Among a certain group of people, there is a driven need to use a mocking term (we'll call it "MMI") to refer to playing D&D and other types of games. However, while the specific pejorative term may have been coined in 2005, the actual debate and the issues it illuminates goes back much farther. I would say that this is, in fact, nothing but a new variation on what older gamers know as the "Thief Debate." In order to understand this debate, it helps to go back to the origins of D&D, to understand the original Thief debate, and then to recognize how that original debate continues to echo through the ages, continuing on today.
A. From the Core Three, to the Core Four.
I care one hundred and crazy percent.
Without getting too deep into the pre-LLB history of OD&D, the important thing to note is that when OD&D was originally published, there were three core classes. In Men & Magic, we had the Core Three of Fighter (called "Fighting Man" at the time), Magic User, and Cleric. That was it. There was an allowance for race that could do some funky things (such as the Elf rule that would let you switch between Fighter and Magic User), but you only had the core three classes. The rules, such as they were .... were sparse. Honestly, the LBBs (the three "Little Brown Books" that were the first release of OD&D) were unplayable without additions or modifications or the use of additional material. They were much more the building blocks of a game than the rules of a game itself.
And then, of course, there came the Thief - the Thief (now generally known as the "Rogue") is widely considered the fourth major class, and part of the "Core Fore" classes of D&D. The Thief was originally created to use a modified "spell system" like the Magic User by Gary Switzer. Gygax took this idea and published it as class, but using a percentile system, in Great Plains Game Players Newsletter #9, and then in the Greyhawk supplement for OD&D.
Of course, the release of a designated thief class in OD&D immediately caused some problems. It's not that there hadn't been an RPG Thief before- Dave Megarry played a thief in Arneson's pre-OD&D campaign called "McDuck." But what made McDuck a thief wasn't enumerated skills- it was what McDuck did. This was similar to many aspects of the Arneson campaign- for example, an "Assassin" didn't have special abilities, per se, it was just a character (Allan Hammock's) that joined the assassin's guild.
Right here, you see the dividing line, and the cause for this incredibly early debate. A character in an Arneson campaign could become a thief by, basically, announcing that they are doing thief-y type activities. After the Greyhawk Supplement, you had to play a Thief Class to be a thief. Which suddenly made for an interesting conundrum for gamers-
If you have to be a Thief Class to "Hide in Shadows" or "Climb Walls" or "Listen to Doors," does that mean that ... the other characters can't? Before the thief class was officially brought into the game, it never occurred to players and DMs that their characters couldn't try and listen at a door, or hide in the shadows, or accomplish any of the tasks that the Thief was now doing. And this was why the Thief started one of the first great debates in D&D- if you give enumerated abilities to a class, does that mean you are now taking them away from everyone else? And if a Thief has those thieving abilities enumerated, does that mean that any other thieving abilities cannot be done?
B. A Brief Aside About Adjectives.
I'm good at everything I do. I'm not bragging, because bragging is the one thing I'm not good at. Although, if I wanted to be, I'd be excellent at that, too. As I just proved.
A long time ago, I had an English teacher who taught me a definition for adjectives that has always stuck with me. "An adjective," he said, "is a word that limits a noun." When I first heard him describe it like that, it didn't make much sense to me. After all, adjective describe nouns! Adjectives are the juice of the English language, giving it color and verve! Limit?
But then, after it was explained, it made perfect sense. A house can be any kind of house. But a red house can only be red. It can no longer be blue, or yellow, or purple. A large house is limited- it cannot be small. And so on. Every adjective limits the noun. It restricts the possibilities.
That also works as a general concept for many things- the description, the enumeration, the categorization of things necessarily limits those things. To describe something ... is to make it lesser than the mystery it was before.
C. What the Thief Debate is Really About.
Meaning lies as much
in the mind of the reader
as in the Haiku.
The "Thief Debate," in essence, was the first and earliest iteration of a debate that continues to recur in TTRPGs in general, but more specifically in D&D. Every time you codify something into a rule, you reduce the space for something to be accomplished by "not rule." There is a legal Latin term for this-
Expressio unius est exclusio alterius
The expression of one thing is the exclusion of others. Whenever new rules are introduced into D&D, whether it was the Thief Class, or the codification (for example) of NWPs (non-weapon proficiencies, AKA "skills" as we know them now) or rules for social abilities, we see people manning the same familiar barricade-
I don't need a rule to tell me what to do.
The flip side of that debate, of course, are those that want these rules. The crave rules to enhance their play. If a Magic User gets to cast spells, why can't a Thief get to ... you know, do Thief-y things? If Duroc the Merciless has rules for hitting the snot out of people, why can't Loring the Charming have rules for convincing the NPC to give up the location of the treasure? Over and over again, it's the same debate- rules, or rulings. Do we need to have a Thief class with thieving abilities, or can I just say I'm hiding?
D. Insults and Context Switching Paralysis in D&D.
I wish my wish would not be granted!
When it comes to playing D&D, people have no shortage of pejorative terms to use (sometimes about D&D, sometimes about editions, or sometimes about other games). Do you like games with rulings? Oh, you like "Mother May I." Do you like games with rules? Oh, you're a "Button Masher" that "Can Only Solve Problems By Looking at the Character Sheet." And so on. None of these terms really add to the discussion, and, instead, are best seen as someone declaring loudly that they are a member of one tribe- watch out!
That said, I think that D&D in general, and 5e in particular, can fall into a problem that I call "Context Switching Paralysis" There are games that heavily dependent on rulings and have minimalist rulesets (such as FKR games or many OSR games). For the most part, they don't have issues with DMs and Players both playing to the fiction- the shared assumption of "playing to the world" are baked into the game itself. On the other hand, games that are heavily bound by rules also don't have a big problem- binding DM authority or making actions and results explicit and predictable through rules also can have a salutary effect.
Instead, I would propose that the majority of problems gaming in so-called "MMI" or "DM Decides" typically occur in games, like 5e, that both depend heavily on rules and heavily on rulings. It's the specific mix of both that can lead to Context Switching Paralysis.
Let's start with the basics- 5e is a game of both rules and rulings. There are large numbers of systems in D&D that are heavily codified; for example, most combat and spells would be examples of this. On the other hand, there are a lot of things in 5e that are lightly codified or uncodified; these would be things like social interactions, setting DCs, or resolving character actions that are not provided for through explicit abilities.
In a typical FKR game, as there nothing that is heavily codified, there is never any need to "switch" between rules and rulings.
In a typical game that is governed almost entirely by rules (say, 3.5e), you are usually operating within the space of a codified rule.
But in 5e, you are often switching between things that are heavily codified (such as a combat, or casting a spell) and things that are not (social encounters, parts of the exploration pillar, etc.). Switching between these two modes of play can, at times, lead to context switching paralysis on the part of the DM or the players (or all of them!). In other words, if you've been using a lot of rules, you become uncertain when you have to venture into the world of pure adjudication (Oh, that's Mother May I!). When you have been relying on adjudication, you get frustrated when you are restricted to actions based the rules and not what you imagine based on the fiction (Oh, now I have to Button Mash!).
I would say that while the allowance for context switching, and allowing groups to have more "rules" or more "rulings" as they might prefer is a strength of 5e, without clear table communication you can also end up with the context switching paralysis and a bad gaming experience.
A. From the Core Three, to the Core Four.
I care one hundred and crazy percent.
Without getting too deep into the pre-LLB history of OD&D, the important thing to note is that when OD&D was originally published, there were three core classes. In Men & Magic, we had the Core Three of Fighter (called "Fighting Man" at the time), Magic User, and Cleric. That was it. There was an allowance for race that could do some funky things (such as the Elf rule that would let you switch between Fighter and Magic User), but you only had the core three classes. The rules, such as they were .... were sparse. Honestly, the LBBs (the three "Little Brown Books" that were the first release of OD&D) were unplayable without additions or modifications or the use of additional material. They were much more the building blocks of a game than the rules of a game itself.
And then, of course, there came the Thief - the Thief (now generally known as the "Rogue") is widely considered the fourth major class, and part of the "Core Fore" classes of D&D. The Thief was originally created to use a modified "spell system" like the Magic User by Gary Switzer. Gygax took this idea and published it as class, but using a percentile system, in Great Plains Game Players Newsletter #9, and then in the Greyhawk supplement for OD&D.
Of course, the release of a designated thief class in OD&D immediately caused some problems. It's not that there hadn't been an RPG Thief before- Dave Megarry played a thief in Arneson's pre-OD&D campaign called "McDuck." But what made McDuck a thief wasn't enumerated skills- it was what McDuck did. This was similar to many aspects of the Arneson campaign- for example, an "Assassin" didn't have special abilities, per se, it was just a character (Allan Hammock's) that joined the assassin's guild.
Right here, you see the dividing line, and the cause for this incredibly early debate. A character in an Arneson campaign could become a thief by, basically, announcing that they are doing thief-y type activities. After the Greyhawk Supplement, you had to play a Thief Class to be a thief. Which suddenly made for an interesting conundrum for gamers-
If you have to be a Thief Class to "Hide in Shadows" or "Climb Walls" or "Listen to Doors," does that mean that ... the other characters can't? Before the thief class was officially brought into the game, it never occurred to players and DMs that their characters couldn't try and listen at a door, or hide in the shadows, or accomplish any of the tasks that the Thief was now doing. And this was why the Thief started one of the first great debates in D&D- if you give enumerated abilities to a class, does that mean you are now taking them away from everyone else? And if a Thief has those thieving abilities enumerated, does that mean that any other thieving abilities cannot be done?
B. A Brief Aside About Adjectives.
I'm good at everything I do. I'm not bragging, because bragging is the one thing I'm not good at. Although, if I wanted to be, I'd be excellent at that, too. As I just proved.
A long time ago, I had an English teacher who taught me a definition for adjectives that has always stuck with me. "An adjective," he said, "is a word that limits a noun." When I first heard him describe it like that, it didn't make much sense to me. After all, adjective describe nouns! Adjectives are the juice of the English language, giving it color and verve! Limit?
But then, after it was explained, it made perfect sense. A house can be any kind of house. But a red house can only be red. It can no longer be blue, or yellow, or purple. A large house is limited- it cannot be small. And so on. Every adjective limits the noun. It restricts the possibilities.
That also works as a general concept for many things- the description, the enumeration, the categorization of things necessarily limits those things. To describe something ... is to make it lesser than the mystery it was before.
C. What the Thief Debate is Really About.
Meaning lies as much
in the mind of the reader
as in the Haiku.
The "Thief Debate," in essence, was the first and earliest iteration of a debate that continues to recur in TTRPGs in general, but more specifically in D&D. Every time you codify something into a rule, you reduce the space for something to be accomplished by "not rule." There is a legal Latin term for this-
Expressio unius est exclusio alterius
The expression of one thing is the exclusion of others. Whenever new rules are introduced into D&D, whether it was the Thief Class, or the codification (for example) of NWPs (non-weapon proficiencies, AKA "skills" as we know them now) or rules for social abilities, we see people manning the same familiar barricade-
I don't need a rule to tell me what to do.
The flip side of that debate, of course, are those that want these rules. The crave rules to enhance their play. If a Magic User gets to cast spells, why can't a Thief get to ... you know, do Thief-y things? If Duroc the Merciless has rules for hitting the snot out of people, why can't Loring the Charming have rules for convincing the NPC to give up the location of the treasure? Over and over again, it's the same debate- rules, or rulings. Do we need to have a Thief class with thieving abilities, or can I just say I'm hiding?
D. Insults and Context Switching Paralysis in D&D.
I wish my wish would not be granted!
When it comes to playing D&D, people have no shortage of pejorative terms to use (sometimes about D&D, sometimes about editions, or sometimes about other games). Do you like games with rulings? Oh, you like "Mother May I." Do you like games with rules? Oh, you're a "Button Masher" that "Can Only Solve Problems By Looking at the Character Sheet." And so on. None of these terms really add to the discussion, and, instead, are best seen as someone declaring loudly that they are a member of one tribe- watch out!
That said, I think that D&D in general, and 5e in particular, can fall into a problem that I call "Context Switching Paralysis" There are games that heavily dependent on rulings and have minimalist rulesets (such as FKR games or many OSR games). For the most part, they don't have issues with DMs and Players both playing to the fiction- the shared assumption of "playing to the world" are baked into the game itself. On the other hand, games that are heavily bound by rules also don't have a big problem- binding DM authority or making actions and results explicit and predictable through rules also can have a salutary effect.
Instead, I would propose that the majority of problems gaming in so-called "MMI" or "DM Decides" typically occur in games, like 5e, that both depend heavily on rules and heavily on rulings. It's the specific mix of both that can lead to Context Switching Paralysis.
Let's start with the basics- 5e is a game of both rules and rulings. There are large numbers of systems in D&D that are heavily codified; for example, most combat and spells would be examples of this. On the other hand, there are a lot of things in 5e that are lightly codified or uncodified; these would be things like social interactions, setting DCs, or resolving character actions that are not provided for through explicit abilities.
In a typical FKR game, as there nothing that is heavily codified, there is never any need to "switch" between rules and rulings.
In a typical game that is governed almost entirely by rules (say, 3.5e), you are usually operating within the space of a codified rule.
But in 5e, you are often switching between things that are heavily codified (such as a combat, or casting a spell) and things that are not (social encounters, parts of the exploration pillar, etc.). Switching between these two modes of play can, at times, lead to context switching paralysis on the part of the DM or the players (or all of them!). In other words, if you've been using a lot of rules, you become uncertain when you have to venture into the world of pure adjudication (Oh, that's Mother May I!). When you have been relying on adjudication, you get frustrated when you are restricted to actions based the rules and not what you imagine based on the fiction (Oh, now I have to Button Mash!).
I would say that while the allowance for context switching, and allowing groups to have more "rules" or more "rulings" as they might prefer is a strength of 5e, without clear table communication you can also end up with the context switching paralysis and a bad gaming experience.