Ethica wrote:Here in the UK we have a game show (if you can call it that) called Mastermind where the contestant gets a couple of minutes to answer questions on their specialised subject. drathe would go on there and it'd be like "My specialised subject is the rules and history of Heroquest". "On what page of the second edition european rulebook would you find rules governing secret doors", "page 12", "correct"...
Is this an open-book game show? I normally double-check my resources before making page references.
As for rolling secret door searches, I can understand the splash of realism thrown in that a door may be hidden well enough that it's not found at first, or even during a subsequent search. However, if we're adding some realism into this, if I search a room once and find nothing, I realistically would assume there are no secret passages and move on. Only if I come to a dead end in the Quest with no way to proceed would I realise there
must be another way. Then brings the question of
where and can I
actually find it.
How does one find a secret door on a roll? Is it, if a six is roll on a red die, you
know where the door is, should there be one? Or roll a number of dice for a skill and if you get equal to, or higher, you
know where the door is, should there be one? I suppose either way, I would continue rolling turn after turn until I was 100% sure that
if there was a door, I would have found it before moving on in the game.
The way I see it, and the way Ethica perceives it, the current HQ rule of, "if you search and
if there is a door, you find it," just skips over all the rolling until it's found because I would just stay put until I know 100%. Just seems to save time.
But these are just personal opinions. Many play and enjoy rolling for searches. If you're keen on the rule, just try it out in a Quest and ask your players for feedback after they've experienced the rule. It may be their cup o'tea.
