Hey all...thought I'd share a quick app I slapped together for helping me track my players as they progress through a shifting maze. My campaign is set in a low-magic, post-apocalypse world (a la Mark Lawrence) where "Builder" technology is coveted. They are seeking out the Librarian who has been described to them as a ghost with the knowledge of past and present. In reality, he's an AI-hologram that can make various predictions based on the knowledge it has gathered from "holy symbols" (aka IoT devices) that are scattered around the world.
Either way, I had this idea that I wanted them to enter into a shifting maze kind of like the Cube movies though for their sake, I would make it 2D and only 9 rooms so that they don't get stuck in it for multiple sessions. My only problem was tracking how this thing moves and keeping track of what has happened in each room (ie - have they scratched a number into the floor, have they defeated the challenge this room has, etc.). To solve this I made a room tracker. The players move from south to north through the maze starting in Room 8 (entrance) and each room has four doors they can move to. If they are on the edge of the square, that door does not open. I have another rule (to make things easier on me tbh) that only one door may open at a time to prevent players from splitting up and making it difficult to track them; thought about allowing this as splitting up is a viable strategy...but decided it would make my life too difficult. Sue me, I'm lazy :). Either way. Once all the players enter a room a shift happens, the players feel the rumble and it shuffles the order along a set of mutations. I originally had this as a random mutation after play testing that myself I very quickly realized that it needed to fall along a repeatable pattern so I opted for translations of the rooms using the following: 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8...ie - 0 is the natural state of the maze with Room 1 being in the 1 position, then a translation of 1 shifts everything "left" one space and now Room 1 is in the 9th position. Then a 3 moves Room 1 to the seventh position....and so on.
To use the tool, you click the room they move to and it shows you the description of that room in the bottom left, if the room has a challenge to overcome it displays information about that as well and finally there's an input that you can use to write notes in for each room which show up in the bottom left as well when you click that room. Also, if you made a mistake or the players change their mind, you can undo a shift by clicking undo.
Let me know your thoughts...the writing is draft right now and I want to flesh out some more details, descriptions and challenges to make it easier to distinguish rooms but would love to hear anyone's feedback. I've also thought about having it so that when a translation occurs the room they left is no longer adjacent but I'm worried that'll be too confusing...thoughts?
This is Amazing (pardon the pun). I wanted to do a shifting maze for a while now but had no idea how I would track it and it seemed like I would have to really think about it. Seriously great job, I can't believe no one else has commented on this
Thanks for sharing! My players will be encountering a shifting maze and I was looking for resources so I don't have to design and plan it all out myself, so this is very useful!
Hey all...thought I'd share a quick app I slapped together for helping me track my players as they progress through a shifting maze. My campaign is set in a low-magic, post-apocalypse world (a la Mark Lawrence) where "Builder" technology is coveted. They are seeking out the Librarian who has been described to them as a ghost with the knowledge of past and present. In reality, he's an AI-hologram that can make various predictions based on the knowledge it has gathered from "holy symbols" (aka IoT devices) that are scattered around the world.
Either way, I had this idea that I wanted them to enter into a shifting maze kind of like the Cube movies though for their sake, I would make it 2D and only 9 rooms so that they don't get stuck in it for multiple sessions. My only problem was tracking how this thing moves and keeping track of what has happened in each room (ie - have they scratched a number into the floor, have they defeated the challenge this room has, etc.). To solve this I made a room tracker. The players move from south to north through the maze starting in Room 8 (entrance) and each room has four doors they can move to. If they are on the edge of the square, that door does not open. I have another rule (to make things easier on me tbh) that only one door may open at a time to prevent players from splitting up and making it difficult to track them; thought about allowing this as splitting up is a viable strategy...but decided it would make my life too difficult. Sue me, I'm lazy :). Either way. Once all the players enter a room a shift happens, the players feel the rumble and it shuffles the order along a set of mutations. I originally had this as a random mutation after play testing that myself I very quickly realized that it needed to fall along a repeatable pattern so I opted for translations of the rooms using the following: 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8...ie - 0 is the natural state of the maze with Room 1 being in the 1 position, then a translation of 1 shifts everything "left" one space and now Room 1 is in the 9th position. Then a 3 moves Room 1 to the seventh position....and so on.
To use the tool, you click the room they move to and it shows you the description of that room in the bottom left, if the room has a challenge to overcome it displays information about that as well and finally there's an input that you can use to write notes in for each room which show up in the bottom left as well when you click that room. Also, if you made a mistake or the players change their mind, you can undo a shift by clicking undo.
FYI -- This is not mobile responsive.
http://dnd-maze.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/the-library
If you wanna check out the source code I've posted it to Git.
Source code
Let me know your thoughts...the writing is draft right now and I want to flesh out some more details, descriptions and challenges to make it easier to distinguish rooms but would love to hear anyone's feedback. I've also thought about having it so that when a translation occurs the room they left is no longer adjacent but I'm worried that'll be too confusing...thoughts?
This is Amazing (pardon the pun). I wanted to do a shifting maze for a while now but had no idea how I would track it and it seemed like I would have to really think about it. Seriously great job, I can't believe no one else has commented on this
This is incredibly useful, many thanks for putting it together! I'll be trying it out with my players next weekend.
Thanks for sharing! My players will be encountering a shifting maze and I was looking for resources so I don't have to design and plan it all out myself, so this is very useful!
Awesome work and thanks for sharing :)