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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 8248448" data-attributes="member: 1465">1) Go through the rulebooks and find all rules related to finding hidden things, gather them together in some reference document2) Study the rules accurately, make sure you understand the nuances and learn them like the back of your hand3) Throw all said rules in the toiletMore seriously... the best (maybe only) way to make hidden non-monster stuff INTERESTING is to handle the process narratively. No amount of rolls or bonuses or resolution mechanics is really interesting. Unfortunately this means you have to put the players' skills under the spotlight, which inevitable makes the characters' skills somewhat less important. But that's what it should be, just like you can't seriously expect to handle all social interactions with rolls AND be interesting. There is always a symbiosis between players' skills and characters' skills, even in combat (the characters swing the sword an shoot the arrows, but the player makes the tactics), but it's way too common to emphasize the importance of rules, rules and more rules for exploration (or social interaction) and then oh what a surprise exploration sucks. You have to shift back some emphasis on players' decisions, for example use more detailed descriptions of the environment to invite observations, encourage some free interactions with the environment without using rules, do not make the players roll for everything and especially make them roll after not before... so don't allow blanket tasks such as "I check the room for hidden doors/traps" but instead make your players tell what their character does and eventually* have them check after to see if their character's abilities succeed or fail at supporting the character's intention (i.e. the player's). Keep in mind that some blanket rules like passive perception are actually designed for players who hate exploration and don't want to bother with it.*and not necessarily always, I think a good approach is to think that rolls are only needed when the DM is undecided on the outcome, but I digress...</blockquote>

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