I think this may be what @hawkeyefan had in mind when, quite a way upthread, he identified spells and combat as the places in 5e D&D which are less prone to "mother may I" because of the difference of orientation towards adjudication of those things.
In D&D combat the only thing keeping a DM from fudging dice, inflating monster hp after realizing the monster was too weak, bringing in reinforcements just to make the encounter more challenging - the only thing keeping any of that from happening is principles.
So IMO, there's plenty of opportunity in combat for a D&D under some sets of principles to do the same thing you call MMI and to hide the fact that's occurring by keeping the details of it in information the players aren't privy to.
I think this ties in nicely with your preferences around clear player facing mechanics (which make it transparent when that might occur) and non-dm-adjudication systems to determine outcomes (as these can also be 'hid' behind to make what you call MMI occur).
I think that it shows that pointing to the play loop without also considering principles is not an adequate account of how the game is meant to be played. And (as you know) I think once principles are brought in, there is a pretty clear basis for diagnosing the bad GMing in the episode that @hawkeyefan has described.
While a game like Blades may have a short list of explicit principles that are in effect all the time, often times principles at a given D&D table are more dynamic. Except for the most basic and static set of D&D principles I don't know that it's actually going to be analyzable - or at least if it was it would likely take a doctorate level thesis to work out.
As I've posted several times now, I don't see that 5e necessitates that things outside of combat and spells be handled in a way where no principles govern other than the GM adhering to their conception of the fiction.
Maybe not all things, that’s why I asked if you have any examples beyond genre/setting violations. What I’m saying is that it’s on the players to not violate those… it shouldn’t be the GM’s job to correct the players in this way. The players are not free of responsibility here.
My example was absurd just to be clear. Obviously, there could be examples far less extreme where GM and player may have a different idea about what violates genre. When that happens, I think a discussion is in order.
For many folks who have posted in this thread, my guess is that they would say the GM’s ideas should win out by default in such cases. I’d say that this is a practice that can lead to play becoming Mother May I.
My group was play Curse of Strahd a long time ago. I was a player. We encountered the Burgomaster who was basically the leader of one of the factions. I can't remember precisely what was said to the Burgomaster but the jist was that he was shutting down all the players plans and ultimately a player insulted him with a milder insult. Immediately it was guards and jail the offender.
I did ask the DM afterwards because he does tend to play medieval rulers with a very specific lens. But this wasn't so much him as how the book explained to run the Burgomaster. We talked about it some more and I don't think we ever figured out a great way to run him and adhere to the rules about him that would have been fun for the players.
Published adventures can be tough to avoid Mother May I at times. So much has to be determined ahead of time that the designers risk favoring certain approaches over others, expecting certain outcomes to keep things moving as required. Even an adventure that’s as open as Curse of Strahd is in its early parts.
Here’s my take on that though… the burgomeister (or maybe the Baron of Vallaki, I think it may have been) is not essential to the game in any way that requires a certain outcome. He can be obeyed or tricked or overthrown… the adventure does a good job of not requiring a specific way of dealing with him. Which only makes the need for a GM to force the Baron’s authority in such a way more troublesome.
I don't think you meant this the way it sounds, but it does imply that all of us that don't share a position similar to yours on MMI, that we nearly always choose the worst result from the players perspective. That comes across not only untrue but highly offensive.
No it’s not. It’s about the example of the Barn/Rustic Hospitality. That was an example where the GM essentially determined things to go just about as bad as they could have for the players. Look at how many comments have been made to justify the GM’s judgment on this.
Cleary, this is something that happens in play. No, it’s not a given that it’ll happen. It’s not a statement that this is always universally true. It’s a criticism of one of the shortcomings of this method. One of the pitfalls of which to be aware and try to avoid.
Taking offense and denying that it’s possible rather than considering it and discussing ways it can be avoided is a choice people are making.
IMO, D&D groups often have an unspoken/unwritten principle that combat rules should be played as more binding than the rest of the game rules. This is a very common principle across D&D tables.
I think this may be what @hawkeyefan had in mind when, quite a way upthread, he identified spells and combat as the places in 5e D&D which are less prone to "mother may I" because of the difference of orientation towards adjudication of those things.
I think that it shows that pointing to the play loop without also considering principles is not an adequate account of how the game is meant to be played. And (as you know) I think once principles are brought in, there is a pretty clear basis for diagnosing the bad GMing in the episode that @hawkeyefan has described.
As I've posted several times now, I don't see that 5e necessitates that things outside of combat and spells be handled in a way where no principles govern other than the GM adhering to their conception of the fiction.
Right. I wish the books did more to advise against this kind of GMing. Or to suggest that it may be a thing and some players/GMs may not enjoy it. Instead, it’s on all of us to learn this by trial and error, potentially across many years or decades of play.
Which at times, I think, makes people think that’s the only way for this stuff to be learned.
In D&D combat the only thing keeping a DM from fudging dice, inflating monster hp after realizing the monster was too weak, bringing in reinforcements just to make the encounter more challenging - the only thing keeping any of that from happening is principles.
Principled play is a big part of it, absolutely. But it’s not the only thing. Just the existence of codified mechanics serve that purpose as well. Why else would they exist if not to be used in play?
The absence of such robust mechanics in areas not related to combat is a huge part of what makes things so fuzzy here.
I think that the fact that multiple GMs can handle such a situation as the Baron of Vallaki in multiple ways is the kind of thing that’s seen as one of the strengths of the 5E rules. And while that may be true, I think that viewing it solely as a variety for the GM is part of the conflict in this discussion.
So IMO, there's plenty of opportunity in combat for a D&D under some sets of principles to do the same thing you call MMI and to hide the fact that's occurring by keeping the details of it in information the players aren't privy to.
Sure, there’s always a risk of unprincipled play or GMing. Offering specific and clear principles is a way to help reduce that. Having such in place makes it much more obvious when they’re compromised.
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.
I think it is right for DM to clarify... in this case to remind players of the established facts of their shared fiction. Note emphasis to call attention to a difference in what we might think is happening here: is that at the heart of your concern?
I'm an advocate of asymmetrical roles around the table in both boardgames and TTRPG. At the same time, I am agnostic as to what those roles should be. It may be one participant has been tasked by the group to establish background details, including who holds esoteric knowledge. Or that may be on everyone equally. In either case, they should follow their shared principles, fiction, and system.
No it’s not. It’s about the example of the Barn/Rustic Hospitality. That was an example where the GM essentially determined things to go just about as bad as they could have for the players. Look at how many comments have been made to justify the GM’s judgment on this.
This may do disservice to other posters' comments, and certainly does to mine. Nowhere in my comments do I say that the DM exercised the right judgement. What I suggest is that they exercised the wrong judgement while still following the game rules. Their judgement erred in the following of principles, not rules.
As @FrogReaver has argued, there's really no part of the system that one cannot misapply if erring on principles.
While I use MMI to describe the design philosophy of 'I don't know, what am I the game's designer? Ask your DM.', I think this is the heart of the problem being discussed.
Sharing the fiction, where everyone has narrative levers and some level of agency and autonomy relative to the group experience.
VS
Sharing in the faction, where the plyers are having an interactive experience with the curated fiction the GM slaved over a hot laptop twenty hours for and if you want something else, then you can make it yourself--Go to your room, young man.
While I use MMI to describe the design philosophy of 'I don't know, what am I the game's designer? Ask your DM.', I think this is the heart of the problem being discussed.
Sharing the fiction, where everyone has narrative levers and some level of agency and autonomy relative to the group experience.
VS
Sharing in the faction, where the plyers are having an interactive experience with the curated fiction the GM slaved over a hot laptop twenty hours for and if you want something else, then you can make it yourself--Go to your room, young man.
Suppose a group opt into an arrangement where one of their number is tasked with creating background fiction which the others explore and add to in ways that are not equal. Are they committed in that case to everything those unequal participants say amounting to MMI?
Through thought experiments of that kind, where I land is that MMI is down to principles. Under some set of principles, DM-curated play can be MMI. Under some other set, not.
Which I honestly find quite baffling. Why does this major subset, where most of the actual rules are, get treated as sacrosanct when the places where the rules are so thin they barely exist don't? It just seems like the silliest stance when contrasted against the seemingly pervasive "rulings not rules" approach.
There doesn't really need to be any special sacredness for combat rules. Ability checks are governed by rules that differ in important ways from those governing combat. Compare the procedure for an attack action (PHB195) to that for actions outside of combat that may lead to ability checks (PHB174, DMG237.)
Which I honestly find quite baffling. Why does this major subset, where most of the actual rules are, get treated as sacrosanct when the places where the rules are so thin they barely exist don't? It just seems like the silliest stance when contrasted against the seemingly pervasive "rulings not rules" approach.
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.
I think you are trying to hold any form of player agency alongside the branching spinning plates screw around and find out speeding train of gameplay people bristle at being compared to a problematic children's game about absolute control & suspect that's why you mentioned railroading & what the GM could have done instead so often in the thread. Yes in all three examples the players gave some agency to forge their own path, but it's largely a one step path with an easy start & end point with few chances to go in unexpected directions
That's the problem. Your [editost defining example] isn't showing a game where players are free to carve a of their own path because it's already decided on what they need to do even if there's some wiggle room on the where. It's pretty much standard trad type game plan where players need to solve for x and get a little freedom in choosing a path as long as it leads to the predetermined end point so the players are still largely railroad adjacent even if they get distracted.
Look at it in terms of the ever popular forest & the trees metaphor. The players can always plant new trees or cut down existing ones& within limits of their abilities. When the players have one step goals like find a place of power to solve for x it's not much different than find a pine tree in the forest. When players gave goals like "stabilize this city", "win the war for your chosen faction" "fix ravenloft/barovia with strahd's blessing to something khorvaire wouldn't call primitive & undeveloped" "use this limited time travel macguffin repair the entire timeline" or whatever things get a bit more big picture & players have a real chance to dig their hands into the clay of the world to shape things with their actions. Everything they do influences someone else (for good or ill) and can potentially eliminate existing groups from the sheet or cause new ones to step up from a quantum state of irrelevance into one worthy of their own name goals connections & powerbase on the board.
All of those are actual campaigns I ran in 3.x/pf/5e with no idea how or if the players would succeed & all of them individually lasted at least a year of weekly sessions making them something very different than just find a place to solve for x & go there to solve. With those larger goals the players need to consider the stones they throw with the knowledge that the brute force solution might be easy for this one thing but doing so could turn a previously neutral or mild frenemy into a hostile burning bridge actively working against you.
That reason is a stone that the players threw & it made ripples in the forest. The players can't unthrow that stone because the ripples are already beyond their reach. What they can do is:
take an action to cast a new stone that creates new ripples making the Duke ignore the last stone. It's not forgotten that they threw it, but in somehow bring made whole again he's willing move on while the players move on. This is rarely a good option because the players threw the initial stone for a reason.
be too much of a hassle to peruse... Maybe kill enough guards or run far/fast enough might suffice. Depending on the duke's powerbase this may or may not be a good option but runs the risk of looking too deep into the abyss or triggering "nice job breaking it, hero".
the most rewarding and potentially complicated option is hitching their collective wagon under the skirts of someone with a different kind of power (ie political /planar /etc) who simply by being tied to the party makes it difficult for the Duke to use his power against them. That difficulty works both ways though because their patron's concerns need to be part of their own or it goes from mutually beneficial relationship to a toxic one that severs them from their patron.
In the ravenloft game this was A: the (mostly) house Cannith artificers and B: the somewhat off his rocker love obsessed strahd. The players succeeded when they found ways to make their goals align with the goals of those two & vice versa but that was complicated because the two didn't always start out mutually on the same page & often had a reason or need why that needed solving or alternatives created.
It might not seem a concern in many games, but in this style severing ties to one patron with a backstabbing double cross & going off to a new one shifts the whole game's focus & potentially leaves behind a network of burning bridges. Those burned bridges pile up when done repeatedly & the players wind up with a well earned reputation of being untrustworthy & unreliable making new patron hesitant to extend anything in good faith. It pretty much forces the GM to rebuild a new campaign on the fly at a level where players are too powerful to get in on events with small bite sized pieces & too untrustworthy for their new "allies" to explain things even if the GM has them fleshed out enough ready to go.
5e makes it hard for players to put their own self interest above not doing this & knifing the goal simply because NPCs don't have anything whatsoever that the players need. let alone need regularly. getting rid of required magic items & magic item churn while making so many magic items even more powerful in 5e all but assures that a lot of players will do this with glee just because they can then blame the gm for the meltdown they themselves created
build their own power base. This is fairly difficult because it requires the players care about the interests of their base along with their own interests. Even when doing this it's important to have mutual patrons out in the world, eventually players become powerful enough that some of the groups who may have been their patrons previously evolve into more of an underling role simply because so much of the each side's power is linked to continuing that relationship rather than risking a web of allies
You aren't running a game where players are free to carve a of their own path because it's already decided on what they need to do even if there's some wiggle room on the where.
This may do disservice to other posters' comments, and certainly does to mine. Nowhere in my comments do I say that the DM exercised the right judgement. What I suggest is that they exercised the wrong judgement while still following the game rules. Their judgement erred in the following of principles, not rules.
I didn’t attribute such comments to you; I simply pointed out how prevalent they are in the thread.
However, I would say that a rules system that does nothing to prevent making the wrong judgment… no hard rules or principles of play to guide play… is flawed. Does it mean the whole system is crap? That anyone who enjoys the game is somehow wrong? No, of course not. It’s simply pointing out that the rules system is not perfect.
Of course. What makes it even harder is not providing such principles of play. The 5E books may hint at some or suggest some, but not in as direct away as possible, and often contradicted in other parts of the text (such as the Role of the Dice section in the DMG).
ost defining example] isn't showing a game where players are free to carve a of their own path because it's already decided on what they need to do even if there's some wiggle room on the where. It's pretty much standard trad type game plan where players need to solve for x and get a little freedom in choosing a path as long as it leads to the predetermined end point so the players are still largely railroad adjacent even if they get distracted.
