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Change aspects of your improvisation to navigate through Dungeon Master's maze.
Preparation
You will need a pen and paper and means to hide it from view of Players.
Setup
A percussive Player is chosen as a Dungeon Master (the rest of the Players should be melodic). DM will play with a piece of paper that will not be seen by other Players. When everyone is seated, Dungeon Master proceeds with the setup:
On a piece of paper draw a 3x3 grid of squares — every square will be a room in the dungeon. Mark one of the squares as the starting point of Players and one square as a place for treasure. Then add three walls in such a way that a single wall divides two small squares on a grid by their side and no square is locked out from the rest of the dungeon.
Establish and announce two dimensions of music. Players don't need to know further details, but Dungeon Master needs to remember well which direction is shown by what aspect (it's best to mark it on a paper). For example you can set that volume increases from South to North (bottom-up on a paper) and pitch grows from West to East (left to right).
Gameplay instructions
Players start to improvise freely.
The game proceeds in steps:
1) DM points to the Player that will direct the team by played music in this turn (make sure to select players evenly).
2) Player chosen by DM changes one of the two anounced aspects of playing to indicate the direction of movement in the dungeon.
3) DM signals if the team went through (soft percussive sounds) or bumped into the wall (sharp sounds).
Game end
Game usually ends when Players reach the treasure (which is signalled by triumphant sounds from Dungeon Master, e.g. hand clapping or conglatulatory speech). But two type of losses are possible — when Dungeon Master loses track of Players or Players give up in searching for the treasure.
Example
Here is a solo run, where adventurer was quite lucky and hit just one wall although happened to visit most of squares (7 of 9).
Variants
You can experiment with slightly bigger mazes and additional finds on the way. For example, adventurers may encounter a "chest" with two random rule cards. DM will choose one of them and give it to the active player to follow from now on.
Testing shows that you can also make two teams navigating the labyrinth at the same time.
A streamlined variant is available as Into the Labyrinth (lvl 1).
Designer-composer
Game is in beta and is being developed by DrZdrowie and odolany. Everyone is welcome to contribute!
The rules are licensed as CC BY 4.0 with the attribution as "Games for Music, http://musicgames.wikidot.com"
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