If locking in of this type (as contrasted with pre-scripted material) is part of play, then how it's done doesn't matter. The story—or the chain of events, to be more fussy about it—is being driven by generative dramatic concerns, not pre-scripted logical or dramatic concerns. I've been in Blades sessions where we went through several steps to investigate and inquire and determine where our objective must be (or even to generate the dramatic need for such a thing)—and that established that it was there, although the critical check at the climactic moment could scupper or complicate our efforts up to that point, for some other reason.
This part matches the locking in that we're using. Players can work things to a point where the dirt must be in the safe, and there could still be a roll if some other complication were possible.
I've been in Blades sessions where we players just put forward a likely fact in the moment, and because we succeeded on the check, it was true. (Or if we failed on the check, and the stakes were specifically that it was or was not there, then it wasn't there.) It all depended on how we wanted to go about things and where we wanted to dive into detail. In all cases, the stakes of each check were open and accepted as to how things would shake out, based on the dice roll (which, by the way, leaves room for "something bad's gonna happen, but you're not sure what"!).
The more difficult case is if the group simply say "Sod it, let's break in and check the safe. Maybe the dirt is there, maybe not." No work done to get things to a locked in state. Player intent in this case is to prove that the dirt is or is not in this safe (as indicated by "maybe the dirt is there, maybe not"). If they can't open the safe (fail), they can't satisfy that intent. If they can open it (succeed), then they do satisfy that intent, even if the safe is empty.
But suppose a player dug their heels in and said - "I'm cracking this safe with the firm and specfic goal / intent of finding the dirt inside"
despite having done nothing at all to lock that in!? I asses this as a degenerate case that puts the player in the position of spoilsport. It can also happen as an inadvertant instance of inept play (an antithesis of skilled play) in which case reminding that they've no clues as to what could be in the safe, so the declared intent toward it is ill-formed, gets things back on track. They adjust, maybe crack it, with renewed faithfulness as to what they can say that follows. To see how it's a kind of reaching, imagine instead they say "I'm cracking this safe with the firm and specfic goal / intent of finding a +3 defender sword inside" or something that is normally nonsensical, like finding the safe inside itself!
Locking in of this type is not compatible with GNS process-sim play, clearly. That involves the GM establishing facts about the world ahead of time and sticking to them (although how players can be assured the GM is sticking to pre-established facts is an issue).
Right, albeit to count the bracketed part as a concern is really to shift the analysis to the question of - are GMs trustworthy? I just add "In the case that GM is trustworthy,..." and the assessment is worked out from there.
It's also not compatible with GNS high-concept sim, if that means the GM reserves all right to what's true about the world at large from moment to moment. And those traits are generally expected of those kinds of play.
I might misread this. You mean that in HCS, GM reserves all right to what's true about the world at large from moment to moment. That's how I see it, also. Locking in can mean finding out what was in prep. The character pumps an informant and finds out that no, the dirt isn't in the safe. No safe cracking required. But prep is held
lightly and we're working together in an iterative process to learn what is true. It strikes me that folk get that there is an FKR method for task resolution, but I think there is also one for conflict resolution. I need to think on that more.
