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

[clearstream]

Suppose that you imagine Sherlock getting dressed in the morning and putting on socks. But I, based on my beliefs about how eccentric Victorian gentlemen might dress, imagine him putting on hose.

To the best of my knowledge of the Holmes stories, nothing has ever turned on which of our imaginings might be a correct account of the fiction. But in a RPG it might turn out to matter: if the character is wearing hose they can use them to bind a NPC's hands; but socks are a bit short for that purpose. In that case, how do we settle this?

My view is: the same way we settle what a character might know about the colour of the ceiling (of their inn; of their childhood bedroom; of the king's throne room; or whatever other bit of unspecified detail suddenly turns out to matter in play).

I think the default is a check. Or the GM can easily enough yield to the player, who probably has more at stake - after all, if it has turned out to matter in play than a PC is probably in trouble, or trying to achieve something. I think a GM who unilaterally imposes their conception is running needless risks.

Absolutely. My comment is silent on whose version of what we know should prevail, or by what process. My experience is that it varies by group, their purposes in play, chosen system, and aspects or subjects to be settled.

 

[clearstream]

Who is responsible for I (as my PC) kill the Orc - which implicates both the PC and the Orc - or We (the PCs) avoid a confrontation with the Duke's men - which, again, implicates both the PCs and the NPCs (both the Duke's men and, given the details of Rustic Hospitality, the commoners)?

That is part of the point of action resolution mechanics - to settle questions of who is in charge when different areas of authority/responsibility overlap.

That's true. Killing the orc normally engages the combat rules. RH engages the ability check, rest and recovery rules. The answers differ due to inter alia differences in those rules.

In my view, the GM asserting that because they're NPCs, I get to decide - and then pushing that all the way up the chain of responsibility (to use @FrogReaver's phrase), so that the players' desire for their action which was grounded in their good-faith reading of their background feature - is in my view a recipe for unsatisfactory play. I agree with @Hussar on this, and have now posted a couple of times my view as to a reasonable way to handle it in 5e D&D, given there is no fortune mechanic in a lot of these cases.

I agree with you that it is a good way to handle it. What I have written does not conflict with that.

 

[tetrasodium]

Possibly, although I dislike that this again borders on conflating MMI with DM-curation when it is not my (or as I understand it, several other posters') experience that there is such a conflation.

Another thought I had then, prompted by our current exchange, is that it arises when roles aren't respected. So where one participant expects to be able to say X, another overrides that X. In the barn example, the player expected to be able to say "We are successfully hidden from the Duke’s men" and that was overridden.

For roles to be respected, there must be common definition, so lack of that too is culpable.

In the barn example the participant never had the responsibility of the role that gets to decide that so their expectation wasn't overridden. Specifically they were never granted the role they wanted to seize from the participant who holds the responsibility of making that decision.

It's a subtle but important distinction of which role is not being respected. When the person trying to seize that role also holds the freedom of deciding their character choosing to hide in the barn seizing the result also turns the entire game into mere puppetry. People would unquestionably question a gm who seized that freedom of choosing what to do from the players & simply declared that they did things like puppets yet we have pages & pages of posts defending the player's right to demand the inverse seizing of roles.

 

[clearstream]

@pemerton your "moving up and down the chain" conceptualisation gives us a good tool for thinking about these questions.

 

[pemerton]

thinking of the 5e game text, player describes their character's actions and so I lean to saying DM cannot in following the rules undo that description. "Describe to live" in the words of TB2.

I think it's helpful to be flexible. Here is the Describe to Live text:

Dungeoneer's Handbook (pp 19-20):
Once you have a plan, you describe your character’s actions in response to the game master’s narration. Tell the game master what your character does, touches, manipulates, etc.

If you’re clever, you’ll frame your descriptions around your character’s strengths. Any other player who wishes to help should describe how their character supports your character’s action.

Explain how you use your gear and surroundings to overcome any obstacles. Think creatively! Use the abilities and skills on your sheet as inspiration, but always talk in terms of action and not in terms of skills.

Yes: “I peer from behind the boulder to get a view into the gnoll camp.”

No: “I want to use the scout skill…”​

Scholar's Guide (p 214):
Let the players describe their characters’ interactions with the surroundings. Once they reach a point where they are in danger or where forward progress is blocked by an obstacle, call on them to test a skill or ability. . . .​

Clearly when a Torchbearer player explains how they use their gear and surroundings to overcome an obstacle, there is no guarantee that that description becomes a part of the shared fiction. It's an aspiration on the part of the player. The subsequent test of a skill or ability will settle whether or not the player's description becomes true.

For instance, the player whose PC peers from behind the boulder may end up failing to get a view of the camp - because if the Scout test is failed, a permissible twist would be that the character is ambushed by Gnolls! Or that the player has to make a Health check for their PC to evade an arrow fired straight at them by a Gnoll guard.

If a 5e GM was worried about the possibility of "Mother may I", I would suggest that they adopt a similarly flexible approach: encourage engagement and expansiveness in action declarations, rather than turtling; and settle the precise content of the shared fiction as an outcome of action resolution.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In the barn example the participant never had the responsibility of the role that gets to decide that so their expectation wasn't overridden. Specifically they were never granted the role they wanted to seize from the participant who holds the responsibility of making that decision.

It's a subtle but important distinction of which role is not being respected. When the person trying to seize that role also holds the freedom of deciding their character choosing to hide in the barn seizing the result also turns the entire game into mere puppetry. People would unquestionably question a gm who seized that freedom of choosing what to do from the players & simply declared that they did things like puppets yet we have pages & pages of posts defending the player's right to demand the inverse seizing of roles.

You’ve got this quite wrong.

I was not attempting to seize anything. I stated what my goal was, and I declared an action toward that goal.

My action did not fail.

The negative consequences inflicted were the result of the GM’s whim alone.

If you think this is functional play, then I don’t think you can claim to have any problem with Mother May I.

 

[tetrasodium]

You’ve got this quite wrong.

I was not attempting to seize anything. I stated what my goal was, and I declared an action toward that goal.

My action did not fail.

The negative consequences inflicted were the result of the GM’s whim alone.

If you think this is functional play, then I don’t think you can claim to have any problem with Mother May I.

In having a goal that includes the successful result explicitly seizes the GM's role be trying to force the GM's hand with a combined can I do x to succeed at y goal even though Y is the role of someone else at the table(the GM). That over-reaching goal assumes yes to x means that y is guaranteed exactly as the player taking the action of x imagines. At this point any sort of "well why didn't the gm... " leads into the GM blanket defaulting to a frustrating & unsatisfying "you can try" rebuttal to every "can I.." statement. If only used sometimes then the GM answers both once the dividing line is understood or just frustrates the players sent looking for the detail they missed when invoked randomly.

If that was not the case then you were doing something much worse in attempting to make a quantum action that tries to check the result of a possible action without actually taking the time resources risk or giving up the right to do something else.

The order of events seems to have been:

• A: Players ask an we hide from the guards using RH
  • B: gm says yes & decides that no rolls are required when narrating the results of that action per step3(phb6). Various rules empower the GM to bypass rolls for trivial impossible actions by various rules in the ruleset.
• C: you and/or other players take a new action dependent on A completing & set up watches. Apparently information about the barn might have even Been provided If the goal was "an attempt to avoid the fight" using RH instead of getting a long rest the time to be clear about that is here in C
  • D: Just before or just after E The GM even confirmed “Okay, you’re up in the barn, you’ve set a watch… does anyone want to do anything else?” before pulling the trigger on the prior step. If the GM missed the clarification in C that you were not taking a long rest but hiding until phase2 of the plan now is the time to point that out or state "anything else"step2 action that you want or plan to do when the now revealed conditions for phase2 come about.
• E: Just before or just after D the group took a second or third action in the form of deciding to take a long rest that depends on A & C after the GM gave out info in C & even confirmed there was nothing else in D.
  • F: With nothing else from the players the GM moved on to "step3 the DM narrates the results.."(PHB pg6) Those results were that the guards found you. At this point it doesn't matter if they respond with a young guns style encounter the gm thinks would be cool or some other course of action the gm feels is fitting for them to choose. With all things being equal cool choices often get extra points because those are often more fun. "Lets surround them" is even a tactically sound choice for the guards so it's not oddness in service of cool either.

Dialing back the clock of events to somewhere between E&F to insert an action you were prompted to offer but did not choose to or even all the way back to A to insert a different action because you aren't satisfied with how F turned out is very much not a reasonable power for a PC to have barring extreme circumstances like wish or similar. That kind of no rewind things power pretty much requires the player using it seize the GM's role because multiple actions have been taken & the course of action was even explicitly confirmed as one not containing a next step from the players. Even a spell like wish only grants that power to the player using wish with almost a paragraph of stipulations

Spoiler: said paragraph"

ou might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the GM as precisely as possible. The GM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance; the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner.

Wish

Wish is the mightiest spell a mortal creature can cast. By simply speaking aloud, you can alter the very foundations of reality in accord...

www.dndbeyond.com

The GM even took pains in making an effort to avoid seizing the "players describe what they want to do" role laid out on phb pg6 by confirming the plan & asking if there was anything else in D before they moved on with "the DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions" (also phb6) yet here we are debating if the gm was wrong to engage in their role or if players should have been granted some form of omniscience needed to witness events beyond the abilities of their characters & similar.

 

[FrogReaver]

You’ve got this quite wrong.

I was not attempting to seize anything. I stated what my goal was, and I declared an action toward that goal.

My action did not fail.

The negative consequences inflicted were the result of the GM’s whim alone.

If you think this is functional play, then I don’t think you can claim to have any problem with Mother May I.

Let’s not conflate the position that play isnt Mother May I with the position that such play is functional play.

 

[Ovi]

Let’s not conflate the position that play isnt Mother May I with the position that such play is functional play.

MMI play is often functional. There's nothing inherently dysfunctional with MMI play. I mean, the children's game being referenced isn't dysfunctional, play examples including MMI are often presented without claims of dysfunction. What are you saying here?

 

[hawkeyefan]

In having a goal that includes the successful result explicitly seizes the GM's role be trying to force the GM's hand with a combined can I do x to succeed at y goal even though Y is the role of someone else at the table(the GM). That over-reaching goal assumes yes to x means that y is guaranteed exactly as the player taking the action of x imagines. At this point any sort of "well why didn't the gm... " leads into the GM blanket defaulting to a frustrating & unsatisfying "you can try" rebuttal to every "can I.." statement. If only used sometimes then the GM answers both once the dividing line is understood or just frustrates the players sent looking for the detail they missed when invoked randomly.

Having a goal is not an attempt to seize control from the GM. It's a goal.

Again, put it into combat terms. If I say "I want to disarm this guard" that's me stating my goal. We have a pretty good idea how things will proceed from there.... what kinds of rules and processes will be applied, and also what's at stake. There'ss nothing at all strange about a player stating their goal.

What I would have wanted in that scene was not some kind of guarantee of success, but if Rustic Hospitality hadn't been sufficient, then the understanding that it wasn't enough in and of itself, and then discussion about what additional actions our group would like to take.

D: Just before or just after E The GM even confirmed “Okay, you’re up in the barn, you’ve set a watch… does anyone want to do anything else?” before pulling the trigger on the prior step. If the GM missed the clarification in C that you were not taking a long rest but hiding until phase2 of the plan now is the time to point that out or state "anything else"step2 action that you want or plan to do when the now revealed conditions for phase2 come about.

This is the main area where you're wrong. The GM did not do the bold. He did not ask if we want to do anything else. The watch was set, we looked to him for narration, and he went to the morning and the surrounding of the barn.

I acknowledged in the post you linked to that we didn't state any additional actions and perhaps we could have, but there was no additional information from the GM prompting any action on our part. No "What do you do?" moments.

Let’s not conflate the position that play isnt Mother May I with the position that such play is functional play.

I imagine for many such play is perfectly functional.