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

[Vaalingrade]

Except for illusion and enchantment spells. And a lot of divination spells.

There is a reason no one uses illusion spells.

Too many ogres instantly realizing that the shadows aren't just right, or city guards that literally know every single street in a massive city and KNOW there isn't supposed to be a wall there.

 

[Malmuria]

There is a reason no one uses illusion spells.

Too many ogres instantly realizing that the shadows aren't just right, or city guards that literally know every single street in a massive city and KNOW there isn't supposed to be a wall there.

I've seen plenty of illusion and enchantment spells that are effective in play. It all depends on the DM and the Players and the communication/trust between those parties. The same is true for something like a persuasion roll, where the effects of a success are fuzzy but still possible to be adjudicated.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

There is a reason no one uses illusion spells.

Too many ogres instantly realizing that the shadows aren't just right, or city guards that literally know every single street in a massive city and KNOW there isn't supposed to be a wall there.

Not long ago at all during a session I was playing in, we were staking out somewhere and were hiding in an alley. A NPC who was with us rolled a 1 on their stealth, and the DM indicated they were 'relieving themselves' on the wall of the building as some guards came by. With few options available, I illusion'd a bush around them. The guards walked on by, one of them commenting to the other how the alley smelled like a sewer. Worked quite well, was hilarious. Agreed with Malmuria that it all depends on the DM and players, just pointing out that the guards magically 'knowing' every alley by heart and automatically identifying the element which is out of place is not a universal thing.

 

[James Gasik]

There is a reason no one uses illusion spells.

Too many ogres instantly realizing that the shadows aren't just right, or city guards that literally know every single street in a massive city and KNOW there isn't supposed to be a wall there.

Because illusion spells are open ended, most any DM feels obligated to pick them apart to prevent players from "getting away with anything". Even though NPC illusions are always perfectly plausible.

Now granted, it's been my experience that players do not usually try to make their illusions plausible, creating illusions of dragons or gods when an ordinary wolf would do. But in fairness, that's likely because there's no rule that says you have to make an illusion plausible!

And even if there was ("enemies have disadvantage on saves/investigation checks against plausible illusions"), I have no doubt there would be endless debates about what even is a plausible illusion.

 

[Hussar]

The existence of people who enjoy Mother May I style rules and systems does not make them immune to criticism.

There are very good examples of Mother May I play detracting from the enjoyment of the game and almost all defenses of it boil down to Obyroni territory.

I’ve not seen a particularly strong defence of it outside of, well just have a better DM.

If it requires a “better” DM to make it work, it’s really not a very good idea.

 

[James Gasik]

An enjoyable game is kind of like a magic trick. I can understand why some DM's don't want to ruin the illusion by explaining the trick (if you'll forgive me the analogy). The way I see it, however, is that the world only exists when the DM says it does. That the DM is the lens through which everyone perceives the world.

You know the old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words"? Myself, I can wax poetic about what the players sense around them, but there reaches a point where I know I'd be doing the players a disservice by going on for ten minutes of Gygaxian prose in describing what they could figure out in seconds by seeing a picture.

So I give them that picture, and all the information possible. That might "ruin the trick", and take them out of the experience, but it's vastly preferable to my own style than accidentally setting up a "gotcha" moment where they might waste a spell slot on something that they could never target in the first place.

 

[Hussar]

Something else I'd point out. Mother May I and "Yes And" are not the same at all. I'd argue they are, in fact, polar opposites. In a Mother May I situation, the DM determines that only a certain phrase (or set of phrases) will resolve the challenge. Unless the player specifically states this phrase(s) the player cannot succeed at this challenge. In a Yes And situation, the player can state any solution (presuming that it is made in good faith) and the DM is beholden to accept that solution as true. It's the complete opposite of Mother May I.

Now, @Snarf Zagyg, I will freely admit my ignorance of Free Kriegspiel and related games. It's not anything I've ever looked into. So, as a question, do they base resolution on "Yes and"? So long as the player makes a reasonable (for a given value of reasonable) attempt to resolve the challenge, is the DM beholden to accept that resolution?

Because, the thing is, I do see Mother May I style resolution as poor gaming. It's very poor design because it leads to frustration among the players and teaches players to not rely on the DM to the absolute extent possible. It's inherently antagonistic between the person running the game and the players because it forces the players to play to the GM and not the game. It's also inherently meta-gaming because, again, I don't have to interact with the game world, I have to guess what the GM intends using the clues provided by the GM. It places the GM front and center of all challenges, rather than placing the challenges front and center.

If your players (not you @Snarf Zagyg, I'm addressing anyone reading this) immediately look to their character sheets every time you propose a challenge, be it combat, social or exploration, that's because the players have been taught, either by you or by another DM they've had in the past, that the only way they can reliably interact with the game world is through whatever is written on their character sheet. That's why I so strongly argue against anything that smacks of Mother May I in roleplaying games. It's dysfunctional and leads to dysfunctional play.

 

[bloodtide]

You can play by the book and still be creative--extremely so. It is simply not true that 100% of "by the book" play is anti-creative. I've seen it in OSR games, I've seen it in 4e, I've seen it in games that weren't even tangentially related to D&D.

True, I'd say it's 75%. That is still a ton of people who will never have a character "swing from a chandelier" as they don't have that ability written on their character sheet.

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.

I'm one of those DMs. I want the players to try all sorts of things. Though I do require the player put a bit of effort in to doing so.

 

[tetrasodium]

An enjoyable game is kind of like a magic trick. I can understand why some DM's don't want to ruin the illusion by explaining the trick (if you'll forgive me the analogy). The way I see it, however, is that the world only exists when the DM says it does. That the DM is the lens through which everyone perceives the world.

You know the old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words"? Myself, I can wax poetic about what the players sense around them, but there reaches a point where I know I'd be doing the players a disservice by going on for ten minutes of Gygaxian prose in describing what they could figure out in seconds by seeing a picture.

So I give them that picture, and all the information possible. That might "ruin the trick", and take them out of the experience, but it's vastly preferable to my own style than accidentally setting up a "gotcha" moment where they might waste a spell slot on something that they could never target in the first place.

I wouldn't say it's so simple. The original hypothetical from @overgeeked was players demanding far more than their character could reasonably know. Just in the last dungeon one of my groups ran through I had a couple examples of this kind of thing happening

• Players were in a fight with monsters in a room linked to one of the elemental plains due to some kind of arcane devicenoticed as they stormed in & began combat.
  • Midway into the fight one player wanted to move into the space with part of a freaking eldritch machine built into the room as well as the entire temple

Spoiler: it went like this

• GM"wait wut?!... like in part of the eldritch machine? There is a 3 dimensional array of runes & glyphs containing a vortex of elemental energy there"[it's literally an animated 5x5 vortex on the map ]
• Player:"well what will it do?"
• GM:"dude you are in the middle of a fight, do you want to spend your turn trying to analyze the runes?... do you even have arcana?"
• Player:"does it look dangerous?"
• GM:"It's the huge vortex of elemental energy I described when you stormed in & I called for initiative.. safe assumption to make there"
• Player:"but what will it do? I can avoid an AoO if I go through there"
• GM sighs & moves to the next spot in the initiative after declaring the PC was distracted or something

What would happen if the player walked into a vortex feeding the eldritch machine having already investigated the runes on a similar vortex tuned to a different plane in a different room?... heck if I know because I don't usually plan for that level of suicidal stupidity, anything up to bob dies instantly no save

• In another fight a player became very animated demanding to know if the weapon used by a monster was made of wood or not. I told them all they saw was the elemental component and that they would need to spend an action trying to get that info but they can't do that because it's literally a different player's turn. Combat gets back around & the player uses action+bonus action+object interaction+they moved then wanted to know if the weapon was wood... This is not a player with a heat metal/shocking grasp type ability that changes based on the presence of metal it was just a demand for more information about a magic item in the middle of combat combined with a refusal to expend any sort of action to get that info.
• In a different fight a third player had literally the entire group weighing in on the best positioning for his fireball over a period of minutes. I shrugged & gave them what he decided instead of the initial point based on the caster's decision. The change resulted in two pixie type monsters who were not invisible being spared in order for a third also not invisible pixie type monster to be barbequed . Unsurprisingly the two survivors went invisible & started doing things like going ahead to open doors so reinforcements could run back.*

None of that was me setting up any form of gotcha scenario but in all of them the players demanded excessive information or engaged in an enormous dilatation of time in order to function as a hive mind with a gods eye view.



* I run with a local VTT running on a tvbox & all of the monsters were visible on the player screen, they just were so focused on a monster the caster themselves probably shouldn't have been able to see (tiny size, multiple players between etc) that they forgot about the other two while counting squares to ensure that the fireball would get that one monster while exactly missing all but one PC. It weas so frustrating that I decided to start turning off gridlines on the player screen to avoid abusive levels of metagaming.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So, I realize that no example offered is always complete… I’m curious about a couple that you shared.

Players were in a fight with monsters in a room linked to one of the elemental plains due to some kind of arcane devicenoticed as they stormed in & began combat.

• Midway into the fight one player wanted to move into the space with part of a freaking eldritch machine built into the room as well as the entire temple

Why not just say “yes, it looks incredibly dangerous” and be done with it? I would assume the player wasn’t quite on the same page with what a “swirling vortex of elemental energy” meant. So why not just make it clear? Why all the back and forth and the requirement of using an action?

I mean, you seem to have thought it would be obvious to the player. So given the chance, why not make it so?

In another fight a player became very animated demanding to know if the weapon used by a monster was made of wood or not. I told them all they saw was the elemental component and that they would need to spend an action trying to get that info but they can't do that because it's literally a different player's turn. Combat gets back around & the player uses action+bonus action+object interaction+they moved then wanted to know if the weapon was wood... This is not a player with a heat metal/shocking grasp type ability that changes based on the presence of metal it was just a demand for more information about a magic item in the middle of combat combined with a refusal to expend any sort of action to get that info.

Again, why draw this out? Just say “it’s wood” or “it’s steel” or whatever and move on? If it doesn’t matter, why would you take steps to make it seem like it matters?