Foot of the Bleeder - Handouts for a Guess-Who adventure

Here's a variant of the Guess-Who adventure, set in a medieval-ish period. The PCs are tasked with (or rather, may choose to engage with the task of) retrieving the seven relics of Bishop Severend.

Bishop Severend led the second conquest of the pagan-infested peninsula known as the Gauntland (previously Ettinmark, but I've come to hate how that looks in writing). His endeavors all but succeeded, but he was betrayed and defeated, and subsequently stabbed, drawn and quartered to death by Ygdrain, the chieftain of the wildmen. This defeat became the end of the second conquest, and the armies withdrew or were hounded down. In this turmoil, a group of knights still loyal to Severend managed to retrieve the severed parts of their fallen leader. Vowing to keep the remains out of the pagans' grasp, they split up and journeyed each in their own direction until divine inspiration or circumstance told them that they had found a place where the relics would be safe.

In this scenario, the player-characters learn that the one of the relics - the foot - is kept in an Apostate Shrine. The mystery is in which shrine the foot is kept, and since the events took place long time ago the investigation consists of finding information in letters and dusty tomes in old libraries. So in this sense it follows the blueprint of a Call of Cthulhu investigation, only set in a fantasy-medieval time. So the clues are in libraries, the libraries are spread out, and the adventure oscillates between traveling from one library to the other - encountering wandering monsters and robber knights and what have you - and piecing together the resultant clues. However, I also wanted there to be a fail-safe, in case the players don't feel like following this structure. Hence the Apostate Shrines, which represent distinct locations. I chose 20 as a high but not too-high number of shrines. This means that the players can brute-force the investigation by just traveling to all shrines and searching them. But it also means that each clue will be important on its own, because even if it just narrows down their search to half, it is still considerably fewer locations to travel to. So in this investigation, partial success is still very much a success.

I wrote the letters following Skerples' guidelines for medieval correspondence.

Handout 1a: A Letter from Terbaud, the Monk

To Bishop Imbrius from Terbaud, greetings  

You will be pleased to learn that my Inquiry into the whereabouts of the Holy Relics have already born fruit. Yesterday I visited with the monks of Souern, who hold a great library.  As you are well aware, accounts are unanimous in that the Knight Orcalx took off with the Foot following the dismemberment of Holy Severend, and hid it in a church. From my studies, I have come to believe that this was not a true Church, but instead one of the Apostate Shrines found in this land. Included in this letter, you will find a page copied from Methodius’ “Compiled list.” Orcalx was not a scholarly man, and the heterodoxy of these cults were not as widely known during his life as it is today. Yet, I now wonder about the proper course of action. Therefore, send me word of you wishes.

Farewell.

This handout starts the investigation, and since it is a letter it should be given to the player-characters by some central NPC (or found at their corpse). 

Handout 1b. Excerpt from “A Compiled List, detailing the Apostate Shrines of the Gauntland.”

At Ashwold, south of Tinslay, lies a shrine constructed by exiled Consolers. It is believed to be the oldest apostate shrine in the land. The shrine is dedicated to the Father, who this sect believes to be nothing like the true heavenly Lord.

The second oldest shrine is in Glander. It was built by a local lord using material of a cyclopean temple previously in that location and is dedicated to the Spirit.

A third shrine lies in Orvault, on a small island. The shrine was commissioned by a local lord to be built on top of a pagan cairn. The shrine is dedicated to the Father, and it is one of the oldest.

At Egwyn Fach lies a fourth shrine, erected by the people of that place with aid of the Devil shortly after the first conquest. The shrine is dedicated to the Mother.

The shrine of Alverdis was erected by members of the triclavists and is one of the oldest. The shrine is dedicated to the Father.

Nine miles east of King's road, at Loudreác, lies a shrine dedicated to the Mother. It was built by Consolers during the reign of queen Aelwydd.

At Langonne lies a shrine adorned by the occidental crosses of the Consolers. It is built on the place of old pagan worship, and was completed just before the beginning of the second conquest. The shrine is dedicated to the Spirit.

The Pyworth shrine, dedicated to the Mother, is similar in design to that in Thurdon but smaller and built on a place of pagan worship. Both shrines were constructed under the reign of queen Aelwydd.

The shrine in Soudan was built over the course of twenty years by pilgrims flocking around the hermit Canabaas, sometime between the first and second conquest under the reign of queen Aelwydd. The shrine is dedicated to the spirit, which the worshippers hold higher than the Father and the Son

At Derrill, by the Wallingwall channel, lies a small shrine. Scholars claim it was built by Consolers on a location previously used by the druids and it was completed in the early years of the second conquest. The shrine is dedicated to the Father.

The largest of the shrines is in Thurdon. Its construction indicates that the buliders were of bogomil persuasion, possibly Consolers, and its tower is seen for many miles. The shrine is dedicated to the Spirit.

In Witherral, off the path to Lewill on a site used for ritual fornication among the wildmen, lies a shrine dedicated to the Mother. Its origins are unknown but scholars date its construction as contemporary with that in Loudreác, even if other connections are debated.

The Camrose shrine was constructed by Consolers living there in secret, following the end of the second conquest. The shrine is dedicated to the Father.

The Spittal shrine, built by Consolers, was completed just a few years after the defeat of Severend that ended the second conquest. The shrine is dedicated to the Mother, and only women may enter into it.

The shrine at Derwen was built by Consolers under Marcher Lord Brewen. It is dedicated to the Mother.

At Row, deep in the Fellwood, lies a shrine built by triclavists. It was constructed during the reign of Macher Lords that followed after the second conquest, possibly Lord Gilmer. Having driven off the earlier inhabitants, builders ransacked their holy places and built a shrine dedicated to the Spirit in their place.

The shrine in Treillère was erected by a local community, reached by the gospel through the preachings of Guyon who was invited by Marcher Lord Gilmer. The shrine is dedicated to the Father, and is said to incorporate standing stones from an earlier construction in its foundation.

At Kerngrist, perched on the cliffs of Skarn, lies one of the most recent shrines. It was constructed by Consolers and is dedicated to the Spirit, but is otherwise unremarkable.

Despite being one of the newest, little is known about the shrine at Croix-an-Terray. No traces of the sect that built it have survived, but it sits on an old site of worship. The shrine is dedicated to the Father.

The last shrine built is at Quilliaut. It was built by triclavists and is dedicated to the Mother. The place is said to be haunted by the many men drowned in the nearby pond as part of pagan worship.

 

This handout is central, as it outlines the possible locations where the relic might be. It might be included with the handout 1a, or it might come separate. Since it is very long, I'd probably use a trick from playing Horror on the Orient Express: cut it in parts and say that the page was damaged. Then, the players will naturally piece it together, and while doing so they will also read it. You could also give them half the list (cut vertically) and say "it's damaged, but you might find a complete copy at Souern (where the monk found it)". This would also create more engagement with the handout.

Handout 2a: Terbaud’s 2^nd letter

To Bishop Imbrius from Terbaud, greetings 

At your request, I have visited the shrines in Langonne, Egwyn Fach, Derrill, Thurdon. Witherral, Row, Derwen and Croix-an-Terray. I have also visited Camrose, of which nothing but rubble remains, and Ashwold where spiders in the million are born from the dirt. My travail has been substantial, and only the blessing of our heavenly Lord has kept me safe from the aggressions of the heathens that are everywhere reclaiming the land. Yesterday, we spotted one of the colossi of druidic worship. The guide I recruited was crushed to death before we could flee. I fear that I cannot press any further unless accompanied by a host of soldiers. Therefore, send me word of you wishes.

Farewell.

Handout 2b: Travel log of Terbaud the Monk

At the request of Bishop Imbrius, I have visited the shrines in Langonne, Egwyn Fach, Derrill, Thurdon. Witheral, Row, Derwen and Croix-an-Terray. I have also visited Camrose, of which nothing but rubble remains, and Ashwold where spiders in the million are born from the dirt. The travail has been substantial, and only the blessing of our heavenly Lord has kept me safe from the aggressions of the heathens that are everywhere reclaiming the land. Returning from Derwen, we spotted one of the colossi the Druids worship and many men were lost. But once again the Lord watched over me, and I was safe.

These are essentially the same handout. The letter can, realistically, only be in one place, whereas the travel log can exist in many copies. So version A is "if you go look in a specific place", and version B is "if you look in a plausible place". You can use just B if you want.

Handout 3: Travel log of Gillifrid the Nun

Their practices of the people in this land are strange, for they have not been reached by the true gospel and instead listed to the proselytisation of prophets drawing on hearsay or mixing fragments of the good book common superstition. But many of them are good people that would no doubt adopt the True Faith if they had the chance, and in Langonne, Egwyn Fach, Soudan, Pyworth, and Alverdis, but also in Camrose, Spittal and Treillère, I came upon the curious shrines they have erected. Here, I saw the great wealth stored in these shrines and witnessed many wonders, including the Foot of the Bleeder.

Handout 4: Excerpt from “The Chronicle of Sir Orcalx”

Of the glorious deeds of Sir Orcalx, the most remarkable is that he retrieved the Foot of Saint Severend, also known as the Bleeder, away from those who sought its destruction. Fearing that the Druids would seek him to rob him of this Prize, he rode for days on end until he came upon a small shrine. Not knowing what to do, he knelt there and asked the Mother for guidance. And the she answered his prayer and revealed an empty monstrance in her shrine. Relieved, he placed the relic there and turned back to face the enemies of his Lord.

Handout 5: Excerpt from “On the Recreant Knights”

Despite Sir Orcalx’s loyal service during the second crusade, his family was divested their peerage at the council of Meraux after his death. Among the many accusations leveraged against them was that their faith was wavering. As proof of this, it was argued that Orcalx had brought the Foot he was entrusted to the Consolers. This sect had just been outlawed, and the act violated the Papal Decree.

Handout 6: Excerpt from “Knights of the Gauntland”

Roland of Offrey, who met him, writes that Sir Orcalx spent many months after the end of the second conquest in a remote village, regaining his strength. The village had been a place of druidic worship, but the inhabitants had torn down their temple and built a shrine where it used to stand, and after this the druids never returned. The people of this village were so hospitable and pious, that Orcalx decided to leave the Foot of the Bleeder, which he was carrying with him, at this shrine as a token of the Authority’s power.

To increase the cost of the brute force solution, you'd probably want the shrines to be very far apart and much more distant than the nearest library. Also, consider having some powerful guardians - after all, they are abandoned sites of (heretical) worship.

Weapon list (and less interesting choices)

The other day, we playtested the rules in a real adventure for the first time. For the most part, everything worked as anticipated. But one thing that didn't work was the weapons list. I had thought that the incentives and disincentives were fairly balanced. But in play, I found my players overestimating the incentives and underestimating the disincentives when shopping for equipment. As a result, I had one player-character who was comically over-encumbered from the start, while another had opted for a weapon he had almost no chance of hitting with.

I don't know if this is a general thing, but at least for my group it seems to be: they constantly overestimate their luck. This presents a problem since it can result in decidedly un-fun situations. So I repeatedly have to build in fail-safes that - if everyone was rational - should not be needed.

Anyone analyzing games will tell you that you create interesting choices through incomparables. Gather two forest-tokens, or move your troops? Discard all cards, or play one? But this works poorly when you have players like mine, who have a very fickle interest in rationality and could just as well compulsively chop down trees every round out of some vague animosity towards dryads.

So I revised the weapons list and some of the rules, and I think it came out less interesting but a whole lot better. Here's the list.

(It used to be that higher damage was balanced against lower chances of hitting for weapons where you didn't meet the requirements. After the playtest I decided to instead lower the damage. This, I hope, will make oversized weapons lose their appeal).

The Baroness' Jewels: a guess-who adventure

Yesterday, i proposed a structure and process for creating investigation scenarios. Today, I'll give an example.

1. I begin by deciding on a premise: an Agatha Christie-style mystery where one of the people in a large house have stolen something, because it is easy to visualize and come up with clues.

2. I decide on a five column matrix, because it gives more options than a four-column matrix but is neater than the six-column ditto. Also, I want each criteria to match exactly half of the cases meeting any other criteria, and I realized that my six-clue matrix didn't do that.

3. I come up with criteria, and clues to match.

Clues

- a blonde (edit:brown) hair found at the crime scene
- a size 9 (edit:7) footprint outside the window
- Cecil, David, Gabriella, Hector, Karen, Leonard, Oscar, Patricia have alibi.
- The wooden staircase leading between the floors squeaks and creaks terribly. Hector (with his migraine) heard no-one except the Baroness use it.
- the room was remarkably tidy, as if the burglar know where to look. Only seven people have visited the Baroness in her room.

4. I fill out my matrix.

5. I re-write the entries, from YES and (blank) to a more natural language, and introduce some variation within the categories. For example, I decide that not everyone with an alibi has the same alibi (because then you could just ask any of them which makes for a boring investigation), and that not everyone with different-size shoes or different hair color has the same because it feels artificial. I also come up with some reasons for why people have been in the Baroness room.
Since now the characters have different alibi, I also change the criteria from "No Alibi" to "Alibi".

New alibi clues:

- Cecil, David and Gabrielle were in the foyer playing Gin Rummy, when they heard the Baroness' cry for help
- Hector had migraine due to the weather, and was helped in his room by Karen and Leonard when they heard the call.
- Oscar and Patricia are having a divorce, and were arguing bitterly in their room.

Looking at the matrix, some of the clues had to go in certain columns. The two clues  involving the Baroness - having been in her room, and living on the same floor - necessarily had to include her too. Of course, I could have decided that there were 16 suspects plus the Baroness, but I don't think that works in this type of scenario. Of course the Baroness must also be among the suspects - the jewelry might have been glass, her fortune gone, and now she was desperate for insurance money. That could totally happen in Agatha Christie, so it should be a possibility here too.

Filling out the rest of my matrix, I also realized that some of the criteria felt off. I had originally though that the footprint was size 9, but in the matrix it didn't align well with the distribution of male and female names so I changed it to a more neutral 7. The same was true for the blonde hair. For adults, being blonde is more common among women and the distribution in my matrix didn't reflect that. The matrix would also result in a situation where most people were blonde. So I decided to change the clue so the hair found was brown.

Now, in reality if you selected 16 people at sort-of-random, you would often end up with some strange coincidences like all the women having really big feet or all the men being blonde. In this sense, keeping the original structure would actually have been more realistic. But what matters here isn't if something is realistic, but if it feels realistic. If I was playing with statisticians, I would have kept the idiosyncrasy because it would probably have been realistic to them. But I'm not.

The reason I point this out, is that in any mystery solving you are asking the players to look for patterns and irregularities. And in doing this, they will often use their real-world knowledge of things. Like, for example, that you could hear someone walking in a creaking stair, or that you can find out someone's shoe size by asking them, by looking in their shoes or by measuring it. Therefore, I think it is fair to limit the number of accidental patterns so that your players don't spend the evening ruling out the possibilities that the thief was wearing a wig or using wrong-sized shoes to cast suspicion elsewhere.

Result

Premise

Wealthy guests have gathered at a countryside mansion, when sudden storm cuts off the only road leading there. On Saturday night, someone breaks into the Baroness' room at floor 3 stealing  jewelry, but is interrupted by the Baroness returning to the room and flees out the window.


The PCs are detectives.

Clues

- a brown hair can be found at the crime scene
- a size 7 footprint outside the window
- the room was remarkably tidy, as if the burglar know where to look.
- Cecil, David and Gabrielle were in the foyer playing Gin Rummy, when they heard the Baroness' cry for help
- Hector had migraine due to the weather, and was helped in his room by Karen and Leonard when they heard the call.
- Oscar and Patricia are having a divorce, and were arguing bitterly in their room.
- The wooden staircase leading between the floors squeaks and creaks terribly. Hector (with his migraine) heard no-one except the Baroness use it.

Dramatis personae

Alfred. Had breakfast with the Baroness in her room on Saturday morning. Had room next to the Baroness. Shoe size 7, Brunette. (Guilty)

Baroness. Lived in the room. Shoe size 6, Blonde

Cecil. Helped the Baroness carry her luggage. Room on third floor. Played Gin Rummy in Foyer. Shoe size 7, Blonde

David. Was having an affair with the Baroness. Room further down the hall from Baroness.    Played Gin Rummy in Foyer. Size    9, Brunette

Elliot. Had breakfast with the Baroness in her room on Saturday morning. Size 7,    Blonde

Francis. Had breakfast with the Baroness in her room on Saturday morning. Size 8, Brunette

Gabrielle. Gave the Baroness a hand unpacking. Gin Rummy in Foyer. Size 7, Brunette

Hector. Joined the Baroness for tea in her room. Had migraine, w/Karen and Leonard. Size 10, Black hair

Isobel. Room on third floor, size 7 shoes, Black hair.

Juliette. Had room across from Baroness, size 6, Brunette.

Karen. Room on third floor, Helped Hector when he had migraine,    shoe size 7, Red hair

Leonard. Room next to the Baroness. Helped Hector. Size 8, Brunette.

Malcolm. Size 7, Brunette.

Nathan. Size 9, Dark hair

Oscar. Argued with Patricia. Size 7, Brunette.

Patricia. Argued with Oscar. Size 6, Blonde.

The rest can be improvised during play.

A procedure for creating investigation scenarios, or Guess-who adventures

Of all the campaigns I've played, I hold Masks of Nyarlathothep highest. And ever since I played it, I've trying to recreate its atmosphere - without success. The primary reason for this is time. Masks' basic structure is simple: there is a number of nodes, there are local mini-adventures at each node, there are also events that point to the next node, and players gain access to local and the global events through clues. Part of the brilliance of Masks is its scale. The clues are usually very straight-forward: you find a match box from a bar so you know that's where you should go, but the bar is in another country and you also have ten other clues pointing in other directions. What to do? So while the structure is simple, the fundamental feeling of investigating relies heavily on the sheer quantity of leads, locations and events. To create a similar campaign would simply take me too much time.

But another reason is that I wouldn't really know how to start. Internet, and to some extent the game books themselves, is full of advice for creating locations in general, and dungeons and encounters in particular. Other forms of adventures, barring the story-structured adventure, gets much less attention. This is reasonable, since the encounter and the dungeon are widely used adventure building blocks. But this also presents the strange situation where you are given most advice on the things you are already most familiar with. For investigation adventures, you're left with stuff like the three clue rule and that murderers need motivation. And while decent advice, it isn't really helping me. The combined takeaway is that I need three times as many clues, which triples the workload, and need to write some backstory. In other words, I was told to do more of things I already knew I had to do, instead of a different approach to the problem.

So in case your situation is anything like mine, I want to propose a design for creating investigation-centered adventures based on the kid's game "Guess who?". In this design, player-characters are presented with a number of possibilities, and tasked with selecting the correct one. Every step of the investigation leads them closer to zeroing in on the correct solution by eliminating some possibilities, until only the correct one remains.

Below is a procedure for creating such an adventure.

Guess-who adventures

1. Decide on the premise.

The guess-who investigation can only reduce the number of possibilities, never add. This presents a limit to what can be investigated, since there must be some initial separation between possible and impossible cases. Good premises are:
- something is stolen, and only a select group of people knew its location
- a murder on an isolated island
- the gates to the lost dwarven city can only be opened with the correct sequence of runes, but the wrong sequence will flood it with poison gas and seal it off for another century
- have three attempts to enter the PIN code that will open the terrorist's cell phone, and time is running short
- Professor Carlisle disappeared while visiting five ancient cities, where did he go?
- The Crown of Command must be retrieved from the Lich King's hold, but no-one knows in which of his crypts it is
- The Orcs are gathering in alarming numbers in the forest, and the King don't know where to send his troops to meet them

Deciding on the premise is a big deal, since it has consequences for what types of clues are reasonable and how to find them.

2. Set up the clue matrix.

You can make the number of possibilities as large of small as you like. Here I present the basic matrix for 16 possibilities. This makes it solvable with 4 clues, which I think is reasonable.

Criteria 5 and 6 are not needed, and only included here for the sake of completeness. You can save prep time by cutting them.

If your investigation has a lot more starting complexity, like a four-digit PIN, you need a matrix where many more possibilities are excluded than included in each step.

3. Set elimination criteria

If you look at the matrix, you see 8 YESs in each column. One of these is the correct solution, and the other fall into the same category with regards to some criterion. So what are these criteria? Well, really any characteristic that set some of the cases apart from the rest. By knowing that the correct solution fall into the category sharing this characteristic, we can exclude all cases that don't. Therefore, the criteria or characteristics serve the purpose of ruling out possibilities and thereby excluding some cases.

For a murder or theft relevant criteria could be:
Being blonde, leaving the party early, being out in the rain, being elderly, size 10 shoes, and not having an alibi for 9-10 pm.

For a PIN code or dwarven runes, relevant criteria could be:
the second digit is a 3, being a historical date (puts the first two digits at 00 through 20, assuming western calendar), being a prime number, being a birthday of some relation, the four symbols include a combination of frog, ox, moon & sphere.

For a lost city or invasion, relevant criteria could be:
west of some landmark, by a port, far from any major city, site significant in the some personal vendetta with the Lich King, it begins with an N

Four things are important when setting your criteria
1. That they can reasonably be shared between several cases
2. That they are distinct enough that they can be noted separately
3. That they can be formulated as YES/NO.
4. That they exclude a similar amount of cases.

4. Design your clues

Clues can be found in witness reports, letters, travel logs, e-mails or text messages, footprints, a hair left at the crime scene, and so on. Decide if you want the clues to be obvious or require some further reasoning. An obvious clue would be "I saw two people using the ladder that night". A indirect clue would "Smith is in a wheelchair and Hank is afraid of heights; the crime scene can only be reached by a ladder." People feel smarter when they spot an indirect clue, but they are also trickier to set up.

5. Distribute the clues, as you see fit.

Some final comments

Note that the excluded cases in a column don't have to be similar with regard to the characteristic, they just don't match the criterion. For example, your could have 4 suspects with shoe size 7, 4 with size 8, if the footprints indicate that the burglar was size 10.

The investigation will feel more realistic if the proportion isn't strictly half-half regarding each characteristic. Maybe #2 rules out 10 possibilities, while #3 only rules out 7. However, if you shift the proportions, make sure that no clue becomes totally redundant.

Also, since the case can be solved with any four clues, you only need four clues. Including five or six clues, however, give the players more freedom in their investigation. On the other hand, the stucture doesn't really permit more than six clues if they are all to be equal. If for some reason you want more than six clues, the additional clues need to overlap with your original six. A practical way to do this is to think of criteria that by definition or nature appear together. So the size 10 shoe could also lead us to conclude that the burglar was a man, or tall, or both. Or if the invaders will arrive at to the port city, this could also lead us to conclude that come by boat and that the attack is along the coastline. Strictly speaking, these additional clues are of course redundant, but they can provide the players with more options and make the investigation feel more natural.

House Rules

It's been a while since I posted and I'm struggling with the last pieces of the next adventure. But today is supposedly the last day of the Google+ OSR group, and I felt I wanted to post something to commemorate this occasion. During my time at G+, this group has filled my feed with a constant stream of inspiration and creativity, and led me to discover a wealth of outstanding blogs and creators that I might otherwise have missed.

So, in lieu of a proper post with actual content, I offer my house rules.

The starting idea behind these rules was to provide a sense of weight. This is the reason for using damage reduction instead of AC, and for the size die and ability requirements for equipment. But this reasoning also resulted in two rules that might perhaps be of some interest to others: fatigue, and pressing.

Fatigue basically provides an extended range for critical failures. To not make the book-keeping too burdensome, normal equipment and normal actions do not result in fatigue. Opportunity attacks, wielding heavy weapons - and in my game wearing heavy armor - do. In my game, it's treated as a "mild" critical miss: you become easier to hit and attacks deal more damage to you until your next turn.

Pressing, in turn, is a way of gambling a success on getting another success. After an attack hits, the player can opt to attack again instead of rolling damage. If the second attack is also successful, they score two hits. If not, they lose the first. However, for each time the attack is pressed, fatigue goes up by one. I stole this rule from detect magic where it is more unforgiving, but I scaled it back since I want to keep HP roughly in the same spectrum as ability scores (max 20). If you use standard HP progression, the original rule is probably better.

1p Adventure: House of Thousand Idols

The Rod of Seven Parts for my campaign is no rod, but relics of the Martyr King Severend. So far I've detailed the locations for the torso, the head, and the arm, with the aim of making each location as condensed and "constructed" as I can.

Today's addition is the house of thousand idols. The idea was to design a maze that is simple enough to crack for those so inclined and possible to brute-force in a non-tedious manner. My proposed solution is to use symmetric rooms with many passages and no corridors, and instead make the rooms multi-state. So the trick isn't really "do we find the way", but "do we find the right way".

To emphasize this theme, I put in slow but very deadly enemies that trigger if you don't follow the right way, and a cockatrice that can fly - and so have other movement options than the PCs - and has a petrifying attack that further limits movement.

The adventure will work best if the cockatrice is a beatable but formidable foe so that players prefer avoiding it. If they can easily kill it, the maze feel too static so in that case you might want to introduce some rival adventurers or a mother-cockatrice that arrives in 1d4 turns to maintain some urgency.