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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7098989" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not ignoreing the GM involvement. I'm expressly noting it.In the real world, a change takes place: something that was unknown (the skulker's motivation) becomes known. Something that was unauthored (the skulker's motivation) becomes authored.But there is no change in, or to, the gameworld. Within the fiction, the skulker's motivation has not changed. It is what it always was.Hence the notion of "Schroedinger's motivation" or "Schroedinger's secret door" misfires. It's not the case that the door is both there or not there. It's either there, or not, but no one knows because the fiction hasn't been authored yet.It's no different from watching Star Wars and wondering whether or not Luke knows how to ride a horse or similar beast. Either he does or he doesn't - there's nothing of a Schroedinger nature about his ability to ride. But from wathcing the movie one can't tell because that particular bit of fiction has not been authored yet, and nor has anything else that might entail an answer one way or another.Just because a bit of fiction hasn't been authored yet doesn't mean that, in the fiction, there is no fact of the matter one way or the other. And authoring the fiction doesn't change anything in the fiction itself. The only change that takes place is in the real world. (Something unauthored and hence unknown becomes authored and thereby known.)There are no REH Conan stories in which Conan casts a spell, but there are stories in which he finds secret doors.And there are adventure films in which secret doors figure. It's a fairly common trope (it's not as if Gygax invented it from scracth!).Well, there is no cost to using a Passwall spell or similar in D&D!And a character having good Perception, or Architecture, or Catacombs-wise, or whatever, doesn't seem to me any different in principle from a player having an ability for a particular situation.In any event, in BW, the failed check obliged the GM to narrate a consequence of failure. New fiction gets established, adverse to the intention with which the action was declared. The example that has already come up in this thread is the search for the nickel-silver mace in the ruined tower - the check failed, and the consequence was the discovery, instead, of black arrows made by the mage's brother prior to being possessed by a balrog.It is the combination of needing to establish the right fictional positioning to declare the check, and the risk of failure, that generates the constraint.</blockquote>

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