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

[hawkeyefan]

No I think that's oversimplifying things & overlooking the tangent I quoted back in #821. I didn't bring it up to vent, it came up to explain why a shame on those bad gm's type behavior gets forced by design choices made in the structure of 5e itself.
It's a severe problem for 5e how even pointing out how 5e causes that & other issues with deliberate design choices it made results in "go find a different game." defending those design choices by blaming the GM as simply being incompatible with 5e & suggesting some other system rather than admitting that there even is a line players need to meet even unreasonable mindset to push on GMs. When a subset of those players were described as "outright toxic" that mindset calls into question if the players are even capable of using agency & character story iin a toxic way against the gm & their fellow players.

I don’t think this has anything to do with edition though, other than that each edition works differently. So the GM has to figure out what will work to create challenge within any edition of the game. Having expectations for a AD&D experience while GMing 5E isn’t a fault of 5E.

 

[clearstream]

GMs being precious about their setting… their world… is a big part of many MMI issues.

Except where other participants expect them to curate that world, possibly.

Well yes. When I declare an action for my character, I want to understand as a player how that action is resolved. I don’t think this is an unrealistic expectation to have. Again, see combat and magic… very clear ways to resolve that the player understands (even if not always privy to every detail, like an AC or DC).

There’s really no need for it to work so differently out of combat. Yes, there can be differences in how things work, but the actual process can be known. We should be able to “show the work” if necessary.

So I do not say that your expectations are unrealistic, only that they might not be identical to another participant's expectations. That we can have these kinds of debates seems to me like very good support for that prospect.

There is no mystic element to these things, so the idea of a “magic circle” is problematic, I’d say. It implies an unknowable process which is the breeding ground for the kinds of mismatched expectations (which is like the one thing almost all of us seem to agree on is problematic). That we can’t examine our process, it’s beyond our understanding. I don’t believe that’s true at all, though I do think it can at times be difficult to examine our own play in such a curious manner.

I'm using magic circle here in a sense that has been common in game studies for many decades now. Salen and Zimmerman give a relatively recent write up of it, although it was first introduced by Huizinga. Here, it just means that expectations about what will happen while we are at play will be different from expectations about what will happen in normal life. The concept of a magic circle is thus very much part of examining our process!

 

[clearstream]

The rest of my post is clarifying the 'not really.' Did you have any questions about it outside of the first two words?

Oh right, then so far as I can tell we're speaking at cross-purposes.

 

[Ovi]

Oh right, then so far as I can tell we're speaking at cross-purposes.

Cool. I'm unclear what your purpose was, though? I thought it was that people asserting that players should have inputs into the fiction not gated by the GM was unhelpful because 5e does absolutely have a GM gate for such things. Was that not it?

 

[clearstream]

I'm unclear what was gained by the fisking. Your opening response about synonyms was covered in my response four sentences later. You broke up my post to respond and tell me something I offer freely within the same paragraph. In fact, a large part of my point was that using them synonymously is something that happens often and leads to unclear communication.

I would absolutely argue that characters can be imagined to know things that we haven't yet imagined them knowing. I mean, this is how it works, right? Even in a normal 5e approach to gating information through the GM, a player may ask if their character knows something about the fiction in play, the GM may ask for a check, and on a success, the GM, having not previously imagined this detail, could ad lib it on the spot. Do we assume, then, that the character suddenly had this knowledge spring into existence fully formed in their imaginary mind, or do we assume that we just discovered that this character knew this detail all along, even though we had not yet had occasion to imagine that they did so? This happens all the time in 5e, a game that's already structured so that players cannot assert facts about the setting without the GM's invitation and approval. Facts that their characters would then know.

The corollary to this is the alien argument, where characters are treated as if they are aliens visiting the setting of the game and do not know anything about it unless granted by the GM.

We can say that we imagine that the Druid knows how to do something that the player doing the imagining does not. And since we can then continue play based on this imagining, reaching the metaphysical question you seem to have about passing that knowledge back across the imagination into the real is not very probative.

It wasn't in fact my intent with my comment to say something probative. Rather to say something descriptive. Anyway, we seem to be circling around the same points. A mountain was made of a molehill by another poster. Why don't we leave it here? (Excepting of course, anything you would like to add about probative/descriptive seeing as I responded to you on that. I won't say more if so, to give you the last word.)

 

[Cadence]

GMs being precious about their setting… their world… is a big part of many MMI issues.

The tone I heard "precious" with made me think for a second you think the GM should never shoot things down because they think something is anachronistic or silly, but your other posts make me believe that isn't what you meant. So, how do you approach it?
What's the line between "being precious about" and some or all of "caring about", "having thought about", "wanting to be vaguely consistent with", "valuing tone and genre", etc...

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Tangenting (so not directed particularly at @hawkeyefan ):

Reaching back into the thread a ways, da Vinci sketched something that might inspire someone to imagine a helicopter way back in the same century that the Bastard Sword, Caravel, Ranseur, and Rapier were first used, and this is in our world without tinker gnomes or air elementals. Why would a pseudo-helicopter be all that anachronistic in a D&D world except for the DM not thinking it fit?

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Tangenting from the tangent...

Some DMs on here are not averse to characters knowing what their players know (what some others would call a type of metagaming). In that case something involving non, or not very, magical air travel feels like it would be even easier to come up with for the characters. And in some cases, any block feels like it would require something like physics not working in the usual way, some supernatural entity hating the contraptions, or here-to-fore unseen aerial predators abounding

 

[hawkeyefan]

The tone I heard "precious" with made me think for a second you think the GM should never shoot things down because they think something is anachronistic or silly, but your other posts make me believe that isn't what you meant. So, how do you approach it?
What's the line between "being precious about" and some or all of "caring about", "having thought about", "wanting to be vaguely consistent with", "valuing tone and genre", etc...

I wouldn’t say never, because there are always exceptions. But I feel like such a decision is not one to be made lightly. If something hasn’t yet been established in play, then it’s possible. The GM should consider such suggestions seriously because this is literally the player saying “I want X to be part of play.” So saying no to that should have some strong reason behind it. More than “I didn’t imagine court jesters as being a thing in this world”.

At the same time, the players should allow the setting as it takes shape to inform their choices and desires.

Since the example @pemerton gave was from a one shot of In a Wicked Age, and early in the session when they were making characters, I don’t think the player requests were going against anything that had been established. At least not beyond the loose genre and name lists offered by the game as a default.

Also that the players were kids matters as well, I’d guess, and these kind of social considerations may be quite important.

I think with many RPGs, the setting can be held as paramount. But I don’t think it should be so, at least not as a default.

Reaching back into the thread a ways, da Vinci sketched something that might inspire someone to imagine a helicopter way back in the same century that the Bastard Sword, Caravel, Ranseur, and Rapier were first used, and this is in our world without tinker gnomes or air elementals. Why would a pseudo-helicopter be all that anachronistic in a D&D world except for the DM not thinking it fit?

I think it depends on many factors. Participant desire is one (I use participant here to group player and GM). Genre and setting are others.

Some DMs on here are not averse to characters knowing what their players know (what some others would call a type of metagaming). In that case something involving non, or not very, magical air travel feels like it would be even easier to come up with for the characters. And in some cases, any block feels like it would require something like physics not working in the usual way, some supernatural entity hating the contraptions, or here-to-fore unseen aerial predators abounding

When it comes to the example of a flying machine of some sort, I think most settings may allow for some kind of take on it, from a glider in very low tech settings, to more advanced things as tech level increases. Magic only opens up the possibility even more.

 

[pemerton]

To my reading, different posters have different ideas in mind when they talk about making contributions to a shared fiction. For some, those go beyond simply declaring actions for a particular character, to include how those actions are resolved, and as we have discussed up-thread the outcome of those actions. For that reason inter alia I feel "hoping to play a game" doesn't do the work needed to capture the diversity of expectations that players can have upon entering the magic circle.

Your characterisation of declaring actions is tendentious.

Consider the famous example from Donald Davidson ("Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963)):

I flip the switch, turn on the light, and illuminate the room. Unbeknownst to me I also alert a prowler to the fact that I am home. Here I need not have done four things, but only one, of which four descriptions have been given.​

So when it comes to "declaring actions" in RPGing, the key question is who gets to decide what descriptions of the PCs' actions are true, and how.

It's true that some players are content with getting to decide only very "thin" descriptions, focused on the character's bodily movements (analogous to Davidson's "I flip the switch"), like I attack the Orc with my sword or I wink at the maiden or I hide from the soldiers in the barn or I bring the child into the Tiny Hut. But many players want to have some influence over the truth of "thicker" descriptions of their PCs' actions, like I kill the Orc with my sword or I soften the heart of the maiden with a wink or I avoid confrontation with the soldiers by hiding in the barn or I rescue the child, first by providing shelter in the Tiny Hut.

The obvious purpose of D&D's combat mechanics - which you, upthread, have flagged as different in some fashion from the "core play loop" - is to give players some influence over the truth of the thick description I kill the Orc with my sword. To me (although as I read your posts not to you) it seems to me obvious that the purpose of the Rustic Hospitality background feature is to give the player some influence over the truth of the thick description I avoid confrontation with the soldiers by hiding in the barn.

If players were not intended to have some influence over how their actions are resolved, and the outcomes that follow from their PC's bodily motions - which is to say, if players were not intended to have some influence not only over the truth of then descriptions but also over the truth of thick descriptions - then why would their be action resolution mechanics at all?

Thus, while there may be some players content with having no influence beyond providing thin descriptions, those who want more influence are hardly breaking the spirit of the game as it is presented in its rulebooks.

 

[pemerton]

your admonishment to me that characters cannot know things because they're fictional seems increasingly like a semantic point rather than one useful to discussion of play. I say this because you're now allowing for thinking that the characters can be imagined to know something that the players do not. I believe you have to do this, because otherwise when the Druid wildshapes we need to ascertain if the player knows how to wildshape first. Or casts a spell. Or when an INT (nature) check is successful to gain some bit of setting information that the player doesn't already know. I'll admit to being guilty of a shorthand in talking about the character knowing things the player does not -- clearly the character is fictional and so we only imagine they know things the player does not.

It's no more absurd or misleading to talk about Sherlock Holmes knowing what Watson looks like or knowing what colour the ceiling of his bedroom is than it is to talk about Sherlock Holmes leaving Baker Street to investigate a crime or Sherlock Holmes asking Watson to bring him such-and-such a piece of equipment.

Of course these are all fictional events and states of affairs. Holmes, Watson and the hijinks they get up to are all imaginary. But there is nothing distinctive about imagining someone knowing things as opposed to imagining someone doing things.

 

[pemerton]

characters cannot "know" things. Not in the normal sense of the world. They don't have functioning cognitive systems. That doesn't mean that there cannot be imagined facts that are implied in how we imagine those characters. We as players may know, or not know those imagined facts. Some of them may not have been decided on yet.

<snip>

would you honestly contend that characters can know anything that we haven't brought into our thoughts about them? Rather, we have sets of parameters, imagined facts, and most importantly implied imagined facts. The latter are all those imagined facts that seem to us as if they are very likely true, given that we have some parameter, fact or question already in mind. Suppose we picture our character holding a kettle. In our world, kettles must be manufactured, so a manufacturer of the kettle is implied for us when we picture our character. However, until and unless we decide to get to that detail and form in our thoughts something about that manufacturer, we "know" nothing about them. Our characters cannot (literally) know. And we do not yet know.

When I imagine a character in a fiction, I imagine them as having cognitive systems - and hence able to know - just as I imagine them having skeleto-muscular systems, and hence able to walk. In this respect, imagining a character knowing things (say, being a brilliant scholar of alchemy or of the history of an imaginary kingdom) is no different from imagining them running or swimming or (if they're a ghost) passing through a wall or (if they're a bird-person or a dragon) flapping their wings and flying.

Knowledge of X does entail X. So when we imagine characters knowing things that we at the table haven't imagined yet, we are positing as-yet unspecified Xs. This is implicit all the time in RPGing as in other fictions: for instance, when the PCs leave the inn to go to the dungeon, they know whether or not their are clouds in the sky, and if there are whether or not they make interesting shapes. But most of the time the GM will not describe these things, and so there are Xs that the characters know but that are not specified elements of the shared fiction.

Similarly: given the nature of (pseudo-)mediaeval production, it is likely that many D&D characters know who manufactured their clothes, their weapons, etc - although typically the participants at the table will not have thought about this, or established any fact about it. In a modern-world RPG, the PC will probably know where they bought the kettle in their house, whether they have a warranty card for it and if so what drawer that is kept in, etc - even though, at the table, none of that detail will be specified (probably not even how the PC's house is furnished and hence how many drawers there are in the house).

As far as the nature of fictions is concerned, it makes no difference if the X is a fact about how places of power influence spirit magic, rather than if X is a fact about the shape of the clouds, the furnishing of a house, or the manufacture of some mundane goods. (Of course, the first such X is more likely to be an interesting component of play than any of the others.)