In (2) the player, while still having the hope, also has the meta-knowledge that a good roll guarantees success; which the player in (1) - just like the PC in the fiction - doesn't have.
Well, the PC doesn't know
anything about dice rolls. So that is already a player/PC divide in any system that uses dice to resolve action declarations.
In the end, I can only report my experience: rolling and hoping correlates strongly to searching and hoping. The player knows the action isn't futile (because success on the dice is possible); but the PC must at least
believe that searching isn't futile, or else s/he wouldn't be doing it.
I have to say, this absolutely boggles my mind: that the mechanics of a game system limit what the DM can describe in a scene!
More description is permitted, but it will just be colour. Whereas the scene distinctions are not mere colour.
"Chill Winds" doesn't tell me if it's snowing (reduced visibility?), or bright sunshine (snow blindness?), or what...which means I'd have to ask.
Well, it doesn't matter to resolution. If you think the Chill Winds are hampering your PC, you can declare as much (and earn a plot point). When you describe what is going on, you might refer to snow being driven by the Chill Winds, or to the winds themselves, as you feel fits your conception of the situation. No one else at the table is going to contradict you.
"Narrow Defile..." needs a direction, which when coupled with the time of day (particularly if it's sunny) would tell me whether the defile is well-lit or is in deep shadow at the moment.
Again, this doesn't matter to resolution.
At the start of the encounter described in my earlier post, the berserker identified and established a defensive position for the PC seer and himself - he delcared that he was moving some rocks into place against the mountain wall (thus using his Godlike Strength as the biggest die in his pool). In my mind's eye, this was on the left looking at the wyverns flying in (because that fitted where those two players were seated at the table relative to me). I don't know how the player envisaged it in detail, but that didn't matter.
Little things like this - if you describe them up front players don't have to ask about them; and yes I'm saying it's usually better to describe in too much detail rather than too little.
The number of RPG tables which worry about the location of the sun, and hence (eg) the difficulties of shooting arrows at backlit foes, or the chance of momentary blindness from looking into ths sun, is - I assert - very very small.
In Cortex+ Heroic, that risk is all subsumed into the Narrow Defile scene distinction.
But, let's try an example. The party enters a study in a castle; they're here looking for a map and have decided that if the castle has a study that's the first place they'll look...and so they either explore until they get there or are framed straight there (no difference for these purposes). In either case, were I to go into detail my narration of the place might go something like:
[sblock]"You've found what appears to be - or have been - a study. It's a small room - maybe 15' on a side - with stone walls, rug-covered floor and plastered-over ceiling; there are no other obvious exits other than the door you are in, and no obvious occupants. A leaded-glass window across the room from you looks out north across the lawn toward the gate house, and allows enough light in that vision here is not really a problem; the room is otherwise unlit. The place clearly isn't used often - dusty gray sheets cover most of the furniture, some of the shapes hinting at two chairs and a table beneath - and everything is covered with a thick layer of dust, slightly stirred up by your arrival. There are but two pieces of furniture not covered by sheets: an overstuffed armchair beneath the window whose sheet - on the floor nexxt to it - has clearly fallen off at some point, and a solid-looking wooden desk just to the right of the door. On this desk are a small box of some sort, an inkwell with what's left of a quill sticking out of it, an empty wine glass, and what might be some papers - it's hard to tell under the dust. The desk also has a couple of closed wide shallow drawers just below its top. A large tall sheet-covered piece of furniture against the west wall might be a bookshelf or a shallow wardrobe - again, hard to tell. What do you do?[/sblock]
So, no mechanics here, just a description in enough detail to forestall some obvious questions and provide lots of things to interact with. Would Cortex+ Heroic allow this, in this wording?
Well, it discourages it.
I would say something more like:
You come into a small sunlit study. The scene distincitons are Stonewalled Room, Sheet-covered Furniture and Dust-covered Desk.
Oon this approach, if the players look for things on the desk - papers, boxes, whatever - then, given that we're talking about a hunt for something, that would (in mechanical terms) be about creating assets or resources. It probably wouldn't be built into the situation by the GM.
If the GM wants to make the box a feature, then an alternative would be:
You come into a small sunlit study. The scene distincitons are Sheet-covered Furniture, Dust-covered Desk and - on the desk - an Intriguing Box.
