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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7359620" data-attributes="member: 82106">And I don't actually find 'secret doors' in the Gygaxian sense very interesting, outside of purely Gygaxian play where you're in a puzzle dungeon and that's just part of the puzzle. In a game of the type I'm talking about, why would a GM establish a secret door as part of the fiction? Well, establishing fiction ONLY happens for the purpose of framing scenes who's focus is on the player's agenda. So, a secret door in my kind of play will ONLY EXIST in order to further the engagement with that topic. There's no objective world, even an imaginary one, in which the secret door 'exists', it is a narrative device. Now, if a player really wants to engage in puzzle-solving, then maybe setting up a situation where he has to figure out the existence of a secret door from whatever clues might be a thing. In that case the GM might actually decide at some point that the parameters of the mystery include a secret door at a specific location. This is a possible kind of play which could resemble 'classic' D&D play where the GM maps out an area and places a secret door.OTOH a secret door could be a 'resource' ala Cortex+, or something that a player simply declares, as in "I search for a way through the wall, like a secret door" and then succeeds on a check. There are no real dearth of secret doors in my games, but they don't appear as fixed, established elements of mapped-out locations, unless such has been established by canon. I was just pointing out that a wall and an unbribeable guard differ in that one way. Of course I wouldn't have an unbribeable guard, just like I wouldn't have an unbeatable one either! So, in my style of play it would only be established that the guard is unbribeable or the wall impenetrable by testing that possibility, in which case the character's action will be thwarted and a different solution will be required.Right, there's nothing wrong with genre conventions. Modrons are unbribeable, the walls of Asmodeus' palace are impenetrable. This kind of thing is OK, but it should be fairly obvious that these things are true, given their genre convention status. Agreed. I don't have a problem with walls. Maybe this is where the characters pull out a pickaxe and make a new door. I don't think I see the fear of keeping secrets from the players that seems to be a major concern. Yes, I get that such secrets can be used poorly by the GM. But I also think they can be interesting complications to the players' plans, and what courses of actions are available to the characters. Pemerton would likely dismiss this as not being interested in this kind of "puzzle solving" but I don't really see it that way. So I'd like your take on it, if you care to share.So if I pre-establish in my GM notes that the guards may be open to bribery, but it will depend on the results of the PC's check, then how is this different from Story Now? I mean in the result at the table and the impact on the players' agency in this instance? Eh, is it limiting if the players can simply pick another direction to go in? As long as they're finding choices and as long as those choices have thematic narrative consequences its fine. Its when they have no choice as to what the story is ABOUT that they lose their agency. Yes, the GM always has a lot of choices, potentially. The art is really more in making it work for the players than in giving people choice.</blockquote>

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