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

[el-remmen]

Call it "Begging the DM"

 

[jmartkdr2]

I agree to the above. MMI is usually just used as a slight at people who think the DM is the arbiter of the rules.
I am having a hard time to stay diplomatic here..
lets say, some players want hard and fast rules to resolve any possible situation, some are more happy to have a dialogue with the DM.

Just to invert this:

Some dm's want to keep control of the whole game, other are happy to have a dialogue.

 

[overgeeked]

Call it "Begging the DM"

I don't see how that's an improvement.

It's a really odd argument to me as even many of the much lauded flattened-hierarchy games still involve a lot of referee authority. Like PbtA games. The referee is still very much in charge and is the final arbiter of most things in the game. The world may be collaboratively created (depending on the specific PbtA game), but the referee still sets the scenes, decides who's in them, creates/runs/MC's factions and fronts, decides how all the NPCs act and react, and decides when the rules are invoked. Even in "low referee-authority" games, the referee has a lot of authority. Even more indie is something like Fiasco, which doesn't have a referee per se, but if you dig into the rules, it has a shifting referee. The player of the spotlight character for a scene is the referee during that scene in that they have final authority over the details of that scene.

 

[jmartkdr2]

That's what I thought. So it's simply one's preferences for heavier rules and less referee authority couched in a snide dismissal of the reverse preference, i.e. rules light games and referee authority-based play.

A lot of the time it's not that the rules or lack thereof creates the problem - it's the ambiguity is handled poorly by the dm. If the dm is always consistent and fair in their rulings, MMI is rarely complained about. But the fewer rules the are, the harder it is for a dm to remain consistent and fair. lack of rules allows for MMI.

CF Railroading (in its most negative sense) isn't when there's a defined path the dm wants players to follow - it's when the tools used by the dm to keep players on the path feel arbitrary and unfair. If the tools used are subtle, fiction-consistent or just accepted as part of the game by the players it likely won't get called railroading.

 

[TheSword]

How do you define “mother may I” in reference to D&D 5e?

You don’t! It’s a pejorative phrase that assumes a hostile and adversarial DM.

If you need a rule system that protects you from the DM then get a new DM… because rules will never be enough.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It’s just a label people use to trash talk how other people play.

It had nothing to do with how people like to play. It's about a design philosophy.

 

[Malmuria]

Action resolution has been well covered here, so I will address some setting concerns that make me feel like I basically have to ask permission to do things.

For me personally a player character's connection to the setting essential. If I am ask to play an itinerant wanderer, man with no name type where I am constantly a fish out of water that adds to the sense of "Mother May I?" to me. I want to have resources I can depend on, information I can have confidence in and reliable means of gaining information I lack. That means real allies, real contacts and some measure of authority/responsibility. I need an actual context that I can operate within and leverage so I don't have to spend an inordinate amount of table time focused on finding information about how the setting works.

I want to spend my time acting on the setting, not trying to suss it all out.

That's a good point. I've been in games where I've been constantly confused/mistaken about the setting assumptions, just because it was a very well worked out setting in the DMs mind and we didn't have access to all that info.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hmm... "genuine freeform"? I think the FKR folk feel their freeform is genuine. I'm not really FKR, but I "GM" freeform. I think my freeform is genuine. I've never encountered identical role / identical authority freeform.

When someone speaks of "freeform" roleplay, I think of the freeform Dragonriders of Pern RP I used to do when I was in middle school/high school. Where it was all text, and the site moderators only had power in the sense that they adjudicated uncouth behavior and set up the semi-contest-like bonding events. There were no mechanics to play--it was totally, exclusively "the fiction" as Dungeon World would put it.

I genuinely, truly do not understand FKR, so yeah, that's probably going to be a stumbling block.

I guess we see this in a worlds-apart way

Well, when you call something "freeform" but it actually has mechanics, yeah, I'm going to get very confused. How can it be free of form (or free in form) if there actually is an invisible rulebook? Especially one you literally aren't allowed to know, because the whole point with FKR (as I have been given to understand) is that they binned any visible rulebook that might exist, and went full-bore for "the rules are whatever the DM says they are, whenever they say it."

Yeah, that poster's notion of what "genuine free-form" is doesn't mesh at all with my experiences of free-form.

See above. I take the term "freeform" rather more seriously than most people, apparently. If it has actual rules that need adjudication, it's not "freeform." It may certainly be rules-light, or those rules may be (trying for charitable phrasing) adjudicated only at DM discretion, but it is not free of/in form.

And FKR isn't always free-form. FKR games absolutely can and often do have rules, though they're typically minimalistic rules. They most often defer to the genre and setting that the game is set in. And FKR most definitely has a referee with authority. That's the basis of the style of play.

Which, as I said above, is the problem: an inherently unequal distribution of power and invisible rules that cannot be referenced other than going through that authority and zero responsibility that can be expected of that authority because the invisible rules are only what that authority decides they are at any given moment, nothing more, nothing less.

Inherently unequal distributions of power alone would not be a problem. Invisible rules alone would not be a problem. Zero responsibility is perhaps iffy in concept, but I hesitate to say that it alone would be a problem. When you pair all three together, however, you get exactly the problems I spoke of earlier. There are rules, but they have only the consistency the anti-axiomatic human mind can give them; they cannot be seen or heard without petitioning their arbiter to reveal them; and there is no recourse other than going through that authority, whose consistency is only as reliable as human beings.

How do you define “mother may I” in reference to D&D 5e?

You don’t! It’s a pejorative phrase that assumes a hostile and adversarial DM.

If you need a rule system that protects you from the DM then get a new DM… because rules will never be enough.

Not surprised to see this particular retort again. Disappointed, to be sure, but not surprised.

You are, of course, correct, but the point is irrelevant. Clearly, rules do matter, or else systems would never be published. Certainly, we wouldn't be seeing "One D&D" if design quality didn't matter in any degree.

Good rules help make good DMs better. Crappy rules encourage or even empower crappy DMs. Mediocre rules can end up going either way--and I would certainly say that "no rules but what the DM says, no matter what the DM has previously said" would be in the "mediocre" category. This means that, yes, it is in fact possible for good rules to help against these problems--likewise, for good rules to help against problems with players. Nothing whatever can be an utterly impregnable defense against bad-faith behavior, but we can use tools that help. Rules can help us manage bad-faith behavior, call it out, isolate it, and address it. That's why we live in a nation of laws. Laws don't prevent bad behavior, but they give us a tool for addressing it, at least in part.

 

[overgeeked]

Some dm's want to keep control of the whole game, other are happy to have a dialogue.

And weirdly, those two are not mutually exclusive.

A lot of the time it's not that the rules or lack thereof creates the problem - it's the ambiguity is handled poorly by the dm.

Or the players cannot abide ambiguity and complain, despite ambiguity being a thing we all have to deal with. Ambiguity in the game sense can be used to reinforce the ambiguity the character would actually feel in a situation. Like the example above about a fish-out-of-water character who should be feeling ambiguity being run by a player who doesn't like ambiguity. Nordic Larps call this bleed. When the emotions of the player or character bleed from one to the other. Your character feels ambiguity and you as the player feel ambiguity. The solution out of character is the same as in character, ask questions to understand things, to learn about the setting so that the sense of ambiguity is decreased. It's bizarre to me that players want to know more than their character can ever know before they sit down to play. I mean, where your sense of adventure or sense of discovery? Play to find out, right?

If the dm is always consistent and fair in their rulings, MMI is rarely complained about.

As expressed up thread, the mere fact that the referee is permitted to make rulings at all is enough to get the game described as MMI by some.

But the fewer rules the are, the harder it is for a dm to remain consistent and fair. lack of rules allows for MMI.

That's not my experience at all. Quite the opposite in fact. The most fair and consistent referees have run games using the lightest of rules systems. You get on the same page in regards to the setting, genre, and expectations and stick to them. It's infinitely easier to do that people think. And far easier to do than have everyone try to memorize a 350+ page rule book to make sure they're all on the same page.

CF Railroading (in its most negative sense) isn't when there's a defined path the dm wants players to follow - it's when the tools used by the dm to keep players on the path feel arbitrary and unfair. If the tools used are subtle, fiction-consistent or just accepted as part of the game by the players it likely won't get called railroading.

Hard disagree. It's not the feeling evoked by the referee keeping the players on the rails, it's that the referee is negating the player's agency to guarantee a specific outcome.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Just to invert this:

Some dm's want to keep control of the whole game, other are happy to have a dialogue.

Also correct.