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

[Aldarc]

You've yet to establish how MMI is actually occurring in AW. You're asserting it, but there's not work. Please do the work and stop just asserting that you're right.

I think it really sounds like this argument is more about people wanting 5E to be more like AW and Burning Wheel. If that is the case, I say it is way better to talk about what those games do that 5E doesn't and why 5E would benefit from it. Because I think getting to that argument first by way of Mather May I, is just a bad way to have these discussions. Again, it is essentially a pejorative. No one wants mother may I in their games, so if you introduce that as a problem, particularly if you are using an expansive view of it that includes any game where the GM has authority over outcomes, I don't know, doesn't seem a very good faith discussion to me

I don't think that is necessarily the case. However, IMHO, it really sounds like some people who dislike MMI as a criticism - and I don't include you here - attempting to deflect that criticism by trying to create a picture that all TTRPGs are fundamentally MMI through shallow analyses, faulty understandings of other games, and superficial comparisons. This is to say, the rhetorical strategy appears to amount to saying that "if 5e is MMI then everything is MMI for [insert spurious reasons here], ergo MMI is an invalid criticism."

 

[pemerton]

I hope that you see here that my point is not to say that AW should be run this way, but that on game text alone it can be run this way.

What's your actual scenario in which you disagree with the player of the Driver as to whether or not the Driver has proved they're not owned? What's your actual scenario in which, looking at the President through crosshairs, you determine they won't come into contact with any salient thing?

In your post, I didn't see those scenarios. Just abstract assertions, that rest on a premise that "legitimately" and "conceivably" are synonyms for "in accordance with the GM's own preferred conception of the fiction". The game text of AW doesn't support that premise.

 

[clearstream]

I don't think that is necessarily the case. However, IMHO, it really sounds like some people who dislike MMI as a criticism - and I don't include you here - attempting to deflect that criticism by trying to create a picture that all TTRPGs are fundamentally MMI through shallow analyses, faulty understandings of other games, and superficial comparisons. This is to say, the rhetorical strategy appears to amount to saying that "if 5e is MMI then everything is MMI for [insert spurious reasons here], ergo MMI is an invalid criticism."

My position is that MMI describes a dysfunctional participant experience. The dysfunction arises out of mismatching expectations. It is solved by aligning expectations with whichever are relieving out of game text, other participant expectations, and principles in play. As a phenomenon, MMI is cultural and social.

Where posters have consistently located it is where there is room for differing interpretations. All sides have resisted the interpretations of others, but I think we could all agree that we have ample evidence that others feel capable of having differing interpretations from our own. We can then try to claim the high-ground - ours are right, theirs are faulty - or we can step back and consider that we are playing games whose texts are interpreted by humans, applied by humans, and humans are not all the same.

I think some posters to this thread, were they to play 5e, would very often experience MMI. Others, I understand rarely if ever experience MMI. Yet I do not feel justified in laying MMI at the feet of the posters who appear to provoke it. The problem is not in them: it is in the mismatch.

 

[pemerton]

The topic of this thread is "Mother may I" in the context of 5e D&D.

We've been provided with some actual examples.

There have also been (at various degrees of generality) actual examples from 3E and from 2nd ed AD&D.

As best I can recall the thread, no one has posted an actual example of Mother May I play from 4e D&D, from Apocalypse World, from In A Wicked Age, from Agon or from Burning Wheel.

In my view this pattern is relevant. It is consistent with an already-plausible conjecture that 5e, 3E and 2nd ed AD&D are often played in a broadly similar way, with the GM exercising a large degree of authority over how things turn out that is only loosely constrained by the outcomes of action resolution processes (like dice results and deployment of fiat abilities).

Which takes my mind back to a point @hawkeyefan made way upthread: there are probably useful things to be said to a 5e GM who wants to avoid falling into "Mother may I" play, that the rulebooks don't currently say.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think it really sounds like this argument is more about people wanting 5E to be more like AW and Burning Wheel. If that is the case, I say it is way better to talk about what those games do that 5E doesn't and why 5E would benefit from it. Because I think getting to that argument first by way of Mather May I, is just a bad way to have these discussions. Again, it is essentially a pejorative. No one wants mother may I in their games, so if you introduce that as a problem, particularly if you are using an expansive view of it that includes any game where the GM has authority over outcomes, I don't know, doesn't seem a very good faith discussion to me

There are a lot of people who are talking about different things semi kicked around by derisive wording of a core term and some disagreement over if rules matter to a degree all when the gm can just be expected to fix it for wotc.

Dimce someone brought up "a rule for everything" I'd say that is misleading phrasing that can lead to well meaning situations like a hypothetical set of 4 different rules for riding a horse in the rain at night. More useful wording might be the better application of extensible rules frameworks with a structural frame the gm can hook unusual situations edge cases & so on from as those things play out across the table

 

[Malmuria]

I have not been following this thread, so apologies if this is out of context with the current discussion. However, I saw this on twitter and it made me think of the earlier discussion here. RAW, 5e is very dm-centric, and there was discussion of how more codified rules, procedures and subsystems, or dm principles might give more agency to players. However, when I look at what people say about the experience of DMing 5e, it's actually the opposite: that 5e play culture is very player-centric, and it is rather the DM that needs more mechanics and subsystems (crafting, etc) for the sake of more consistently enforcing their authority at the table.

 

[James Gasik]

What a strange concept, that a DM needs help to enforce their authority. You just say "this is my ruling". If your players aren't happy, they can try their hand at being DM.

Granted, I tend to be much more open about the reasoning behind my rulings, and I try to stick to the rules as written unless they are demonstrably inane, but what do you need, THE DM IS ALWAYS RIGHT printed on the top of each page in bright red ink?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Which takes my mind back to a point @hawkeyefan made way upthread: there are probably useful things to be said to a 5e GM who wants to avoid falling into "Mother may I" play, that the rulebooks don't currently say.

This thread has been very interesting at points, but to me, it lacks examples of 5E play that show how to prevent or limit MMI. I think @clearstream at one point posted a list of principles they use when GMing 5e, and that's the kind of stuff I'd like to see.

As you say, in my mind, this is a risk of the system that's in place for 5E, but I don't think it needs to be a certainty. The books don't do enough to guide new GMs. I'd like to hear what people would suggest if there was going to be such a section of the DMG in the new edition that's coming.

They really should provide more guidance on this stuff to folks new to the hobby.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What a strange concept, that a DM needs help to enforce their authority. You just say "this is my ruling". If your players aren't happy, they can try their hand at being DM.

Granted, I tend to be much more open about the reasoning behind my rulings, and I try to stick to the rules as written unless they are demonstrably inane, but what do you need, THE DM IS ALWAYS RIGHT printed on the top of each page in bright red ink?

I'd prefer THE DM ISN'T ALWAYS RIGHT.

That's the one people seem to forget most often.

 

[FrogReaver]

What's your actual scenario in which you disagree with the player of the Driver as to whether or not the Driver has proved they're not owned? What's your actual scenario in which, looking at the President through crosshairs, you determine they won't come into contact with any salient thing?

In your post, I didn't see those scenarios. Just abstract assertions, that rest on a premise that "legitimately" and "conceivably" are synonyms for "in accordance with the GM's own preferred conception of the fiction". The game text of AW doesn't support that premise.

I don’t play those games so I don’t have an example. I’d be willing to work together with you to craft a hypothetical example but this is very much something that has to go both ways.