Mechanics Microblog: Secrets, Tension & Pipeweed
When your dungeon is full of cool secrets, you don't want them locked behind a skill check the players might fail. But they're not secrets if you just give them away for free.
Here's the rule module I've plugged into my most recent dungeon crawling. I follow the typical Landmark, Hidden, Secret approach for categorising dungeon information.
Rules for Searching
When entering a room, knaves can choose to spend time searching the room methodically, or search quickly. They can also choose to apply any relevant Expertise they have to the situation at hand; doing so quickly creates stress (Tension).
This means there are four possible approaches to searching the room:
- Ransack (Quickly, No Expertise): Find all hidden information in the room, but you attract the attention of anything nearby and trigger any traps.
- Scour (Methodically, No Expertise): Find all hidden information in the room, but you spend an extended amount of time searching, and you'll leave a trace.
- Intuit (Quickly, Expertise): Find all hidden and relevant secret information in the room, and leave no trace, but add a Tension to your inventory.
- Inspect (Methodically, Expertise): Find all hidden and relevant secret information in the room, and leave no trace, but you take your time.
Dealing with Tension
This is a game with Mausritter-style inventory - burdens like Tension and Fatigue fill slots that could otherwise be used to hold treasure. You can remove Tension by resting, but unlike Fatigue, you can also remove it by using pipeweed.
Why?
There's a range of old-school-adjacent ways of approaching hidden information. Rise Up Comus has lore bids, Cairn has its knowledge and perception rules, Chris McDowall says just tell them everything. Ty's Ransacking the Room post was a huge influence here.
Personally, I think it's neat to have a somewhat-diagetic set of rules that also explain why your wizard is constantly smoking pipeweed and why your grizzled elven huntress needs a cigarette break in the depths of Moria. In particular, it's relevant to the specific vibe of my In Fires Deep campaign: wizards are effective more because of their wisdom than their magic, so there's a reason for that wisdom to have a specific mechanical hook.