6.0 Moving Through the Maze

General Rule

"Death Maze" has no board in the strict sense: the players create it during play, gradually building the maze by laying matching corridor and room tiles. The tile representing the party must always occupy one of the segments, marking the party's location. Movement through the maze always goes from one segment to a neighbouring one; it's never permitted to cross two or more segments at once.

Procedure

When the party decides to leave a segment, one player randomly draws the next segment from the container and places it so it's adjacent to the segment being left. Corridors or doorways on both segments must connect to each other. If there are several ways to place the new segment and each satisfies that condition, players are entirely free to choose among them. If the party is moving along a path it has already travelled, there's no need to draw new segments.

Detailed Rules

[6.1] A new segment must be placed relative to all its neighbours so that corridors connect to corridors, doorways to doorways, and blank walls to blank walls. If it's impossible to place the new tile this way, it's returned to the container and the draw is repeated (even several times) until the first matching tile is found.

[6.2] If there's more than one way to place a new segment, the players decide how it will be placed.

[6.3] The party always moves only one segment per stage of play.

[6.4] The maze cannot end in a dead end until the Black Gate has been found. If all exits from the current segment lead to dead ends, the last drawn tile is returned to the container, and another is drawn instead, one that does not "seal off" the maze.

[6.5] The maze may be up to three levels deep.

Stairs can be found in some rooms. Every set of stairs connects all three levels (see 13.7). The deeper the party descends, the more dangerous the monsters encountered will be, but also richer, and worth more experience points when defeated. See 6.7.

[6.6] Moving from one level to another is treated like moving from one segment to another, so it's not possible to cross two levels in a single stage. A segment on a new level is treated as a room. Once the party descends to a lower level, construction of that level begins again from scratch, independently of the level above. It must begin with the placement of the tile containing the stairs. Note: it may happen that different stairs are found on the lower level than the ones the party descended by. They may only be incorporated into the maze if it's possible to place matching stairs at the corresponding location on both of the other two levels, meaning no other tile has already been placed at the spot corresponding to the newly found stairs on one or both of the remaining levels.

[6.7] Table "Maze Levels": see the table board.

[6.8] The "Maze Levels" table modifies monsters' stats, the treasure they hold, and the experience points earned for killing them, depending on level. Read it as follows:

• Strength: added to the monster's normal strength, e.g. a monster whose normal strength is given as 2+2 (2K6+2), encountered on the second level, has its strength given as 2+4.
• Agility: added to normal agility, as above.
• Reluctance to negotiate: added to the normal RN stat, as above.
• Number of monsters: multiply the number of monsters encountered by the digit corresponding to the level, e.g. if table 8.3 indicates the party ran into 2 Chimeras, and this happens on the third level, it means there are actually 4 Chimeras (2 x 2).
• Treasure type: the level shifts the treasure type one step down table 14.9 "Treasure" for the second level, and two steps down for the third level, e.g. a monster that would normally have treasure type C will have treasure type E on the third level.
• Experience: the number of experience points earned by a character is multiplied by the digit corresponding to the level.

[6.9] If, for whatever reason, a monster the party ran into was not killed, a tile representing that monster is placed in the segment where the encounter took place, to mark its position. If the party enters that same segment again, it will meet that same monster, and only that monster, treated as "new," meaning any previous negotiation or bribery results are ignored.