![]() PaganUnicorn on Reddit was unhappy with the basics of maze dungeons and set out to fix them with a deck of cards: The reason it's a horror movie is because the worst aspects of human nature inevitably come out. Throughout, the protagonist tries to team up with his cellmate with varying degrees of success. Each month, a prisoner is randomly assigned to a different level. Theoretically, if each prisoner only eats enough food to be full, many more people could survive. The catch is that food is lowered on the platform, with less and less food available for those below. In some regards it's a reductionist commentary on House of Leaves, and openly mocks any high-minded discussion of the topic with its simple (but effective!) use of cardboard special effects.įor a particularly brutal version of a labyrinth that goes straight down, The Platformtells the story of random captives who appear at certain levels a room abutting a plunging shaft. The characters avoid some of the labyrinthine restrictions by punching through walls and death results in red-and-pink silly string. This isn't frequently explored in movies but there are some exceptions.ĭave Made a Maze is a movie (despite the title) about a cardboard labyrinth with a Minotaur at its center. The further in they go, the further from the exit (and potentially freedom or a long rest) they become. Protagonists can move forward and backward, but their paths are limited to those two choices. Gauntlets and labyrinths, on the other hand, are essentially battles of attrition. These sorts of "moving dungeons" are particularly deadly because protagonists may not be able to find their way out. The author is free to create new horrors behind each room, unconstrained by dimensions. ![]() Horror movies like Cube and the transmedia book House of Leaves set up a maze structure only to break its boundaries, inevitably killing characters in the process. ![]() Horror that involves mazes rarely plays by these rules. This is why mapping dungeons were so important in early D&D. Mazes, in horror, can be unsettling but theoretically can be "solved" through diligent exploration. The player still has agency, but not as much as in a role-playing game. Which is perhaps why labyrinths tend to show up in the horror genre more than fantasy.Īs we mentioned in our discussion of gamebooks, restricting agency of a protagonist is part of what makes gamebooks challenging. That difference changes a game from a series of events that happen to players to events the players choose. Choosing between “right door or left door” is meaningless, but choosing between “door covered in leaves of a man-eating plant or door covered in poisonous fungus” is exciting. Whenever you give the players a choice, however, make sure it’s meaningful, otherwise they may as well flip a coin to decide. They are the captains of their own ship, and can explore in any direction they want. The greatest benefit of creating a labyrinth dungeon is the level of agency it gives the players. James Haeck on D&D Beyond classifies traditional maze dungeons as labyrinths, and the unicursal labyrinth as a gauntlet. Multicursal mazes were more common until 430 BC, where the labyrinth became the standard, with that style being the fashion until hedge mazes were introduced during the Renaissance. It's worth noting that the distinction between maze and labyrinth isn't always clear. It wasn't until the hero Theseus arrived that the Minotaur was finally defeated, and even then in most versions of the tale he had help from Ariadne in navigating the maze. Labyrinths have been traditionally associated with the lair of the Minotaur, a twisting series of passages created by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Unlike a maze, the entrance is also the exit. Labyrinths aren't necessarily hard to navigate, they're just long. Labyrinths, on the other hand, are unicursal (a single, non-branching path) which leads to the center. ![]() Both are meant to confuse those who enter but mazes can have multiple outcomes (multicursal), branching further with each additional choice to go left, right, or forward. Simply put, mazes and labyrinths are related but not the same.
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