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

[DEFCON 1]

I define "Mother, may I" as an extreme only of rule zero: in most games i am very happy to let the dungeon master have the final word, but I have been in ridiculous games where the dungeon master caused my character to be killed because I called the NPC a hobbit instead of a halfling.

Heh... and that's the problem with a lot of these "playstyle" discussions and arguments here on the boards. More often than not, a person's issue with a particular playstyle isn't actually the playstyle itself, but how the style was played and used by the other people at the table.

If you are playing with someone whose use of a playstyle just doesn't jive with you, or whom others would say was not using that playstyle in the manner that should be the most effective... it's no wonder why a person bounces off of it or says the playstyle is bad.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I define "Mother, may I" as an extreme only of rule zero: in most games i am very happy to let the dungeon master have the final word, but I have been in ridiculous games where the dungeon master caused my character to be killed because I called the NPC a hobbit instead of a halfling.

This is the issue.

I agree that this was a terrible experience (a "ridiculous game"). But this is the crux of the problem with the term. At it's core, everyone agrees in the tautology that Bad GMs are Bad GMs.

Just like if I came up with some clever term, say, "One Ball, 11 Quarterbacks," or "Lowest Common Denominator Play," to describe unruly players who try to dominate the game by inventing fiction or rules lawyering, I would be doing nothing more than employing the tautology that ... wait for it ... Bad Players are Bad Players.

The trouble, of course, is that there is a group of people that chose to use "Mother May I" as a way to describe ... not Bad GMing, but an entire way of playing. A playstyle. In the same way that I might call certain games, "Lowest Common Denominator." And then turn around and say, "Hey there, I'm not being negative- just describing it! Don't take offense at the terms I use! After all, some other person also used them, so it's okay. Suck it up, buttercup!"

There is a simple way to get to the heart of the issue- go and ask people who play a certain style* if they describe their games in that way. If they (absent a failure point- like Bad DMing) would describe the way they play as "Mother My I."

Now, if they don't ... maybe you shouldn't use that term to describe them? That's basic courtesy. If you want to have an actual conversation with people (as opposed to trumpet your own preferred playing style), it's usually best to not try and rubbish the other side with loaded terms.

Then again, if your purpose is not to have that conversation, then don't bother. The choice is yours.



*In order to head off the inevitable, it has to be their preferred and most common playstyle. Not, "I used to play Mother May I, but now I know better!" Or, "Sure, sometimes I have to play Mother May I, but that's only because the sheeple don't play the games I like."

 

[Tallifer]

This is the issue.

Hmm...

then I define "Mother may I" as "DM has the final say," and I approve of it given the caveat that some DMs are just horrible people. LOL

 

[briggart]

But the other side can be just as frustrating and indeed could be claimed as "metagaming" just as badly. The life-or-death situation where one ally is getting pummeled to death but other players have their character hang back and just plink away at it with ranged weapons because they don't want to risk their own character being hurt. It's okay if the "tank goes down"... that's the "tank's job" after all... but I can risk MY character dying by getting into the fray and drawing attacks away from the downed tank.

That kind of "play to survive" or "play to win" mentality I find to be just as egregious. And indeed not at all truthful either.

Thanks for clarifying, I misunderstood your original post. I too do no particularly enjoy the "every player for themselves" D&D, except possibly for the occasional one-shot. In my regular groups we see D&D as a sport team, so we typically have each other backs. I've encountered the behavior you described mostly in organized play, but it didn't bother me too much there, given the higher player rotation.

 

[payn]

Is that why caster supremacy is such a problem? The game is designed for you to eyeball guess and miss target half the time?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Hmm...

then I define "Mother may I" as "DM has the final say," and I approve of it given the caveat that some DMs are just horrible people. LOL

That's the thing though; fundamentally, there are a lot of different ways to categorize TTRPGs. One of the major dividing lines is the "distribution of authority."

There are advantages, and there are drawbacks, with having games that allocate more authority to the DM. It's perfectly possible to have a conversation about that! As you correctly point out, the biggest drawback is that having the DM have that authority provides one MASSIVE failure point. OTOH, one of the advantages is that this is the failure point; games that have a great deal of player authority require a great deal of player involvement (GOOD!) but also are less suited to tables where not all the players are equally involved, or "bring it" every game.

It's perfectly possible to have those discussions without categorizing games in a pejorative way.

 

[Hussar]

So this statement I think gets to an important point of the discussion. If this is your experiences with Mother May I? gameplay... where the DM only pretends to 'Yes, And' as a matter of politeness but has every intention of working things to say 'No' because they want something else to happen... then of course I understand why you don't like it and would rather have a fuller set of concrete rules. I get that wholeheartedly! With more set rules the DM has less chance to talk out of both sides of their mouth. That makes all the sense in the world and I'm sorry you experience that.

But just know there are some of us out here who will say 'Yes, And', and then actually do 'Yes, And'. If you find yourself playing a game with one of us at some point, hopefully we'll be able to show you that this style of play isn't always as bad as you have experienced.

Oh, I get that. Honestly, it's why I DM far more than I play. I get frustrated in games, quite often, after seeing exactly this. And, note, I don't think DM's are doing it maliciously. There's always the sense that they are "providing a challenge" and things like that. You see it in discussions on the boards as well. DM's will talk about how you can't do this or that, because the "world keeps on moving around you" and whatnot.

I have zero problems with "Yes and" to be honest. I do it all the time. But, I also totally understand why players are so reluctant to engage in the game that way as well. It only takes being bitten a few times for players to turtle up and only try to engage with the game world through their character sheets. They know that the DM will abide by the rules, so, if the rules say that they succeed, or they have X chance of success anyway, they can actually plan around those odds. Otherwise, it's not really engaging with the game at all. It's "How long can you be lucky before you eventually fail a check and the first (or maybe the second) fail will be catastrophic.

 

[Hussar]

That's the thing though; fundamentally, there are a lot of different ways to categorize TTRPGs. One of the major dividing lines is the "distribution of authority."

There are advantages, and there are drawbacks, with having games that allocate more authority to the DM. It's perfectly possible to have a conversation about that! As you correctly point out, the biggest drawback is that having the DM have that authority provides one MASSIVE failure point. OTOH, one of the advantages is that this is the failure point; games that have a great deal of player authority require a great deal of player involvement (GOOD!) but also are less suited to tables where not all the players are equally involved, or "bring it" every game.

It's perfectly possible to have those discussions without categorizing games in a pejorative way.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but, Mother May I isn't exactly a common phrase though. It does describe, typically, a situation where there is a breakdown in play - but, it's rarely used to describe an entire game or play style. Or, have I just not been looking in the right places? Mother May I typically gets trotted out in response to specific examples, IME. So, like I mentioned before, play where the DM will simply keep calling for skill checks until the group fails, in order to "provide a challenge" is a perfect example of Mother May I. Or play where the DM require the players to say certain magic words in order to succeed at a task - "You didn't say your character was looking up - so, you get surprised by that giant spider on the ceiling!"

And yes, very old school play where the players were constantly expected to describe in detail what their characters were doing in order to find traps or secret doors or that sort of thing is another example of Mother May I and there's a reason the game moved away from that model. I mean, we've had thieves skills in the game since the 70's. The whole "You must tell the DM exactly what you are doing" model caused far more problems at the table than it solved, and, rightly, it was jettisoned from the game.

Note there are games now that might be going back in that direction, that's fair, but, I'd say that that's far more the exception than the rule. It's pretty rare now for a game to insist that you explicitly detail every action your character takes. Most games abstract it to skill checks of some sort or other.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but, Mother May I isn't exactly a common phrase though. It does describe, typically, a situation where there is a breakdown in play - but, it's rarely used to describe an entire game or play style. Or, have I just not been looking in the right places?

Well, let's see ... you literally defined an entire gaming style later in your post as Mother May I. Did you notice that?

Here-

And yes, very old school play where the players were constantly expected to describe in detail what their characters were doing in order to find traps or secret doors or that sort of thing is another example of Mother May I and there's a reason the game moved away from that model. I mean, we've had thieves skills in the game since the 70's. The whole "You must tell the DM exactly what you are doing" model caused far more problems at the table than it solved, and, rightly, it was jettisoned from the game.

Except .... it wasn't jettisoned from the game. There is a reason that there is this entire "OSR" thing. Or, for that matter, "FKR."

And that's the issue- you just literally and unknowingly disparaged the way a LOT of people play. Because you have accepted this term- which was first used, AFAIK, (IRONY ALERT) by Mike Mearls and became popularized among a certain set of gamers that did not play D&D.

Which is the point I was making. Use the term other people use to describe the games they are playing. Don't use a term that was invented as a pejorative.

 

[GSHamster]

I wonder what the game would look like if we added more "Mother, May I" elements to spell-casting. For example, if Knock had the following restriction:

"Gnomish locksmiths have a secret method of making locks which makes them resilient to magic. A lock made by a Gnome cannot be opened with Knock."