Taking a look at some books this week that prepared me for a lifelong love of RPGs. First up, Christopher Manson’s mysterious Maze.

Maze is a puzzle book, originally published in 1985 and carrying a hefty $10,000 prize for the person or persons able to: navigate from the entrance to the center (Room 45) in sixteen steps, figure out the riddle in the central room and solve it using hints found on the shortest path. The contest ended in 1987, when the prize money was split among twelve people who got the short path and who were all equally close to solving the riddle. It took 20 years for me to crack the shortest path. I don’t have a clue what the riddle or its answer are. I am not sure anyone has ever entirely figured it out.

Maze is special because of the room illustrations. It forms, in my mind, a kind of perfect, non-violent dungeon crawl, like Tomb of Horrors without the grisly deaths. Each room is packed with visuals that act as clues to the puzzle, but also form a kind of surreal set dressing. Surreal in the proper sense to the word – a lot of Maze reminds me of the work of Rene Magritte. They also remind me of Piranesi’s Le Carceri engravings from the 18th century and, of course, the often perplexing illustrations from pick your path game books.

Nominally considered a children’s book, the enduring appeal of Maze for me is how menacing the whole thing is. The prose is written from the perspective of a guide who may very well be a charming minotaur and his witty words barely conceal his contempt. The atmosphere of obscure mystery is pervasive. The rooms themselves have many an infernal decoration – a demon statue here, a pitchfork there – and the whole fictional space feels dangerous, like a place you should not have entered in the first place and, once inside, should not be dallying in.

A must for any game master’s shelf, I think.