the GM should have some latitude to narrate what form that success takes if something workable other than the player's direct intent suggests itself
Why?
You are looking before the dice were ever rolled and saying see this system covers all possible resolutions.
The rest of us are looking at it after the dice are already rolled - and at that moment the range of possible resolutions are restricted.
In a relatively traditional RPG a GM gets to establish a lot of fiction: much of the setting; many of the NPCs; the framing of many situations; the narration of failures; maybe other stuff too that I'm not thinking of at present.
What is the function of
successful checks if the GM also gets to establish what happens there too?
in my example the PC does achieve what she hoped for: she found incriminating evidence against the Duke.
That the evidence didn't take the exact form specified in the action declaration doesn't reduce the success
I was just responding to what you posted:
Player: I carefully open the desk drawer and, disturbing as little as I can, search for any financial records that might help prove the Duke is receiving payments from Southtor (an enemy state). (GM nods; player rolls well into the success range)
GM: Well, there don't appear to be any financial records or ledgers here at all
In what you posted, the player declares an intent for his PC to find financial records containing information in the desk drawer. The GM narrates that the PC fails to find any such thing. I don't see how that counts as a success.
If the action declaration had been
I search the drawer for something that might incriminate the Duke then obviously we'd be having a different conversation.
the GM typically has the power to call for a check or not call for a check and if he has that power then nothing is permitted that the GM doesn't permit. Do some systems avoid giving the GM that level of control? I'm sure some exist - but to what detriment?
In some RPG systems certain actions declared by players automatically trigger checks. Insofar as players can declare those actions, they can thereby trigger the checks. Examples would include Classic Traveller, Rolemaster and PbtA games.
In some RPG systems the GM can say "yes" to an action declaration but otherwise - assuming that the action declaration isn't of something that violates the logic of the system or the genre r the fictional positioning - is obliged to call for a check. Examples include Burning Wheel and Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic.
I don't know of any RPG system in which the GM has the power to refuse to countenance an action declaration, although the declaration violates neither system nor genre nor fictional positioning, by both refusing to say "yes" and refusing to permit a check. In such a system, what is the function of the players?
how can something we do in this world cause any challenge to a PC in a fictional world? It seems far fetched to think that rolling dice in this world is the only way to challenge a PC in the fictional world no? Or are challenges not real in our world? Do we only misperceive them as challegnes when in fact they aren't because there's no god ordained dice roller for our universe?
<snip>
it may even be fun to roll dice and they likely can be used to enhance the game part of an RPG, but all roleplay can be had without them. In fact it should be obvious that dice and roleplaying are at odds - imagine a game that only ever used dice to determine everything about your character and everything they do and everything they think etc. There is no room left to roleplay in that scenario.
The PCs in a RPG don't
really exist. They are elements in a fiction. That fiction is authored. Therefore whether or not the PCs are challenged is a result of authorship decisions taken in the real world. This is a significant difference from actual people in our actual world, who - subject to some theological speculation that I'll put to one side - are not authored entities "living" within an authored world.
Of course those authorship decisions which give rise to the fiction aren't typically part of the fiction. (Over the Edge is one RPG which is an exception to this - it allows for breaking the 4th wall. Maybe there are others too that I'm not familiar with.) So if we are talking about the imagined in-fiction causation then they don't figure. But if we're talking about what actually causes the fiction to have the content that it does, then we can't do that
except by referring to those authorship decisions.
Which brings us to the role of mechanics. I can't do any better on this than to quote
Vincent Baker:
Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . .
Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.
If the GM suggests that, as a result of the maiden winking, my PC is in love with her; and if I suggest that this is not so; then we have a disagrement as to what is actually true in the fiction. How do we resolve it? Via system. One possible system is
the GM is always right. Another possible system is
the player is always right. A third possible system is
they toss for it. Rolling dice (be it a saving throw rolled by the player, a wink test rolled by the GM, or something else) is a more sophisticated version of that third possibility.
That's all. It neither increases nor reduces the amount of shared imagination taking place, and hence the amount of roleplaying. It does reduce the player's authorship authority compared to the second possible system. But even if one takes a fairly narrow definition of roleplaying that can hardly be relevant: actors play roles and typically they don't author the characters they are playing.
And for the curious who can't be bothered to follow the link, here is the whole of the Vincent Baker quote without ellision:
[sblock]Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players
and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not.
So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"
What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?
1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.
2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense."
3. Sometimes, mechanics. "An orc? Only if you make your having-an-orc-show-up roll. Throw down!" "Rawk! 57!" "Dude, orc it is!" The thing to notice here is that the mechanics
serve the exact same purpose as the explanation about this thing about her tribe in point 2, which is to establish your credibility wrt the orc in question.
4. And sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll, a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing. Wave a stick in a game store and every game you knock of the shelves will have a combat system that works like this.
(Plenty of suggestions at the game table don't get picked up by the group, or get revised and modified by the group before being accepted, all with the same range of time and attention spent negotiating.)
So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.[/sblock]