Hidden LM dice rolls?

[Stormcrow]

Just as a point of context:

When Dungeons & Dragons was first invented, there were no "find traps" rolls. If you wanted to find a trap, you said what you did to find it: what you looked at, what you prodded, where you positioned yourself, and so on. This was part of the challenge of the game: you versus the dungeon. How you dealt with that trap was also completely up to you: you could poke the trigger with a pole, try to pull away the tripwire without setting off the device, wear metal gauntlets in the hopes that any poisoned needle wouldn't be able to penetrate. There were no dice rolls involved here; the referee just told you what happened. He might roll a die to see if you set off a trap, but that's it.

When the Greyhawk supplement came out and the thief class was introduced, the "remove traps" roll was introduced. This didn't mean that other characters couldn't deal with traps exactly as they had been all along; it simply meant that thieves had a professional chance to deal with a known trap automatically, and if that didn't work they could still try to figure out another way past just like everyone else.

The "find traps" roll wasn't added to D&D until the publication of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and didn't enter the original line until the second edition of the Basic Set. By this time the idea of actually saying how you looked for and dealt with traps was falling out of the collective consciousness, replaced simply by "find/remove traps" rolls, which only thieves could do (and certain versions of dwarves). Other games had, by this time, incorporated such activities into skill systems, where if you didn't have the skill you couldn't search for or deal with traps at all, or at best did so badly.

Nowadays it's rare to find a game that expects you to interact with the setting in such a puzzle form as the original D&D did. Traps and the like are usually abstracted into things characters can either do or not do, based on a die-roll.

[Glorelendil]

Actually, the "find/remove traps" paradigm goes back to the Hittite culture, in one of the earliest proto-RPGs, a game called "Jhal". (Interesting side note: some scholars believe the Hittites originally developed iron for the casting of tabletop miniatures and only later appreciated it's use in tools and weapons.) Mechanics in Jhal were all based around inspiration from various deities, as the Hittites believed that human achievement was always due to the will of their myriad gods and sub-gods, and not the result of individual ability. So the equivalent of "Perception" was really a test of whether or nor your patron deities deigned to inform you of something. (Another side note: apparently they rolled 14 sided dice, similar to those found in a B.C.E. Chinese tomb.) All dice rolling was in the open, because it was felt that since all knowledge derived from deities, it didn't matter what the human players knew.

Gary Gygax knew all about this. In 3rd grade, when he and I used to act out fantasy roleplaying skits on the playground (even back then we called him "The Pedant"), he would talk about the Hittites. We'd sit on the see-saw and devise intricate traps, and see if the other person could solve them. If the other person sprung the trap we'd jump off the see-saw trying to startle the "victim". We called that "immersion".

[aramis]

And for goodness sake, NEVER include a Perception test for noticing the secret door/macguffin/character that you simply MUST notice for the adventure to continue!

This is 250% true

No, it isn't.

I've done it a bunch of times... and made it work.

The trick is that the roll isn't to find it, but to find safely, quickly and/or without notice. Are you going to find the Arkenstone in the Horde? Sure. Will you find it before Smaug notices you? Maybe not, and on a fumble, well, ol' Smaug gets to take a poke at you before you can get to it, while a simple failure is he notices as you grab it...

Or, as I did on thanksgiving, on a mission to take a note from Radagast to the Lord of Eagles, a player stated, "I'm looking for a climbable path up the spire to the Eagles' Aerie." a fumble resulted (1 shy of even being able to hope it.)
"Well, you see no path up the spire, but you spot a path along the saddle from the bluff..." and then what would have been a 1 day climb was a 3 day hike in TN 20 mountains to come down upon that narrow saddle path. (Rather than traverse the saddle, they smoke signalled to get an eagle to actually come take a look...)
Even worse: If he'd asked any of three others to look instead, they could have succeeded with a trait...

[Stormcrow]

Then it's not a roll to find it, it's a roll to avoid being spotted, or to avoid being skewered, or to go faster than someone else.

[Glorelendil]

And for goodness sake, NEVER include a Perception test for noticing the secret door/macguffin/character that you simply MUST notice for the adventure to continue!

This is 250% true

No, it isn't.

I've done it a bunch of times... and made it work.

The trick is that the roll isn't to find it, but to find safely, quickly and/or without notice. Are you going to find the Arkenstone in the Horde? Sure. Will you find it before Smaug notices you? Maybe not, and on a fumble, well, ol' Smaug gets to take a poke at you before you can get to it, while a simple failure is he notices as you grab it...

Or, as I did on thanksgiving, on a mission to take a note from Radagast to the Lord of Eagles, a player stated, "I'm looking for a climbable path up the spire to the Eagles' Aerie." a fumble resulted (1 shy of even being able to hope it.)
"Well, you see no path up the spire, but you spot a path along the saddle from the bluff..." and then what would have been a 1 day climb was a 3 day hike in TN 20 mountains to come down upon that narrow saddle path. (Rather than traverse the saddle, they smoke signalled to get an eagle to actually come take a look...)
Even worse: If he'd asked any of three others to look instead, they could have succeeded with a trait...

I don't think you're disagreeing with them.

What you are describing is exactly what I would suspect both Stormcrow and Terisonen would say is the way you should do it.

[Elmoth]

Yup.

Having a roll for a SINGLE viable option not to be in a dead end adventure-wise is just plain bad adventure design. Few games do that at all, not even the much cited CoC, that supposedly does that a lot, when in fact doesn't do that in any official adventures IIRC. Dead plot end is not the way to go in any game, and TOR is not different here.

Cheers,
Xavi

[Winterwolf]

Great discussion - I was hoping for something like this - thanks everyone. Certainly interesting points - I get that TOR is quite different to any previous RPG rules I've used so I intend to be flexible but likely start without hidden rolls unless it feels necessary.
I expect that any players in my games will be mature and not try to exploit situations anyway - but there will also be some first-time RPG'ers so I'll have to explain how these things work.
I also liked the idea of using flat skill levels to determine whether or not something is noticed, etc rather than relying on die rolls.
Advice about not having adventures hinge on a single skill check also noted.
Thanks again!