D&D 5E How do you define “mother may I” in relation to D&D 5E?

[Umbran]

And the obvious answer to that is the characters do not and basically cannot exist in such an information-rich environment.

With respect - the characters live in their full-fidelity environment 24/7, while the players have a smoky, filtered window into that world a few hours every few weeks, or somesuch. In effect, the characters always live in an information-rich environment. The players live in an environment in which the only information they get comes out of the rules in play, and the GM's mouth.

You're in a dimly-lit dungeon 100ft underground some 200 miles from your home. There's about a 0% chance of you knowing exactly how far away is that drooling monster who wants to eat your face.

To me, you seem to be confusing "having a role-playing experience" with "playing a role playing game". In an RPG players are expected not only to make role-playing decisions, but game playing decisions. So, of course, they want information for their game play choices.

Now, remember the different perspectives of the player and character. The character doesn't actually need to know an enemy's position down to 5' resolution. The character is, for example, proficient in use of the longbow. They've made great practice with the weapon, with their life depending on that practice. They've been plugging away at rabbits and deer for food for a decade. They know if the critter is in short or long range, without having to get a tape measure.

But, they player doesn't know if they are in short or long range unless you tell them. If the GM refuses to give them the information, the GM is creating a divide between the game choice and the role choice that should not be there.

So, choose rules that base game decisions on the kinds of information you will give players, not the kinds of information you know you won't, and then the role play and game play will be in alignment.

What a self-contradictory statement. Trying to find out what's going on is acting on the setting. Do you want to know what's behind that door? Guess what, you have to go over there and open it. To gain information you have to act on the environment.

Sure. But, here we get into how this is supposed to be a play activity. It is supposed to be entertaining. Long periods of fruitless action to get information from the environment is apt to be tedious, boring, and/or frustrating. Play ought to be arranged so that the activity ends up a fair use of the player's time.

 

[Undrave]

I only bring up MMI when I find it unequally applied to characters.

That is, I accept there's certain amount of MMI in a RPG and dealing with your DM is part of the gameplay, but I take offense in the fact that certain characters (mainly Casters) inherently have less need to rely on it than other characters. Everybody deserves the chance to reliably go "I'm gonna do X" without having to ask permission all the damn time.

 

[Malmuria]

There's actually probably something analogous here to the "if Ubisoft developed Elden Ring" meme. Surely there are ways in ttrpgs to make environmental navigation challenging without being opaque and frustrating, but also without providing an elaborate metagame 'overlay' to every single aspect of the game.

(that's a parody image of what the game Elden Ring would look like if created by more maximalist UI designers. Someone should do something similar with the layout of OSE and the 5e DMG)

 

[Umbran]

It's like trying to play football, but the defending team can just add more players to their side whenever they want during a play.

What came to my mind was playing a game in which you don't know where the opponent's pieces are - this works fine if you are playing Battleship, but not well if you are playing Checkers.

 

[overgeeked]

With respect - the characters live in their full-fidelity environment 24/7, while the players have a smoky, filtered window into that world a few hours every few weeks, or somesuch. In effect, the characters always live in an information-rich environment. The players live in an environment in which the only information they get comes out of the rules in play, and the GM's mouth.

With respect, you live in a full-fidelity environment 24/7 and I'm willing to bet you'd have a problem with the experiment from my post you quoted. We have this very strange notion of how much information we have and how easy it is to access, but in a lot of cases we're wrong. Like the old saw of knowing something like the back of your hand, there have been experiments on this, most people can't tell the back of their own hand very well at all. To say nothing of guessing directions and distances.

To me, you seem to be confusing "having a role-playing experience" with "playing a role playing game". In an RPG players are expected not only to make role-playing decisions, but game playing decisions. So, of course, they want information for their game play choices.

No, not confusing them. I want them to match as much as possible. That's intentional. The purpose of the game mechanics is to more accurately mirror the environment the character is in. The further we get away from that, the worse it is, in my opinion. So, since people cannot perfectly measure distances with a glance in dim light while their life is in jeopardy, neither the character nor the player should have that ability. If players have meta-game information, they will act on it. So, the less meta-game information the players have, the more accurately their role-playing choices will mirror what the character in that situation would do. That's the desired goal. For the players to make role-playing choices based on role-playing their character, not make role-playing choices based on game mechanics.

Now, remember the different perspectives of the player and character. The character doesn't actually need to know an enemy's position down to 5' resolution. The character is, for example, proficient in use of the longbow. They've made great practice with the weapon, with their life depending on that practice. They've been plugging away at rabbits and deer for food for a decade. They know if the critter is in short or long range, without having to get a tape measure.

Exactly. So there's no need for precise measurements. The character knows the target is roughly in short or long range. So the referee should tell the player that. The information the player has to use to make choices should mirror the information the character has to use to make choices.

But, they player doesn't know if they are in short or long range unless you tell them. If the GM refuses to give them the information, the GM is creating a divide between the game choice and the role choice that should not be there.

You're assuming I'm saying that. I'm not. Not at all. The information the player has should match the information the character has as much as possible. The character does not know that the rabbit is exactly 100ft away, so the player doesn't need to know that either. The character knows the target is roughly in short or long range, so the referee should tell the player that. Basic theater of the mind.

So, choose rules that bases decisions on the kinds of information you will give players, not the kinds of information you know you won't, and then the role play and game play will be in alignment.

Again, theater of the mind.

Sure. But, here we get into how this is supposed to be a play activity. It is supposed to be entertaining. Long periods of fruitless action to get information from the environment is apt to be tedious, boring, and/or frustrating. Play ought to be arranged so that the activity ends up a fair use of the player's time.

Different people find different things fun and entertaining. You might find having to interact with the environment to glean information about the environment tedious, boring, and/or frustrating, but others don't.

 

[Umbran]

With respect, you live in a full-fidelity environment 24/7 and I'm willing to bet you'd have a problem with the experiment from my post you quoted.

So, still with respect, you seem to be misunderstanding the issue.

The question of how much detail you need to give a player is, as already mentioned, an issue of the rules chosen. It isn't about actual real world level of detail, it is about the detail needed to make game choices. Arguments that "you don't, in the real world, use that detail" are irrelevant, because that detail isn't being used as it would be in the real world! It is being used for game rule decision making, and that's all.

If you are using theater of the mind, then you give theater of the mind detail. If you are using detailed tactical rules, you give that level of detail. If the GMs in those two situations are doing their jobs properly, in the long run, there will be little difference between the results.

We have this very strange notion of how much information we have and how easy it is to access

As above, I don't think we have a very strange notion about how much information we have. We have a solid notion about how much information our players need to make gameplay decisions.

No, not confusing them. I want them to match as much as possible. That's intentional. The purpose of the game mechanics is to more accurately mirror the environment the character is in.

Eh, no. Game mechanics do/can have several possible purposes, and that isn't always one of them.

Again, theater of the mind.

Yes, I get that. Within theater of the mind, you give theater of the mind information. I play loads of Fate, which is entirely theater of the mind. But, that theater of the mind argument doesn't generalize outside of ToM play.

 

[bloodtide]

Those...don't sound like "OSR" rules at all to me. Far from it. They sound completely idiosyncratic, or very modern. What makes them "OSR"?

The people that made them made them for OSR games.

I don't understand what "by the book" means in this context. What do you mean by it? How does it differ from using defined rules creatively? I'm very confused. The sentences around the words sound like "bullheaded anti-creativity," but that has nothing to do with the words "by the book." I actually saw both "dogged refusal to use the book (and thus dying)" and "extremely creative by-the-book play (and thus trouncing a difficult adventure" in my brief foray into OSR gaming. Specifically, it was three or four sessions of Labyrinth Lord, wherein I saw a PC die horribly due to doggedly insisting on his "creative" solution that invoked no rules other than "DM decides," and another nearly single-handedly deal with a tough situation through intelligent use of two spells, one of which was invisibility, though I fear I have forgotten what the second was.

Yes, by the book means no creativity. After all there are no rules for creativity. A by the book player will only consider doing things that are listed in the rules in the book. They would never even consider the "swing on a rope and spread a bag of flower around". They look at the book for "attack actions" and do only one of them. Most often in combat, a by the book player will only attack...do damage..kill foes...just like the rules say to do. The same way if there character walks into an area, they will want to make a check to do anything.....just like the rules say.

 

[overgeeked]

So, still with respect, you seem to be misunderstanding the issue.

I understand. I just disagree with you. We're coming at this from opposite angles. To you, seemingly, having enough info to make a good game decision is the goal. That's fine, but that's not my goal. To me, having only the information your character would have so you can make a good role-playing decision is the goal. Having meta-game knowledge inevitably gets in the way. It's only natural, but it gets in the way. If you the player make a good game decision that is counter to what your character would do, i.e. a bad role-playing decision, there's a monumental problem. And that's almost always down to the rules and players meta-gaming. For me, the less you worry about the game, the better. The more you focus on the setting, the world, the character, the better. Play roles, not games. Play worlds, not rules. Etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

And the obvious answer to that is the characters do not and basically cannot exist in such an information-rich environment. The player's desire for precise metagame information is at odds with the amount and quality of information reasonably available to the character in the fiction. No monster living in a dungeon is going to paint 5ft markings across the floor, for example.

The only time a character would know precisely how far away something is is if they happen to be in their home and happened to have measured the distances precisely before combat for some reason. And then, it's not going to be precise. You might know the couch is 40-some inches and the door's a little smaller than that. But unless you've taken a tape measure to your living room, and memorized those numbers, and can recall those numbers perfectly in a life-and-death situation, you're not going to know exactly how far something is from you. The further from those ideal conditions you are, the less precise your information will be.

You're in a dimly-lit dungeon 100ft underground some 200 miles from your home. There's about a 0% chance of you knowing exactly how far away is that drooling monster who wants to eat your face.

No, we referees should be more honest and prepare the setting in an honest way. As above, unless the conditions are literally perfect, the characters will not have precise information. That the players decide that's not enough, that's cheating, that's not fair, etc is 100% on them. That the players want more information to make a split-second decision than hours worth of scans and measurements could possibly provide is not reasonable and referees should not cater to that.

What a self-contradictory statement. Trying to find out what's going on is acting on the setting. Do you want to know what's behind that door? Guess what, you have to go over there and open it. To gain information you have to act on the environment.

ETA: Try this experiment. No need to report the results. Grab a small cup or bowl and a tape measure or ruler. Go into the biggest room of your home, keeping your eyes on the floor. Don't bump into anything, but don't scan the room. Pick a relatively centered spot and put down the cup/bowl and tape measure between your feet. Close your eyes and stand up straight. Angle your self about 5-10 degrees off-center from the walls. Now...point out your arm at some small object in the room, against the walls, or on the walls, like a TV or picture. Say out loud the number of feet you are away from that object. Open your eyes and look. Now, be honest. I bet you were close, but not spot on with your directions. Now measure the distance from the cup/bowl to the object you picked. Again, be honest. I bet you were off by more than a little bit. And that's the objects in a room you regularly interact with. Now extrapolate that out to a place you've never been before, in less than ideal conditions, in dim light, and knowing your life is in jeopardy. There's no chance you're going to have perfect knowledge of relative distances.

It seems like this post is getting a lot of criticism rooted in extremes that grant players unlimited grace and assume poor gm'ing even when the player may have come to the table with problematic & possibly toxic behaviors developed as a response to some other gm.


There was a post over on the alexandrian about abused gamer syndrome where players come to the table with problematic behaviors seemingly rooted in experience with some other GM. For whatever reason it tends to be common in d&d communication to reflexively blame the gm rather than admit some players come to the table with problematic expectations & behavior

Spoiler: There's a great video on it here

Timestamp jjmps to the relevant section

That's not to say that an inexperienced or malicious gm is not capable of causing players to act as described simply to survive(or whatever) as this post is getting friction on... It just admits that the gm is not the only possible problem element.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

To the points above, just want to throw out two questions:

1) When is the last time, in real life, you've misjudged a distance, and maybe tossed something to someone which landed at their feet, or found the piece of aluminum foil you cut off is Way too short to be useful, or ran out of gas, or whatever else?

2) When is the last time, in D&D, you've had someone fire off a spell or shoot an arrow or something, and had them a bit out of range, and the spell fizzles short or the shot goes wide, and everyone just rolled with it? Conversely, when is the last time finding out 'that person is out of range of that spell' or 'you have disadvantage on that shot since it's long range' has resulted in 'well then I wouldn't have targeted them' or 'well then I'm doing something else' or something to that effect?

Someone trying to lightning bolt a target and them being just out of reach (or equivalent) happens all the time in books, movies, whatever, because it's narratively compelling. It's also deeply relatable, we've been there and done that. But it pretty much never happens in D&D in my experience, and attempting to ensure it doesn't happen often takes significant time and discussion and ends up with the plan for someone's 6 second turn taking minutes as the 2nd or 3rd iteration of their plans are formulated around a new piece of info.

Just saying, someone eyeballing minis on a map without grid markers, saying 'I cast X at Y', the DM whipping out a tape measure, and announcing 'you complete the casting but since they're not a valid target (being outside the range of the spell) the magic fizzles without effect' is not necessarily a sign of a bad GM or inadequate information being provided or even an undesirable result in my opinion. To each their own of course and I'm not at all saying that folks Should be operating on 'less than perfect' info in game, again, around my tables folks certainly get to mulligan and act as if their players Did have all the info. I can simply see why a different approach might be seen as desirable.