Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7574342" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I think this is a good example of how to handle the terminology. I personally felt that the use of MMI in the original thread was clear. The poster was using it as a way of describing GM authorization of game elements; he wanted to allow the player to introduce elements that interested him without having to rely on the GM for introduction of the content or approval. In that sense, the term works perfectly. And if we toss out the idea that it's meant as a pejorative (and I know that historically, it can be used that way, but let's ignore that for now). GM Authorization does seem to be the default approach for many RPGs, including D&D. I don't think that's really in contention; the players are free to declare actions for their characters (within the established constraints of the fiction), and the GM establishes the likelihood of success or failure, usually by setting some kind of DC or target number for a skill check or other action. How exactly the GM decides on a target DC will vary, but usually it involves including relevant fictional factors such as range, quality, pressure, and the like. Nearly everything in the game is filtered through the GM. Whether that's good or bad or a mix of the two is up to personal preference. I personally don't mind this style of play, but I do tend to incorporate as much player authorship as the system will allow. I have a 5E campaign, and my players routinely add things to the fictional world. It's not in as formalized or mechanically supported a way as other games may support, and I'd say that's the significant difference. D&D as written allows players to introduce fictional elements mostly through Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, which is pretty minimal, and very likely front loaded at the time of character creation. There's no reason you can't incorporate more player authorship into the game in other ways, and I would say that the system itself is flexible enough to handle a lot of that, but if you decide to do so, you have to introduce optional rules or house rule it, and so on. But even for my game which I consider to have a good deal of player authorship, I still think it falls into the GM Authorization category; that's exactly how the mechanics are designed to work. It's not a bad thing, and I don't know why some see this as bad, other than one phrase used to summarize it.</blockquote>

Verification