Secret Doors!

Earlier this week, Tenkar posted about secret doors. I put my 2 coppers in there, but since, Peter Dell'Orto also spent some time on the subject. So, I guess I will add to the blog chatter for the week.

I think secret doors are a good thing in D&D (and clones). I do think they are used far too much. It's my opinion that they cannot bar a quest. Nor can they hide something important to the PC's goals. It just turns into a slog of dice rolling at that point, and sucks the fun completely out of the game for a while.

Great treasure, or treasonous secrets should be hidden behind secret doors. I used the example of a shrine to a dark cult in a mansion over at Tenkar's place. A wizard may have a secret study where he keeps a copy of all of his spellbooks, in case his enemies loot his tower.

Now, this being D&D, rules are always broken. A powerful enemy like Strahd will be the exception to the rule about barring quests. There is no reason why a powerful, rich person like Strahd would not hide his coffin behind a difficult to find door. Or a lich might hide a phalacrity behind a secret door.  But, when discussing enemies of that caliber, the heroes should have magics available to help.

So, in Mord Mar, my rules for secret doors are as follows:
1. It needs an original purpose. The secret door in Pickles and Potatoes was to hide the money-counting room.
2. The current resident needs to have the intelligence to use/find/access the secret door. A single ogre will probably not know about the secret door behind his lair, but 200 goblins would eventually stumble across a secret door in their area.
3. Almost everything behind a secret door will be "gravy." That demon's hoard of treasure seem light? Might want to search for secret doors.
4. Intelligent and powerful creatures will use secret doors to their fullest advantage. The party is beating up on the powerful mage a bit to quickly? His iron golem may just pop out of the secret door, and cover his escape.
5. Often ancient things lie behind secret doors. Maybe a long-sleeping undead, or maybe a forgotten relic?
6. The lower in the dungeon you are, the more likely there will be secret doors. The "pre-dungeon" has one secret door on level 1, two on level 2, and three on level 3. The deeper you go, the more likely that a secret door is around.