Just to get my current interest in this out of the way. I have completed a map of a prison-palace-city-island-home of a 'Great Being'. The overall architectural design is intended to be alien and complex and a typical closed portal will present difficulties for a human party of a kind that renders an ordinary door a 'secret' puzzle to a dog.

What is a 'secret' door? Well we know it is distinguished from a 'concealed' door which sounds like a category of portals which are covered over with rugs, mirrors, paintings and so on which are bound to reveal themselves to perspiration and time. A 'secret' door is likely to be architecturally integrated in wall, floor or ceiling and reveal themselves to inspiration only. Portals plastered and painted over might be one or the other.

The activation of a secret door is only loosely presented by Gygax in the DMG. Either abstract with a d6 roll or get the players to specify their experiments.

Here is one of my favourite secret areas from a module - Gygax's WG4 Tharizdun. I love that the space beneath the stairs might be deduced to exist, I love the revolving door mechanism, and the secret place itself may be the most extraordinary in adventure literature.



SECRET D0OR:This rotating wall section is so cleverly made so as to defy detection by visual inspection. A tapping of the exact spot of the secret door will sound slightly different than the rest of the wall (1 in 4 chance of noting this slight difference). The door operates by pressing inwards and downwards with the palms held at shoulder height. A 2' wide section of the wall will then turn clockwise forcing the individual into the secret room.

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I am interested in two things here:

[1] Do you design secret doors with mechanisms which require specific verbal instructions from your players to discover and unlock? If so let us hear the details of any you devised that you were pleased with.

[2] What is you favourite example of a secret door from a published adventure?

Cool thread, dude. I must admit that i don't think i've ever come up with a door with a mechanism off my own noggin.

My favourite secret door is actually from a computer game, which i ported over into my game.

I like all kinds of door mechanisms - irising doors, swinging panels, doors that slide up and down, etc.

Quote from: _kent_;585830I am interested in two things here:

[1] Do you design secret doors with mechanisms which require specific verbal instructions from your players to discover and unlock? If so let us hear the details of any you devised that you were pleased with.

[2] What is you favourite example of a secret door from a published adventure?

[1] No, because that leads to pixelbitching.

[2] The secret door that was a permanent Passwall in the floor.

Quote from: jeff37923;585896[1] No, because that leads to pixelbitching.

I disagree. If you leave clues as to where the verbal instructions can be discovered or deciphered, it adds a lot of interest to proceedings. And a big sense of achievement when the players get through.

The dungeon in the game I run at the moment has some doors with passwords in an ancient dwarfish language that none of the players understand, but there are clues around the dungeon if they can decipher them - though to do that they will need to find an expert in that language. It's another layer of adventuring that they need to do, and where is the harm in that?

Quote from: jeff37923;585896[1] No, because that leads to pixelbitching.

I keep hearing that term thrown around quite a bit. Without description of the environment how do players interact with the setting ?

Quote from: noisms;585910The dungeon in the game I run at the moment has some doors with passwords in an ancient dwarfish language that none of the players understand, but there are clues around the dungeon if they can decipher them - though to do that they will need to find an expert in that language. It's another layer of adventuring that they need to do.

That's good. I can imagine an unscrupulous expert who misleads the party and tries to take advantage of the information himself.

Quote from: _kent_;585922That's good. I can imagine an unscrupulous expert who misleads the party and tries to take advantage of the information himself.

Exactly. Some experts will tell the truth for money or other favours. Others will tell lies. Some might be fraudulent. Some will use the players as bodyguards to get into areas of the dungeon that would be unsafe to enter by themselves. Stuff like that is what makes role playing games interesting to me.

So long as the secret door isn't essential to 'solving' the adventure, then I don't see the 'pixelbitching'. Not every room gets explored. In fact I'd be happy to take a dollar for every secret door that went undiscovered.

Cool idea for a thread.

I have a set of three doors in my dungeon that open by actioning levers on the left and right, which set gears in and around the doors into motion, which in turn make the halves of a face depicted on the outer doors join on the middle door. The outer doors each open once their half slided to the middle door. You can then enter the rooms left and right, get the eyes of the central mask reconstituted in the central door there, and then put them back on the mask, which then opens the central door.

Also in my dungeon, there is a secret door that is opened by connecting with a brain using a specific mask with tentacles and basically putting yourself in a mind flayer's place.

An old favorite of mine in a published adventure was for the Dark Eye RPG where you had a tapestry with a guy with crossed eyes in a huge serious, grim battle scene, and by pressing the eyes you could open the secret door in the painting. The cool part is that the entire painting was reproduced as a hand out the players could actually look at in real time and tell you what they did with it, how they poked and where, etc. That was neat.

Quote from: _kent_;585830[1] Do you design secret doors with mechanisms which require specific verbal instructions from your players to discover and unlock?

Yes, absolutely!

One example is a wall that pivots open when you pull a lever in the gushing mouth of a nearby wall fountain. (The lever isn't obvious while the water is flowing, unless you feel around inside mouth of the fountain.)

Quote[2] What is you favourite example of a secret door from a published adventure?

At risk of being a little vain: The complex secret "door" in Fane of Poisoned Prophecies that leads ... up ... to another world. In some ways, the existence of the "door" is quite plain, but the trick is figuring out how & when it "opens". For that there are various clues throughout the site, but some trial and error may also be necessary.

Quote from: mcbobbo;585984So long as the secret door isn't essential to 'solving' the adventure, then I don't see the 'pixelbitching'. Not every room gets explored. In fact I'd be happy to take a dollar for every secret door that went undiscovered.

I don't know what 'solving the adventure' means.

I think it is perfectly legitimate for the discovery of a secret door alone to allow access to the more intriguing or wonderful regions of a castle/dungeon/city/palace. In that case I think it is a duty for the DM to elicit descriptions from the players of their search methods rather than rely merely on dice.

Quote from: Benoist;586008I have a set of three doors in my dungeon that open by actioning levers on the left and right, which set gears in and around the doors into motion, which in turn make the halves of a face depicted on the outer doors join on the middle door. The outer doors each open once their half slided to the middle door. You can then enter the rooms left and right, get the eyes of the central mask reconstituted in the central door there, and then put them back on the mask, which then opens the central door.

That is visually interesting but here is a question for you. In some movies and computer games secret doors are really puzzle doors presenting an unmistakable if difficult challenge. But shouldn't secret doors be anonymous, mundane and invisible no matter how grand the vistas beyond? At least if I was an architect that is how I would design them.

Quote from: Benoist;586008An old favorite of mine in a published adventure was for the Dark Eye RPG where you had a tapestry with a guy with crossed eyes in a huge serious, grim battle scene, and by pressing the eyes you could open the secret door in the painting. The cool part is that the entire painting was reproduced as a hand out the players could actually look at in real time and tell you what they did with it, how they poked and where, etc. That was neat.

That reminds me of the illustrations in C1 and S1. It is very satisfying to give players good handouts, Warhammer 1e was particularly good for that, but I hadn't thought of it for secret doors and it sounds almost perfect as a device. There may be difficulty though in giving them a picture without informing them there is a secret to be discovered if the idea is used more than once or you don't have many pictures of the environment.

QuotePixelbitching
A style of GMing--specifically, a form of railroading--in which the players need to find one specific clue in order to advance on the one plot line determined by the GM, cannot proceed without it, and do not get any help from the GM in finding it. If said clue is particularly hard to find (or if the GM requires a very specific action to locate it), the GM may be said to be "pixelbitching".
Origin: Computer games, specifically point-and-click games in which you need to click a specific place--sometimes only a few pixels on the screen (hence the name)--in order to get some magic clue you need to advance in the programmed-in plot line. Coined by SteveD on RPG.net.
http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/RPG_Lexica:PQR

That's a stupid word, and even more stupid when used in relation to pen and paper. I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist.

I very rarely use purely mechanical secret doors in dungeon settings because they're just too difficult to disguise if they are regularly used (scrapes on the floor, worn edges, etc.). But my favourite one was in a CoC game which was hidden in  panelling in the side of an actual doorway - that is, the thick stone walls of the mansion actually made the doorways deep enough to contain a narrow passage within the walls. Players tend to look at walls but the bit between the rooms gets ignored.

Quote from: Guy Fullerton;586122Yes, absolutely!

One example is a wall that pivots open when you pull a lever in the gushing mouth of a nearby wall fountain. (The lever isn't obvious while the water is flowing, unless you feel around inside mouth of the fountain.)

At risk of being a little vain: The complex secret "door" in Fane of Poisoned Prophecies that leads ... up ... to another world. In some ways, the existence of the "door" is quite plain, but the trick is figuring out how & when it "opens". For that there are various clues throughout the site, but some trial and error may also be necessary.

Something about secret doors I like is the idea that people who take risks (with their characters hands) and who are curious (interested in exploring your dungeon in detail) are the ones who are rewarded.

Can you describe your secret door from 'Fane of Poisoned Prophecies' in more (not necessarily full) detail?

Quote from: Vile;586130my favourite one was in a CoC game which was hidden in  panelling in the side of an actual doorway - that is, the thick stone walls of the mansion actually made the doorways deep enough to contain a narrow passage within the walls. Players tend to look at walls but the bit between the rooms gets ignored.

That's good because if the players are studying maps closely which they absolutely should be then it is conceivable they might wonder about the walls. Im sure there is a re Howard Conan story which has tunnels within the walls of a castle/palace for spying on guests and moving about.