Well, in that mass of bad takes overnight, I was quite surprised to see that
@Oofta said this:
There are times when I've decided that I'm uncertain what my PC (or NPC if I'm DMing) would do or how they would react and I will roll a die to make a determination. My current PC in my wife's campaign flips a coin but that's more of a character affectation and ... well it's a long story.
Because this is the same conceptual thing as all of the mechanics being discussed, and which
@Oofta strangely disclaims despite this statement. And here's why -- every one of the mechanics being cited for resolution of character points are invoked by the player. Every one. Sometimes this is explicit in the moment -- you explicitly state that you want to find this out about your character. And here, this is just like what
@Oofta's die roll or his wife's coin flip are doing. You're saying that you do not want to decide this, you want to be prompted, so you explicitly engage a mechanical resolution.
@Oofta's is adhoc, and the ones under discussion are much more formalized, but the conceptual parts are the same.
What gets lost in many of the responses that disclaim these kinds of mechanics is this player engagement with the concept. They treat them as forced upon the player unwanted, that there's just a die roll at random points or whenever the GM chooses, and disclaim this loss of agency. And I agree -- if this were the case it would be weird and I wouldn't like it at all. No, instead what's happening is that the player is asking for this to resolve something about their character that they want to find out but not decide -- just like when
@Oofta rolls a die. Most often, though, this choice to put these aspects of character to the test are made either when you agree to play a certain game that has this as a major theme, or during character creation where you flag these parts of your character as things you want to find out. Sometimes it's explicit in the moment. But, at all times, it's the player putting these things forward as "let's test this in play and see what happens." These aren't things foisted upon them.
So, it seems that
@Oofta does understand the appeal of using an outside method to determine what a character wants, feels, or does. They just haven't yet aligned this to the conception of doing so in a more formalized method that's still very much engaging what the player feels are those moments where the character should be so tested.