Deathmaze

Deathmaze is a board game published by Simulations Publications in January 1980, and designed by Greg Costikyan. It falls into the general category of fantasy role playing games, more specifically, dungeon games in which players enter a dungeon, massacre the dungeon dwellers and steal their treasures.

Deathmaze differed from other games of the genre by offering play without requiring either a Game Master (to design the dungeon and play the monsters within during combat) or numbered paragraphs (as offered by similar games in the genre such as Flying Buffalo's Buffalo Castle expansion for its Tunnels & Trolls, or Metagaming's Death Test for The Fantasy Trip). In Deathmaze, the players randomly drew counters representing rooms and corridors one at a time as they progressed through the dungeon, slowly building up the dungeon counter by counter.^[1]

A tongue in cheek introduction offered the viewpoint of the dungeon dwellers on the invasion of humans into their homes.^[2]

The same game system was reprised in Citadel of Blood,^[3] with the addition of character races, dungeon levels and different "colors" of magic depending upon phases of the moon.

• Boardgame Geek Article on Deathmaze
• SPI Compendium by Greg Costikyan (lists games, magazine contents, etc.)
• A Farewell to Hexes by Greg Costikyan