What’s the Deal with Secret Doors?

Dungeon crawling used to involve a lot more secret doors. They were so important that some classes had specific secret-door related abilities. Today, it’s hard (for me) to see the purpose behind them all.

Are they there to waste time?

D&D is a resource management game. The longer the party spends in the dungeon the more torches will burn out, the more chances for encountering wandering monsters, the more opportunities to run low on HP, supplies and spells.

Taking time to search for hidden doors should be a trade-off. Searching every room as a matter of course would be boring.

Are they there to hide content?

As it has been said, there is nothing exciting about hiding content from the players. If an adventure would end or be un-interesting if the door isn’t found, that really is a point against it.

But, if secret doors are hiding alternate paths or side-content, that’s not such a problem.

Are they there to test player skill?

As the party crawls through the dungeon, they draw a map of what they’ve explored. Players can find gaps where a room might be expected, and can search for the secret door that must lead to it.

This might be a fine use of secret doors, but not every party maps out their dungeon this way now-a-days.

What would good secret doors look like?

Well, they certainly wouldn’t look like doors. That would make it much too easy to spot them.

1. In-world clues to their presence (purposeful markings, secret signs, evidence of opening and closing, logical reasons for their presence)
2. Not blocking the main path of the dungeon, more for alternate-paths or side-content (though, a dungeon shouldn’t have a bottle-kneck of any kind, really)
3. Use the same methods for searching as the rest of your game (I prefer narrative descriptions of search methods, but if you’re using Perception rolls, then secret doors should use them as well)
4. Players shouldn’t feel the need to search every room or risk missing out. It just isn’t special if you say: “And we check the room for secret doors before we leave” every time.