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Old 05-05-2021, 06:33 AM   #2
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Time to find a Secret Door

Quote:
Originally Posted by psydraco View Post
Hi friends!

Exploits p. 19 says

How much time of a active search requires to find one? I know it can vary depending on how big is the room and any other variants. But for the porpouses of Wandering Monsters hourly rolling and to have a reason for the players not stop on every room to search for them, how much time would require, maximum and minimum, considering margin of succes and any other variant (ideas are wellcome).

Thanks!
You can pick anything you like really - one wandering monster roll is fairly traditional. Most real secret doors are not too hard for experienced searchers to pick out in a few minutes if they have any reason to suspect them - and that's in an era where steel frames and tracks, and electrical or magnetic catches, exist. On the other hand there are historical accounts of Elizabethan era priest hunts where a search party occupied (and mapped in detail!) a house for several *weeks* before they found a hiding place big enough to hold a person - admittedly hampered by the fact the searchers often didn't know what they were doing and labored under legal requirements not to damage the property too much in the process.

Note that the modern searchers also have the advantage that modern construction is *expected* to be smooth, tight and uniform to a degree historical construction often is not - which means if you search an old building a lot of "suspicious" stuff will turn out to be entirely innocent spots where the joinery isn't very tight or the available masonry blocks weren't quite the right size - and of working in much better light than historical searchers had to work with.
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MA Lloyd

Last edited by malloyd; 05-05-2021 at 06:39 AM.
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