Mertwig's Maze

Mertwig's Maze is a board game set in the Forgotten Realms setting. Play occurs in the Kingdom of Mertwig, a location invented for the game, in north Faerûn's Vast region.
==Gameplay==
Players venture into the wilderness, either randomly, towards one of the seven minor boards, or as directed by an event card, in search of the necessary items. Combat with monsters ensues from encounter cards drawn during these explorations. Players also have the option to attack one another in hopes of acquiring royal items from their adversaries. If a character is killed in combat, the player begins the next turn with a new character. Once a player has collected two royal items, they can proceed to the royal palace maze to confront the Mystic Musk-Ox. The player who defeats this final adversary wins the game.
==Contents==
* 1 large paper game map
* 8 smaller paper game maps
* 190 event cards
* 100 diecut, full-color counters
* 1 cardstock storage folder
* 1 rules booklet 
==History==
Mertwig's Maze was designed by Tom Wham, with editing by Steve Winter, cover art and interior illustrations by Wham, gameboard art by David C. Sutherland III, and graphic coordination by Stephanie Tabat. It was published by TSR, Inc. in 1988, though was originally fully-developed and play-tested by Wham for another game company, Gary Gygax's start-up New Infinities Productions. New Infinities folded before the game could be released and Wham eventually reached out to TSR through friends in the company, managing to sell Jim Ward on it under the caveat that it be somehow tied to Dungeons & Dragons, leading to Mertwig's rework as a Forgotten Realms product. Prior to his contract with New Infinities Productions, Tom Wham had designed an early iteration of the game while he was still an employee at TSR in 1983,Neither the Polyhedron article nor Tom Wham's website state exactly the year of Mertwig's conception, though the latter mentions that it “...lived in a brown cardboard box for about 5 years before getting published”. From this the year 1983 can be extrapolated. under the working title The Dungeon.
Later in 1991, Tom Wham wrote an article titled "More To The Maze" for issue 57 of the Polyhedron Newszine. In this article he provided errata for Mertwig's Maze, a whole new encounter titled "The Tallest Tree In the Forest", and detailed the development history of the board game.
The "Tallest Tree In The Forest" expansion was later uploaded online by Tom Wham to his personal website, alongside a sketch someone at TSR did atop an excerpt of an official map of the Realms to illustrate for him where exactly the Kingdom of Mertwig was located in the Vast.Based on the art style of the map excerpt that was drawn upon and the use of "Ravensgate" instead of "Ravens Bluff", it would appear that the excerpt is of Dennis Kauth's poster map of the Realms from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set boxed set.
==Index==
===Characters===
===Creatures===
===Magic===
===Locations===
===Organizations===
===Miscellaneous===
==Appendix==
===Notes===
===Gallery===
Mertwig Map.jpg|The central board of Mertwig's Maze.
===Further Reading===
* 
* 
===External Links===
* 
===References===
Category:Board games
Category:Published in 1988
Category:Works by Tom Wham