way most players will experience this room.

• Option A: Three of the doors go in the bottom left corner of the surface they’re set into and three of them go in the bottom right corner.
• Option B: All six doors go in the same position relative to their surface.

The room in option A looks like from the point of view of a character who is entering the room looks like one of these two diagrams, depending on which door they entered through:

The room in option B always looks like this:

As described above, there are always two options for non-flying characters (besides turning around and trying to backtrack). These topological diagrams show those connections and reveal the difference between the two approaches:

All the connections in option A are one-way only. If you enter through doorway 1 and clamber through doorway 2, you can’t then re-enter through doorway 2 and reach doorway 1 by walking.

In option B, one of your choices is always a two-way connection. If you enter through doorway 1 and clamber through doorway 4 and then immediately re-enter the maze through 4, you can walk directly to doorway 1 and climb back through it.

I don’t think either option is any more or less difficult, but A is potentially a lot more frustrating.

Solving any type of maze means learning to navigate it. Observant players, when shown whichever wireframe is applicable, have all the clues to figure out how to get from where they are to any point in the room. I’ve run games using this room a half-dozen times or so and most players haven’t been that observant, at least not while they’re feeling rushed because a monster just splatted their friend on the ceiling. 

When you’re lost in a maze (or any deeply unfamiliar environment), every choice of direction is arbitrary until you find yourself in a place you’ve been before. That’s the moment it starts to click. You probably haven’t solved the maze completely yet, but you’ve begun to solve it incrementally. That’s more likely to happen sooner with option B.

The better choice is kind of dependent on how the rest of the dungeon or level is laid out. If there are lots of connections you want the players to explore, avoiding the gravity maze whenever possible, go with A. If the 6 doorways lead to different wings that are largely treated as separate, or if you want to encourage your players to spend time in the maze, I would recommend option B.