A long post as I catch up on this thread.
If it's left to a die roll or the DM's decision, there is no real test of character.
<snip>
There's a huge difference between me struggling with a decision for my PC, and clack, clack, clack! Oh, look. This time he's an ass, maybe next time he'll be noble. *yawn*
The second bit here suggest to me that you're not familiar with the play of any of the non-D&D games that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION], [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] and I have referenced - Fate, Pendrgaon, Prince Valiant, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, Bunring Wheel, etc.
And the first bit is odd, because the way you find out whether a D&D character is tough enough to beat Orcus in a fight is (among other things) to roll some dice.
Of course D&D combat is not
nothing but die rolls. But nor is a skill challenge, or a Duel of Wits, or whatever other mechanic a system might use to find out whether or not your PC is steely-hearted enough to resist the maiden's wink.
Consulting rules makes zero difference here. It's just a question of whether or not you trust the GM to set up the game to be fun. Adding a veneer of rules on top is just a comfort blanket for gamers who really like rules
I certainly find it interesting that [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] are fine with the maiden melting a PC's heart of the GM has written down (i) that the maiden has such a special ability and (ii) it allows a saving throw. Given that there's no rule in D&D that limits the special abilities a GM can place on a creature or NPC, and no rules that limit the number of saves s/he can call for, this seems like a strange view to take - what you call a comfort blanket or even a fetish.
You're insisting that there can be no consequences for character unless the player agrees. This just means that character is never at risk. I'm asking to you imagine what happens if it is -- what kind of game is that, how does that work, what can be accomplished? There's nothing wrong with not grappling with these questions, or grappling and finding them lacking, but you've straightjacketed yourself into a narrow view of games by insisting it should not be.
This post in particular has some nice accounts of what is involved in putting a character at risk.
In his discussion of this, Ron Edwards characterises different systems in terms of the degree of intensity/pressure they will place on the participants. He correctly notes that Prince Valiant is pretty light in this respect - the tropes are safely within romantic fantasy territory, the characters are not super-deep, the action is chivalric jousts, winking maidens, etc. For a sentimental referee such as me it's a superb game!
He doesn't comment on Burning Wheel (not really a thing when he was writing his stuff) but it's at the other end of the spectrum. Having read but not (yet) played Apocalypse World, I think it too is towards that other end. These games encourage deep characterisation, really hard GM pressure (which for a sentimental referee like me is hard on my as well as the players!) and a serious chance that you might get burned in play. (Not emotinally scarred or traumatised, but cetainly the possibility of experiences that are bruising in the moment.)
I fully agree with you that you can't do this - and especially the more intense stuff - if nothing ever happens that the player doesn't choose for his/her PC.
I also agree with something you said in an earlier post in reply to [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION], about the alleged difference between a character who can't be beaten in a fight, and a character who thinks s/he can't be beaten. In play, if I'm immersed in that character, then
there is no difference until - should it come to pass - I'm beaten. And linking this to the point about risk, it follows that the difference only matters from the out-of-game perspective - if, as a
player, I don't want my character conception to be at risk, then the difference is crucial. But oddly enough that seems to contradict the notion of
roleplaying that was being put forward, which was all about performing the character, not performing the role of an author who doesn't want his/her character conception violated.
I'll finish with a little actual play example that illustrates both points, in the context of a light-hearted MHRP session. One of the players - perhaps unsuprisingly, the one who most enjoys showing off at the table! - was playing Nightcrawler. One of Nightcrawler's character destinctions is Devout Catholic. One of his milestones is Romantic. This particular session started with Nightcrawler, Iceman and War Machine heading out to a Washington, DC bar in their civvies. Naturally the women they met in the bar turned out to be the supervillains Black Mamba, Asp and Diamondback (the B.A.D. girls). The session was a mixture of romancing, fighting and breaking hearts: Bobby took Asp skating on the moat in front of the Washington Monument (I think I'm getting that right - my knowledge of the city is from TV, not real life), and also ended the session by sweeeping into the Smithsonian on an ice slide and carrying off the last B.A.D. girl standing into the sunset, thereby both ending the fisticuffs between her and Nighcrawler and War Machine,
and getting the girl. Earlier on, War Machine left one of the women dangling from the top of the monument when he got the alert about the attack on the Smithsonian; and Nightcrawler loved and left one on the roof of the Capitol Dome. In doing this he reached the capstone on his Romantic Milestone ("when you either break off a romantic relationship, or seek to enter into a more permanent partnership and ask your love to marry you") and so he had to write a new Milestone. And in combination with other events, in the session, it became clear that his Catholicism was less devout than previously believed, and so the player spent the requisite XPs to replace that distinction. From memory, the new distinction was The Devil Within while the new milestone was about lapsed faith.
That's not the sort of play that's going to cause flashback or make someone question the meaningfulness of their life! But we got to see an image of Bobby as slightly naive and innocent affirmed; while Nightcrawler definitely emerged as more dark than he sometimes is portrayed, and the PC sheet changed to reflect this - and that happened withint Nightcrawler actually having to fail any checks (that's not to say that he had no failures, but those weren't crucial to the character transformation arc that I outlined).
When it gets interesting is when there's some actual temptation on the part of the player to succumb. Maybe sometimes, for some, just the story value is enough of a temptation. But for others a mechanical temptation might be needed. And I have to admit that I favor genuine trade-offs. (That is, the player of the knight knows that if he/she gives in to the temptation, there's some concrete benefit to be gained, and a concrete penalty to breaking the vow.)
I am somewhat wary of reducing the emotional and thematic aspect of playing a charcter to a cost-benefit analysis. Because then the main thing we learn is how expedient the character is.
There are variations on this that don't push so hard towards expedience: eg in systems with player-side action-boosting currency one way we learn how much the character cares about X is by seeing how much currency the player is prepared to spend to help ensure X. Or we can have the opposite, as per the AW seduce/manipulate PvP mechanic that I posted upthread: we can see how dedicated the character is to avoiding X by seeing if she gives up the possible XP, or is prepared to soak the possible penalty, for not doing X. (MHRP/Cortex+ is similar to this - go against your complication and the opposing dice pool gets to include that complication die.)
Then there are ways of risking one's character (and character concept) that are more like my play example: the character doesn't become more (or less) effective by changing milestones and changing descriptors; rather, the sorts of things s/he is incentivised to do, and the flavour of those actions, changes.
So if we consider the example of the knight who abandons his/her quest for love, to frame the issue as one of
succumbing to temptation is already to have taken a god's-eye-view on the matter. Whereas if we take a player-inhabiting-the-character view how do we know that that's what it is? Maybe it's realising that quests are abstract futility whereas real love with a real person is concrete, worthwile reality.
In a game of the sort [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] has described, one key function of the GM is to create these opportunities for the player to decide what/who his/her PC
really is. Typically - perhaps almost always - this won't involve narrating the maiden's wink as melting the PC's heart. But it has to meaningfully put into play a possibility of that sort in a way that doesn't make the player think about what is expedience but rather - from the point of view of his/her PC but also knowing as a player that the whole game experience can survive changes in the character - makes the player think what do I really want here?