Best practices for easy-to-run modules [+]

[Bill Zebub]

More I'm saying "If you're careful and spend the time it takes to search,

To make sure I'm understanding, are you suggesting that they should be careful and search every single square of the dungeon so they don't miss anything, or that there was some reason (that they missed) that they should have searched for that secret door? If it's the latter, then yes I'm agreeing with you. If it's the former, then just no. No interest in playing that way. It's not fun now and it never was.

you give yourself a not-guaranteed chance of making things easier on yourselves; if you don't, that chance disappears."

...and even if they do search in the right place (or every place), you still use RNG to determine if they are successful?

This assumes they didn't find the other end of the passage while searching the chambers for the Vizier, who had by then used said passage to esacpe. That's the much-more-likely outcome here: they realize they missed it on the way in when they find it, in effect, on the way out.

That, and IME it's quite rare that a party finds everything in a site or dungeon: it's almost inevitable they're going to miss a passage or some treasure or something else relevant, either by choice (we've done the mission, let's get out fast) or by impatience or by sheer bad luck.

If they are missing things because of their own (the players') mistakes...such as missing the tells...then I'm with you. If they are missing things because they are expected to search every square of the dungeon, and/or because the dice told them they missed it, then no.

Unpredictability is what random is.

No. That statement is only true in one direction. Yes, random things are unpredictable. But not all unpredictable things are random. People used to not be able to predict comets and eclipses. That doesn't mean they used to be random and now they are not.

In the here and now moment when the information is needed, not knowing something and not remembering something amount to exactly the same thing: you don't have the info in your mind when you need it.

If they are synonymous then why do we have two different verbs?

So, as this has not yet been determined otherwise, what we're rolling for is to determine whether you happen to be one of the 80% of the in-game population who don't know this bit of semi-obscure information or the 20% who do.

Yes, I understand that people who play that way are using randomness to model uncertainty. I can understand why that is a tempting short cut. But it's not random whether or not a certain person knows something. Any more than it's random whether or not a sword strike lands.