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Mini-Dungeon #034: Mysteries of the Endless Maze
By Justin Andrew Mason
4-5 Level 5 PCs
In this dungeon the adventurers make their way through a series of randomly shifting maze segments interconnected by magical portals. Passage between the segments of the dungeon are completely randomized as are the contents of each area within the maze. The adventurers must recover five keystones to access the maze vault and escape.
A powerful wizard created the maze to ensnare treasure hunters who may be bold enough to seek his prized hoard of magic items. Though the maze’s creator died long ago, its magic persists and the enigmatic complex has yet to be solved. A wealth of treasure awaits any who are cunning enough to traverse the mysterious maze.
5E Mini-Dungeons are single page, double sided adventures for D&D 5th Edition which are setting agnostic and are easily inserted anywhere in your campaign.
$1.99
5e, 5E Mini-Dungeons
I was looking for a challenge to inject into a campaign I am hobling together. I used this Mini dungeon to great effect with a party of 6, level 5 characters. I am very happy and will be looking to this site for future ideas.
An Endzeitgeist.com review
This pdf clocks in at 2 pages and is a mini-dungeon. This means we get 2 pages content, including a solid map and all item/monster-stats hyperlinked and thus, absent from the pdf, with only deviations from the statblocks being noted for the GM. Unlike most 5E Mini-Dungeons, this one does not come with VTT-maps or player-friendly iterations, which is a bit of a bummer.
Since this product line’s goal is providing short diversions, side-quest dungeons etc., I will not expect mind-shattering revelations, massive plots or particularly smart or detailed depictions, instead tackling the line for what it is. Got that? Great!
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.
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Still here?
All right!
This is a ready to use portal-maze, but one with a twist: Upon entering one of the segments, you roll 1d4; on a 1, the segment’s challenge is a riddle; #2 is a trap (4 of which are presented), #3 is a random monster (6 of which are available) and if a riddle is solved, the PCs can get one of 4 prizes. The riddles presented are brief, but not the lame old classics you will have seen before…unless you’re really, really into riddles. If a segment of the maze has been completed, its portals activate. Critters defeated carry keystones and ultimately, these can be used to access the vault, where the nasty boss of the complex is awaiting alongside the sizable treasure. As a minor complaint, only the defeat of monsters will actually net keystones, which could have been handled slightly more flexibly. As a minor nitpick, I did notice a line of text missing blank spaces.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to a beautiful 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes sans bookmarks, but needs none at this length. Cartography is full color and surprisingly good for such an inexpensive pdf, but there is no key-less version of the map to print out and hand to your players. The pdf does sport one nice piece of original full-color art – kudos!
Justin Andrew Mason’s Mysteries of the Endless Maze is an amazing little puzzle-dungeon; it is not one of the annoying mazes that just frustrates players and has a smooth, nice progression rate, at least in my game it had. That being said, one minor nitpick is that you should carefully read how the dungeon works; due to the limited word-count available, its precise functions require a slight bit more observation on part of the GM. Not that it’s opaque, mind you. The dungeon also has a nice replay value and whether as a maze in Sigil, as a sub-level, as the BBEG effing with the players – the complex has a ton of uses and can be inserted literally at any time and any place.
Kyle Crider’s conversion to 5E manages to retain the cool nature of this dungeon and the foes are chosen well – though the massive loot the PCs can gain may be a bit overkill for the more conservative 5E-GMs out there…but that is cut down easily enough.
All in all, a well-crafted mini-dungeon worth of a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up for the purpose of this platform.
Endzeitgeist out.