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

[Malmuria]

This video is a great introduction to ttrpgs in general, but at this timestamp (23:08) has some particularly good GM advice on some of the points raised in this thread



edit: also, just to elaborate a bit, basically the advice is when a player asks "can I do X," the GM should avoid simply saying "no." Notably, the examples given (strong implied context of dnd) are either not things covered in the rules (e.g. drinking a sip of a potion), or are places where the rules are punitive to the point of discouraging the action (not to mention buried in long rulebooks).

 

[Hussar]

(If it hasn't been made clear, I find the term "GM-based resolution" to be the ideal term for what we are discussing here, and agree with Bedrockgames that "MMI," in as much as it has any usefulness to the discussion, can only apply to GM-based resolution gone horribly wrong.)

I think I would largely agree with all of this point. I think it rather well expresses what I've been trying to say.

And, @Malmuria - yup, excellent advice.

I think this:

/snip

It sounds a lot like players want something akin to system mastery but for their knowledge of the setting, genre, or games' assumptions. Something like genre awareness or "setting mastery," as it were. With system mastery the rewards are obvious, the game runs smoother and the player is more able to create powerful characters, but with "setting mastery" the rewards are purely informational. The character is given, basically, a download of the player's knowledge that the character otherwise wouldn't reasonably have. While that desire makes sense, coming up with reasonable in-fiction excuses for why a beginner adventurer would have knowledge that more closely matches the veteran players' knowledge of the fiction becomes increasingly difficult and less and less realistic. One resolution would be to simply start veteran players' characters at higher levels, but that would create problems for mixed experience groups.

is getting far too deep in the weeds though. Not knowing if something regenerates is very unlikely to cause too much friction at the table. It just isn't. The heart of the problem when it comes to the dividing line between GM-based resolution and MMI is when the DM is placing restrictions on the player that the player finds illogical and cannot be simply reconciled away AND these have fairly large repercussions on how the game is played.

IOW, there's a significant difference between "Do I know if trolls need to be hit with fire" and "If I do this, will I still be a paladin in the morning?" Or, "I jump in the water and swim to the other side." You drown because you're wearing armor" "Uhhh, what??"

 

[hawkeyefan]

As mentioned above, a referee with authority specifically exists to give the players agency (i.e. tactical infinity) and to give the players' agency a sense of verisimilitude (i.e. informational blindspots).

Can agency be given?

Like, the answer to “Mother May I” may be “yes”. Is that agency?

But I think one of the problems I often ran into with more robust rules systems was they actually ended up constraining player agency because all of their actions are expected to be filtered through the rules. So if you want to make a magic item, you need to do so through the subsystem for that. This can be liberating for some people, but it can also be very constraining, especially if a player is trying to do something that feels like it comes out of a story or out of legend. This is where, for me, rulings over rules, can be very helpful in empowering players and promoting agency. The player tries doing something very interesting and the GM is able to find a way to make that happen using the system.

I agree that rules can be constraining at times. But if there are rules in place (and they’re made available to the player) at least a player can understand what is needed in order to achieve their goal. This is why @Ovinomancer mentioned earlier in the thread that often the areas of the game with the most agency are combat and spell use.

Combat works with far less need for rulings. We know the odds and when we see the dice, we know the results. This is not to say that rulings are bad or that they don’t have their place. I think they’re just best used for edge cases or out of the ordinary examples rather than as the default process.

Magic of course breaks many rules and has the ability to override what the GM says would happen otherwise. Magic is often overlooked in this regard because it has an in-world categorization. But from a game perspective, it’s pure player agency saying “I get to say what happens”.

But to lean on your example of crafting an item… absent any rules, we’re pretty much in Mother May I territory, no? The GM can ultimatey say yes or no.

That’s at its most basic. The GM can instead make a ruling that involves mechanics in some way. I think this is a good way to handle it. To craft some rules to support what the player is attempting. This gives the player the ability to make an informed decision, gives the GM avenues for input, and puts the success or failure up to the dice.

More player involvement and more system involvement is less Mother May I.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I agree that rules can be constraining at times. But if there are rules in place (and they’re made available to the player) at least a player can understand what is needed in order to achieve their goal. This is why @Ovinomancer mentioned earlier in the thread that often the areas of the game with the most agency are combat and spell use.

And to be clear I am not knocking rules as anti-agency. I am just pointing out it is more complicated than "more rules, less GM authority, equals greater agency" and "fewer rules, more GM authority, equals less agency" . I am cool with games that have robust rules systems and one of the advantages is exactly what you point out. But over time, I tend to find the rules system itself more constricting than having fewer rules with more GM authority because it is the ability to go beyond any pre-laid down rules that really gives me the sense of freedom (and that's just my taste, I don't think this is a very black and white thing).

 

[Eric V]

Can agency be given?

I would think that if it can be given, it's not agency.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Combat works with far less need for rulings. We know the odds and when we see the dice, we know the results. This is not to say that rulings are bad or that they don’t have their place. I think they’re just best used for edge cases or out of the ordinary examples rather than as the default process.

Certainly it does work with more rules, fewer rulings. But I find presently I feel more free as a player to try creative tactics and maneuvers when you have fewer rules and more rulings (because rulings are all about adapting to what the players are specifically trying to do, rather than be tied to a list of mechanics). Again this is all preference. My point isn't to knock more rules. Its just pointing out that relying more on rulings and GM authority doesn't take away my freedom as a player.

Magic of course breaks many rules and has the ability to override what the GM says would happen otherwise. Magic is often overlooked in this regard because it has an in-world categorization. But from a game perspective, it’s pure player agency saying “I get to say what happens”.

Sure, but one of the fascinating things about much earlier editions of D&D that I really enjoyed when I went back to them (particularly when I looked at the white box), is how short and open the spell descriptions are. By 3E the descriptions were very specific about what the spell could do. So the GM had less power to interpret in a lot of ways. Whereas those earlier spells were more open to GM interpretation. That could be limiting if you had a very mother may I GM. But if the GM was open minded, unafraid of players trying interesting things or smashing the scenery, it could lead to the players doing a lot more than they would in a later edition. For me re-examining these old spells really helped bring back that original spark that the game caused when I first played it.

But to lean on your example of crafting an item… absent any rules, we’re pretty much in Mother May I territory, no? The GM can ultimatey say yes or no.

I would say no. It is only mother may I if the GM handles it in a very bad way. Again, Mother May I is the GM regularly saying no tot he frustration of the players. But what I am talking about here is empowering the GM to consider weird and unusual things the players try in a more open way through rulings. For example a player kills a minotaur and decides to forge an axe made from its bone and blood. Not using a spell he calls upon some crazy god to imbue the axe with the spirit of his fallen foe. I like the GM being able to rule on that. Ruling here isn't a simple yes or no. And it isn't mother may I. The GM should consider the attempt honestly. I certainly would at least give that a chance of working, and if it succeeded I'd probably allow it to be a pretty bad ass magical weapon (not just some +2 item). Its been a while, maybe that keys to the crafting an item rules in 3E, I can't remember, but my memory is it was a lot harder to respond creatively to those kinds of attempts with that kind of system. And I felt that took away rather than gave agency in many instances.

That’s at its most basic. The GM can instead make a ruling that involves mechanics in some way. I think this is a good way to handle it. To craft some rules to support what the player is attempting. This gives the player the ability to make an informed decision, gives the GM avenues for input, and puts the success or failure up to the dice.

More player involvement and more system involvement is less Mother May I.

All a ruling is either saying something works, doesn't, or providing a mechanical way to resolve whether it works (which could be a matter of a single roll or a number of different rolls and procedures). But the idea isn't to mother may i the person. The idea is to find a resolution that matches fairly what the player is trying to do. Now if a player tried something like the above in a modern day police procedural setting (obviously not with a minotaur), then clearly that's the kind of case where the GM is justified in saying flat out it doesn't work. But a GM who just says it doesn't work all the time because he is trying to contain player power, or because he doesn't want the campaign to go a certain direction, or because he just likes having the players guess what solution he has come up with, that's mother may I territory.

 

[Bedrockgames]

More player involvement and more system involvement is less Mother May I.

I don't think so. It can be. But not automatically. If the GM is wielding the authority in the ways I have described and if the players feel fully empowered, it could well be less mother may I than if they are getting mother may I'd by a really rigid rules system. Again, I loved 3E, but one of my issues with it was so often you would want to try something cool or interesting as a player and you'd look it up, or someone would tell you "nope you can't do that, unless you X, Y and Z". Again I played the heck out of it. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is just after a while I did start to feel this way more and more. And it was also very reliant on system mastery, which meant a technically savvy player who could master the rules, effectively had much greater agency than the player who wasn't as good at those things. To be clear again, I am not knocking it. It is still one of my favorite editions of D&D. But my point is this stuff isn't that black and white

 

[Malmuria]

I agree that rules can be constraining at times. But if there are rules in place (and they’re made available to the player) at least a player can understand what is needed in order to achieve their goal. This is why @Ovinomancer mentioned earlier in the thread that often the areas of the game with the most agency are combat and spell use.

As a player in 5e, I often feel that combat tends toward the illusion of agency. Mostly, this is achieved by combat being a phase of the game that both explicitly or implicitly constraints player choice in a way that makes the options they have on a character sheet to appear as more meaningful or impactful than they are. For example, if you cast a spell as a bonus action, you can only use your action to cast a cantrip. As a player, that's a predictable rule, and one that the GM can't change, and it allows me to look at my spell list and consider the best tactical option. But it's also very arbitrary, as if you are asking the rulebook MMI. In other words, if that wasn't a rule, but the DM just decided to houserule things in that way, as a player I would feel that that's very arbitrary.

I saw this dnd combat simulator, where you can enter various parameters and the site will run through the encounter multiple times to simulate how its probably going to go. It made me think, are balanced combats really ever about agency? It's one thing if you are always on a knife's edge of running out of resources (spells, hp, etc), but I'm not sure 5e is really designed to do that. The most memorable combats I've had in 5e involved running into something where we were outmatched, at least "on paper," and had to change strategy midway through in order to even survive.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But to lean on your example of crafting an item… absent any rules, we’re pretty much in Mother May I territory, no? The GM can ultimatey say yes or no.

That’s at its most basic. The GM can instead make a ruling that involves mechanics in some way. I think this is a good way to handle it. To craft some rules to support what the player is attempting. This gives the player the ability to make an informed decision, gives the GM avenues for input, and puts the success or failure up to the dice.

The GM having the authority to make a ruling is what gives the players the agency in this case. Because he can respond to their very specific actions. But the GM could do it by fiat too. I mean if a player tries something really cool, and the GM decides it is so amazing it should automatically work...

I do take the point, some GMs don't handle this authority well, and even GMs who do should be mindful of the mood in the group over time. For me, what matters at the end of the day is having a functional game group where everyone is enjoying themselves.

 

[Malmuria]

To take an example from the video above, let's say a player wants their character to take just a sip of a potion. How should a game handle this to maximize player agency? How should the GM handle this to maximize player agency?

5e doesn't have a rule for this, though they do have a rule for drinking more than one potion at the time, squirreled away in the dmg. It's essentially a d100 version of a success/partial success/failure. And I guess it's...ok? The likelihood of a dm remembering this rule exists and finding it quickly is relatively low. The roll itself will result in some outcome of maybe it works maybe it doesn't, with the more interesting examples either killing the PC or making the effect permanent.