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

[hawkeyefan]

Because that's literally the point of roleplaying. Pretending imaginary stuff is real and acting & reacting accordingly. And that's literally my job as the referee, to create and run a world that's as "real" as possible for the PCs to interact with. The more "real" I treat that world, the more it holds together under scrutiny. The more the characters can poke and prod and do whatever they want and it doesn't unravel.

My point though is that it's all made up. Sure, you want to kind of treat it like it's real... have characters behave in ways that make sense and so on... but the actual elements of the world are designed. They are chosen. There are any number of ways to interpret how things could go down that still involved the players engaging with the fiction instead of the GM just crafting some concept on his own and then forcing that on the table.

Forget the Folk Hero bit. Just think about a group of characters camping for the night, Group A. Another group, Group B, wants to learn where these characters are, and then wants to sneak up on them. We can all come up with many ways for this to happen at the table. There are many rules that we can lean on to determine what happens.

If a GM decides to ignore all those rules and says "Group B found and sneaked up on Group A, roll initiative", we'd all consider it flawed.

But is it against the play loop of 5E?

Because RPGs are not movies and not TV shows. The characters are not the center of the universe. They are the main characters of the RPG, sure, but the world exists around them and will continue on with or without them. The world doesn't shuffle and change and morph around simply because the players or characters want it to. I'm far more interested in emergent storytelling than providing some weird power fantasy to the players. If you wander into a dragon's lair at 1st-level, it's on you. I'll signpost the hell out of that, but here be dragons.

I don't agree. No, the world does not exist without the characters. The characters are the point of the game. The setting serves the characters. Without the characters, it's just the GM's imagination, there's no game happening.

I don't think GM's should place more importance on the setting (or its consistency and so on) than on the characters. Someone mentioned Main Character Syndrome earlier... but that's just as relevant for a GM and their world.

Now, that's not to say that everything needs to be easy to the characters, or anything like that. But the game is about them.

If it's not, then what is it about?

No, not at all. I'm simply trying to explain the dozens of ways things can pan out without the PCs being aware of them. Sorry that you're not looking for reasonable explanations. Your referee railroaded you and that sucks. I didn't do that to you.

I'm talking about the players. Why would you not want to involve the players? Through their PCs, sure, but it's a game that's being played.... you have to involve the participants. Instead of imagining what happens beyond their notice, bring something to them. There's any number of believable ways to do so. I've listed a bunch, others have offered plenty of suggestions.

Those notes exist to remind my aging brain what's happening off camera. Not to steal player agency. My copious notes are for the NPCs' plans. As I said, unless the PCs interfere with those plans, the NPCs will keep on with their plans. If the PCs interfere, their plans change. It's so weird that you think I'm interested in railroading. Take a minute or two and search my history for the many, many times I've argued against railroading.

You're saying the GM railroaded us, but you're also doing everything you can to defend that side. To somehow justify it. Why? I don't get it.

 

[FrogReaver]

My point though is that it's all made up. Sure, you want to kind of treat it like it's real... have characters behave in ways that make sense and so on... but the actual elements of the world are designed. They are chosen. There are any number of ways to interpret how things could go down that still involved the players engaging with the fiction instead of the GM just crafting some concept on his own and then forcing that on the table.

Forget the Folk Hero bit. Just think about a group of characters camping for the night, Group A. Another group, Group B, wants to learn where these characters are, and then wants to sneak up on them. We can all come up with many ways for this to happen at the table. There are many rules that we can lean on to determine what happens.

If a GM decides to ignore all those rules and says "Group B found and sneaked up on Group A, roll initiative", we'd all consider it flawed.

But is it against the play loop of 5E?

I'll answer. That's not against the 5e play loop. It would be against the stealth rules though.

But nothing in that example has to do with any conception of Mother May I that I've read in this thread. It would be an example of bad GMing (though add enough fictional details and I'm sure we could get at least half of us agreeing that stealth rules could be legitimately ignored by the DM in determining the outcome). The point with being able to ignore rules is that the fiction should take precedence and so if it makes more sense in a particular fictional situation to ignore a rule like stealth then by all means do so!

You're saying the GM railroaded us, but you're also doing everything you can to defend that side. To somehow justify it. Why? I don't get it.

IMO, it's because you keep on claiming that's an example of Mother May I. No one is justifying the bad DM call there - they've been pinpointing where it was and saying that's not a Mother May I example after doing so. Just to be clear, the bad DM call was in not honoring the lookout that the players left.

 

[FrogReaver]

Totally. Not disputing this. The fundamental question here is how and why those decisions get made and the impact that it has on a player's experience. We're pretty much all GMs here. This is just talking shop.

When I run trad games (which is fairly often) I make these decisions primarily on my understanding of the setting/scenario, but that only works in my opinion when significant interaction design work is put into scenario and setting design. Players need means to find the facts on the ground and meaningful connections between setting elements to leverage. The environment doesn't have to be known, but I feel it should be meaningfully knowable and comprehensible.

Part of that involves designing NPCs that can be meaningfully convinced and relied on as we all rely on people in our daily lives.

Not disagreeing about the authority the game gives. Just not a really a fan of the way some GMs use it sometimes. I think the scenario in question was mostly a case of not really doing the interaction design as well as could be done. We all have those moments where we don't communicate as well as we can or we don't provide enough levers in the fiction for players to interact with.

Basically sure we follow the internal causality of the setting and defined NPCs within it, but we also design all of that. The impact of those designs are something we are accountable for and strive to get better at.

I agree with all of this.

 

[pemerton]

Basically sure we follow the internal causality of the setting and defined NPCs within it, but we also design all of that. The impact of those designs are something we are accountable for and strive to get better at.

This.

A RPG like Apocalypse World provides semi-formal frameworks for discharging that responsibility: fronts and threats.

A RPG like Burning Wheel gives the players formal mechanical tools for picking up the slack if the GM drops it: Circles, relationships, wises.

5e D&D doesn't have these things, but that doesn't mean the responsibility goes away!

 

[pemerton]

Your proposal - the Duke's men liked the villagers and would never harm them. In most games this isn't going to describe a villain's henchmen's behavior. Is it possible - yes (most things are), but this is a good justification to not pick this outcome.

I made a number of suggestions about possible fiction. I don't think I made the one you're suggesting. I agreed with @Manbearcat, and also made the following ones:

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.

And here's another one I just thought up: it turns out that the sergeant leading the troops is the brother-in-law of the village's leader, and the latter implores the former to be gentle with the villagers.

There's an infinite number of possibilities here. As I said, in real life soldiers of a regime far more terrible than anything @hawkeyefan's GM can think up failed to find some hidden people, because those who were hiding them didn't give them up. In the D&D context, why would soldiers kill all the villagers? Where would their food, clothes and so on come from if they did that? The Duke might be vicious, but are the soldiers all evil through and through, or are they just people doing a job?

The GM in this instance was following the rules of the basic playloop.

<snip>

The rules of the basic playloop allow this.

The playloop is silent as to the principles that govern the GM. I don't think that entails that there aren't any.

The DM determines outcomes. There's going to be times when the DM's conceptions and the players don't align. It's inevitable.

I don't think this has to be true at all. Participants in a game of shared fiction can talk to one another and get on the same page. I do that all the time when I'm GMing, whatever the system!

the DM's job is to determine outcomes, of which there are often countless possibilities. At some point, he just has to make a choice.

<snip>

The only wrong answer there is the one that cannot be easily justified.

I don't agree. And if that is how a GM is doing their job - treating as the sole constraint can I tell a story in my head that makes sense of this fiction then in my view they are a bad GM. At a minimum, they should in my view be having regard to the character of RPGing as a collective activity, where the players also have views about the fiction, what makes sense in it, how they are using their (limited) resources to try and shape it, etc.

The authority-structure of 5e D&D makes this especially important, in my view. (I think here I'm really echoing some of what @hawkeyefan has said upthread.)

The DM honored the background feature. That's why this part of the conversation is soo bizarre.

Please tell me how having the PC's stay safely in the barn all night long and getting to benefit from a long rest (in D&D that's a big deal) - how didn't that honor the ability?

Is your opinion the ability wasn't honored unless the villagers warned the PC's the Duke's men were there? Is your opinion the ability wasn't honored without giving the PC's a perception check to notice the Duke's men? Or maybe better stated - What exactly do you find missing from that ability being honored?

Here is the ability:

You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other commoners, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They will shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you, though they will not risk their lives for you.​

The PCs were among commoners. They did not show themselves to be a danger to them. But the GM decided that the commoners didn't shield the PCs from the soldiers searching for them, and then retroactively established some fiction in their mind that produced that outcome (I don't think @hawkeyefan has told us exactly what that fiction was, and I don't know if the GM told hawkeyefan - but we might assume the fiction is standover tactics from the soldiers, or a snitch among the commoners.)

That is why I don't agree that the GM honoured the ability.

In case you weren't aware - your objections really come across as being against the DM determining outcomes at all.

Given that I've suggested multiple possible outcomes that the GM might have determined that would have honoured the ability, I find what you say here odd. Did you read those posts of mine?

 

[FrogReaver]

The playloop is silent as to the principles that govern the GM. I don't think that entails that there aren't any.

Agreed. I don't view that as against the playloop - though it could be against whatever principles are in play.

I don't think this has to be true at all. Participants in a game of shared fiction can talk to one another and get on the same page. I do that all the time when I'm GMing, whatever the system!

By necessity you admit that before you all talked it out the players and DM were on different pages. That sounds extremely close to what I suggested - that the players and DM won't always have the same conception of the fiction.

You did go on to note an excellent way to bring those conceptions back in alignment - however, some GM principles would be more about keeping play going (and then possibly talking through that at the end of the session).

I don't agree. And if that is how a GM is doing their job - treating as the sole constraint can I tell a story in my head that makes sense of this fiction then in my view they are a bad GM. At a minimum, they should in my view be having regard to the character of RPGing as a collective activity, where the players also have views about the fiction, what makes sense in it, how they are using their (limited) resources to try and shape it, etc.

I went out of my way to note that plausibility wasn't the only constraint...

The authority-structure of 5e D&D makes this especially important, in my view. (I think here I'm really echoing some of what @hawkeyefan has said upthread.)

Here is the ability:

You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other commoners, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They will shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you, though they will not risk their lives for you.​

The PCs were among commoners. They did not show themselves to be a danger to them. But the GM decided that the commoners didn't shield the PCs from the soldiers searching for them, and then retroactively established some fiction in their mind that produced that outcome (I don't think @hawkeyefan has told us exactly what that fiction was, and I don't know if the GM told hawkeyefan - but we might assume the fiction is standover tactics from the soldiers, or a snitch among the commoners.)

That ability explicitly says a circumstance when the commoners will not shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you - when their lives are at risk.

My biggest concern here is that you use the word retroactively. There's simply no way to know this. It could have just as easily been that the DM thought through what he knew about the Duke and his men and determined that ultimately the villagers would fear for their lives - which in D&D is precisely the kind of thing the DM is supposed to do.

That is why I don't agree that the GM honoured the ability.

Suppose it happened as I suggested instead of retroactively as you suggested - did the DM honor the ability then?

Given that I've suggested multiple possible outcomes that the GM might have determined that would have honoured the ability, I find what you say here odd.

Why do you view the only way of honoring the ability as the villagers shield the PC's? Why do you view the only way the DM could have determined the outcome of them not shielding the PCs is by doing so retroactively?

Did you read those posts of mine?

Let's both do better on the snark.

 

[clearstream]

You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other commoners, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them.

The benefit is conditioned on not showing yourself to be a danger. Hiding requires a place to hide and may require a check or group check. Rest is a reference to the rest rules. Recuperate is vague, but would include recovery from hit point loss which just takes time. I take the "or" to allow any number of those things (so it can be hide, or rest, or hide and rest.)

They will shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you, though they will not risk their lives for you.

The benefit is conditioned on not risking their lives. If it will put their lives are at risk, then they will not shield you.

Due to this wording, it can be simultaneously true that the rule is followed and the PCs are found. It can alternatively be simultaneously true that the rule is followed and the PCs are not found.

For each cromulent world in which they are found, there is an equally cromulent world in which they are not found. Which they are in ought to have been evident in their shared fiction, affording opportunity for PCs to form actions as inhabitants of that world. Instead, DM had a scene they wanted to deliver and jumped to that.

There are significant inadequacies in that, but failing to follow the rule as written is not among them. Apposite to the OP, was it a case of MMI? If it is, then this case suggests that following the rules may not be at issue for MMI. A view that is reinforced if one feels that the Intimidation ruling @hawkeyefan offered further above is not a case of MMI.

 

[FrogReaver]

Instead, DM had a scene they wanted to deliver and jumped to that.

IMO, it is possible for a DM to desire a scene but only choose to place that scene into the game when it makes fictional sense to do so and there's no better outcome to choose.

I don't think that was the case in this instance, but it's worth noting that desiring a scene and then eventually placing it in the fiction doesn't imply you are railroading or forcing the scene into the fiction.

 

[chaochou]

Let's both do better on the snark.

Who said it was snark? Did you read the posts involved?

If you did, why are you blatantly misrepresenting them?
If not, why are you blatantly misrepresenting them?

 

[pemerton]

That ability explicitly says a circumstance when the commoners will not shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you - when their lives are at risk.

My biggest concern here is that you use the word retroactively. There's simply no way to know this. It could have just as easily been that the DM thought through what he knew about the Duke and his men and determined that ultimately the villagers would fear for their lives - which in D&D is precisely the kind of thing the DM is supposed to do.

Suppose it happened as I suggested instead of retroactively as you suggested - did the DM honor the ability then?

Why do you view the only way of honoring the ability as the villagers shield the PC's? Why do you view the only way the DM could have determined the outcome of them not shielding the PCs is by doing so retroactively?

The benefit is conditioned on not showing yourself to be a danger.

<snip>

The benefit is conditioned on not risking their lives. If it will put their lives are at risk, then they will not shield you.

Due to this wording, it can be simultaneously true that the rule is followed and the PCs are found. It can alternatively be simultaneously true that the rule is followed and the PCs are not found.

For each cromulent world in which they are found, there is an equally cromulent world in which they are not found. Which they are in ought to have been evident in their shared fiction, affording opportunity for PCs to form actions as inhabitants of that world. Instead, DM had a scene they wanted to deliver and jumped to that.

There are significant inadequacies in that, but failing to follow the rule as written is not among them.

My contention is that the GM didn't honour the use of the ability. Reference to "cromulent worlds" in my view does no work here: the use of the ability by the players is meant to select between those worlds.

I mean, suppose the PCs charge into a commoner's house demanding shelter while dire wolves yap at their heels. That would be a case of the PCs showing themselves to be a danger, and/or placing the commoners' lives at risk. But that didn't happen in this case.

In this case, the GM made a decision, based purely on his own imagination about various NPCs, that the duration of the ability was over. It's the most naked of GM fiat.

To respond to FrogReaver, I refer to "retroactively" because @hawkeyefan has told us as much: the GM wanted a Young Guns-style showdown, and so set one up. To the best of my knowledge of this episode, he didn't even share with the players what events occurred in his imagination to bring things to such a state ( @hawkeyefan will correct me if I'm wrong about this).

But it doesn't matter if it wasn't retroactive. The GM might have an idea in their imagination about what happens next; but if a character uses an appropriate ability then the GM is obliged to change their idea. That's the whole point of being a player in a RPG - you get to change the shared fiction.

The play loop doesn't expressly address what I've just said, but is the playloop not meant to be supplemented by principles? Given that the Basic PDF says this on p 2, I think the answer is that there are relevant principles here:

The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. . . . There’s no winning and losing in the Dungeons & Dragons game - at least, not the way those terms are usually understood. Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils. . . . The group might fail to complete an adventure successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win.​

There are two key sentences there - together, the DM and the players create an exciting story and everyone . . . created a memorable story. These don't, to me, suggest that the GM is the unilateral storyteller.

The same page refers to the GM as "the game’s lead storyteller and referee". This doesn't entail that the GM is the sole storyteller.

How do the players do their bit in creating an exciting and memorable story? By declaring actions and using the abilities they get from their characters. Like Rustic Hospitality.

As I posted upthread, if 5e D&D really set out the view that @hawkeyefan's play experience is consistent with playing the game properly and well, that would be a sad indictment of the game. But as per the passages I've just quoted, it doesn't.