Time to find a Secret Door

[psydraco]

Hi friends!

Exploits p. 19 says

"Finding them always requires an active search; the GM rolls secretly against the highest of Vision, Observation, or Per-based Traps for each searcher. Success reveals a door, if there is one; it may require an IQ-based Traps roll to open. These rolls often have steep penalties.

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!

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by psydraco

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.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by psydraco

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).

Kromm addressed this in his "Tactical Looting" article in Pyramid #4/1: Fantasy/Magic I:

Originally Posted by Kromm

Searching: When actively searching for concealed or secret doors, traps, etc., or using Tracking, delvers advance at Move 1 – i.e., each yard equals one second. If they believe they missed something and search again, repeated attempts take 10 seconds apiece.

So according to Hoyle, stopping and looking isn't going to matter too much for a wandering monster roll, especially if you're rolling only every hour.

[Black Leviathan]

For consistency sake I measure any long action as 15 minutes -10% x Margin of success. I might worry about more accurate timing if I was doing scenes with a realistic clock but most of the time it's just a matter of can I do this action and then run to catch up with the rest of the group doing something else.

Actions with a specific operation time like cooking a turkey or charging a phone are an exception, but usually the parts of the action that have a set time aren't the aspect involve a roll.

[psydraco]

Thanks for the clarification