(I still don't actually know anything about Traveller. Space something probably...)
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Furthermore, in most games in these sort of "I see if I can find any guns/drugs/etc" situations the Gm is perfectly within their rights to just say "no, this is not sort of place they can be found at." I.e. the GM actually determines whether the thing is present, the player determines whether their character manages to find it.
I don't know what you have in mind with "in most games of these sort". Do you mean D&D circa mid-80s onwards? Vampire? CoC?
Classic Traveller ("Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far Future) doesn't anywhere state
the GM is perfectly within their rights to just say no. The rule is the one I quoted:
the referee should set the throw required. This is just one manifestation of how Classic Traveller (1977 version) supports high player agency RPGing. (I am deliberately citing the publication date because there were changes in later versions to make it more like "most games of these sort". That's one reason I prefer the 1977 vesrion.)
1977 Classic Traveller doesn't anywhere have a single definitive statement of the referee's role - that's a contrast with the editing/presentation of (say) Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel. But when you read through the books you can actually put together a fairly clear list of referee responsibilities:
* The referee adjudicates action resolution, by setting throws required (following and building on the rules and subsystems presented) and establishing consequences;
* There is quite an elaborate system for random encounters (both onworld and in space) but the referee is entitled to also introduce non-random encounters where s/he wants to, in order to reflect the established fiction, present situations and drive the action;
* The referee manages NPCs, having regard to their skills and abilities and the results of throws on the reaction table;
* The referee may introduce new technology or equipment beyond the lists, and may create star systems, worlds and ecologies deliberately rather than using the random generation methods that are presented.
There are also a couple of referee "options":
* The referee can generate a star map in advance; but the game also expressly supports more "spontaneous" creation of the star map on an "as-needed" basis;
* The referee may indicate possible quests using various "in fiction" devices (eg rumours, patrons, the ship's Library program) for signalling these possibilities.
The game is also explicit about the importance of referee-player collaboration. From Book 3:
* "At times . . . combinations of features [of randomly generated worlds] may seem contradictory or unreasonable. Common sense should rule in such cases; either the players or referee will generate a rationale which explains the situation, or an alternative description should be made."
* "A group involved in playing a scenario or campaign can make their adventures more elaborate, more detailed, more interesting, with the input of a great deal of imagination. . . . Above all, the referee and the players should work together. . . . the situation is not primarily an adversary relationship. The referee simply administers rules in situations where the players themselves have an incomplete understanding of the universe. The results should reflect a consistent reality."
It's not part of the referee's job to decide, prior to a Streewise check made to find someone who will sell illegal guns at a good price, to decide whether or not there is such a someone to be found.
existence of general type of a person or good and existence of an unique specific thing you made up are rather drastically different things
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You have some sort of weird category error going on here. These are completely different sort of things. If your character decides to attack the orc, you don't get to decide what the orc does, the GM decides that. And whether that orcs attempts to defend (assuming that the GM decides that this is what they do) is represented via some passive number such as in D&D or via some active roll like in many other games really does not affect that. That is completely different than narrative level ability to summon towers into being! Can you really not tell the difference between deciding the actions of your character and deciding things about the world, external to your character?
You assert these differences. I'm sure they're important to you. I don't really feel the force of them.
If there exists
someone willing to sell illegal guns at a good price, it follows that
there exists a unique specific person in a particular place willing to engage in that activity.
The impersonal framing in Traveller mostly reflects that - as the name of the game suggests - the PCs are travellers through the universe. The Streetwise rules address this head-on by saying (Book 1) that "local subcultures . . . tend to be the same everywhere in human society" so that the ability is a portable one.
The personal framing in the Burning Wheel scenario I described, conversely, mostly reflects the fact that asking the referee
Do I know anything about local wizard's towers? is incredibly non-immersive (the only time I've ever had to ask someone else to tell me what it is that I know is when I had a (thankfully) brief period of amnesia), whereas asking
Am I right to think that we're in the neighbourhood of Evard's tower? actually inhabits my character's mental space. Burning Wheel is not a game that focuses on strangers in strange lands. Connections and relationships are an important part of the game.
As far as the difference between
knowing and finding things and
circumventing Orc shields, they both involve interaction between the character and the broader (fictional) world. When my PC attacks an Orc, it is
the Orc who decides whether and how to defend, who instigates the causal process that might result in my attack being blocked, etc. That process interacts with the process my PC initiates - of attacking the Orc with a sword.
When my PC's sidekick contemplates the location of Evard's tower, it is
Evard and his assistants who have decided whether or not to build a tower, and where. That process interacts with processes that are internal to my character - like having heard rumours of Evard's tower and its location, and now trying to accurately recall those stories.
It's sheer dogma to insist that one set of processes "naturally" lends itself to all being settled on the player side (via a to-hit roll against static AC) while the other "naturally" lends itself to being settled in some different fashion (GM makes an unconstrainted prior decision, and then has the player make a roll to determine whether or not that decision is communicated to the player). RuneQuest is a RPG that has been around for a pretty long time and handles the shield issue differently from how D&D does - it uses checks to model both processes. Classic Traveller has also been around for a pretty long time, and it handles the
person and place issue much the same as D&D handles the Orc shield issue.
I understand that a lot of players seem to prefer to play RPGs where they learn their PCs' memories and experiences by having the GM narrate them to them in a 2nd person fashion. It puzzles me that anyone would find this very immersive (unless playing an amnesiac!), but there's no accounting for differences of taste.
But those matters of difference and taste don't really bear upon the actual analysis of the mechanical approaches and the principles that govern them.
