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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7979024" data-attributes="member: 29398">Agreed.It's in the box.  Not in the sideboard or the flower pot or the dresser drawer even if those are searched first no matter how successful the roll might be.Which is where we fall apart; any system that allows the result of a check to retroactively affect the fiction (e.g. a great check roll determines the widget is found in the flower pot, thus meaning someone earlier in the fiction had to have put it there) leads directly to Schroedinger's widgets.By 'serach chest' I assume you mean 'search check'?The character opens the chest and searches.  The player rolls the die as a means of informing what happens next - does the character find anything if it's there to be found - but it's still the character doing the searching, be it done well or not well.In LotR these things never become relevant but if they did, one would have to assume JRRT had the specifics in mind all along.But in an RPG where it's unknown what might later become relevant, there has to be a baseline assumption that things in the fiction are constant - that should the PCs for some reason search Sam's house for Galadhriel's box there's a specific place (determined ahead of time by the DM, as soon as it becomes obvious the box's location is going to matter) where he's put it, and should they happen to look there they'll find it.Sometimes this happens, when the players ask the DM about something she simply didn't see coming; and she has to improvise.In the widget example, it's known by the DM ahead of time the PCs are going to look for it and so she - as is her right when setting adventure parameters - places it in location x.So of course it's 'GM decides'.As for 'have to occur'; well if the PCs have been sent to find the widget it's a pretty safe bet they're going to look for it, which means searching of some sort 99% likely has to occur (the other 1% being if the PCs decide not to bother with the mission once on site).  Further, the widget's location has to be set somewhere - which may or may not be anywhere related to the area being searched! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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