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

[Thomas Shey]

This is because they DO NOT WANT TO DRIVE PLAY or THEY CANNOT DRIVE PLAY. There is s host of reasons why this might be true (from cognitive limitations to social limitations to investment limitations). For these two cohorts of players, MMI and Force (and resultant Railroads) are not only NOT DYSFUNCTIONAL, the inverse would actually lead to dysfunctional play (halted, stilted, stagnant, or otherwise FUNAR fiction/gamestate and/or an undesirable cognitive load or emotional state for those players).

I’ve seen it firsthand. I know personally of multiple players where this is true. I’ve read tons of anecdotes about these cohorts here and elsewhere.

I've referred to this elsewhere as "players looking for their chalk marks." I know its common to believe this only occurs when people have been trained to this, but I think that's super dismissive of legitimate preferences (or alternatively, not accepting it as legitimate). I'll go even farther to say that even players who are willing and able to drive play don't want to do it all the time and are sometimes happy to just get on the train (on a night when I'm low energy I'm that way myself).

(Of course this doesn't address my personal issues with MMI destroying my decision making capability, but as I've noted there's more than one issue going on here and it does the discussion good to tease them apart).

 

[FrogReaver]

Frankly, my reaction to that would be if I was going to not have an ability work as it says on the tin just to say upfront its not available. There seems no virtue in bait-and-switch.

If probable the dm should definitely call this out in session 0. The scenario I gave was explicitly one where it was improbable at the start of play and then the players drove the game in the direction of distant lands where it becomes much more probable. IMO, a practical solution cannot entail speaking to every single possibility and contingency before play ever begins.

Thus IMO calling this bait and switch is a bit of an overreaction.

I also should note - DMs are generally accommodating when you picked an ability that isn’t coming up in play and will work with you to change it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If probable the dm should definitely call this out in session 0. The scenario I gave was explicitly one where it was improbable at the start of play and then the players drove the game in the direction of distant lands where it becomes much more probable. IMO, a practical solution cannot entail speaking to every single possibility and contingency before play ever begins.

I can see that, but honestly, that strikes me as "You're not a noble from my homeland but I've heard you are where you come from so I'll still extend you the courtesy" and move on. There are probably other cases where that's less true (a trait that gives you automatic knowledge of the geography when you're well outside anywhere you can IC reasonably know) but I'd argue if you don't already have those limits baked into the trait, its misdesigned right out of the gate.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This is the tricky part. Players have to want to be integrated into the world, want to have connections that are meaningful, etc. Every. single. player. in every single campaign I have run has done the opposite: loner, no family, no home, no connections to anyone. Just adventuring and the party (and even then, their connection to the party is usually tenuous). My players don't want anything that can potentially be used against them, ever. (I think it has to do with their early experiences with our former-forever DM)

Without wanting to explore the world, ask questions, engage with people, etc., its very difficult to run a sandbox.

This is because folks have been conditioned to this stuff. They've learned (usually at the hands of a specific GM, as you suggest) to not trust. That any contribution they offer to the fiction of the game will be used as a club.

The only way to change this is to de-condition them. Have them make contributions that ultimately benefit their characters. Place them into the world as a part of it, not as wanderers with no connections. The game actually tells us not to do that, but the conditioning has been so strong that folks just stick with it.

I think you have to do the work to integrate the characters into the world. Give them real context - people, places they care about, things they want to accomplish. I don't think you need a train, but you do need context and a dynamic situation.

Yeah, the characters should plug into the world, so to speak, in many ways. They should have places they know, people they can trust, people they can't, connections to groups and cultures and all that kind of stuff.

In my opinion, the best way to get this kind of investment is to be far more collaborative than many folks are when it comes to setting and 5E.

 

[clearstream]

You appear to have misread my post.

I was citing a particular cohort for which MMI, Force, and Railroading not only do not yield dysfunctional play, but they achieve desirable play.

Those 3 cohorts are folks with cognitive, social, or investment limitations.

They either don’t want the burden of mental processing/can’t manage the burden of mental processing/can’t manage the social demands of being aggressively in the spotlight/don’t care to be responsible for the trajectory of play. Precisely because of this, for that aggregate cohort, the dynamics of play that MMI/Force/Railroading engender are desirable (not dysfunctional).

Yes, that is exactly as I read it. It was on that reading - now confirmed correct - that I flagged it problematic.

You genuinely don't see the issue? Some players desire railroading because they are cognitively limited? Surely you don't mean to imply that!?

 

[FrogReaver]

I can see that, but honestly, that strikes me as "You're not a noble from my homeland but I've heard you are where you come from so I'll still extend you the courtesy" and move on. There are probably other cases where that's less true (a trait that gives you automatic knowledge of the geography when you're well outside anywhere you can IC reasonably know) but I'd argue if you don't already have those limits baked into the trait, its misdesigned right out of the gate.

Seems to be related to d&d straddling the fence of being a toolkit vs a specific game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, that is exactly as I read it. It was on that reading - now confirmed correct - that I flagged it problematic.

You genuinely don't see the issue? Some players desire railroading because they are cognitively limited? Surely you don't mean to imply that!?

"Ah man, I work all day and when I get here, I just want to kick back and relax... roll some dice and kill some pretend orcs! I don't want to have to really put in a lot of thought into this stuff."

"Hey, I'm just here to hang out and have some laughs. I'm not really invested in where the game goes as much as Joe and Tony are... let them call the shots!"

 

[Thomas Shey]

I liked much of your post greatly, and my main call out would be to ask why on Earth we cannot agree to use a term other than one that some find replete with negative, somewhat pejorative, and typically dismissive and belittling, connotations?

As a second concern, the listed motives for a style or culture of play are all "limitations". Why not "preferences", "choices", "differences", "priorities"... all the many non-judgemental characterisations our language affords? EDIT To list "cognitive limitations" and "social limitations" I feel sure based on all our previous conversations was without ill intent, but I hope you will reconsider and retract.

For me, "Mother May I" has its place in our vernacular solely as a non-neutral label.


Note minor edits to hopefully better explain my concerns.

Well, you can always get into the question of whether something is perceived by a user as generically a negative (it doesn't require that to be universally one) and such the negative connotations seem appropriate. Though I acknowledge your use of "priorities" in the above, implies understanding that there are attached negatives here that are accepted because of tradeoffs, a downside is still a downside even if its necessary for other properties that are desirable. And I'm not sure something has to apply to everyone to be a downside.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wonder what the correlation is between worrying most about GMs or players abusing things and views on issues like railroading, MMI, DM authority, etc..

Well, at the end of the day, more people involved in games come from a primarily player perspective, so they're going to be more sensitive to GMing problems (and I emphasize this because I stand by my opinion that more problems in either direction come from things other than deliberate malice) than play problems (though in particularly egregious cases the latter may be visible even there--see "I'm only playing my character"). The flip side of this is more GMs are going to take the time to discuss things extensively than players for the most part, but purely-GMs are probably rarer than purely-players.

 

[James Gasik]

I think it's perfectly fair for Background abilities to occasionally fail to provide a benefit. That's not really the issue at hand.

It would be better if they provided a benefit most of the time. However, sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what a Background ability can do for you, and what I've noticed is, the Background abilities sit on your sheet and are often forgotten about, because they don't often immediately apply to common adventuring tasks like skulking around in dungeons or killing monsters.

And I presume many DM's don't take them into account either.

So what happens is, when a circumstance where they would come up occurs, a player suddenly remembers "oh hey, I'm a Folk Hero/Noble/Outlander! Does my ability let me do X?"

The DM may be surprised, considers the adventure at hand, and makes a call. Ideally, they would have taken this into account beforehand, but alas, because they are rarely relevant, they too easily forget about them.

And as I've noted elsewhere, DM's hate surprises. It puts them on the spot, and they can make snap decisions that are probably more conservative than if they had time to consider what's going on. So despite the common advice of "say yes, but..." what you get is "no, because I don't have time for this".

So chances are great that your Background ability, even when it could be relevant, won't be.

This sort of thing is often the reason a player might "feel" that a game is MMI, even with a good DM.

As the thread has continued to point out, whether or not a game is MMI is driven just as much by perception as reality.

Now granted, there are ways this can be overcome on both sides of the table. The DM could try to make Backgrounds matter (ditto with motivations, traits, and quirks...or even starting trinkets), but the player could also play their characters in a way that continually reminds everyone of your Background.

For example, because there were rarely situations where my character being a Noble mattered, I tended not to draw attention to the fact. I wore nice clothes and a signet ring, and I always paid for my lifestyle, but while adventuring, I was "that Halfling in leather armor who shoots things with arrows". If I'd put on airs, or did my Thurston Howell impression, maybe my mentioning my Position of Privilege at the table wouldn't have been forgotten?