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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8496889" data-attributes="member: 29398">Except it wasn't always there; and this is where I run hard aground on this whole concept.If the door was always there then someone in the fiction had to know it was there prior to now - the people who built it, anyone (usually the place's current occupants) who currently uses it, and so on.  But if the door only springs into existence right now then nobody who in theory knew of it sooner could have made use of it even though they might have had its existence been known.Put another way: if a search reveals a secret door now which neither DM nor players knew was there before, there's no way to retcon that if the door's there now it would have been there yesterday when the PCs passed through this area and the foes could have used it to escape, or to set up an ambush.  Unless you're assuming the occupants of a place always know nothing about its secrets until the PCs reveal them, which is fine once in a while but seems a bit ludicrous if it's the case every single time.Unless, again, the door has been used in the meantime by the occupants of the place.I'm playing right now in a dungeon crawl where for quite a while the opposition always seemed to be one step ahead of us.  It took us ages to realize the reason for this: the place is riddled with secret passages and well-concealed spyholes; and the opposition had been using these to watch/track our movements and then figuring out where we'd go next, and either lying in wait for us there or clearing out, whichever was more to their advantage.How do you square this with a setup where the DM doesn't and can't know about the spy passages until some check initiates their presence, and thus can't have the opposition make use of them?</blockquote>

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