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

[FrogReaver]

The degree of difficulty seems like it may not matter that much, if none of those difficulties is hard. But in any even, I've nominated some systems which I don't think can be turned into "Mother may I?"

If the player is determining the outcome, how can there by "Mother may I?"

Is the DM is a ‘player’ as well? If so would he be asking mother May I to the player?

 

[pemerton]

This doesn't seem quite right for DW. The text of DR reads in part -

"Of course, some questions might have a negative answer, that’s fine. If there really, honestly is nothing useful or valuable here, the GM will answer that question with 'Nothing, sorry'"

You introduced Dungeon World. I cited Apocalypse World, and made it clear that I was looking at your DW example through the AW lens. The systems I mentioned were Apocalypse World, Agon, In A Wicked Age, and Burning Wheel.

Your description of AW above baffles me even more as to why MMI cannot exist in it.

Perhaps you could point to where you think it does.

I'm with @Ovi here. What 's your example of play that shows Mother May I in the context of Apocalypse World?

 

[pemerton]

Is the DM is a ‘player’ as well? If so would he be asking mother May I to the player?

I'm referring to a player determining the outcome of their own action declaration. This is what happens in Burning Wheel on a successful check.

 

[pemerton]

I said there are no principles but that was solely in relation to written principles and this was contrasted with games that do have written principles.

5e itself has no principles. Each table that plays has their own principles.

I did not say that. I said that 5e leaves it to the group to have principles; and groups always do have principles, whether or not they articulate them. Thus in every instance of 5e there will principles in play that may be violated.

Suppose a 5e table adopts the principle The GM will never negate a player goal/intention unless a check has been called for and failed.

Would you agree that this means that there won't be "Mother may I?" at that table?

EDIT:
clearstream, in this post upthread (and it's not the only one) you appear to be defending @hawkeyefan's GM's adjudication of Rustic Hospitality:

As I have pointed out, that's not relevant. The feature was used and gave a benefit.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Now, bad faith might be entirely unintentional. It's true. You can have perfectly well intentioned rulings on results that lead to MMI. It happens. Which means that MMI situations occur IN PLAY. They are not the consequences of playing this or that system. MMI is the consequence of dysfunctional play.

"Now, cancer might be entirely unintentional. It's true. You can have perfectly well-intentioned ingredients that lead to cancer. It happens. Which means cancer cells occur IN LIVING THINGS. They are not consequences of using this or that material. Cancer is the consequence of dysfunctional cell growth."

Just as one can speak of carcinogens, materials which encourage or heighten the risk of cancer, one can speak of particular rules or systems which encourage or heighten the risk of MMI. That the actual dysfunction must only arise in the active event does not mean the impetus is totally shielded from criticism.

Look, @pemerton, I'm sure you know these systems far better than I. Fair enough. But, are these completely refereeless systems? Is there a referee? If yes, then there is someone, at some point, who can determine outcomes. Even the player's narration of outcomes can be influenced by a referee simply by altering the input states. There are just so many ways that the referee, if they want to, can force MMI situations.

Is it harder in these systems? Maybe. I have no idea. I don't play those games and I'll take your word for it. But, it seems in this thread that people insist that an obviously negative term, MMI, is somehow neutral and it's not. It's always a negative term. And, in play, where MMI is found, not between the covers of a book, but in actual play, I find it extremely difficult to believe that it's impossible to devolve play into MMI.

Much of what you describe explicitly breaks the actual rules text, that is the text of moves, not just the principles or agendas. There are very explicit instructions on various things. E.g., with answers to Discern Realities questions, I am not allowed to speak falsely. If I as GM speak falsely in response to a Discern Realities question, I have broken the rules of Dungeon World. By following the rules, I in fact do the very things needed to avoid MMI (open, honest, and forthright communication; recognition of player choice; conducting the triggered rules.)

Your description of AW above baffles me even more as to why MMI cannot exist in it.

I am unclear how. The player describes what their character does, and if that results in some kind of uncertainty, the rules are triggered, which then specify a response from the GM. Since you have to do it to do it, the players must actually describe the thing they're doing, not merely invoke a rule by name. Further, since if you do it, you do it, there is no adjudication about whether you are using Discern Realities or not: any situation in which you fulfill the descriptive phrase for the move is using the move, there is no gap between. In this case, "When you closely study a situation or person, roll+WIS." etc. It is difficult to see how there could be ambiguity about whether a player has declared that they are closely studying a situation or person. Once the move has been triggered, the player follows its instructions, and the roll is visible to all; there is then a prescribed list of questions they may ask, and the DM is required to answer them truthfully.

For example, during our last session, a player carefully surveyed a ransacked kitchen, considering what food items had been left out, whether the kitchen looked like it had been in use before it was ransacked, whether anything had obviously been stolen or vandalized with intent, etc. That player got a partial success, so they were able to ask one question. IIRC, they chose, "What should I be on the lookout for?" I answered, "As you look over the various detritus and things present here, you realize that there isn't so much as a single scrap of paper here: no cookbooks, no recipes, no grocery lists, not so much as a single handwritten note or torn page. There are clearly spaces where cookbooks could be kept, but no books present. That tells you pretty clearly that whatever books and papers were here were taken, and either they didn't know which specific thing they were looking for, or didn't care about hauling back everything to sort through later." This pushed play in new directions, and the players were able to take advantage of it near the end of session to resolve the Major Issues of the past few sessions.

What possible "mother may I" could be involved here? And this is not some weird special situation. This is the natural play loop of DW: the GM describes the situation and asks, "What do you do?" and the players respond with descriptions of what they do; if those descriptions match the explicit (usually bolded) trigger phrase for a move, then the move is triggered. Otherwise, it swings back to the GM, who answers questions and describes the new situation, and the pendulum keeps swinging until an action triggers a move. When a move is triggered, you do what it says.

Like, let's consider another move, one that doesn't show up as much in my game but which we've still used every now and then: Spout Lore. This is, more or less, the equivalent of a "knowledge check." The text for Spout Lore reads as follows:

When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int.
✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation.
✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful.
The GM might ask you “How do you know this?” Tell them the truth, now.

Note the trigger phrase: the player cannot simply Spout Lore about whatever they want, whenever they want. They must establish that they have accumulated knowledge to consult. Now, that could be the result of referencing backstory, or spending a day doing research at the library, or being a motherflippin' Wizard, or whatever--but it must be established. Once it has been, and a situation occurs that actually involves a character considering what information they have learned about a topic, they follow the rules: roll+INT. Full success requires that the GM tell you something (a) both interesting and useful, (b) about the subject, which is (c) relevant to your situation. Partial success removes only the "...and useful" bit of (a), all other parts remain. It then specifies that the GM might ask how you know, and you the player must answer truthfully.

How can one engage in MMI here? It strains credulity to think that "consult your accumulated knowledge" should be so difficult to identify such that the GM would refuse to recognize the action. When the move is triggered, it would require the GM to actively break the rule (by providing something not interesting or relevant, or if full success, something not useful) in order to have a gap between expectation and practice.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

IMO. Is a shovel or a pick a better tool? They serve different purposes.

That's the way I tend to view RPG rules. Of course some shovels can be better made than other shovels and some picks can be made better than other picks, but IMO most of our differences at this point are more akin to shovels vs picks instead of shovels vs strictly better made shovels.

Is a steel shovel better than a stone shovel? I would argue yes. Even though the steel shovel has certain weaknesses the stone shovel does not, such as the risk of eventually rusting, in essentially every possible way, a steel shovel is superior to a stone shovel. They perform the same function, but the stone shovel is nearly guaranteed to break during ordinary use, while the steel shovel is nearly guaranteed to remain highly functional in essentially all standard use cases.

I would tend to agree - except I'm not convinced you can flat out get rid of MMI by any set of rules or principles. Minimize yes. Eliminate no. Even with Good Faith. I think this because MMI is effectively about subjective feelings of having to ask permission to do something. I'd also add that preventing MMI isn't the only reason for rules and that having rules actively limit MMI is going to trade off some other positive things to do so.

What of games which do not involve "asking for permission to do something"? Because, as noted above, that's not really how DW (or other PbtA) moves work. You don't ask to be able to Discern Realities. You take actions. If those actions match the trigger phrase for Discern Realities, then you do it: if you do it, you do it. Such trigger phrases are almost always of sufficient simplicity and clarity that it, as I said above, strains credulity that it would be possible for the DM to deny that that is the case. The rest of the game text gives elaboration, but it honestly isn't particularly necessary.

I can conceive of a game being designed with that bad of rules, but I don't think any made in the last 10 or maybe even 20 years are like that.

I mean...I cited 3rd edition for a reason. And PF1e was literally "3e, with the serial numbers filed off, and some tweaks here and there." I also very much think several parts of 5e, in part due to ambiguous rules text, in part due to a lack of advice or outright bad advice, do exactly this. For example, IIRC, the DMG even explicitly has some bit hidden in it where it says (paraphrased), "yeah you can just ignore the modifiers and such and just look at the die: 6 [or something like that] or less is basically always a fail, and 14 [or something like that] or more is always a success, and you can decide which you like better for the middle values. Your players will never know."

The place I see MMI happening, is in the areas where someone gets to control the fiction.

If we're building that fiction together, and expected to make that fiction make sense, where does MMI enter? I genuinely don't understand. It sounds like you're generalizing "MMI" into meaning "literally any situation ever where two people have a different perception of the situation," which would cause it to apply to everything ever done in gaming period.

I don't think there's many genuinely better tools in RPG rules. There are tradeoffs. You may like one set of rules better, but I've yet to see a ruleset do everything better than another one. You may say these are the things I value and so this tool is better for me or possibly even most people, but not in the broad sense that it is better for everyone.

I mean, I cited the X-card concept for a reason. It's legitimately better than anything previously used for enabling "dark"/"adult"/"difficult" thematic content without hurting the players. It is a formal structure analogous to a safe word, when there had been no such structure at all prior to its introduction and widespread use. Surely that is an objectively identifiable instance of a genuinely better tool than the pure ad-hoc "I guess we'll just figure it out as we go" approach from before?

Likewise, something that has actually been tested, and confirmed, to determine whether it produces the desired statistical results would seem to be objectively superior to something where you have only your gut instinct as to whether it will work or not. That's what playtesting is for, to identify structures that don't work and fix them, and to identify ones that do work and determine why so you can apply that information again elsewhere.

 

[tetrasodium]

"Now, cancer might be entirely unintentional. It's true. You can have perfectly well-intentioned ingredients that lead to cancer. It happens. Which means cancer cells occur IN LIVING THINGS. They are not consequences of using this or that material. Cancer is the consequence of dysfunctional cell growth."

Just as one can speak of carcinogens, materials which encourage or heighten the risk of cancer, one can speak of particular rules or systems which encourage or heighten the risk of MMI. That the actual dysfunction must only arise in the active event does not mean the impetus is totally shielded from criticism.

I think that the cancer analogy is even better than you give it credit. Cells more or less* developed to grow & survive within the organism they are part of over time just as d&d's various rules developed over the editions to accomplish various bits. Cancer goes wrong in that the cancerous cells are too good at growing & surviving to the point that they can begin damaging & killing the body they exist in.

The problematic rules& omissions you cite do similar In that they are so successful at whatever their design goal was that they damage the system overall by encouraging or failing to control dysfunctional play

* Not going for hardcore biology, just a metaphor

 

[FrogReaver]

Suppose a 5e table adopts the principle The GM will never negate a player goal/intention unless a check has been called for and failed.

Would you agree that this means that there won't be "Mother may I?" at that table?

I would not agree.

There's a number of reasons. A few are noted below:
The GM may not know the players goal/intention.
Another principle may come into conflict and the DM prioritizes the other principle.
The DM may simple chose to ignore this principle at times for 'pick good reason'
The DM may have the failure affect something the player feels should be outside the scope of the check
Etc.

EDIT:
clearstream, in this post upthread (and it's not the only one) you appear to be defending @hawkeyefan's GM's adjudication of Rustic Hospitality:

And now we are back to... One can believe the GM adjudicated Rustic Hospitality by the rules and still believe that situation wasn't handled appropriately, because 5e doesn't supply principles. Hasn't this part been rehashed enough?

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm referring to a player determining the outcome of their own action declaration. This is what happens in Burning Wheel on a successful check.

Obviously. I still think the question stands though. Due to the players ability to determine outcomes can the DM be left feeling like he's playing 'mother may I' with the player being mother?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I would not agree.

There's a number of reasons. A few are noted below:
The GM may not know the players goal/intention.
Another principle may come into conflict and the DM prioritizes the other principle.
The DM may simple chose to ignore this principle at times for 'pick good reason'
The DM may have the failure affect something the player feels should be outside the scope of the check
Etc.

#3 is straight-up "break the rules whenever you feel like it," which axiomatically makes Mother May I a possibility. Why would you include it? Doing so means you are presuming system is irrelevant. It makes your argument circular.

#1 and #4 are solved by communication. The error depends on failing to communicate. Rules-design and principles which make communication paramount are critical to this, as I've said several times now.

#2 means an illogically-designed game. The principles should not conflict with one another. An area where two principles are in fact at absolute, irreconcilable loggerheads is a huge design red flag: it means you have chosen at least one principle that isn't actually a principle (at least not as stated), and should revise your principles until that is no longer the case. For comparison, here are the GM Principles from Dungeon World:

• Draw maps, leave blanks
• Address the characters, not the players
• Embrace the fantastic
• Make a move that follows
• Never speak the name of your move
• Give every monster life
• Name every person
• Ask questions and use the answers
• Be a fan of the characters
• Think dangerous
• Begin and end with the fiction
• Think offscreen, too

In what way could these principles--or other important things like you have to do it, to do it and if you do it, you do it--come to irreconcilable conflict?

And now we are back to... One can believe the GM adjudicated Rustic Hospitality by the rules and still believe that situation wasn't handled appropriately, because 5e doesn't supply principles. Hasn't this part been rehashed enough?

I mean, I guess? People keep bringing it back up again, on both sides.