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

[EzekielRaiden]

Or that if someone says "5e is Mother May I," then they should also go one step further.

Three arguments. Theoretical, practical, and empirical.

Theoretical: From both explicit statements from its designers, and actual in-text citations, the game is explicitly tied to a constant, everpresent DM oversight. I do not use the word "constant" and "everpresent" lightly. It borders on "divine sustainer" levels, where it seems like every game component or element of the fictional world applies or exists solely because the DM's active, affirmative intent lies behind it. Phrases like "DM empowerment" (as if DMs ever actually lost any power) were specifically used for this reason, to exalt DMs into the highest, that their word be law unto the end of the age (where "the age" should be understood to mean "whenever the DM decides a different law is what should be law.")

Practical: The rather significant lack of DM advice present in the DMG, coupled with the mediocre-at-best tools for things like encounter building or setting DCs and using skills. As was mentioned upthread, an extremely vocal chunk of the playerbase seems to lose their collective feces whenever WotC does anything that might be plausibly read as "telling people how to run," so...the book doesn't do much to tell you how to run. The uselessness of CR in particular is my go-to example, where even outright explicit fans of 5e openly admit that CR is really no better than just eyeballing things (and may in fact be worse in many cases.) Other things, like money being useless and the economy being borked even for adventuring stuff, or Champions needing an utterly ridiculous number of combats per short rest just to keep up with Battle Masters (to say nothing of something more powerful like Paladin or Bard!) are also practical examples; the game expects many things, and is noticeably weak on the tools to do it with.

Empirical: The fact that, for at the very least the first several years after 5e came out, literally every single thread where a player asked a rules question would include some variation of the disclaimer, "This depends on your DM, who may have completely rewritten every part of this." Even I gave such disclaimers! Because they were needed. Because, as I mentioned much earlier in the thread, the game is by observation one where the rules are seen as suggestions at best.

These three things demonstrate a climate where everything you do has to be given the DM rubber stamp. Hence, whatever you do, whatever you play, whatever options you consider, you are always having to keep in the back of your mind a little asterisk saying, "Unless the DM vetoes or rewrites it." For literally everything. That, to me, is when a game is clearly in "Mother-May-I" (or, as I've taken to calling it, "Red Light/Green Light") territory. And, again, MMI or RL/GL is not restricted to OSR. I gave my 3e alignment-and-paladins example above. It can also apply in cases where designers and DMs enforce draconian hyperspecialization of the rules, where every single tiny action has a specified form, signed in triplicate with DNA fingerprinting, which AIUI was Mearls' original intent with his use of the phrase, a form sometimes called "pixelb!+@#ing." More or less, the issue isn't (strictly) that the DM decides, since the problem can also occur in games that don't emphasize DM authority nearly so hard. Instead, the issue comes, I think, from micromanaging. Which is why, for me, RL/GL carries the same overall idea: it retains the sense of being beholden, of having your moves monitored and limited. Whether that monitoring or limiting comes from "DM discretion" or from over-engineered rules doesn't really matter.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay well...the main reason I asked was, you've made that exact comparison yourself. About 4e. A comparison that plenty of people find both highly inaccurate and more than a little pejorative. Something which was said at the time, and which was dismissed: "You are projecting."

I don't know what to tell you. You can debate my old posts if you want. There is a good chance, as with any old post, that my current view is different, so I am not going to pretend that the positions I hold right now in a discussion are consistent with everything I've ever said. I don't remember that particular conversation, but I do think 4E feels like wow. So I am happy to defend that position and it certainly sounds like something I have said in the past.

Sometimes these threads get fiery, especially back during the 4E war era. I try to take a much more even handed position these days. But I still think 'feels like wow' is a valid critique. And I feel you responding however you want is valid (I just might not agree with you and respond myself: that is the nature of these discussions). Also looks at what I said. I think someone saying that my style of play is mother may I is totally kosher. I feel I was pretty clear about that: someone having the genuine reaction that a style of play where the GM's primary role is to run the adventure, play the NPCs, control the setting and respond to what the PC s do as 'mother may I' is fair if that is their reaction. It is a critique and a critique is what you think about a game. I don't agree with the critique and sometimes I think the critique is used in crappy ways, but I don't object to someone making that critique.

Again though, if you go into a thread and say "x is like wow" or "x is just mother may I" of course people who disagree will respond, probably in a feisty manner. That is to be expected.

And I think going from a critique to treating your critique as an objective description is a problem. It isn't morally bad or anything. It just doesn't shed light on the style or game in question, beyond your own subjective reaction to it.

 

[overgeeked]

I said it before, and I will say it again: I think of MMI as an overarching TTRPG problem rather than a FKR/OSR problem. I likewise said that I that "play worlds, not rules" is distinct from what "MMI" describes. And I think that MMI can be antithetical to FKR rather than a pejorative describing FKR. There are two places where I think that MMI can rub clearly against MMI's principles: (1) play worlds, not rules, and (2) tactical infinity.

Did you mean MMI here in the bolded bit or did you mean OSR/FKR? Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to parse the sentence.

@overgeeked is correct that we are playing a RPG and not a boardgame or a video game. We are presmably playing a roleplaying game. Part of that entails roleplaying a character in a shared fictional world.

That's important. We'll get back to it.

Where I have issue with MMI - regardless of what gaming culture it shows up in - lies in how it interferes with the ability to roleplay my character(s). It is not just the world that I would want to play with fidelity in OSR or FKR, but also my character. If things like what my character knows is constantly being gated behind GM permissions...

Okay...so we're playing a D&D. It's taking place both around one of those long-forgotten meatspace tables and in our imaginations. It's a shared fictional world.

Q: How do the players interact with that shared fictional world?

A: Through the referee.

The basic play loop of 5E is:
1. The DM describes the environment.
2. The players describe what they want their characters to do.
3. The DM narrates the results of the characters’ actions.

What's in the environment? It's up to the referee. How do the characters know what's in the environment? It's the referee's job to describe it to the players. What they decide to tell you is what your character knows about the world. What they decide your character cannot know in the moment, they don't tell you, and therefore neither you nor your character knows. What do the characters get to do? They can try anything they want within the confines of the game, genre, and referee's presentation of the world. What happens next? The referee asks for a roll and/or narrates the results. What happens next? The players respond to the new situation with new actions and we start the loop again.

In other words, 1) your characters' knowledge of the world is gated behind referee permissions, and; 2) your character's actions in the world are gated behind referee permissions.

This is the bit people seem to be skipping over. It's only through the referee that the players can interact with the world at all. The referee puts the buildings into the world. The referee puts the NPCs into the world. The referee puts the monsters into the world. In some cases the referee literally creates the entire world for the PCs to bounce around in. You want to play an elf in a world where the referee has decided there are no elves? Guess you're not playing an elf. You want to multiclass in a game where the referee has banned multiclassing? Guess you're not multiclassing. Everything the characters know and everything the characters do is, by default, gated behind referee permissions. Whether you think that's good or bad, it's still true.

That's the default play loop of D&D. It's not some adversarial referee. It's not MMI. It's literally the play loop of D&D.

(A) it will start feeling less and less like my character and more like a character that the GM has loaned me; (B) it will likewise feel less and less like my play and more and more like the GM's play, and (C) I will likely feel less and less immersed in the world that my character inhabits and the shared world I am playing.

How to you gain information about the shared fictional world without interacting with the referee?

I also think that MMI runs counter to FKR, as MMI can turn FKR less into an expression of "tacitcal infinity" and more into an expression of "GM-approved tactics."

Agreed. But that's based on my definition of MMI. We can't seem to agree what MMI is. Some seem to think it's the referee having any authority at all, while others reject it as an intentionally derogatory and insulting characterization of high referee-authority games or play styles.

I think that GM rulings are not really what's at stake here for me when we are talking about MMI. It's about my agency as a player to play my character in the game. Can I know this? Can I do this? Can I do anything with my character without the GM's gated permission? What actual autonomy or agency do I have to roleplay my character in this world that isn't subject to requiring the GM's permission or unilateral veto? Can I know or do anything regarding my player character without the GM's permission and not be accused of being an entitled player?

Again, how do you interact with the world without interacting with the referee?

Something as simple as casting a spell.

Player: "I cast X."

Referee: "It doesn't work, mark off the slot."

Player: "What? Why?"

Referee: "You don't know."

Now. Lots of people in this thread will immediately claim MMI and adversarial refereeing. Okay, but are there any other possible explanations for this? Of course there are: things exist in the world that the PCs are unaware of. Someone in the room is a disguised beholder and their anti-magic field is covering the PC. Someone they can't see cast counterspell. An anti-magic field has been placed in this room. That's just by the book stuff. The referee could have something similar to the Star Wars EU ysalamiri in their world to block magic. The stones the room is built out of are naturally anti-magic. Someone has a cursed magic item that projects an anti-magic field. Etc.

Trouble is sometimes the players can't know what's going on without spoiling the game. "The regent is really a beholder! Roll initiative!" But the players will also insist on knowing otherwise they'll argue MMI and adversarial DMing. You can't have perfect information. That's peeking at the end of the book. You as a player don't get to know everything. Your character doesn't get to know everything. Some things are just mysteries. Your character is not omniscient. You as a player can't be omniscient. The only way this is a problem is if you assume the referee is adversarial. That's a terrible assumption to make. And if it's a bunch of referees in this thread saying they assume all referees are adversarial, well that's a bit of a problem.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I just...I want people to not be trying to have it both ways. Either pejoratives are sometimes okay and thus cannot be dismissed out of hand solely because they are pejorative, or pejoratives are never okay and should never have been used to begin with. I've been seeing a breakdown of that standard in this thread, and I am deeply frustrated by it.

To be clear here: pejoratives are fine in my book if you are giving your reaction to something. That is just honesty. If you don't like a particular mechanic, there is not reason to disguise the language you are using to describe it. I think when I do react negatively to pejoratives it is when I perceive people either arguing in bad faith, treating their pejoratives as objective analysis or using a pejorative as a rhetorical trick. Generally I do try to be fair, open minded, and even handed in these things. But obviously I am human like anyone else, get irritated sometimes, react stronger to certain posting styles over others, and have my own style blinders and biases that impact how I sometimes read posts.

 

[Mercurius]

Whereas I have seen it (both in-person and vicariously) explode into rather serious problems more than once. And have several times (many of them in person) seen it not explode, but slowly simmer and build up resentment pressure, in the various ways I previously cited: bad understanding of probability, offering what are thought to be good deals but are actually really really horrible deals, making it incredibly risky to do cool things, balancing the game around the rare lucky few rather than the extremely common dead, etc.

Not sure how I can really comment on this because I wasn't there, so can't make a personal judgment of what went wrong. But I think, as a general rule, this is a human element - and not necessarily primary derived from a problem with MMI or rulings. Clearly defined rules might lessen this sort of thing from happening, but as the Depeche Mode song said, "people are people" and are going to people. That is, be emotional, reactive, etc.

Then why do so many people make such an intense, overt, explicit point of emphasizing exactly how absolute and inviolate their authority is? That their word is law? Because yes, I have had people straight-up say this. On this forum. I won't name names because I consider that rude. But there are specific people on this forum that I could explicitly name, who have repeatedly asserted their authority is explicitly absolute, and have to some extent or another revelled in the absoluteness of that authority, the degree to which they are the Dungeon Master and the players are there to be led along.

This is a rather extreme characterization that hinges upon the bolded part. Meaning, you're making a judgment of "so many people" and then characterizing it in a rather negative way that implies a kind of despotism. I just don't think that one necessarily follows the other, at least to the degree that you imply. Meaning, the idea that "DM absolute authority" inherently equals "leading the players along." I already explained this re: "the buck stops here."

I mean, it is sort of like the argument around hierarchy - whether it is inherently pathological or not. Some say it is, while others say that there are good and bad forms. I do think, at the least, that not all hierarchies need to involve dominance or despotism; some are simply there to make things run smoothly. For instance, the body--when in crisis--emphasizes certain organs over others. Or if we look at a family dynamic, there is a natural and healthy hierarchy of the parents having more authority than the children (for obvious reasons).

I don't think this specific thing inherently leads to bad decision-making. I think that several extremely common human faults or errors, indeed faults or errors that are essentially universal in humans, lead to bad decision-making in humans generally when certain contexts are relevant (such as mathematics, statistics, and observational data collection.) These nigh-universal issues get magnified greatly when the context involves unilateral decisions that affect other people. DMs who speak of "absolute authority" or the like are, very specifically, making unilateral decisions; hence, bad decision-making is an extreme risk. I cited several specific errors, such as the "roll to conceal yourself every single round you sneak" issue, in order to demonstrate that these problems are real and, at least for some of them, have been notorious for ages.

Yeah, people are people and subject to human error. I'm not sure that the best solution is better and more rules, though. Or at least that's not my personal preference, because I see the human element as a feature and not a flaw. My concern is that the more of that human element you take out, you potentially also cut out some good stuff - like human imagination, spontaneity, etc.

My issue was that you were saying not "this is my approach," nor even "this is a highly effective approach," but rather that "The GM is the world" is the only approach for immersive gaming--that the closer one gets to deep immersion, necessarily the closer one gets to "The GM is the world."

I'm pretty sure that's not what I said, but how you are taking it. For instance, I don't think I ever said anything like "only approach." I'll clarify: In my opinion, "The GM is the world" tends to lead to more immersive gaming, at least in my experience.

I have been very clear that different strokes are for different folks.

Sure. And what I'm saying is, well-made rules are in fact extremely useful for ensuring that that respect is sustained, and that players are not given unexpected perverse incentives (whether to avoid fun things or to do dull things). Well-made rules are difficult to produce, and require significant testing and revision, things which a single DM running for their friends will struggle to replicate. That's why we pay others for their rules; because they have the time and resources to collect the data and perform the analysis.

Unfortunately, many designers...don't actually do that, and may not even know how. Even WotC. I've dug into the education credentials of the vast majority of people who make D&D. 90% or more of them have humanities degrees (mostly Communications, but Art, Music, History, and, in the interesting case of Mr. Heinsoo, Theology are also in there.) People with any kind of formal STEM education are extremely rare, and not one that I could positively identify had explicit, formal training in statistics. In other words, the people who make D&D, in general, don't know very much about math or statistical analysis....which are the things you really, really need to know if you're going to be designing a mathematical framework that depends on both analyzing survey data and checking for statistical behavior.

Of course, a big part of this is that most people who get a STEM degree can get into a career that is more likely to pay big bucks than "TTRPG Designer" is. But it has always frustrated (and confused) me that even WotC, the BMOC when it comes to TTRPG design, never consults with a statistician (for the underlying math stuff) or a psychologist/sociologist/etc. (for how to design and interpret survey data.) The things that would help make rules that work rather than rules that suck are completely ignored, and then people complain that the rules suck, so obviously we have to have DMs that do all the heavy lifting all of the time. It's this incredibly frustrating self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well I don't know what to say. I mean, part of this might have to do with your own level of expertise re: statistics. An instance of "expert's curse," sort of like an audiophile listening to inferior stereo equipment - their more attuned ear actually creates a situation where they enjoy music less often because they require a higher quality level as a baseline. Or a wine afficinado not being able to enjoy wines below a certain level of quality.

I mean, I agree that good rules are a good thing. I just don't feel it as necessary as you seemingly do, to plug every gap with a good rule - that the region of "rulings" and human judgment is a feature, not a flaw of RPGs. The GM doesn't need to be a master of logic and statistical analysis, just a fairly reasonable and intelligent person.

My issue is those last four words: "consistent with their style."

I find that there are a lot of DMs whose style is fundamentally inconsistent, and they don't realize it. Often, though not always, this arises in the form of a failure to understand how their style incentivizes players away from the things they want the players to do. Hence why I so often speak of "perverse incentives." 3rd edition, for example, was designed by people suffering from pretty extreme "functional fixedness": they conceived of D&D as only being played one way, and thus created rules that weren't THAT bad if played that way, e.g. Clerics who use almost all of their spell slots on healing, Wizards who almost always play as blasters, etc. But once players, not subject to functional fixedness, got ahold of those rules, they played them based on what the rules actually did incentivize--and it led to lots and lots of problems and complaints. I find most people suffer from issues of this kind in one form or another; humans are often very poor at picking up absolutely all possible incentives created by their behaviors. This issue becomes even more severe when it is abstractions, rather than real physical objects or people, which induce the incentives.

It's more than a little odd for you to do so, then, when the thrust of the rest of your post is "please don't assume being overly reliant on DM adjudication." That is, you seem to be doing the very thing you had just asked me not to do: predicating an argument on the presumption of being overly reliant on rules, rather than practically reliant on them. Unless you mean to say that any reliance whatsoever on rules is "overly" reliant...?

My general response to this is that I feel that you're A) asking people to be more perfect and flawlessly logical than they can possibly be (humans not being Vulcans), and B) That the answer to human problems isn't necessarily "more and better rules." A lot of these issues can and should best be solved by human interaction. And some of it may simply require accepting human fallibility and everyone--not just the GM--trying to do better next time.

There is no system of perfect rules that is going to solve every problem of human fallibility. Some SF stories have discussed this possibility and they are called dystopias.

 

[Aldarc]

Did you mean MMI here in the bolded bit or did you mean OSR/FKR? Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to parse the sentence.

Yes. Thank you for asking for clarification.

Q: How do the players interact with that shared fictional world?

A: Through the referee.

In TTRPGs, it is one way but not necessarily the only way. One of the things about FKR that gets talked about a lot, for example, is that all the players, including the GM, are bringing their understanding of the world (e.g., Marvel Superheroes, Star Trek/Wars, etc.) to the table. So the trust isn't solely about the GM's understanding of the world, but also the players'. So while the referee may have final say on the shared fiction, it may not be the sole and exclusive say of the GM because this shared fiction is likely being negotiated by the players and the GM.

And to be clear, I do not equate negotiating the fiction (i.e., getting everyone on the same page about the fiction) with MMI.

That's the default play loop of D&D. It's not some adversarial referee. It's not MMI. It's literally the play loop of D&D.

Sure, and this is likely why other people in this thread have said that 5e enables MMI or can be prone to MMI. But the language of an adversarial GM is your own contribution to our discussion. It is not mine. I have said on repeated occasions that MMI is not about a Good GM vs. Bad GM or even about adversarial GMs.

How to you gain information about the shared fictional world without interacting with the referee?

I think that there is a difference between interacting with the GM to negotiate the shared fiction or the GM framing the fiction of the scene and requiring permissions from the GM for the player character's thoughts and actions. I don't think that it's helpful or particularly insightful to conflate these things as being one and the same. Respectfully, if you believe that these are the same thing, then it's doubtful that there is any chance we will see eye to eye on this matter.

Agreed. But that's based on my definition of MMI. We can't seem to agree what MMI is. Some seem to think it's the referee having any authority at all, while others reject it as an intentionally derogatory and insulting characterization of high referee-authority games or play styles.

The point of this thread is not to agree on MMI or to come to a singular definition. As per the mods, it's about presenting our own definitions. Naturally, people have different definitions and understandings of the term, yourself and myself included. As you are talking with me, then mine and yours are really the only relevant ones for purposes of our interactions.

Trouble is sometimes the players can't know what's going on without spoiling the game. "The regent is really a beholder! Roll initiative!" But the players will also insist on knowing otherwise they'll argue MMI and adversarial DMing. You can't have perfect information. That's peeking at the end of the book. You as a player don't get to know everything. Your character doesn't get to know everything. Some things are just mysteries. Your character is not omniscient. You as a player can't be omniscient. The only way this is a problem is if you assume the referee is adversarial. That's a terrible assumption to make. And if it's a bunch of referees in this thread saying they assume all referees are adversarial, well that's a bit of a problem.

This seems to be arguing against the PCs knowing everything, but if we look back at what other people have said about MMI and we respect the argument they were making, then this was never being debated by those criticizing MMI. No one has wanted their PCs to know everything. No one has wanted no mystery to the game or knowledge outside of their character's ken.

But can I know anything? What can I know? What is permissible for a player to know about player character knowledge or in-game knowledge that isn't GM-gated? Must I ask if I know everything about the world? What is common knowledge? What isn't? What is reasonable for my character to know? Is that really the GM's sole discretion?

FWIW, I don't think that any of this is necessarily about an adversarial referee/GM. That seems to be an idea that you are introducing into the argument but that is not what I have said or argued, because I genuinely believe that there are non-adversarial GMs who engage in MMI as well. These may also be the GMs who fudge in favor of the characters.

 

[Aldarc]

OSR: Old School Renaissance/Revival

• OSR as Legal Retroclones: OD&D, B/X, 1e, and 2e Retroclones (e.g., Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, etc.)
• OSR as Games Designed with Reimagined Old School Principles (e.g., Forbidden Lands, Maze Rats, Into the Odd, Mörk Borg, etc.)

FKR: Frei Kriegspiel

My apologies, @CreamCloud0, but I also meant to link Principia Apocrypha: Principles of Old School RPGS, or, A New OSR Primer as part of the explanation for the second use of OSR.

 

[Malmuria]

I've been following this thread on and off, and felt the (perhaps unwise) need to butt in at this point. The argument above is tantamount to saying that bad design exists, therefore there is no point in critiquing design. I don't buy it.

If you go back to 'rulings not rules' B/X D&D, there was a structured exploration turn of the dungeon. Wandering monster checks were rolled every other turn. In 5e, the DMG says this:

Worse than useless. It also suggests that one of the reasons you might use one is because the players 'are getting off track'. So, when it comes to random encounters, 5e encourages and relies upon arbitrary use of DM authority, while B/X has rules which the DM must implement and adjudicate. B/X does not encourage MMI, while 5e actively encourages the DM to punish the players with random encounters for not following the (secret, to them) script. It's built-in dysfunction.

I don't see how the lack of exploration rules in 5e is a MMI situation. In my understanding, MMI arises from the discrepancy between GM and player authority and knowledge of a setting or situation. So, when I cast silent image to trick the guard, I'm relying on a capacious GM judgement to accurately play the guard's response. Or when I want to move to the other side of the room in theater of the mind combat, I have to assume the GM won't use their superior knowledge of the positioning dynamics in the room to screw me over in some way. Encounter procedures and wandering monster checks don't seem to be a similar kind of design problem. In other words, if "Mother May I" can refer to everything from encounter procedure, to social interactions in the world, to combat positioning, it is much too vague to be very helpful criticism.

Further, your account of the purposes of wandering monster checks in b/x vs 5e is not accurate in my view. In b/x, wandering monsters present a check to the PCs to ensure they aren't able to spend countless turns searching rooms for treasure, secret doors, etc. They are very much meant to "punish" PCs who don't explore with a sense of urgency, those providing a risk/reward mechanism. I suppose at the metagame level the players know that the GM can't impose a wandering monster check at will, except that they can, and Gygaxian play encouraged this type of thing.

By contrast, in 5e wandering monsters are a vestigial part of the game and mostly a distraction. First of all, when you get XP for killing monsters, having more monsters to kill is a reward, not a punishment. Second, there is a strong expectation that any encounter in 5e will be balanced to the level of the party and be part of the 6-8 encounter budget for the day. Finally, while you are correct that 5e tends toward linear play, this is precisely the reason that wandering monsters don't have a role to play in the game. For example, it wouldn't make sense to put wandering monsters in your 5 room dungeon, as it detracts from the paced story the 5 rooms are trying to tell. Whereas in b/x, wandering monsters are there to put a check on the PCs exploring every last inch of the 60 room dungeon--and thus acquiring all of its treasure--without a sense of urgency and strategy.

 

[Hussar]

I’m curious where the line is on this

There isn't one. At least not one that can be defined, since it's a criticism that's leveled in response to someone at the table being unhappy about what's going on. If you have a table where the DM is absolutely enforcing all sorts of entirely capricious rulings and the players literally have zero idea of the odds of any of their actions, but, no one is complaining about it, then, well, is it still a Mother May I situation?

I'd certainly call it out as such, but, since everyone at the table is perfectly happy, then, well, who cares what I think. Saying something is Mother May I only reflects my personal preferences. I am saying that the DM is being too capricious in rulings and hiding the odds too much FOR ME.

See, I think where the real issue is coming in is that people are seeing this as an objective criticism. To some degree, I suppose, it is, since there has to be, on some level, the objective fact that the DM is ruling in a capricious manner for the criticism to carry any water at all. But, mostly, it's a personal criticism saying, "I don't like this, and this is why I don't like this."

 

[Hussar]

/snip

If you have a chip on your shoulder going in, and don't ask for the qualifier, the argument that results is as much your own fault as theirs.

Which is totally fair.

But, I'd point out that many people talking about MMI have been REALLY specific about the qualifiers. And the responses have largely been to ignore the qualifiers and then complain about how the phrase is overly broad and applied to things that was obviously never meant to be applied.

No one is broad brush tarring any playstyle or game as being a bad game or play style because of MMI. About the worst that's been said is that particular games or play styles might (MIGHT!!!) be more or less prone to MMI play because of how their rules are set up. Better examples have actually pointed to specific mechanics (random encounters in 5e, paladins in nearly any edition) where MMI often does cause conflicts.

Sure, it's great to provide qualifiers, but, we've got ten pages of qualifiers now and people are still entirely stuck on ignoring them and insisting one definitions that no one else is using.