Hedge Maze?

[Obah Bason]

Has anyone ever done a hedge maze as terrain before?
If so, did it turn out?
I have some ideas how I can make one work, but it seems deceptively simple.
Tips, pics or advisories welcome.

[tesral]

Yes, not on a battle mat but I have used them. It's a maze with thick walls.

My experience with mazes is they work poorly in the role -playing environment. Why? They are boring. They cut into session time with trying to find your way around, not an active puzzle, role-playing, or combat. It's not the same as actually working a maze of being in a real hedge maze.

[Obah Bason]

I was actually thinking less "Maze" and more "Combat" maps from the old Atari game. Twisty corridors that make flanking and cover critical.

Maybe modular 10"x10" tiles that can be moved around to change the "maze".

[mrken]

Think Tesral is right on this one. The maze would be visible to the players and they can figure it out while they wait their turn. You could do as i have in the past, I have sections of dungeon of about eight inches in length and reveal them to the players as the characters move along. I have the pieces mapped but for some reason the players never figured out they needed to map underground. At times I would let them flounder around, but when the torches burned out and they had no back up plan, it really got boring fast. Was upsetting to the players and I found it to be a bummer when people couldn't figure that out.

[Skunkape]

The idea of having modular terrain is something I like and only allowing the players to see a small portion, the area around them that the characters would be able to see is something I like, but if the player's aren't mapping their progress, getting them lost and keeping them lost could be frustrating to the players and then by default, frustrating to me at some point.

I think a modular approach to the hedge maze is a good idea, and allowing them to get lost is a good idea, but once it back obvious to me that they were getting frustrated, I'd have them 'find' their way out of the maze, with one or more encounters and then either let them go back in or continue on to something else.

Oh and for most terrain I have been building lately, which includes modular dungeon pieces, I've been keeping the walls around 1/2 inch in height so that figure positioning and movement is easier to handle. Also, while having the figures in true scale terrain, it can get frustrating trying to move them around. I have the forest set from World Works Games and as far as the trees that I use from the set, I'm only using the trunk pieces on 1 inch weighted bases. That way, they're less apt to fall down and you can move figures around in any forest I set up much easier.

Need to take some pictures of those trees and post them!