Finding Secret Doors

fully developed  thesis on the existential reasons for secret doors, etc, etc. etc. 

LOL. One of the things that makes me interested in DW is I hate detail prep. I like to think a lot about the setting and what's going on in it though. For my current 1920 Cthulhu game I read a 300 page autobiography about someone from an area the PCs were heading to so I'd know more about the setting.

I'll spend 10 hours reading up on someone who lived 80 years ago, but I hate spending 5 minutes writing up stats on them. I think DW plays nicely into that.

There seems to be a number of items that are part and parcel to the genre that are left out of the rules. And maybe for you story type guys, you have your ways of handling that, but that isn't always so clear for me coming from a mechanical system.

Nope, ran into many of the same road blocks you have and there are still things I think I'd like to handle from a mechanical perspective. I do think that the mechanics behind DW are sound though. The group all rolling on perception issue isn't unique to the game, you sort of have to handle it everywhere.

I think it can be extremely hard for someone who's "advanced" in an experience to relate to a newer point of view and see where new concepts can be a struggle for someone fresh to the experience. I think DW is going to see a lot of people asking questions on the basics as it gets more popular and since the creators are just so swamped putting out the product it'll be up to the community to help people sort of grok new concepts.

There's still some ideas and concepts I'm chewing over myself.

Perception stuff is always tricky! DW includes one way by default, but honestly, custom moves are your friend here. Adam's is pretty good.

In my current World of Dungeons game, I use two methods.
1. Tell them what's obvious, including tell-tales of secrets if there are any.
2. When they take the initiative and investigate something, I ask them how they do it. Then roll+WIS (usually). On a 10+, I tell them everything they could reasonably know or intuit, based on who they are and what they're doing. Character class matters a lot; it's the lens through which information is passed. On a 7-9, they make some progress but it's a half measure. I tell them something true, but don't elaborate. If there's trouble, I can bring it (often, curious monsters, guards, time slipping away). On a miss, trouble manifests fully, and this avenue of investigation is a dead end for now. Nothing to see here, try another way.

I don't know why, but I would shy away from explicitly letting a player look for hidden doors. Hidden doors should always be surprises in my opinion, like when an Elf (in OD&D) comes across one while just walking by. If a player says "I bet there is a hidden door here! I am going to look", I would just describe the wall as accurately as possible and let him describe how he interacts with it in the fiction—no dice rolls needed. Now if a player were fleeing from a Hobgoblin lair and found himself in a dead end passageway with the enemy only moments behind, he definitely could Discern Realities and ask "what is useful here?" I would totally say "well, that hidden door in the corner, for starters..."

Maybe it is just that the division between GM and player seems critical in a game like DW. The GM is the source of the fiction, and the player only gets to choose how his character acts within the world. There are other games that allow the player to also make up some of the reality (i.e. the player "declares" that there is a hidden door there). Those are fine games, but I don't think DW can delve into that playstyle without everything seeming less... objective.

Is the GM making most of it up as he goes, and taking a lot of cues secretly from the players? Yeah, totally, but it should never be so obvious to ruin the suspension of disbelief.

Good stuff, everyone.