(For purposes of this post, I will consider the game to be a table top role playing game, but generalizing this concept to include video games is trivial.)

1. The party enters the maze. The GM says something like "you can either go forward or turn left; there's a wall on the right". The party then makes a decision which way to go. The GM, of course, has a map of the maze; the players might try to map the maze themselves.

2. The party reaches the maze. The GM asks, "who wants to navigate the maze?" Player 1 (chosen without loss of generality) says "I do". GM: "Roll a navigation check." Player 1 rolls: "18. Is that enough?" GM then says, "Yes, you make your way through the maze and come out the other side". (Of course, one needs to decide what happens if the check fails.)

3. The party reaches the maze, but doesn't have a map. The GM tells the party, "you need a map". The party then does some other questing, finds a map, and makes their way back to the maze. The GM tells the party, "you use the map to make your way through the maze", and the party is now on the other side.

So, what do you think of these different methods? (I think 1 tends to be the most common in video games, but the other methods could easily work.)

Mmm, maybe a sort of hybrid between the first and the third one: the party should decide if questing or not for the map, maybe due to a matter of time saving a princess/a town/the world/a Plane/whatever.

1 is the most common, but ends up being too boring in most sessions, so I find it better to keep maps simpler and, whenever you had a big maze or similar, use method 2. You add some special encounters for failures to add some flavour and, voila!, a quick, fun-to-play, maze.

I think you forgot the cases where "mapping the maze" forms the whole context of the adventure, such as where the group is supposed to be a scout party identifying the best invasion route. Any shortcuts would defeat the rationale for the adventure in that case.

Also, there are games where "Cartographer" or "Surveyor" is a skill that can be applied, but not as simply as a rote roll check.

Once my group was questing and entered a maze. And it was nefariously trapped. To the point where we were scared to death to enter the next room. At one point after being wounded, losing some gear, backtracking, what have you, we stood at the threshold of a new untested room. It looked fine, everyone rolled appropriate skill checks and nothing was revealed. But we were still nervous. Suddenly, one player says, "I kick the druid's dog into the room." The room collapsed in on itself, crushing the dog.

I was the druid. :(

Usually I use a combination of all three. Major decisions are made by the players (which basically govern which parts of the maze they visit), minor details are determined by skill-checks. Here the outcome determines how long they take and possibly how dangerous it gets. And if they quest for a map beforehand, the skill-checks become easier.

But since traps were already mentioned: my favourite trap was a room on a space station where the entry hatch slammed shut when the players were half through it. Then a large counter appeared on a big screen, counting down from 10. In panic, the players searched for something to do and found a button below the screen that said "Emergency reset." Upon pressing that, the counter reset to 10, only to resume counting down as soon as they let go of the button. So one character stayed there, holding the button pressed down, while the rest of the party tried to find some hidden mechanisms, tried and failed to shoot their way through the exit door and so on. It took aged until they dared to let the counter count down to zero - at which point the exit opened. The counter was just a lock with a 10 second delay between the closing of the entry and the opening of the exit door... *eg*

I could see this working in a video game, and it would be interesting to see the reaction. You enter a new level (in a game where there isn't usually a timer), and a timer appears on the screen and starts counting down. Only by letting the timer run out can you continue to the next part of the game. There's a button or switch that you can use to restart the timer, but that will only prolong the level. Also, there would have to be no clue that that's the way to progress. (There's one part in Final Fantasy 6 with a timer that has to run out for the game to progress, but the context and dialog makes it clear that that needs to happen.)

One downside: While this could add fake tension on a first playthrough, it could get annoying on repeat playthroughs, and in particular could be annoying to speedrunners (unless there's a way to speed up the timer).

3 works great in some old adventure games, such as Monkey Island or Flight of the Amazon Queen. Sometimes you can acquire a map (which might not look like a map at first), sometimes you need to get an item or help from a character that helps you navigate through the maze. Sometimes you can use method #1 as well, but it is obviously harder; sometimes you are blocked from progressing too far into the maze without completing previous quest.

A hybrid system. But don't make the maze too big. Maybe 10 x 10 if you're sticking to 2D segments, even smaller if multiple floors are involved.

I think if a game has started using mazes as a game mechanism, it's really lost it's way.

Yeah, you forgot the fourth and incidentally the best way a game could handle a maze: just don't bother with it. ;P

Anyway, it depends. You presenting these three ways as equally valid choices seems to imply that there is nothing to this maze apart from the players having to find their way through it, no encounters, no combat no treasure etc. If that's the case, I'd find the first way pretty boring and a waste of time. With the second way depending on chance and character stats, it would probably only be fun for a character with high navigation skill and and a player with luck, while it might lead to frustration on the part of all the other other players, unless the GM is very creative and funny so as to make failure enjoyable as well. The third way has the potential for an adventure or at least a challenge that everyone can participate in creatively. So if I absolutely can't avoid having a maze in the game, I think I'd prefer option 3.

There's a maze in Aarklash Legacy that suggests a significant variation on #1, where as you transition between screens you move between different versions of the maze.

It's tricky because the visual geography doesn't change at all, but esp. after you've killed all the mobs there's literally nothing left (best that I can tell) to help you navigate to the correct version of the exit map.

Considering it made me quit a game I was otherwise quite enjoying (I simply couldn't proceed, nor find an online resource to cheat) I'd say it was arguably a bit too effective, or perhaps just not to my strengths.

There exists a foolproof method for navigating a maze (assuming the maze doesn't change configuration whilst you are navigating it).

Simply ***********************, it's that easy!
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