I think for me the basic issue with the Duke example is that the dm had a wide range of responses and chose the one that is the worst result from the player’s perspective. There were all sorts of things that could have happened but “found and ambushed “ was probably the worst result that could have happened.
And I find that those who most vocally denounce any sort of MMI criticism routinely will choose the results that are the worst from the player’s perspective. Typically because they want to “challenge “ the players.
It very often results in the players being stripped of the ability to be active and forced to be purely reactive.
I think for me the basic issue with the Duke example is that the dm had a wide range of responses and chose the one that is the worst result from the player’s perspective. There were all sorts of things that could have happened but “found and ambushed “ was probably the worst result that could have happened.
And I find that those who most vocally denounce any sort of MMI criticism routinely will choose the results that are the worst from the player’s perspective. Typically because they want to “challenge “ the players.
It very often results in the players being stripped of the ability to be active and forced to be purely reactive.
So, in the interest of fairness--since I have made up some examples thus far in the thread--I'm going to take a single, canned, fictitious example to analyze. It'll inspired by events from my home game, mostly because that makes the hypothetical easier. I'll explore what it looks like with heavy MMI, mild MMI, and no MMI.
Couple years ago now, the party had been made aware of a dangerous threat in the form of the "Garden-City of Zerzura," something I adapted from the very excellent Gardens of Ynn. (This is not an affiliate link, I get nothing from it, I just want to give credit where it's due.) They had learned that the Song of Thorns was an extremely powerful spirit of savagery and entropy, which could corrupt the minds and eventually even the bodies of creatures who came in contact with it--and all the contact you need is to hear or read a snippet of the titular song. They'd gotten advice from a shaman that, if you want to hunt a spirit, you should look for a predator for that spirit.
They went and found a different, corrupted spirit of order, and purified it, but their purification wasn't ideal; they had to beat up the spirit pretty badly and basically cleave off the corrupted power, diminishing it. This spirit is named Mudaris, and it's fundamentally a spirit of history or records, originally arising from sedimentary rock, but grew in power with things like life (tree rings!), animals (memory!), and eventually sapient beings (records, history, laws, etc.) Since they wanted to have Mudaris help them fight back against the Song, they investigated how to rebuild its power. Here are three examples of how that could have been handled (with the third being closest to what we actually did.)
Bard: Okay, so we need to power Mudaris up, right? Just want to make sure I know what we're doing.
DM: Yes, that's correct. Mudaris is weak after fighting you, and probably not strong enough to survive fighting the Song of Thorns.
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: No, that would only let you power up spells or other produced magic, not actually build up a spirit.
Ranger: How about going off and slaying other spirits to feed to Mudaris?
DM: That might work eventually, but not on a timetable fast enough for what you want. Spirits take a long time to digest.
Bard: What about spreading word about him to others? We did something like that back at Ravens' Fall, didn't we?
DM: Technically yes, but first, that's also pretty slow, and second, you'd be branded as heretics, that's part of what got Mudaris sealed away to begin with.
Ranger: Jeez, okay, uh...could we go to a library? Maybe ask my cousin at the Asiad al-Khafyun* HQ?
DM: Neither the Waziri nor the Safiqi have the kind of information you need. Only the Kahina would know that, and...well, they don't really keep libraries.
Druid: Okay. What if we...took Mudaris to important old places? Would that work? Try to learn the history Mudaris has missed?
DM: Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. You can think of at least two places where that would work. The Royal Palace here in Al-Rakkah, which originally belonged to the Genie-Rajahs when they ruled this land thousands of years ago, and Kafer-Naum, since it's been continuously inhabited and used as a place of worship since the Safiqi priesthood was founded, which was only very slightly after the genies left the mortal world for Jinnistan.
*Aside: these are basically the "internal police"/"secret police" of the Safiqi priesthood. Sorta-kinda like "ninja clerics," or 4e Avengers. They keep a secret vault of forbidden knowledge, which they consult if needed in order to put down threats to the world or heretics abusing priestly power to hurt the lay faithful.
As you can see here, the players proposed several reasonable-sounding, plausible approaches. None of them work. Sure, there's a reason why each one doesn't work, but this is suggestion after suggestion after suggestion shot down, with no effort made to make it any easier to figure out what will work. It strongly comes across as the DM simply rejecting any solution that isn't the pre-approved one, which in this case is a tour of various ancient locations in order to draw on Mudaris' affinity for records, tradition, etc. It certainly could be the case that the DM is doing this because they have some really cool stuff teed up about visiting millennia-old temples or deciphering the meanings of ancient tablets held in archaeological archives, but the end result looks a lot more like obstruction.
Now, perhaps you could argue that the players should be asking more questions (e.g. "what would work?"), but in a lot of cases, whether MMI or not, players are expected to attempt things rather than asking what they should try. I certainly think the DM here (despite this person theoretically being me!) is stonewalling the players in a highly unproductive way.
Bard: Okay, so we need to power Mudaris up, right? Just want to make sure I know what we're doing.
DM: Yes, that's correct. Mudaris is weak after fighting you, and probably not strong enough to survive fighting the Song of Thorns.
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: You'll need to find a pretty strong place of power to do that. Do you have any in mind?
Druid: Eh...no, not really. Bard, you know of anything like this?
Bard: No, but I'm sure I could go looking for one. Can we get in touch with that librarian we know? Juwairiya?
DM: Sure, give me a Spout Lore roll for that. [AN: "Spout Lore" is basically the DW "Knowledge" check.] Roll three dice and take the worst two, though, because this isn't really your area of expertise, and records of powerful places like this will be hard to find.
Bard: [rolls] Ah, crap, that's only a 7.
DM: You find some handwritten marginalia on the subject, but they're frustratingly vague. "I have located a truly marvelous place of power in at least two readily-accessible places, though the full description is too long for this margin to contain."
Ranger: Well, if it's "readily-accessible," it can't be that far away. Maybe we can feel around with our magical senses?
DM: You probably would have noticed them already if they were that obvious. It must be more subtle than that.
Bard: Huh. What does Mudaris have to say about all this? I'll write what I've seen into the book. [AN: Mudaris was temporarily kept in a book serving as a 'totem' to the spirit. It could speak, but written text was easier for it in this weakened state.]
DM: Mudaris is unsure. "Much has changed in your land whilst I in prison lay. I know not where great powers flow today."
Druid: Okay. What if we...took Mudaris to important old places? Would that work? Try to learn the history Mudaris has missed?
DM: Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. You can think of at least two places where that would work. The Royal Palace here in Al-Rakkah, and Kafer-Naum. Both have been in use for a long time and will have a strong presence in the spirit world, so they have the potential.
Here, we see more of the "covert" MMI (setting super high difficulties, giving paltry rewards). It clearly isn't the rampant no, no, no of the previous. But there's still a lot of effective "no, no, no" going on. The DM is doing a lot less stonewalling, but there's still some resistance in play. Many groups probably wouldn't find too much issue with this situation in isolation, but if it's representative of the overall pattern, it's likely that there would be some issues building up over time.
Bard: Okay, so we need to power Mudaris up, right? Just want to make sure I know what we're doing.
DM: Yes, that's correct. Mudaris is weak after fighting you, and probably not strong enough to survive fighting the Song of Thorns.
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: That sounds like a good place to start, though rituals require a place of power, generally one appropriate to the ritual.
Druid: What are we looking for in that sense?
DM: Well, you're powering up a spirit of tradition, order, and history. Where would you go to look for that?
Bard: Hmm. Places that have a strong influence of history...well, I've studied history, I'm sure I know of some things like that.
DM: Well, for one thing, everyone knows that the city of Al-Rakkah is old enough to have originally belonged to the genie-rajahs. The current royal palace was originally built as an extension of the original, genie-made one.
Ranger: You know, I recently started following the Resolute Seeker...that aspect of the One doesn't really seem to be big on historical locations, but did my training teach me anything useful here?
DM: Definitely. One of the basic tenets of the Safiqi faith is that the truth of the One was taught by Their Servants, before they departed this world, and that happened around the time of the genie-rajahs departing the mortal world for Jinnistan.
Druid: Ooh, does that mean Kafer-Naum is old too? I'd love to go back to the hotsprings...
DM: Yes. Kafer-Naum is probably the oldest city completely built by mortal hands, since it had nothing to do with the genies who used to rule the Tarrakhuna.
Bard: So, the Royal Palace and whatever the oldest spots in Kafer-Naum are.
DM: Sounds suspiciously like a plan.
As I said, this is a very, very loose approximation of what actually happened. I don't recall if our Druid asked about a ritual (I just wanted to keep the intro the same), but the results came out of a dialogue between players and DM, where both sides made statement and asked questions. At no point did the DM here ever actually say no, or even limit the potential success or likelihood thereof--because there was no need to do these things. Leveraging common knowledge, character-specific background knowledge, and previously-established patterns, the situation was resolved with a plan, in a way that supported player interests without simply caving to them--they'll still have to do the work, but they won't have to scrape and save just to try.
It think @EzekielRaiden we're largely on the same page here. The heavy MMI example you give is a very good example of changing the players from active to reactive. They aren't really able to initiate anything. Everything is flowing from the DM to the players, but, nothing is going the other way. The player's suggestions are shut down until they get to the one solution that the DM wants and then they can "choose" to follow that.
And, again, I think we can see that MMI and railroading often go very much hand in hand. In the venn diagram of railroading and MMI there's significant overlap mostly because both things are strongly oriented around the notion of limiting player pro-activity.
It think @EzekielRaiden we're largely on the same page here. The heavy MMI example you give is a very good example of changing the players from active to reactive. They aren't really able to initiate anything. Everything is flowing from the DM to the players, but, nothing is going the other way. The player's suggestions are shut down until they get to the one solution that the DM wants and then they can "choose" to follow that.
And, again, I think we can see that MMI and railroading often go very much hand in hand. In the venn diagram of railroading and MMI there's significant overlap mostly because both things are strongly oriented around the notion of limiting player pro-activity.
Certainly. MMI is "negative" in that it shuts down answers that aren't pre-approved (regardless of whether there is a plot being enforced.) Railroading is "positive" in that it pushes players toward an enforced sequence of events (regardless of whether there are pre-approved answers.) MMI is the classic way of railroading "in the open," as it were, while illusionism is a different approach which railroads "invisibly." Likewise, one can engage in MMI in service of railroading, but it can be done for a variety of reasons: draconian enforcement of overly-restrictive rules, reluctance to allow players to succeed, undue emphasis on making the game world be like the DM's conception of the real world (as opposed to being actually like the real world*), etc.
*We wouldn't have Ripley's Believe It or Not, nor Mythbusters, if everyday folks had a reliable understanding of how reality actually works for various edge case scenarios.
So, in the interest of fairness--since I have made up some examples thus far in the thread--I'm going to take a single, canned, fictitious example to analyze. It'll inspired by events from my home game, mostly because that makes the hypothetical easier. I'll explore what it looks like with heavy MMI, mild MMI, and no MMI.
Couple years ago now, the party had been made aware of a dangerous threat in the form of the "Garden-City of Zerzura," something I adapted from the very excellent Gardens of Ynn. (This is not an affiliate link, I get nothing from it, I just want to give credit where it's due.) They had learned that the Song of Thorns was an extremely powerful spirit of savagery and entropy, which could corrupt the minds and eventually even the bodies of creatures who came in contact with it--and all the contact you need is to hear or read a snippet of the titular song. They'd gotten advice from a shaman that, if you want to hunt a spirit, you should look for a predator for that spirit.
They went and found a different, corrupted spirit of order, and purified it, but their purification wasn't ideal; they had to beat up the spirit pretty badly and basically cleave off the corrupted power, diminishing it. This spirit is named Mudaris, and it's fundamentally a spirit of history or records, originally arising from sedimentary rock, but grew in power with things like life (tree rings!), animals (memory!), and eventually sapient beings (records, history, laws, etc.) Since they wanted to have Mudaris help them fight back against the Song, they investigated how to rebuild its power. Here are three examples of how that could have been handled (with the third being closest to what we actually did.)
Bard: Okay, so we need to power Mudaris up, right? Just want to make sure I know what we're doing.
DM: Yes, that's correct. Mudaris is weak after fighting you, and probably not strong enough to survive fighting the Song of Thorns.
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: No, that would only let you power up spells or other produced magic, not actually build up a spirit.
Ranger: How about going off and slaying other spirits to feed to Mudaris?
DM: That might work eventually, but not on a timetable fast enough for what you want. Spirits take a long time to digest.
Bard: What about spreading word about him to others? We did something like that back at Ravens' Fall, didn't we?
DM: Technically yes, but first, that's also pretty slow, and second, you'd be branded as heretics, that's part of what got Mudaris sealed away to begin with.
Ranger: Jeez, okay, uh...could we go to a library? Maybe ask my cousin at the Asiad al-Khafyun* HQ?
DM: Neither the Waziri nor the Safiqi have the kind of information you need. Only the Kahina would know that, and...well, they don't really keep libraries.
Druid: Okay. What if we...took Mudaris to important old places? Would that work? Try to learn the history Mudaris has missed?
DM: Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. You can think of at least two places where that would work. The Royal Palace here in Al-Rakkah, which originally belonged to the Genie-Rajahs when they ruled this land thousands of years ago, and Kafer-Naum, since it's been continuously inhabited and used as a place of worship since the Safiqi priesthood was founded, which was only very slightly after the genies left the mortal world for Jinnistan.
*Aside: these are basically the "internal police"/"secret police" of the Safiqi priesthood. Sorta-kinda like "ninja clerics," or 4e Avengers. They keep a secret vault of forbidden knowledge, which they consult if needed in order to put down threats to the world or heretics abusing priestly power to hurt the lay faithful.
As you can see here, the players proposed several reasonable-sounding, plausible approaches. None of them work. Sure, there's a reason why each one doesn't work, but this is suggestion after suggestion after suggestion shot down, with no effort made to make it any easier to figure out what will work. It strongly comes across as the DM simply rejecting any solution that isn't the pre-approved one, which in this case is a tour of various ancient locations in order to draw on Mudaris' affinity for records, tradition, etc. It certainly could be the case that the DM is doing this because they have some really cool stuff teed up about visiting millennia-old temples or deciphering the meanings of ancient tablets held in archaeological archives, but the end result looks a lot more like obstruction.
Now, perhaps you could argue that the players should be asking more questions (e.g. "what would work?"), but in a lot of cases, whether MMI or not, players are expected to attempt things rather than asking what they should try. I certainly think the DM here (despite this person theoretically being me!) is stonewalling the players in a highly unproductive way.
Bard: Okay, so we need to power Mudaris up, right? Just want to make sure I know what we're doing.
DM: Yes, that's correct. Mudaris is weak after fighting you, and probably not strong enough to survive fighting the Song of Thorns.
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: You'll need to find a pretty strong place of power to do that. Do you have any in mind?
Druid: Eh...no, not really. Bard, you know of anything like this?
Bard: No, but I'm sure I could go looking for one. Can we get in touch with that librarian we know? Juwairiya?
DM: Sure, give me a Spout Lore roll for that. [AN: "Spout Lore" is basically the DW "Knowledge" check.] Roll three dice and take the worst two, though, because this isn't really your area of expertise, and records of powerful places like this will be hard to find.
Bard: [rolls] Ah, crap, that's only a 7.
DM: You find some handwritten marginalia on the subject, but they're frustratingly vague. "I have located a truly marvelous place of power in at least two readily-accessible places, though the full description is too long for this margin to contain."
Ranger: Well, if it's "readily-accessible," it can't be that far away. Maybe we can feel around with our magical senses?
DM: You probably would have noticed them already if they were that obvious. It must be more subtle than that.
Bard: Huh. What does Mudaris have to say about all this? I'll write what I've seen into the book. [AN: Mudaris was temporarily kept in a book serving as a 'totem' to the spirit. It could speak, but written text was easier for it in this weakened state.]
DM: Mudaris is unsure. "Much has changed in your land whilst I in prison lay. I know not where great powers flow today."
Druid: Okay. What if we...took Mudaris to important old places? Would that work? Try to learn the history Mudaris has missed?
DM: Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. You can think of at least two places where that would work. The Royal Palace here in Al-Rakkah, and Kafer-Naum. Both have been in use for a long time and will have a strong presence in the spirit world, so they have the potential.
Here, we see more of the "covert" MMI (setting super high difficulties, giving paltry rewards). It clearly isn't the rampant no, no, no of the previous. But there's still a lot of effective "no, no, no" going on. The DM is doing a lot less stonewalling, but there's still some resistance in play. Many groups probably wouldn't find too much issue with this situation in isolation, but if it's representative of the overall pattern, it's likely that there would be some issues building up over time.
Bard: Okay, so we need to power Mudaris up, right? Just want to make sure I know what we're doing.
DM: Yes, that's correct. Mudaris is weak after fighting you, and probably not strong enough to survive fighting the Song of Thorns.
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: That sounds like a good place to start, though rituals require a place of power, generally one appropriate to the ritual.
Druid: What are we looking for in that sense?
DM: Well, you're powering up a spirit of tradition, order, and history. Where would you go to look for that?
Bard: Hmm. Places that have a strong influence of history...well, I've studied history, I'm sure I know of some things like that.
DM: Well, for one thing, everyone knows that the city of Al-Rakkah is old enough to have originally belonged to the genie-rajahs. The current royal palace was originally built as an extension of the original, genie-made one.
Ranger: You know, I recently started following the Resolute Seeker...that aspect of the One doesn't really seem to be big on historical locations, but did my training teach me anything useful here?
DM: Definitely. One of the basic tenets of the Safiqi faith is that the truth of the One was taught by Their Servants, before they departed this world, and that happened around the time of the genie-rajahs departing the mortal world for Jinnistan.
Druid: Ooh, does that mean Kafer-Naum is old too? I'd love to go back to the hotsprings...
DM: Yes. Kafer-Naum is probably the oldest city completely built by mortal hands, since it had nothing to do with the genies who used to rule the Tarrakhuna.
Bard: So, the Royal Palace and whatever the oldest spots in Kafer-Naum are.
DM: Sounds suspiciously like a plan.
As I said, this is a very, very loose approximation of what actually happened. I don't recall if our Druid asked about a ritual (I just wanted to keep the intro the same), but the results came out of a dialogue between players and DM, where both sides made statement and asked questions. At no point did the DM here ever actually say no, or even limit the potential success or likelihood thereof--because there was no need to do these things. Leveraging common knowledge, character-specific background knowledge, and previously-established patterns, the situation was resolved with a plan, in a way that supported player interests without simply caving to them--they'll still have to do the work, but they won't have to scrape and save just to try.
Is it right that all three cases land in the same place? The difference is that DM3 adroitly guides the conversation to that place from the players' first idea? Rather than saying no and waiting for the players to stumble upon it.
Bard: Okay, so we need to power Mudaris up, right? Just want to make sure I know what we're doing.
DM: Yes, that's correct. Mudaris is weak after fighting you, and probably not strong enough to survive fighting the Song of Thorns.
@EzekielRaiden I don't raise the question in my post above to nitpick your examples. It's a benefit that you took the time and thought to write them, and I want to engage with them. That all three landed in the same place surprised me. Here is what I am thinking...
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: No, that would only let you power up spells or other produced magic, not actually build up a spirit.
DM: That might work eventually, but the challenge will be doing it fast enough for what you want. You'll need to find a way to speed up their digestion.
Ranger: Okay, while I think about how to do that, any other ideas?
So I am picturing that the first idea was a straight no. We already established that our shared world does not work that way. Idea two could work, albeit with a significant challenge to overcome.
To me, the error is framing the challenge in idea two as unassailable. I dislike in the original write up a feeling that as all three cases land in the same place, we risk focusing on how to successfully deliver illusionism. Rather than guiding players to make their ideas work given our fiction and system.
I don't believe that illusionism is the intent. To me the cases as written can be read to skirt it, hence my questions and thoughts here.
Is it right that all three cases land in the same place? The difference is that DM3 adroitly guides the conversation to that place from the players' first idea? Rather than saying no and waiting for the players to stumble upon it.
Mostly, I was just keeping it conformed to what actually happened in my game. So the start and end are the same, but the road to get there is different.
Mostly, I was just keeping it conformed to what actually happened in my game. So the start and end are the same, but the road to get there is different.
@EzekielRaiden I don't raise the question in my post above to nitpick your examples. It's a benefit that you took the time and thought to write them, and I want to engage with them. That all three landed in the same place surprised me. Here is what I am thinking...
DM: Remember that all our prior rulings on drawing spiritual energy have established that it works that way. Like when you... [DM cites prior ruling]
Being the DM in this case, I can say that there was no established precedent that this was the case. That is, places of power had been used to power up spells, but had never done anything directly related to spirits before, so there would be no way the players could know, and nothing I could cite for said precedent.
(This, incidentally, is part of why I built something off of my own campaign. I can definitively answer questions on the behalf of these hypothetical DMs.)
Also, completely aside: I would IRL absolutely be in favor of allowing a ritual to do what the players were asking for here, though the Ritual move is not always the best thing for the players, as it explicitly gives me as DM much more leeway about exactly what I can ask, as opposed to most other situations where my responses are more restricted by the rules.
Yes, that is usually an issue with overt MMI. Covert MMI does not generally frame challenges as impossible/unattainable. It simply makes them, in practice, impossible/unattainable, or makes them attainable but fruitless.
I dislike in the original write up a feeling that as all three cases land in the same place, we risk focusing on how to successfully deliver illusionism. Rather than guiding players to make their ideas work given our fiction and system.
Being the DM in this case, I can say that there was no established precedent that this was the case. That is, places of power had been used to power up spells, but had never done anything directly related to spirits before, so there would be no way the players could know, and nothing I could cite for said precedent.
Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: Your druidic learning makes you confident that can power up spells or other produced magic that way, but actually build up a spirit? It's outside your current knowldege.
Druid: Hmm... so who would know, I wonder?
Etc
Here again I feel it is okay for DM to explain that characters don't currently have a way to make this work. The DM response as you cast it, to my reading relied on a fact about the world. As you have clarified that it was not preestablished, they are fabricating that fact on the fly to shut down a player's idea. That's quite egregious.
Yes, that is usually an issue with overt MMI. Covert MMI does not generally frame challenges as impossible/unattainable. It simply makes them, in practice, impossible/unattainable, or makes them attainable but fruitless.
Right. For avoidance of doubt, here with "framing" I intended to imply the matter of fact, as well as its representation to the players. We've used the term in slightly different ways. (Yours is less ambiguous.)
