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

[clearstream]

To me, this reads like a description of how (some? many?) GMs find themselves adjudicating in a Mother May I fashion.

Do you feel though that it is generally true that GMs hate surprises?

I love surprises, they're one of my primary satisfactions in GMing. When the players do something and everything heads off somewhere unexpected and interesting. I've asked some other GMs about it, and while I don't get the feeling they get quite as much of a kick out of it, overall I would say the GMs I regularly speak with enjoy surprises.

How are things in your circles?

 

[pemerton]

Do you feel though that it is generally true that GMs hate surprises?

I dunno. I was replying to someone who asserted that they do, and said that what that poster was describing - it seemed to me - was how a GM would find themselves adopting a Mother May I approach to adjudication.

How many GMs fit that description? I don't know for sure, but at least three have been identified by others in this thread: @hawkeyefan's, @Campbells and @James Gasik's. I played with several such GMs in the AD&D 2nd ed era. So they seem to exist, and to have existed over a reasonable stretch of time.

 

[clearstream]

Do players get to use rule zero if they think the GM is making a call that doesn't make sense, given the fiction etc?

Following the game text precisely, it seems they could declare their roleplaying needs, obliging GM to change or ignore rules to fit them. (Albeit this is associated with pursuing an "Immersive Storytelling" play style, in which combat isn't the focus. Thus in full context, not necessarily applying to other styles.)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Do players get to use rule zero if they think the GM is making a call that doesn't make sense, given the fiction etc?

No, of course not. We all know in D&D the GM is the one who invokes rule zero, but that doesn't mean the GM is using rule zero to railroad players into their preferred story (and of course the GM has to consider how players will react to the use of rule zero). It can mean something as simple as "X thing doesn't exist in this setting" or "X thing isn't available right now, because of what happened last game". By the logic you are using here any system that empowers the GM to make rules calls and have final say is railroading players into the GM's preferred story.

Also the players can object to something that doesn't make sense and the GM may well invoke rule zero as a result. One benefit of this is the players can raise concerns, but things keep moving because you have one person making a final decision on any matter.

Could you arrange things differently? Sure. Some games do, and that is fine. But I don't see anything wrong or railroady with the arrangement that one player is GM and that player is the one who can invoke rule zero.

 

[clearstream]

How many GMs fit that description? I don't know for sure, but at least three have been identified by others in this thread: @hawkeyefan's, @Campbells and @James Gasik's. I played with several such GMs in the AD&D 2nd ed era. So they seem to exist, and to have existed over a reasonable stretch of time.

Sounds fair. So some GMs (there are examples given in this thread) dislike surprises. It strikes me to check assumptions: all folk citing GMs hating surprises are on the same side of this debate? (Not that we necessarily need to think in terms of sides, but perhaps there's a kind of feedback loop there.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Do you feel though that it is generally true that GMs hate surprises?

I love surprises, they're one of my primary satisfactions in GMing. When the players do something and everything heads off somewhere unexpected and interesting. I've asked some other GMs about it, and while I don't get the feeling they get quite as much of a kick out of it, overall I would say the GMs I regularly speak with enjoy surprises.

How are things in your circles?

I feel pretty much the same way than you, but I'm also sure that there are a lot of GMs who are not so keen on surprises. And in a relatively prep heavy game like D&D it is rather understandable. It might not be easy to adapt on fly if things proceed into completely unexpected direction.

 

[clearstream]

By the logic you are using here any system that empowers the GM to make rules calls and have final say is railroading players into the GM's preferred story.

I too see that as the nub of a problematic hard conflation of MMI with GM-decides. Not every case of GM-decides is MMI... but here we come back to what I characterised as the objective/subjective divide, and @FrogReaver eloquently expressed as (under one view) being about a player's feelings.

 

[Campbell]

I too see that as the nub of a problematic hard conflation of MMI with GM-decides. Not every case of GM-decides is MMI... but here we come back to what I characterised as the objective/subjective divide, and @FrogReaver eloquently expressed as about a player's feelings.

I think you're tilting at windmills here, seeing any constraint (including social constraints) on GM decision making processes as an indication of hostility towards GM judgement. I'm in favor of a strong GM role. I don't think it should be unbounded and I think everyone at the table should be accountable to everyone else. You don't have to agree, but please stop misrepresenting the arguments that are being made.

Additionally it is not as if the particular framing of this thread was decided by anyone who favors some constraints on GM decision making.

 

[pemerton]

No, of course not. We all know in D&D the GM is the one who invokes rule zero

I assume by "D&D" here you mean 5e D&D?

In my 4e D&D game the players would invoke "rule zero" - ie insisting that resolution incorporate/honour/respond to established fiction, genre logic, narrative trajectory, etc - quite often.

EDIT for clarity: I'm referring to this sort of thing:

It can mean something as simple as "X thing doesn't exist in this setting" or "X thing isn't available right now, because of what happened last game".

 

[pemerton]

I don't see anything wrong or railroady with the arrangement that one player is GM and that player is the one who can invoke rule zero.

I don't think any poster in this thread has said that there is anything wrong with it.

I agree with @hawkeyefan that this sort of structure opens the door to railroading and "Mother May I" in a way that a system where a player could invoke "rule zero" doesn't.