If you aren’t familiar with Mind Weave RPG, you should really get on that. Need a good reason to check out this RPG site? The Rotating Labyrinth is a pinnacle of creative dungeoneering.
With seven rotating circles, DMs can help or hinder their players as they search for the treasure–or even the way out. The original layout had some flaws, so the creative genius Christopher Mathieu created a 3D representation in which he corrected the flaws and made the whole dungeon a bit smoother.
To top it off, Stuart Templeton created a walk-through using Unity, which allows players to go through the Rotating Labyrinth without the overhead map.
The collaborative work of these three units make the Rotating Labyrinth a great addition to any DM’s repertoire, and a fun challenge for any D&D game you might come across. If you are a new DM and you need some resources, remember to stretch your legs online, and fill up your mental catalogue with as many options as possible.
Mapping a game is difficult enough without the map changing as you go, let alone the number of GMs who wouldn’t even give player characters a chance to notice the dungeon rotate around them – grinding noises from gears or stone on stone, seams where the rotation occurs, light levels changing if you’ve got line of site to a passage that’s temporarily blocked or suddenly open, the shift in inertia as the section starts/stops rotating, or even the air pressure shift as the route to outside opens up or closes.
All in all, not a fan of the concept. It’s almost as bad as the tesseract someone tried, and failed, to run for us once.
It honestly sounds like you’re more opposed to bad DMs than the concepts provided here, and just don’t trust anyone to be able to follow through with them. I agree that it could be incredibly bad in the hands of someone that can’t “do it right,” but in the hands of an amazing storyteller and DM it could be an experience that players remember for years.
I think this is tits! Big fat Oprah tits! I would love to run something like this some time!
While I love the concept, it’s really hard to visualize an instance where the execution of such a dungeon would pay off, as the players I’ve gamed with generally don’t bother keeping track of anything for themselves if it isn’t hit points..