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

[EzekielRaiden]

The feature did work. Had it not worked, the party would not have received a long rest.

And unless you're willing to budge on this, we're never going to agree.

Because I strongly dispute this statement. The feature did not work. They were not given a place to hide, and "place to take a long rest" could have been anywhere. They got nothing that not using the feature would not also get them.

The DM in this case did not judge RH voided.

Yes. They did. They just pretended it wasn't voided, and then voided everything they could get away with. 100% violating the spirit of the rules, and (since you keep ignoring it) the "hiding" part of the actual rules text.

I genuinely don't think it was at issue for the DM in question. They agreed that the feature worked. The dispute is over the results of "worked". Say I cast a fireball intending to kill all the Duke's men, but my fireball fails to kill them all. My fireball still worked, even though it failed to achieve my intent.

And if that were actually what was going on here, I would agree.

Instead, what's actually going on here is, "I cast a fireball at them to do some damage."
"They all pass their saves taking only one point of damage each, and half the fireball's normal damage is reflected back at the party. No save."
"What?! How?! WHY?!"
"Listen, the fireball worked! You did some damage! It just didn't work the way you wanted to."

That is the level of disingenuous "approval" the DM granted here.

 

[FrogReaver]

To me this points to Rustic Hospitality not being a great narrative ability mechanically.

That's certainly how I would play to give it more weight -- as soon as I the GM accepts that the people will hide them despite whatever risk, I wouldn't change this state until the players make another "move" or a certain amout of time goes by say X days or whatever. (with the exception being clearly established backstory / abililtes of the Duke that would invalidate this). If there is a plausible at least 50/50 scenerio where they wouldn't be found until another player "move" I'd give it to them.

It would be a better abillity if this was codified but then that can lead to "excessive creativity" and "squinting" in certain edge cases to make the fiction fit.

I probably would have went with a fortune roll to determine the outcome. High roll the PCs completely Elise the dukes men, low roll the ambush happens with a perception check to see it coming. Mid roll would yield the players getting warning from the villagers about the dukes men trying to ambush them.

I think some up front warning about the dukes men being known to be violent with villagers could have gone a long way to foreshadowing the possibility of being found that way (and would seem like common knowledge for the PCs and villagers.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So I've had a very busy day and am way behind, but wanted to respond to some of the below posts. Hopefully, they help clarify my view of the example I gave.

I don't have a problem with the DM's decision to have the Dukes men surround the barn (or at least attempt to). That seems like a legitimate consequence of the PC's holing up in a barn for the night. The whole D&D playloop of PC action, DM narrates outcomes.

What specifically is the Duke's men surrounding the barn a consequence of? That's my issue. It's a consequence, for sure, but of what I have no idea. No perception rolls or anything of the sort were called for.

The problem I do have is not even giving the lookout a perception check to notice something amiss (I'm assuming this wasn't handled by a secret stealth vs passive perception roll or something similar which is always a possibility in D&D).

No, there were no rolls made, no explanations given (either in narration or in the after play discussion). It simply happened.

So to answer the question in simple terms - it's made up, much the same way when a player in blades in the dark rolls a 1-3 and the DM gets to make up one of many plausible consequences for them.

No, there's a huge and obvious difference. The roll of a 1-3 triggers the GM narrating some bad consequence. He can't do so otherwise.

There is no obliging. The rules of the basic playloop allow this.

Then I think that's part of the problem. This is what I meant when I said the 5E structure is susceptible to this kind of thing.

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?

Please tell me how having the Duke's men surround the barn is a consequence of the use of the Rustic Hospitality ability?

The answer is that it's not. It should have been a consequence of other actions that never happened.

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

The conflict in this statement is part of the problem.

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.

Because our goal was to avoid a fight with the Duke's men, who we knew were approaching town. How could we avoid a fight? I offered a reasonable means to do so. The GM decided it was not enough.

What may have been enough? I don't know. That may be the distinction you're looking for between Railroading and MMI, though I think it's hard to tell the difference given that we can't say if there was some magic way to ask to avoid the fight that would have worked.

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.)

No, there was no indication that the Duke's men knew we were in town, or that the farmer or the other couple of people we interacted with thought we were a danger to them (they were in fact, very enamored with us). When I asked him about it after play, he didn't elaborate in what led to our discovery other than, as I said, he thought it would be cool to have the barn surrounded and burning for a cool encounter like Young Guns. I didn't press him on it to see if in his mind we were snitched on or seen by the soldiers or what. I don't think he really gave it much thought to have a specific reason.

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).

Exactly right.

This seems to come back to an argument @overgeeked was making. If accurate, the player asked for an outcome. They wanted the result of their feature use to be that battle was avoided.

Sort of. More that we decided we didn't want to fight the Duke's men. The reason for this (despite D&Desque murder-hoboism) we didn't want to kill a bunch of soldiers who were just doing what they thought were their jobs. We also (again, bucking the trends of D&D) didn't typically want to fight unless there was no other option. We did consider fighting them, but the negatives seemed to outweigh the positives.

So yes, that was the goal. Then I suggested my use of Rustic Hospitality to safely hide, which we hoped would achieve the goal.

Now, to be clear, I didn't necessarily expect that this ability alone would be enough to get the whole job done, so to speak. The Duke's men weren't there specifically for our characters, but they knew who we were, and the Duke hated us, so if we ran into the, there'd be an issue. So I figured we'd need to make a roll or two to hide safely in the barn. Or that the GM would narrate some additional scenes and prompt some actions, and depending on how those went, we may find ourselves in trouble.

So it's not that I expected the Rustic Hospitality was a magic bullet for the situation that got denied. It's that it was seen as the only action that mattered, and then nothing else was used to determine the outcome.

 

[FrogReaver]

Then you are straight-up invalidating the feature before the game even takes off the ground. This is covert Mother May I in action. You are actively neutering the player's abilities, while pretending to let them work. Why? What benefit does that serve?

I think I have my first glimpse of the difference between Mother May I and railroading in your mind. Mother May I (at least one form of it) is about invalidating features whereas railroading is about forcing particular outcomes. This may be done via invalidating features or some other means.

Is this true for your position?

*Note - I'll try to get to the rest later.

 

[Cadence]

So I've had a very busy day and am way behind, but wanted to respond to some of the below posts. Hopefully, they help clarify my view of the example I gave.



What specifically is the Duke's men surrounding the barn a consequence of? That's my issue. It's a consequence, for sure, but of what I have no idea. No perception rolls or anything of the sort were called for.



No, there were no rolls made, no explanations given (either in narration or in the after play discussion). It simply happened.



No, there's a huge and obvious difference. The roll of a 1-3 triggers the GM narrating some bad consequence. He can't do so otherwise.



Then I think that's part of the problem. This is what I meant when I said the 5E structure is susceptible to this kind of thing.



Please tell me how having the Duke's men surround the barn is a consequence of the use of the Rustic Hospitality ability?

The answer is that it's not. It should have been a consequence of other actions that never happened.



The conflict in this statement is part of the problem.



Because our goal was to avoid a fight with the Duke's men, who we knew were approaching town. How could we avoid a fight? I offered a reasonable means to do so. The GM decided it was not enough.

What may have been enough? I don't know. That may be the distinction you're looking for between Railroading and MMI, though I think it's hard to tell the difference given that we can't say if there was some magic way to ask to avoid the fight that would have worked.



No, there was no indication that the Duke's men knew we were in town, or that the farmer or the other couple of people we interacted with thought we were a danger to them (they were in fact, very enamored with us). When I asked him about it after play, he didn't elaborate in what led to our discovery other than, as I said, he thought it would be cool to have the barn surrounded and burning for a cool encounter like Young Guns. I didn't press him on it to see if in his mind we were snitched on or seen by the soldiers or what. I don't think he really gave it much thought to have a specific reason.



Exactly right.



Sort of. More that we decided we didn't want to fight the Duke's men. The reason for this (despite D&Desque murder-hoboism) we didn't want to kill a bunch of soldiers who were just doing what they thought were their jobs. We also (again, bucking the trends of D&D) didn't typically want to fight unless there was no other option. We did consider fighting them, but the negatives seemed to outweigh the positives.

So yes, that was the goal. Then I suggested my use of Rustic Hospitality to safely hide, which we hoped would achieve the goal.

Now, to be clear, I didn't necessarily expect that this ability alone would be enough to get the whole job done, so to speak. The Duke's men weren't there specifically for our characters, but they knew who we were, and the Duke hated us, so if we ran into the, there'd be an issue. So I figured we'd need to make a roll or two to hide safely in the barn. Or that the GM would narrate some additional scenes and prompt some actions, and depending on how those went, we may find ourselves in trouble.

So it's not that I expected the Rustic Hospitality was a magic bullet for the situation that got denied. It's that it was seen as the only action that mattered, and then nothing else was used to determine the outcome.

Thank you for the clarification! I understand your frustration much better now.

 

[Ovi]

Okay. It seems we're in agreement on that.


Use of the feature is conditioned on - posing no threat, and not putting lives at risk. Seeing as DM agreed the feature could be used, those conditions aren't at issue (insofar as deciding whether it worked or not goes: it worked.)


The feature did work. Had it not worked, the party would not have received a long rest.


The word "rest" is used through the 5e game text to refer to long and short rests. I think if you want to suppose it doesn't have that meaning, then you are making your interpretations of the game text more difficult for yourself... but each group certainly must go with their reading of the text.


I genuinely don't think it was at issue for the DM in question. They agreed that the feature worked. The dispute is over the results of "worked". Say I cast a fireball intending to kill all the Duke's men, but my fireball fails to kill them all. My fireball still worked, even though it failed to achieve my intent.

I disagree with quite a bit of this, but the overall take that Rustic Hospitality is governed by MMI is one I agree with enough that I'm not going to continue the argument on the details.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think I have my first glimpse of the difference between Mother May I and railroading in your mind. Mother May I (at least one form of it) is about invalidating features whereas railroading is about forcing particular outcomes. This may be done via invalidating features or some other means.

Is the true for your position?

*Note - I'll try to get to the rest later.

Features would be one example, but it can also be non-feature player...approaches, I guess?

But yes, that is the key difference. Railroading forces outcomes, it's "positive" in the sense that it pushes toward one specific goal. MMI, at least in this context, invalidates plans or approaches, and is thus inherently "negative." The two can pair together, as noted above: negating every option other than the one which sits upon the rails.

Now, ust as linearity can be good in some cases (e.g., we don't need constant interruptions when going from "the inn where we're staying" to "the marketplace where we intend to buy stuff"), it is totally okay contextually to have some "I'm sorry, that won't work" or "because of <established backstory reasons>, you won't be able to do that." Saying "no" is not inherently bad. But it is something one should do cautiously. IMO, saying "no" requires much more caution than saying "yes," but I find a lot of DMs treat it as exactly the reverse--that "yes" should be treated with utmost skepticism and caution, while "no" is always safe and effective.

In both cases, railroading and MMI, openness to alternatives is one of the best anodynes to the problem in question. Instead of "no, sorry," if you say, "Well, I don't think that will work as is. What are you looking for? Perhaps there's a different way," you are specifically averting MMI and railroading. You aren't just giving the player whatever they ask for, but you aren't just shutting off possibilities either, which averts MMI--you're making a dialogue. Further, you aren't just setting out one specific chain of events, but you also aren't letting the players craft whatever events they like, either--you're making a field of possibility.

And, of course, this sort of thing critically depends on human judgment. That's fine. We need that. But it also depends on human sensitivity, on empathy and diplomacy and not just a willingness but an eagerness to cooperate. To not simply make fiat declarations, but to work as hard as you can to build consensus, and only leverage hard fiat when you're backed into a corner and have nowhere else to turn.

"The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning." Morpheus, Deus Ex

 

[tetrasodium]

So I've had a very busy day and am way behind, but wanted to respond to some of the below posts. Hopefully, they help clarify my view of the example I gave.



What specifically is the Duke's men surrounding the barn a consequence of? That's my issue. It's a consequence, for sure, but of what I have no idea. No perception rolls or anything of the sort were called for.



No, there were no rolls made, no explanations given (either in narration or in the after play discussion). It simply happened.



No, there's a huge and obvious difference. The roll of a 1-3 triggers the GM narrating some bad consequence. He can't do so otherwise.



Then I think that's part of the problem. This is what I meant when I said the 5E structure is susceptible to this kind of thing.



Please tell me how having the Duke's men surround the barn is a consequence of the use of the Rustic Hospitality ability?

The answer is that it's not. It should have been a consequence of other actions that never happened.



The conflict in this statement is part of the problem.



Because our goal was to avoid a fight with the Duke's men, who we knew were approaching town. How could we avoid a fight? I offered a reasonable means to do so. The GM decided it was not enough.

What may have been enough? I don't know. That may be the distinction you're looking for between Railroading and MMI, though I think it's hard to tell the difference given that we can't say if there was some magic way to ask to avoid the fight that would have worked.



No, there was no indication that the Duke's men knew we were in town, or that the farmer or the other couple of people we interacted with thought we were a danger to them (they were in fact, very enamored with us). When I asked him about it after play, he didn't elaborate in what led to our discovery other than, as I said, he thought it would be cool to have the barn surrounded and burning for a cool encounter like Young Guns. I didn't press him on it to see if in his mind we were snitched on or seen by the soldiers or what. I don't think he really gave it much thought to have a specific reason.



Exactly right.



Sort of. More that we decided we didn't want to fight the Duke's men. The reason for this (despite D&Desque murder-hoboism) we didn't want to kill a bunch of soldiers who were just doing what they thought were their jobs. We also (again, bucking the trends of D&D) didn't typically want to fight unless there was no other option. We did consider fighting them, but the negatives seemed to outweigh the positives.

So yes, that was the goal. Then I suggested my use of Rustic Hospitality to safely hide, which we hoped would achieve the goal.

Now, to be clear, I didn't necessarily expect that this ability alone would be enough to get the whole job done, so to speak. The Duke's men weren't there specifically for our characters, but they knew who we were, and the Duke hated us, so if we ran into the, there'd be an issue. So I figured we'd need to make a roll or two to hide safely in the barn. Or that the GM would narrate some additional scenes and prompt some actions, and depending on how those went, we may find ourselves in trouble.

So it's not that I expected the Rustic Hospitality was a magic bullet for the situation that got denied. It's that it was seen as the only action that mattered, and then nothing else was used to determine the outcome.

You did hide. Rather than using that time to plan a getaway you took a long rest. The duke's men obviously spent that time continuing to search.

The players get to take actions hoping for a result, the result was hiding successfuly but the world moved on. From there you took a nap instead of taking action to escape. The gm determines outcome & in this case the outcome was that you hit for long enough to take a rest

A few posters have been pretty insistent about accusingthe gm of being a bad gm for not doing x or y to "foreshadow" in a way that gives the players a chance to metagame around it even when those things are reporting events your characters are not present for. That's an incredibly hostile & toxic way for a player to treat the gm however. You as group instead of taking a long rest could have waited an hour for a short rest at best & tried to escape into the forests sewers or whatever while the guards were occupied elsewhere. You as a group could have laid false tracks or even paid an npc to report seeing you run the other way than the direction you plan to run. You could have done all sorts of things other than bed down for a long rest while being hunted if the goal was to escape but you didn't. The fact that you didn't doesn't make you a bad player like the gm in question is being accused of... It just makes you a player who made a plan that didn't have enough follow through to work as well as hoped.

 

[pemerton]

IMO, you have a very different view on how that ability is supposed to work

You think I've got fireball wrong?

 

[Campbell]

@tetrasodium

I don't think the GM in the example @hawkeyefan provided was a bad GM. I do think he could have done a better job in this instance of providing meaningful points of interaction. I have made similar judgement calls in the past that I wish I could have back. I certainly do not always communicate the details of the fiction as well as I could. I think he could do better, but I think we all could do better.