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Secret Doors
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<blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 8246228" data-attributes="member: 12377"><p>Well the first thing I can think of is: you're not going to stop and search inch-by-inch for secret doors in the middle of a raging battle, or while sneaking past a deadly foe, or while frantically trying to deal with a devastating trap or hazard. So danger is a good motivation to NOT search for secret doors. Danger is effective from both an in-game role-playing standpoint ("This place is scary! Let's keep moving!") and from a meta-game tactical standpoint ("Searching here is not worth another encounter with those green-slime-flinging kobolds"). So it could be that your dungeons aren't dangerous enough or that they don't <em>seem</em> dangerous enough.</p><p></p><p>Right now I'm running <em>Dungeon of the Mad Mage</em> and I'm using the Angry GM's Tension Pool to represent danger (although I am calling it the "Doom Pool" because I think telling players how they should feel robs it of some of its effectiveness). It works decently well. The players can always see how many dice are in the pool (more dice = more risk of badness) and I tell them straight up when their actions wil add dice. "Sure, you can search this room, but it'll add 1 Doom Die to the pool..." It's an abstration representing the time it takes to search, the noise they make, the evidence they leave behind, etc.</p><p></p><p>You can also scare players purely through descriptions. They might hear noises in the distance or see evidence of monsters having come through very recently. This works well if the players have encounterd the monsters, and found that they are not to be trifled with. It works less well when the monsters are pushovers and the PCs are clearing the place out room-by-room.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="77IM, post: 8246228, member: 12377"] Well the first thing I can think of is: you're not going to stop and search inch-by-inch for secret doors in the middle of a raging battle, or while sneaking past a deadly foe, or while frantically trying to deal with a devastating trap or hazard. So danger is a good motivation to NOT search for secret doors. Danger is effective from both an in-game role-playing standpoint ("This place is scary! Let's keep moving!") and from a meta-game tactical standpoint ("Searching here is not worth another encounter with those green-slime-flinging kobolds"). So it could be that your dungeons aren't dangerous enough or that they don't [I]seem[/I] dangerous enough. Right now I'm running [I]Dungeon of the Mad Mage[/I] and I'm using the Angry GM's Tension Pool to represent danger (although I am calling it the "Doom Pool" because I think telling players how they should feel robs it of some of its effectiveness). It works decently well. The players can always see how many dice are in the pool (more dice = more risk of badness) and I tell them straight up when their actions wil add dice. "Sure, you can search this room, but it'll add 1 Doom Die to the pool..." It's an abstration representing the time it takes to search, the noise they make, the evidence they leave behind, etc. You can also scare players purely through descriptions. They might hear noises in the distance or see evidence of monsters having come through very recently. This works well if the players have encounterd the monsters, and found that they are not to be trifled with. It works less well when the monsters are pushovers and the PCs are clearing the place out room-by-room. [/QUOTE]
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