But that's the point - I want it to be clear! I want the players to be invested. To invest themselves, they need to know that something is at stake.
Correct! Again, that's the point.
Where sometimes I don't want them to know right now that anything is at stake; they might find out later...or might not...depending on how things go.
Again, this is where I would have a player making the roll. That let's them both have the ritual experience of resolving a moment of crunch for the PC; and in some systems it also lets them expend resources if they want to (eg if the system allows players to expend fate points or similar to boost their checks).
Yeah, I'm not at all sold on systems where OOC resources can influence die rolls like that.
My point is that, in the real world, this is not mediated. If you want to know something about your immediate environment you just look around.
Which in the game is modeled by asking the DM.
I'm sitting at a desk. Without even moving my head (just my eyes) I can see, on the desk, a pile of about two dozen books on various topics, another pile of books and papers dealing with a particular legal topic, various notes and papers spread out around my computer, three memory sticks, and a dozen or so pens. Plus some CDs, some boarding passes sitting around from old travel claims, and various other stuff that I'm not going to type up.
When the GM tells the CoC players that "You walk into the academics office and see a desk strewn with books and papers", there's no way the GM is going to have a list that even remotely captures the detail that the PCs can simply see.
Likewise, how many GM's inn descriptions record the presence of hooks for coats at the door? I've never seen that mentioned in a module that I can recall. I've seen many D&D inns with "wine" on the price list, but rarely its colour or its grape. There might be an entry for "stew", but is it lamb, goat, horse or beef? (Or something more exotic?)
A world in which the default assumption is that nothing is there unless the GM mentions it is so barren as to be implausible,
So just ask for more details (preferably those specific ones relevant to what you're doing e.g. don't ask about the number of tables in the bar if your main interest is whether there's a hook or not) until you get the relevant info you need.
Some players will take this too far and ask for descriptions of absolutely everything whether relevant or not; some DMs will also take this too far by proactively describing everything whether relevant or not. Both of these just waste time.
But once we get out of the dungeon, what are we going to do to rid our world of barren-ness? My solution is this: if the player is assuming that something is there (eg hooks at the door; pens on the desk) and nothing is at stake, I "say 'yes'". Why should my assumptions about what is in the fiction be any more important than there's? It's all just colour, and their sense of the colour is as good as mine.
Fair enough, as long as the DM always has right of veto.
If something is at stake - ie it's not mere colour - then that's where a roll is required (in BW and 4e, at least; Cortex is a bit trickier in this regard, and therefore poses its own GMing challenges). In 4e that would normally be as part of a skill challenge.
Again, though - what if the situation dictates that it not be known what's at stake. OK, there's hooks...you hang your cloak on one...now I'm going to secretly roll to see if a) your contact noticed this and b) if anyone else that might care noticed this.
The game mentioned in the OP has been driven primarily by the mage PCs desire to redeem his brother, the assassin/wizard's desire to kill the same, and the elven ronin's inability to come to terms with the loss of his master (which was what led him to wander into human lands).
Without those background elements, there wouldn't be any play.
Whyever not? Can't the play be driven by greater forces (external plots, wars, impending apocalypse, etc.) than the characters' own angst?
When I look at the sort of fantasy fiction I would like my RPGing to emulate (not usually all at once, but from time to time across the range of sessions, systems and campaigns) I think of LotR, REH's Conan, the Earthsea stories, Arthurian romance, Claremont's X-Men, Star Wars, and the more romantic/passionate "swordsman" movies like Bride With White Hair, Hero, Crouching Tiger, Ashes of Time, etc.
In none of these are the protagonists driven primarily by the pressure for sheer survival. Survival only becomes an issue because something else has motivated them to place themselves in danger.
And in those few of that list I'm familiar with the motivation is usually external. Sure Luke ends up trying to redeem his father (though both father and son are pretty angst-laden anyway; Anakin in the prequels is just painful) but his main motivation is to right the galaxy's wrongs once he learns about them. Frodo takes the ring due to external pressure - it has to be done and during that fractious council meeting he feels he's the only one who can do it. The X-men are mostly fighting for their own survival and to prove they belong in the world (in the movies, I don't know the comics at all). Arthurian romance is just more personal angst against a different backdrop and certainly not enough to hang an entire campaign on (though romance etc. is certainly welcome to arise as a sidebar in the ongoing game).
I'd rather have a campaign where the PCs slowly but surely enmesh themselves in something much bigger than their own lives, and then play that out wherever it may go. LotR does this very well with Frodo...well, with all the Hobbits, come to that. Star Wars does it with Luke, if not quite as seamlessly.
And The Hobbit - all of Bilbo's motivation is external to begin with; sure he discovers himself as well as things go along, but that's not his reason for adventuring.
In my games, most adventurers I've seen played are motivated by either sheer greed, by wanting to improve their social standing (e.g. reach name level), or by being recruited into an existing party.
I don't think these sorts of motivations will easily or naturally emerge in RPGing, if everything is framed as if the stakes are simply survival. But in order to know what will test a player's commitment, in the playing of some particular PC, to honour, or to compassion, or whatever, you need to know how that player, in playing that character, understands the ingame situation. Sometimes that reveals itself through action (eg I remember a couple of occasions when the invoker/wizard in my main 4e game slew helpless prisoners when the opportunity presented itself, because the player - in character - had formed the view that they were beyond redemption and deserved summary execution), but not always. As a GM, the most obvious way to learn this stuff is to ask the player!
Or just watch what the PC does and make mental note e.g. in the case of this wizard I'd be formulating my own ideas on its alignment after this without regard to what's written on the character sheet.
Lan-"when in doubt, ask the DM; if still in doubt, have another beer and try again"-efan