I tried to look this up to see if this had been asked but I could not find much, so here I ask =
What do you think of games where the GM never rolls dice?
They're called "Player Facing Systems" in the majority of discussions I've been involved in.
Would you be happy if D&D and Pathfinder and GURPS and RuneQuest switched to GM never roll? (players only rolled to react/deflect/counter to attacks and such)
Since I won't run any of those at present (except maybe RQ 3rd or MGT1, but neither in Glorantha)... it wouldn't matter to me.
If you LIKE GM no roll games, what is a time when it failed you or didn't help roleplay? (if only for a single action or scene, if ever)
You're assuming a false premise: that they should help with roleplay. My experience is that they're no more and no less roleplay-centric than other games of otherwise similar construction. They don't. The players preferences for how to play far more impact than whether or not the GM rolls dice.
Some such systems are =
- Powered by the Apocalypse (et al)
- Cypher system
- Symbaroum
- Forged in the Dark (et al)
- Tales from the Loop
The Unisystem Lite games are also player facing. Those being,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
Angel,
Army of Darkness, and
Ghosts of Albion. All are built with an assumed roll of 6 in place of the d10 players roll, and essentially all conflict rolls are thus opposed. I ran a season's worth... it works well, but it was my highest prep

lay ratio (about 3:2) ever for the per session adventures.
DragonLance: Fifth Age is the one I enjoyed most; it's card driven, not dice, but it's still player facing resolutions. It's so solid and so different from other TSR games... for some, it works. For others, it's too different.
A few (admitedly distanced) AWE/PBTA derived/inspired games do have GM's rolling. The most successful of those is
Sentinel Comics. (The starter kit explicitly links the design to PBTA.)
(Edit) There is one that's mostly player facing, but the GM rolls for NPC/Monster damage:
Talisman Adventures. Players pick which they attack, their roll determines their hit and their foes's hit (inversely). Extra NPCs the GM gets to pick targets, who then roll solely to resist.
Other thoughts on GM no roll games?
I don't find them as fun to GM, but not to the point of disliking them. I'm not averse to running them. I like my dice. Or my cards. But a good concept and good execution providing other interesting things for the GM to do? Could be worth it. For DL5A, it was.
For Buffy... well... it's not hit the table since. I did play in a campaign, but the GM there was rolling and not reducing the NPC base scores by 6, so I walked. (He also had opinions of schools that were beyond unrealistic. And I was working as a sub in the public schools at the time.)