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

[pemerton]

Sometimes what the players want is to have the external game world function independently of them and that's more important to them than the kinds of potential vulnerabilities you list here.

Sure.

 

[tetrasodium]

So they were able to let go of their need to win at fun, relax, roll with the punches, roleplay their characters, stay with the fiction, and just play the game. That sounds amazing and fun.

Very much so. As the GM on some level my job is usually play the losing side and ultimately lose. That loss might have some victories or metaphorical alert (!) pings along the way, but I pretty much wind up forced into curtailing player agency when the players don't do that orplay to win or play with a god's eye overview of things.

That particular group broke up when we all got covid early 2020 & too many of us had conflicting schedules before things started cooling down. Meanwhile my current group of five is pretty much starting at square one in the world as I just try to establish things for the third time in7-8 levels because a single player icepicked the first two. I feel bad because at this point I'm barely even bothering with things like names in my prep & just hoping I can keep it running long enough to restart it after delver's guide is out*.

* I think I can & that the current crop of stuff going on might hook them or be able to survive bob.

 

[pemerton]

That's why you openly communicate your goals as a player up front

Presumably @hawkeyefan did this.

The player doesn't get to narrate the outcome, the referee does.

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The player gets to try to hide as their declaration, not declare that they successfully hide. The success of that attempt is up to the mechanics or the referee.

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The players get the benefits of having tactical infinity along with the "drawback" of sometimes not having things always work out exactly how the players want them to.

What's the point of the background feature if it makes no difference to what the GM decides about whether or not the player's goal for their PC is realised?

Also, "tactical infinity" here seems to have been reduced to "can make whatever suggestions they like". Actual tactical infinity would involve those suggestions having some sort of teeth in their connection to outcomes. (That's what tactics actually means, isn't it?)

 

[Hussar]

Exactly. And that’s why I’m saying declare the action and narrate the outcome. Unless the outcome is exactly how the player wanted it to be, it’s a problem. It’s this weird kind of Schröndinger’s Decision. The player will commit to an action if, and only if, they know the full ramifications, consequences, and results of the action. They’d rather not do the thing than have it come off as anything less than perfect. That’s not how RPGs work. That’s how boardgames, card games, video games, and wargames work.

I think you just answered your own question. People expect to know the ramifications of their decisions because in every other similar situation- other games- that’s how it works.

And there’s your disconnect. You are insisting rpgs must work differently and then getting annoyed when players aren’t buying it.

 

[FrogReaver]

What is also interesting is that, despite complaints about using a pejorative term like Mother May I to label a playstyle, no one bats an eye at Main Character Syndrome, even though it’s clearly used as a pejorative.

Maybe you should consider what is the difference between railroad, main character syndrome and mother may i. If only one of those isn't accepted even though all are derogatory then why is that?

 

[Hussar]

Exactly. And this leads us back to somewhere near the beginning of the thread where players were talking about wanting perfect information to make game decisions despite their character having no possible way to know or taking no actions in the fiction to secure that information.

Honestly I think it slaps into how often does this occur. IME under multiple dms there is virtually no point in ever trying to do anything than frontal assault because you will always fail.

I had a similar experience to @hawkeyefan where my folk hero character used his background so we could stay in a safe place in an enemy occupied city while we gathered information about a place we needed to infiltrate.

So we spend time gather resources and plan the infiltration. We are immediately caught and wind up having this massive running battle.

I ask how they knew we were coming. True, the characters had no way of knowing but since we’d just spent a couple of hours of game time planning this to have it go sideways in the first ten minutes I was somewhat frustrated.

I was told that we were spotted doing reconnaissance. No rolls. No warning. They knew we were coming.

So why did we bother spending a couple of hours planning when it had zero chance of success. And frankly I know that nothing we could have done would have succeeded.

If the dm is just going to say no, skip the screwing around and just say no. Don’t waste my time trying to do something when it’s never goi g to work.

 

[FrogReaver]

This sounds a lot like railroading to me. At the very least, unless I am missing crucial details, not the best call on the GM's part. I always find it important for there to be a chance of both PCs seeing or not seeing things, and of NPCs not seeing or seeing things. An example is, I would never just automatically assume players are successfully followed by an NPC: I would allow them to make some kind of roll, to see if they noticed a pursuer (and it might be secret and revealed after, but they would know a roll was made at some point). Similarly it the players are hiding somewhere, I wouldn't just assume they are found.

Yea, I'm struggling to see the difference between railroading and mother may I in @hawkeyefan's example.

In the example he didn't have to ask permission to use his ability and be at least partially successful with it. He brought it up and the DM said yes. The complaint really seems to be that the DM didn't give them any chance to avoid the encounter. I'm not getting why this is being called mother may I?

 

[FrogReaver]

If the dm is just going to say no, skip the screwing around and just say no. Don’t waste my time trying to do something when it’s never goi g to work.

I don't think you can do that in D&D terms, at least not fairly. If he had skipped ahead he would be accused of railroading and not giving you the chance of avoiding that encounter. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

 

[overgeeked]

I think you just answered your own question. People expect to know the ramifications of their decisions because in every other similar situation- other games- that’s how it works.

And there’s your disconnect. You are insisting rpgs must work differently and then getting annoyed when players aren’t buying it.

Show me the bit in the rules of chess where it talks about the freedom of the DM to interpret rules. Or the bit from Axis & Allies about how roleplaying works. Or the bit in WoW that says the DM can let you try anything. Or the part in Monopoly about making a character.

If you choose to play RPGs like boardgames, that's your prerogative. But it's more than a bit odd that you're claiming, apparently with a straight face, that you think RPGs function exactly the same as games without a referee.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@CreamCloud0 mentioned how it didn't sound like things the GM was obligated to tell you back in 524, but this shows the other side of the problem caused by even a single player not onboard with the gameplay. Specifically "explain in detail why our plan failed even if there are elements we shouldn't be capable of knowing" with an implied [or you are guilty of bad behavior as a GM till proven otherwise]. Ironically this only exacerbates the problem from the GM's standpoint as the players start making quantum actions based on unknowable stuff & stuff the PCs have no reason to intuit like how a villager turned them in for coin how the villagers were afraid of $reason or whatever.

Elements who shouldn’t be capable of knowing? The characters? The players? Both?

It’s a game. There are players. If you want the players to make choices that matter, then you have to give them the chance to do so.

The GM is free to handle the situation however he likes. He can do so in a way that the players are aware, or he can do so in a way that they’re not.

Why do that? Why keep stuff like that from the players?

Exactly. And this leads us back to somewhere near the beginning of the thread where players were talking about wanting perfect information to make game decisions despite their character having no possible way to know or taking no actions in the fiction to secure that information.

And then this leads us back to the real reason to provide players that information. Because no GM can provide all the relevant information that the character in the fiction would possess. The GM’s narration is incomplete.

Providing the players with relevant mechanical information is a way to bridge that gap.

It’s not about acquiescing to those pesky, over-demanding players.

Exactly. The more of this I’m reading the more it looks like utterly unreasonable player expectations and when those aren’t met, it’s claims of MMI.

As the player in question, I’ll ask you to mind your manners. If you’re going to speak about me in such a way, at least have the courtesy and social fortitude to @ me. I’ve not resorted to calling those who disagree with me unreasonable or anything like that.

I’m critiquing the system and practices that I think can contribute to this.

Also, I can assure you, I’m far from an unreasonable player. And I’m also the GM for my group about 90% of the time… so it’s not like my view os that of a player only.

Maybe you should consider what is the difference between railroad, main character syndrome and mother may i. If only one of those isn't accepted even though all are derogatory then why is that?

Oh I don’t care which of these labels people use. Call a game what you want, I’ll discuss based on the merits of the argument rather than how friendly the label may or may not be.

I thibk Mother May I and Railroading have some things in common for sure. Main Character Syndrome is something else, I think, and seems to have been evoked in this thread as more of a “oh yeah, well we can do that, too” kind of thing.

Yea, I'm struggling to see the difference between railroading and mother may I in @hawkeyefan's example.

In the example he didn't have to ask permission to use his ability. He brought it up and the DM said yes. The complaint really seems to be that the DM didn't give them any chance to avoid the encounter. I'm not getting why this is being called mother may I?

Because I used the ability in an attempt to avoid the fight. And then that didn’t happen. And before @overgeeked or anyone else says that I’m just a sore sport or an unreasonable player, I’ll add that it’s not that my move didn’t work. It’s that it seemingly worked, but then the result was the same as if it hadn’t, with no other chance to try and avoid the fight. No indication it wouldn’t be enough, no chance to make rolls or gather new information.

Me: Mother May I avoid the battle with the Duke’s men?

GM: Nope!