hawkeyefan
Legend
@hawkeyefan - there's more than one thing going on in your post but I thought I'd start with this one, as it speaks directly to the OP:
The OP, following in the lead of Donald Davidson, is really asserting that "do" and "accomplish" are synonyms.
So opening the safe is something that the PC does. And finding X in the safe (or not, as the case may be) is also something that the PC does. And nimbly moving his/her fingers while listening to the fall of the tumblers is also something that the PC does. And these are all the same thing, although under different descriptions - just as moving my finger, flicking on the light switch, illuminating the room and alerting the prowler that I've come home are all descriptions - different descriptions - of the one action.
Building on this point, the OP is asking about who, at the table, gets to decide what descriptions are true and is pushing for answers to this - which of course might be different for different systems, different contexts of play, different preferences, etc - which go beyond the player decides what the PC does. Because once we recognise that what the PC does is something amenable to multiple descriptions, at varying levels of "thinness"/"thickness", some of which are intended and some of which - like the alerting of the prowler - might be inadvertent - then we can see that it doesn't take us very far to say that someone gets to decide what the PC does. Because we need to know what sorts of descriptions is that person entitled to make true.
Yeah, I follow what you're saying. I think that "do" and "accomplish" generally are synonyms, although in the context of many RPGs, one is something that has no risk of failure, and the other invovles risk of failure that will usually result in some kind of action roll or equivalent. I don't think this distinction is necessary, but I do believe that it exists in many games, or in many approaches to RPGing.
I think of it more in terms of "depth" than "thickness". For many games, turning on the light switch is what the player can declare for his character.....anything further upstream is the purview of the GM. So what is found once the room is lit, who may notice or react to the light coming on....all of that is the GM's call. Other games may allow the player some amount of control over what is revealed when the switch is thrown. And still other games may allow the player to introduce a complication such as the prowler noticing the light.
So the question is how far do these toppling dominoes go?
If the prowler reacts by killing the person who's turned on the light....would it be accurate to say that the player got his character killed? He flipped the switch and died as a result.
Where is the line drawn? It's an interesting question, and depending on the game, the answer will vary. I expect most people and most games will assume a line very close to the initial action taken by the character, and very likely limit it to that specific action only, and then any resulting action based on mechanics will be determined by the GM.
One issue this raises is - what is the connection between player desire about the outcome of an action, PC hope/intention in performing an action (which may be the same as what the player desires, but perhaps not always), and true descriptions of the action?
In fairly traditional D&D action declarations which have no very rich intention behind them - say, I open the safe to see what's inside it - are fairly common. And the GM has a correspondingly very extensive licence to settle true descriptions of those actions- You open the safe and see nothing, or maybe You open the safe only to realise it's a gateway - your mind is blasted as you look on the face of Demogorgon at the other end of the interplaner portal!" Of course there are various principles that are expected to govern the formulation of those descriptions - including (say) fidelity to pre-written notes; cognisance of both PC level and dungeon level; not adopting such a "gotcha" appoach that skilled play becomes impossible, etc. But player desire and PC intention don't play a huge role.
Conversely, in BW an action declaration without some fairly rich specification of an intention or a hope isn't really well-formed. Which then has a big effect on how true descriptions are established: if the check succeeds, then we know that, in the fiction, there is a true description of the action which is the PC getting what s/he wanted. The rule book even describes this as "sacrosanct".
Does the above help make clearer what I'm trying to get at and ask about in the OP?
My experience with Burning Wheel consists almost entirely of reading posts of yours, and a quick glance at bits of the rulebook, so I'm limited in that regard. However, I generally understand your point. Blades in the Dark expects that the player states the intended outcome of the action they're going to take. Something like the below:
Player: I want to kill this guard.
GM: How do you want to do that?
Player: I'll sneak up behind him, and then clap a hand over his mouth with one hand, while I stab him in the back with the other.
GM: Okay. What kind of action do you think that is?
Player: Well, I don't think it's a Skirmish since we're not engaged in fighting. So I think it's probably a Prowl check.
GM: Sounds good. I'd say that your Position is Controlled since it's a boring old night and he's not particularly alert, and you can have Standard Effect.
I like the way that this game handles it. It clearly establishes the goal, the stakes, what action is required, and the potential outcome. And then of course the player has resources that they can apply to try and improve their odds of success, or the degree of their success. Whether the player's desires and that of the character are in line with one another can vary a bit....the player can certainly want things to be complicated for his character because that makes the game interesting. Certainly the character wants to succeed in killing the guard. But this is likely true of most games, to some extent, even if such an idea might be met with resistance.
I'm not sure how far "upstream" you'd consider this to be. If the player rolls well, or applies the necessary resources, then essentially the player has determined that his character has sneaked up on the guard and quietly killed him without alerting anyone else. Given the mechanics of BitD, the player can specifically declare that this is what has happened.