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

[pemerton]

But we're not talking about things explicitly covered by the rules. Which is the problem. We're talking about situations where the referee has to make a call and players being upset by those calls.

Rustic Hospitality is a rules element. But its resolution depends on a component of the fiction - what is the degree of risk to the friendly, shelter-providing NPCs? - that in D&D is typically under the GM's control.

Does that mean that any GM decision-making about how author that part of the fiction is as good or reasonable as any other?

If there's no way for the characters to know what's happening, there's no reason to tell the players. It's as simple as that.

Again, these are not objective facts. There's no truth about "what's happening". The GM is authoring it. The GM can decide that none of the Duke's troops come close enough to the PCs' place of shelter to potentially be spotted by the watching PCs. Or the GM can decide that some of them do.

Is any GM decision-making in this space as good or reasonable as any other?

I take it as obvious that the answer to both questions I've asked is No - that part of the GM's responsibility in a RPG is to author fiction that honours the players' contributions via their play of their PCs, and that invites the players to engage proactively and enthusiastically with the unfolding fiction.

@hawkeyefan's GM's adjudication of Rustic Hospitality failed in both respects.

 

[pemerton]

I would say rules-wise the DM played the background feature correctly.

How? By deciding - based on solitaire play - that the NPCs were at risk? Where do the rules tell the GM that's what they should do?

The GM unilaterally introduced fiction, based on sheer stipulation of what was happening "off screen", that brought the "duration" of the background feature to an end. It was not a response to any action taken by the players. It was not responding to a "golden opportunity on a plate" (to borrow Vincent Baker's language from Apocalypse World). It didn't "follow" from anything but the GM's private imaginings.

If that's really what the 5e rules require, that would be a sad fact about 5e D&D. But as it happens, I don't think it is what 5e requires.

 

[pemerton]

Typically we value consistency, will Intimidation consistently in future heal? If we value following the rules, why are we comfortable making a ruling that goes outside them? What is the shadow cast over other abilities by this ruling, such as the cleric divine intervention and healing spells, and those spells that expressly provide for communication with entities like gods? How does the player investing in Medicine and the Healer feat feel about this?

How do players who built fighters feel about the fact that other players can have their PCs fight?

How do players who built battlemasters feel about the fact that other players can have their PCs try and disarm foes?

How do players who built illusionists feel about the fact that other players can try and trick or hide from their enemies?

I find the "what about" argument a very weak one, especially in the context of a game that is so profligate in its sharing of abilities and its overlapping of functions across classes. It's a purely technical problem about balance. The problem mightn't always be technically trivial to solve, but @hawkeyefan suggested some solutions in his post, so he won't have technical difficulties when he has to adjudicate it.

 

[clearstream]

How? By deciding - based on solitaire play - that the NPCs were at risk? Where do the rules tell the GM that's what they should do?

Where is the game text that told the GM that there should be a village just there? It's customary in RPGs for someone to frame a scene and bring NPCs into the picture. Multiple editions of D&D have included advice on playing NPCs that makes them more than mannaquins, that will not think to threaten villagers. The rules of the background feature are entirely complied with.

And with that, I'm not saying that the DM ran things in an ideal way! Only that this isn't a case of MMI, at least not in the sense of failing to give due benefit for and correctly breaking the aegis of the feature.

The GM unilaterally introduced fiction, based on sheer stipulation of what was happening "off screen", that brought the "duration" of the background feature to an end. It was not a response to any action taken by the players. It was not responding to a "golden opportunity on a plate" (to borrow Vincent Baker's language from Apocalypse World). It didn't "follow" from anything but the GM's private imaginings.

DMs introduce fiction. So far I don't know what work was done to cast the Duke's men as the bullies they might be, but it seems not at all outre to suppose they might threaten some villages. That could well legitimately follow (and where it does not, the issue is not MMI, but failure to follow the fiction.)

Hopefully you see what I mean? There do seem to be egregious failures here, but they are not necessarily associated with MMI.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think that the pushback against MMI is about the GM's power to adjudicate rules or making rulings nor do I think that it's about entitled players wanting to adjudicate their own outcomes, know everything, and always succeed at everything. These are strawmen arguments that have a nasty habit of repeatedly surfacing despite evidence and statements provided to the contrary. I do think, however, that players want to make informed decisions based on their environment and utilize information that their character could reasonably have in the world of the shared fiction.

I would add to this: in a game which (in its widespread non-Gygaxian modes of play) is mostly about establishing, exploring, developing etc a shared fiction, it's reasonable for players to expect that their contributions to that fiction will be meaningful, will be invited, will be honoured.

As @hawkeyefan's example makes crystal clear, the GM is not compelled to decide that Duke's soldiers threaten the commoners, that the common folk give up the PCs, that the next thing the PCs know their house is surrounded. It would have been equally consistent with the established fiction for the GM to have had the PCs wake after a restful sleep, and the householders offer them a sack of bread, cheese and onions while saying "Hurry, the Duke's soldiers are about and some of our neighbours aren't as steadfast as we are."

Or any of dozens and hundreds of other possibilities, that better honoured the players' desired trajectory for the fiction, which they had used their PC build resource to establish.

 

[clearstream]

Responsive to the OP, to put forward a contentious thought, perhaps there are two forms of MMI

1. In one form, a DM follows opaque and inconsistent rationales to narrate results so that what happens as a result of a player description can't be predicted, other than by asking that DM in advance
2. In the second form, it is ideological and might be described as "dancing to the DM's tune", and is simply conflated with DM-curated play: any DM decision can be characterised as MMI except those that follow the rules as the player interprets them

My hope here is that these forms can be reflected on and lead to a possible improvement in our understanding (i.e. I do not say that they are right in themselves, I say that perhaps they are worth thinking about: do our arguments lead to them.)

 

[clearstream]

As @hawkeyefan's example makes crystal clear, the GM is not compelled to decide that Duke's soldiers threaten the commoners,

Apologies, but I still do not really follow what would "compel" the GM to decide that the Duke's soliders threaten the commoners, beyond the ordinary considerations envisioned for D&D. Is it a failure to foreshadow that they are bullies?

 

[pemerton]

Multiple editions of D&D have included advice on playing NPCs that makes them more than mannaquins, that will not think to threaten villagers. The rules of the background feature are entirely complied with.

And with that, I'm not saying that the DM ran things in an ideal way! Only that this isn't a case of MMI, at least not in the sense of failing to give due benefit for and correctly breaking the aegis of the feature.


DMs introduce fiction. So far I don't know what work was done to cast the Duke's men as the bullies they might be, but it seems not at all outre to suppose they might threaten some villages. That could well legitimately follow (and where it does not, the issue is not MMI, but failure to follow the fiction.)

Hopefully you see what I mean? There do seem to be egregious failures here, but they are not necessarily associated with MMI.

I don't remotely see what you mean.

Suppose the GM declares All the volcanoes erupt. You all die from heat and asphyxiation. Or While you were poncing around with the Duke's soldiers, Asmodeus led a diabolic army on to the prime material plan. There's a phalanx of Bone Devils in front of you. In the world of D&D, these are as plausible as anything else. When you refer to NPCs as "more than mannequins that will not think to threaten villagers" and say that "it seems not at all outre to suppose thy might threaten some village(r)s", you are already assuming that the GM's private imaginings must be sound. But I can imagine too. I can imagine that the soldiers threaten Villager A who doesn't know anything about the PCs, and says as much, and then the soldiers think it's too much like hard work to threaten every single villager and so sit down instead to drink some confiscated ale while waiting for the PCs to show themselves. Or I can imagine that Villager B tells the soldiers the PCs were seen down by the stream in the woods, sending the soldiers off on a wild goose chase while the PCs hole up enjoying their Rustic Hospitality. I mean, in real life some people have survived not just for one night, but for months and even years, hiding in circumstances of rustic hospitality while the soldiers who posed a threat were far scarier than any of the Duke's troops.

So what does it mean to say that adjudicating by reference to the GM's solitaire imaginings conforms to the rules, but perhaps would be a failure to run things in an ideal way? Or to put it another way, what is the point of rules if conforming with them is compatible with "egregious failure" in carrying out one's participant role? That strongly suggests the rules are incomplete at best.

Rustic Hospitality means shelter, and hiding, and shielding, unless there is a threat to the NPCs. So it obliges the GM to decide when such a threat occurs. I strongly assert that it is possible to do this better or worse, and that the better and the worse can be judged by coherent principles that are implicit in the idea of the players as equal participants in relation to the shared fiction of the game. The GM can think along these lines even in a system, like 5e D&D, that gives the GM a very high degree of authority over the shared fiction. (To this modest extent, at least, I agree with @Bedrockgames.)

Apologies, but I still do not really follow what would "compel" the GM to decide that the Duke's soliders threaten the commoners, beyond the ordinary considerations envisioned for D&D. Is it a failure to foreshadow that they are bullies?

Nothing would. The GM has a choice. And they can choose to honour the players' use of their ability, and what it shows about the fiction the players want. (As @hawkeyefan has made clear, the players did not want to play out a fight with the Duke's soldiers.) Or they can choose not to do so.

It's the choice by the GM to impose their conception of the fiction, regardless of what ideas for it the players have evinced including by use of PC-build-acquired abilities, that creates the "Mother may I" dynamic. Because for the players, they can have their desired fiction only if it conforms to the GM's imaginings.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sure. But we're not talking about things explicitly covered by the rules. Which is the problem. We're talking about situations where the referee has to make a call and players being upset by those calls.

Sure we are. That's what the point of the Rustic Hospitality thing is. That's why we're contrasting it against rope trick and pass without trace. That's why DMs complain so much about only selective "unrealistic" things (like "whack-a-mole" healing) and not others. Etc. The rulings and the rules can't be siloed apart here. It would be like saying we aren't discussing the Constitution, just the SCOTUS precedent surrounding it.

Some players want the referee to not have the authority to make those calls because they might make a call the player doesn't like. Some want the rules to cover everything. Either way, you're ripping the heart and soul out of the genre. A live person at the table able to make those calls is the killer app of RPGs.

I have never met anyone who wants either of those things. I have, however, met a lot of people who claim their opponents want those things. Curious that such massive extremes only appear as accusations, no?

I mean you could even turn the whole thing around. It sounds like despite the game explicitly giving the referee the authority, the referee must say things in exactly the right order, in exactly the right way, or the players get mad. Mothers May I Run the Game?

Is that not what we expect of authority figures? To use their powers scrupulously and responsibly. Do we not take them to task for errors? Is it not a greater offense, at least morally, and often also legally, for a member of government to commit a crime?

If that's cool advice to you, awesome. Everything the players come up with just succeeds? Sounds incredibly boring to me.

You have misquoted. "Everything the players come up with succeeds" is not, and cannot be under any remotely reasonable reading, the same thing as "so long as the players come up with something that resembles a plan, it succeeds."

Now, I too am not entirely on board with that phrasing, but I agree with the underlying spirit. I think it is much more in keeping with the PbtA ethos than the "Rustic Hospitality ambush" situation. That is, the spirit of the advice is that, if the players do their due diligence and put in the time and effort to achieve something, then most of the time, they should have a solid shot at actually achieving the ends they seek. Part of showing due diligence is confirming that the intended action is possible in the first place. Sometimes, it doesn't matter how much planning you do; chewing gum and baling wire cannot repair a nuclear reactor. But in a fantastical setting, such limits are and should be relaxed. Not absent, just relaxed. That's the nature of the fantastical.

The only way for the PCs to get to look cool and be awesome is to face challenges. If they just succeed at everything they suggest, there's no obstacles, no tension, no drama, hell...no story. They just win. Then they just wins some more. Huzzah. Nah. I'm good without that. Being handed victory is boring, earning victory is exciting. But to be able to earn it you have to have risk of failure.

And no one here is asking for any of that. Yet the accusation continues to be levied. Why? When we have resoundingly rejected such stances, and taken pains to show they are not inherent to our aims, it is odd to keep facing it as a criticism.

If there's no way for the characters to know what's happening, there's no reason to tell the players. It's as simple as that. I get that in this exact instance you know this is what happened because you say the referee in question explicitly told you after the fact. Sure. That time. But a lot of referees would do exactly the same thing for a whole host of other reasons. Top of my list: the players shouldn't metagame any more than absolutely necessary to continue the game, so if the characters don't or can't know something, the players don't get to know it either.

I find far too many GMs are ridiculously stingy with information that should be perfectly knowable. Indeed, I find they put Ebenezer himself to shame with how miserly they are with all sorts of things, information and basic knowledge/experience being one of the most obvious.

Hence, while I grant your distaste for "metagame" information, I find way way way too many GMs are allergic to the very thought of the possibility of the notion of a suggestion of "metagaming," and thus apply a dangerous or even lethal (to the game) avoidance of information. Shouldn't it be better to accidentally over share slightly, than to risk denying the players information they should have known?

Because focusing on the game prevents immersion and roleplaying.

Unless the designers make the (difficult!) effort of building rules such that using the rules  is immersive roleplay.

There's a reason I gush about 4e's Lay on Hands and how it's unequivocally superior to every other edition's approach, unless you exclusively want a gamified construct that can be exploited (in which case either 3e or 5e is better, since they're nearly identical.)

Make a call, throw the dice, see what happens. Play to find out, not play to win.

If only the GMs in question were actually interested in playing to find out, rather than playing to enforce what they already decided in secret.

To clarify my viewpoint. It is not that the rules of 5e are any more ambiguous than other game texts, but that they intentionally do not include accompanying written out agenda and principles. Those are for each group to add to the play at their table.

I mean, they are intentionally ambiguous, that's also a thing. But yes, they try to present the rules and then avoid any hint of guidance in their use, which is IMO pretty clearly a mistake.

Until this thread, it wouldn't have been on my list of risks with omitting written out principles from the game text, so rare has been its appearance in the degenerate form at issue here.

Then you should consider yourself lucky. Even with good games and good DMs I have seen this personally, and it comes up all the time in discussion of the game.

If one experiences problems from interpreting in one way, and another way is available that does not have those problems, then one might consider using that other way

Why not instead ask for the thing to be clarified so there is only the effective interpretation, and not the defective one(s)?

I think freeform relies even more on principles, although they're intuitive.

Does this not imply that 5e choosing to eschew such principles entirely is a mistake?

The game text does not advocate keeping it hidden. It explains that it will likely go unnoticed.

That sounds like both a fig leaf excuse and a distinction without a difference. "Oh, your players won't notice, so do whatever you like." That's literally telling you to hide stuff from your players. It's the reason a lot of people (including me) found that passage...problematic.

So far, it does feel like there is a thread of argument in this discussion which amounts to a straight conflation of MMI with DM-curated play. I think cases of what I will call MMI-with-assent illustrate this conflation.

I disagree. DM curation is distinct from MMI. It isn't even an "MMI is degenerate DM curation," because (as I showed much earlier) it can occur in rules-heavy games where the rules encourage problems: paladin alignment in 3e in particular.

and therefore you are I think arguing that MMI is okay, so long as DM says yes.

Not at all. Instead, the DM must give a genuinely fair shake, with an earnest effort to make any reasonable request happen, and to find a way to turn any but egregiously unreasonable requests toward something reasonable.

Contrast with the hiding-in-barn scenario. The complaint there appears to be centered on lack of explanation, rather than stepping outside the rules. It's far less a case of MMI notwithstanding that DM said no.

Sure it is. The players used tools at their disposal. The DM appeared to support the use of those tools. Then, through operations the players were not allowed to know about or do anything to respond to, even though there reasonably should have been multiple such opportunities, the DM invalidated the intended goal of the action. It isn't as direct about the denial—it's sneakier than that—but it is hardly any different from having said "nope Rustic Hospitality won't work, you're no better than if you camped in the woods nearby."

These are strawmen arguments that have a nasty habit of repeatedly surfacing despite evidence and statements provided to the contrary. I do think, however, that players want to make informed decisions based on their environment and utilize information that their character could reasonably have in the world of the shared fiction.

Indeed, we have had several people cast summon straw golem in this conversation. And almost always in the form of "oh so you want the players to win at absolutely everything forever instantly?!" or "oh so you want to kill the spirit of the game and make it just a program?!" With some "perfect information is impossible, therefore anyone asking for information is automatically wrong" thrown in for good measure.

People like knowing the risks and the stakes of their actions as well as assessing alternatives and consequences. It may not be perfect and there may be unknown factors that cannot be accounted for, but this is how humans generally think and make decisions.

Yep.

If one wants to "play worlds, not rules," then the GM needs to provide the players with ample information about the world so that the players can play and engage that world's fiction. Otherwise, it truly is playing the GM rather than the world.

Exactly. And when one is "playing the GM"...I don't see how that doesn't become this sort of problem some of the time (or, rather, a lot of the time.)

Gaining a long rest is significant help in 5e.

It really isn't. Being able to actually use your character abilities is one of the premises of play. It shouldn't be a "significant help" to literally be allowed to play.

I would say rules-wise the DM played the background feature correctly. Where they erred is that when @hawkeyefan's party kept a lookout, play would have greatly benefited from the DM providing appropriate foreshadowing, that they might have acted upon. The clearest case might have been to show that the villagers were put in a position of "risking their lives".

It's not just about "foreshadowing," which you seem oddly fixated on, especially odd because you have repeatedly denied that this is the DM enforcing a fixed and unalterable series of events (you cannot foreshadow events that are not going to come to pass!) It's about giving the players a chance to respond, vs. keeping all relevant information secret, bottled up inside the DM's head, until after it is already too late for the players to do anything about it.

The rules of the background feature are entirely complied with.

Interesting that you turn to RAW here when challenged on breaking the spirit of the rule. How does that square with the commitment to the spirit of the rules even when the RAW says otherwise?

And with that, I'm not saying that the DM ran things in an ideal way! Only that this isn't a case of MMI, at least not in the sense of failing to give due benefit for and correctly breaking the aegis of the feature.

Sure it is. As stated: the DM enforced a preconceived outcome (which is railroading, rather than MMI), and did so specifically by a form of "gotcha" denial: seeming to permit the players to achieve their goal while actually denying that goal, and denying any opportunity to even attempt to make up the gap.

Responsive to the OP, to put forward a contentious thought, perhaps there are two forms of MMI

1. In one form, a DM follows opaque and inconsistent rationales to narrate results so that what happens as a result of a player description can't be predicted, other than by asking that DM in advance
2. In the second form, it is ideological and might be described as "dancing to the DM's tune", and is simply conflated with DM-curated play: any DM decision can be characterised as MMI except those that follow the rules as the player interprets them

My hope here is that these forms can be reflected on and lead to a possible improvement in our understanding (i.e. I do not say that they are right in themselves, I say that perhaps they are worth thinking about: do our arguments lead to them.)

I'm not sure how "dancing to the DM's tune" is distinct or better, here. DM curation is, as I understand the term, referring to things like, "I know my players like nautical stuff, I'll prepare a nautical adventure." Or, "this minotaur will surrender to the party, because he dreams of a better life, and that will give me a voice to share important information with the party, and they almost never kill prisoners so that should work out nicely." Conversely, "dancing to the DM's tune" carries a strong implication of manipulation, of being coerced, of "well I guess us players have to do this thing, since it's what the DM wants us to do."

More importantly, you are conflating "that was a crappy DM action" with "that was a DM action that wasn't explicitly favorable to us, the players." When the DM is keeping players ignorant of things that should be knowable (at least in principle, I'm fine with players trying and failing to learn stuff), and does not work to establish and justify their framing of scenes, and thus describes events "out of the blue" or seemingly with disregard for precedent, rules text, or actually open and established in-character knowledge, then it seems to me perfectly acceptable to criticize that as capricious, inconsistent, and requiring constant confirmation of every small step to ensure that nothing has been left out and no loopholes exist for the DM to ruthlessly exploit. Which is what MMI is criticizing.

DM curation does not mean DM license. But a lot of folks act like it does. That's the criticism.

 

[clearstream]

I don't remotely see what you mean.

To hopefully clarify somewhat, we were - I thought - discussing whether MMI was associated with failing to apply the rules. Yet, the ruling on Intimidation by @hawkeyefan is much further outside what the rules provide for than the ruling made for Rustic Hospitality. Thus it seems that going outside the rules is not a defining trait of MMI. At least if these two cases are representative.

Suppose the GM declares All the volcanoes erupt. You all die from heat and asphyxiation. Or While you were poncing around with the Duke's soldiers, Asmodeus led a diabolic army on to the prime material plan. There's a phalanx of Bone Devils in front of you. In the world of D&D, these are as plausible as anything else. When you refer to NPCs as "more than mannequins that will not think to threaten villagers" and say that "it seems not at all outre to suppose thy might threaten some village(r)s", you are already assuming that the GM's private imaginings must be sound. But I can imagine too. I can imagine that the soldiers threaten Villager A who doesn't know anything about the PCs, and says as much, and then the soldiers think it's too much like hard work to threaten every single villager and so sit down instead to drink some confiscated ale while waiting for the PCs to show themselves. Or I can imagine that Villager B tells the soldiers the PCs were seen down by the stream in the woods, sending the soldiers off on a wild goose chase while the PCs hole up enjoying their Rustic Hospitality. I mean, in real life some people have survived not just for one night, but for months and even years, hiding in circumstances of rustic hospitality while the soldiers who posed a threat were far scarier than any of the Duke's troops.

For sure! Hence I questioned the notion of "compelled." Perhaps you have something in mind that would characterise compelled in the right way to avoid or mitigate MMI.

So what does it mean to say that adjudicating by reference to the GM's solitaire imaginings conforms to the rules, but perhaps would be a failure to run things in an ideal way? Or to put it another way, what is the point of rules if conforming with them is compatible with "egregious failure" in carrying out one's participant role? That strongly suggests the rules are incomplete at best.

Well, the incompleteness is specifically the intentional omission of an agenda or principles, which each group brings for themselves. I expect we can both agree that the GM's imaginings should follow the group's fiction + system. The catch is, what rightly follows is diverse, as you have shown. That is, it can rightly follow that the Duke's men are bullies and threatened the villagers, and it can equally follow that some courageous villager misled them. Neither of these choices are about any breach of the game rules.

So is it then that the DM must say yes? I think that is not correct. The DM can and should take things in directions that may surprise the players. The fault I think is not that @hawkeyefan's DM had a rules-compliant result of the feature use that didn't match @hawkeyefan's desired outcome (which skirts saying that players can narrate results without concern for agreement from other participants), but rather that there was no preceding fiction that could have informed their expectations.

"We can hide you in the barn and buy you a good amount of time, but the Duke's men are thugs... they've been here before. I can't let them beat up my friends!" and so on. Frame the situation so that players can see how what they want to do might turn out and respond creatively to that. But then, are we saying that it is opacity of decision-making that is the central characteristic of MMI?

Rustic Hospitality means shelter, and hiding, and shielding, unless there is a threat to the NPCs. So it obliges the GM to decide when such a threat occurs. I strongly assert that it is possible to do this better or worse, and that the better and the worse can be judged by coherent principles that are implicit in the idea of the players as equal participants in relation to the shared fiction of the game. The GM can think along these lines even in a system, like 5e D&D, that gives the GM a very high degree of authority over the shared fiction. (To this modest extent, at least, I agree with @Bedrockgames.)

Yes, I agree with much of that. Where we might disagree is on what counts as equal. I believe that participants can have differentiated roles and responsibilities, while still having equality in shaping the fiction. As I described up thread, Addy may have more say over their character than Robin does, and Robin may have a stronger voice on fiction concerning the folk of the woods. Al might have taken on the job of learning and interpreting the rules, so everyone looks at them when a doubt arises and a ruling is needed.

It's the choice by the GM to impose their conception of the fiction, regardless of what ideas for it the players have evinced including by use of PC-build-acquired abilities, that creates the "Mother may I" dynamic. Because for the players, they can have their desired fiction only if it conforms to the GM's imaginings.

It's not shown that use of PC-build-acquired abilities is doing any work here, due to what is counted acceptable for Intimidation and not for Rustic Hospitality. And I think it is also not forbidden to DM to have a conception of the fiction. The central problem seems to be opacity, and for sure giving no regard for player ideas. But that is not down to saying no, it is down to giving no regard for player ideas.