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

[tetrasodium]

I’m often amazed at how many GMs… myself included… will not want to allow what might be considered an “easy win”.

As if any given challenge is going to be the final challenge.

If they get an easy win, especially through clever play or resource use… best to allow it. There’s always the next adventuring day and infinite tarrasques.

5e causes that problem by designing to an absurd six to eight medium to hard encounters with two short rests while different classes are pegged to different recovery expectations all pinned on "you're the gm you make it work" & "rulings not rules [but you better rule a thousand percent of the time in favor of the players or you are a monster]"

 

[Campbell]

I think we need to decide as GMs whether we are being neutral adjudicators, curious explorers of the fiction, and playing the world with integrity or we are actively seeking to frame scenes to challenge the player characters. We cannot have it both ways. If we are doing the latter than I think we need a way to maintain competitive integrity because we are no longer actively maintaining it ourselves. We cannot both be referees and not referees at the same time.

 

[pemerton]

@EzekielRaiden said

On my reading you've changed @EzekielRaiden's example and point.

Here is what EzekielRaiden posted:

DM: Remember that all our prior rulings on drawing spiritual energy have established that it works that way. Like when you... [DM cites prior ruling]

Being the DM in this case, I can say that there was no established precedent that this was the case. That is, places of power had been used to power up spells, but had never done anything directly related to spirits before, so there would be no way the players could know, and nothing I could cite for said precedent.

EzekielRaiden replies to your suggestion by pointing out that there was no established fiction, and hence nothing that the players could know about how places of power might relate to magic and the like involving spirits.

EzekielRaiden says nothing about what the PCs may or may not know. And says nothing that would block or postpone a player's action declaration. The very fact that the players know nothing about this aspect of the table's shared fiction leaves it open for them to suggest, or stipulate (depending on how authority is distributed at EzekielRaiden's table) something about spirits and places of power.

But you reply thus:

Right, and in which case I would suggest perhaps

Druid: Alright. Could we conduct a ritual to draw spiritual energy?
DM: Your druidic learning makes you confident that can power up spells or other produced magic that way, but actually build up a spirit? It's outside your current knowldege.
Druid: Hmm... so who would know, I wonder?
Etc

Here again I feel it is okay for DM to explain that characters don't currently have a way to make this work.

I think it is right for DM to clarify... in this case to remind players of the established facts of their shared fiction.

There is no shared fiction that establishes the ignorance and incapability of the druid. You propose the GM deciding, unilaterally, that the PCs have no knowledge and no relevant ability, and that the players will have to declare actions that generate more knowledge of the GM's fiction before they can declare the action they are actually interested in.

As I posted upthread, I don't understand why. Why postpone the play the players are interested in, in order to foreground the GM's imagination?

I mean, in this case what is the point of the system having an INT stat and associated skills if those are not going to be used in this sort of situation to determine the outcome of the action declaration (thereby perhaps also settling what the PC does or doesn't know).

And to push the point more strongly: the upshot of your approach here is that the players can never take the lead. Because every time there is a blank slate - which by default there always will be, given that fictions don't write themselves - you infer to PC ignorance, and the need for the players to declare actions that will oblige the GM to have the setting yield up its secrets to the PCs in play.

This is an instance of "Mother may I", at least in general structure - it leaves the players dancing to the GM's tune.

 

[pemerton]

Suppose a group opt into an arrangement where one of their number is tasked with creating background fiction which the others explore and add to in ways that are not equal. Are they committed in that case to everything those unequal participants say amounting to MMI?

Obviously not. I've just posted a Torchbearer 2e actual play report. It's not Burning Wheel or even Agon - it's heavily exploratory and puzzle-solving play - but it's not Mother may I.

But look at the difference from (for instance) your suggested adjudication of @EzekielRaiden's scenario!

 

[pemerton]

There doesn't really need to be any special sacredness for combat rules. Ability checks are governed by rules that differ in important ways from those governing combat. Compare the procedure for an attack action (PHB195) to that for actions outside of combat that may lead to ability checks (PHB174, DMG237.)

Just to be clear: you and @FrogReaver are no longer asserting that the core play loop governs all action resolution in 5e D&D, without more?

In that case, why do you assert that there is no "more" in the case of Rustic Hospitality?

 

[hawkeyefan]

5e causes that problem by designing to an absurd six to eight medium to hard encounters with two short rests while different classes are pegged to different recovery expectations all pinned on "you're the gm you make it work" & "rulings not rules [but you better rule a thousand percent of the time in favor of the players or you are a monster]"

I don’t think the issue I described has anything to do with edition.

Plus, it’s a gajillion percent, obviously!

 

[tetrasodium]

I don’t think the issue I described has anything to do with edition.

Plus, it’s a gajillion percent, obviously!

No things are tuned so much further in favor of players that it inverts.

Early editions with a permissive gm might be on par wth the old snes battle toads on easy with a game genie (a seriously hard core difficult accomplishment despite the sounds. 3.x/4e dialed things baxk a bit in some ways but 5e is almost a game with risk on par with an idle game where a permissive gm is like adding heavy cheat consoles use on top. The fact that differenct classes benefit so dramatically different makes a mess for the gm to handle

 

[hawkeyefan]

No things are tuned so much further in favor of players that it inverts.

Early editions with a permissive gm might be on par wth the old snes battle toads on easy with a game genie (a seriously hard core difficult accomplishment despite the sounds. 3.x/4e dialed things baxk a bit in some ways but 5e is almost a game with risk on par with an idle game where a permissive gm is like adding heavy cheat consoles use on top. The fact that differenct classes benefit so dramatically different makes a mess for the gm to handle

Yeah, but every edition has had situations that allow for an easy win. And GMs in every edition have often, when faced with such, sought any way to undo them.

 

[pemerton]

Or another example that came up on the boards some time ago when discussing exploration. The party rescues a child in the wilderness and sets up camp with Leomund's Hut. The DM decides that the child wanders out of the hut during the night and attracts wandering monsters. Pure MMI. The party could not do anything to prevent this, short of tying the child up. All to create "challenges" for the party. And the response was, "Well, it's the DM's job to create challenges" with wide eyed innocence.

I haven't heard of this one before. Just bizarre!

I’m often amazed at how many GMs… myself included… will not want to allow what might be considered an “easy win”.

As if any given challenge is going to be the final challenge.

I think we need to decide as GMs whether we are being neutral adjudicators, curious explorers of the fiction, and playing the world with integrity or we are actively seeking to frame scenes to challenge the player characters. We cannot have it both ways. If we are doing the latter than I think we need a way to maintain competitive integrity because we are no longer actively maintaining it ourselves. We cannot both be referees and not referees at the same time.

@Campbell, I don't want to glom together different techniques and approaches without recognising their differences (and I think my posting history backs this up). But I think that there are some principles that can apply across quite a variety of techniques/approaches, that are relevant in the context of this thread and some of the examples being discussed (Rustic Hospitality and hiding from the Duke's soldiers in the barn; the druid and spirit magic in places of power; the child in the Tiny Hut).

The key principle I have in mind is along these lines: honour the players' contributions to the fiction.

In classic dungeoncrawling, this means - for instance - respecting the players' decisions about which doors they open and shut, where they do and don't use their light, etc. If the GM makes decisions about a "living, breathing world" or "for fun" that make those player decisions irrelevant, then the integrity of play is lost. An example of what I have in mind here would be the GM deciding - not via some game process/check but just via their imagination - that some wandering monster has removed the iron spike the PCs used to wedge open the escape route behind them.

In scene-framing play, the need to honour the fiction is less about that sort of attention to operational decision-making, and more likely to be about theme and character trajectories. But respecting previous consequences also matters. If the players have won a victory in scene A, it's just bad GMing to frame scene B in a way that puts that win in jeopardy again - unless the players have themselves done something to put it at stake. If the GM is not sure about whether or not the players have intended to do this, they can ask! This covers the child example, for instance - why are the players supposed to accept that, simply by declaring their rest in their Tiny Hut, they're staking both their own safety and that of the child.

Relating this to @hawkeyefan's point: if the GM doesn't have enough material to frame challenges that honour what the players have done - if the only adversity the GM can think of is negating what the PCs have just won - then to be perfectly frank, they need to step up their game. Obviously there are many RPGs (including 4e D&D) that have excellent advice on this, that is followed through with related elements of PC build, situation creation, etc; but even vanilla D&D shouldn't make this too hard to do.

And connected to this: the system, even 5e D&D with its rather squishy, "rulings not rules" structure, will provide support here. The basic motto could be Forward on a success, backward on a failure. Use the checks.

In the child case, the child running out makes sense as failure narration for an attempt to coax information out of the child (failed CHA (Persuasion)).

In @hawkeyefan's case, the Duke's soldier turning up makes sense as failure narration for an attempt to shore up the resolve of the villagers (failed CHA (Persuasion)) or to lead them away (failed CHA (Deception) or WIS (Survival) or similar).

In the druid-spirit-place-of-power case, PC ignorance makes sense as failure narration for an attempt to recall ancient druidic mysteries (failed INT (Religion) or INT (Nature) or whatever applies at that table in that situation).

Again, 5e D&D isn't perfect for this because it has a large number of fiat abilities that don't, in themselves, trigger checks. But advice around how to use soft moves in response to those, for instance, will help here. Or in the case of a dungeon, it should be designed so that if the players go from room 1 to room 2 via fiat, there is something interesting in room 2 to engage them.

A final problem is the tendency to treat the "uncertainty" test for calling for a check in 5e as turning on whether or not the GM thinks it's uncertain relative to their private imagination about the fiction rather than whether or not it's uncertain relative to the shared fiction (which in some approaches to play includes a certain sort of prepared notes put together in accordance with appropriate dungeon-building principles). But that's easily changed!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

EzekielRaiden replies to your suggestion by pointing out that there was no established fiction, and hence nothing that the players could know about how places of power might relate to magic and the like involving spirits.

EzekielRaiden says nothing about what the PCs may or may not know. And says nothing that would block or postpone a player's action declaration. The very fact that the players know nothing about this aspect of the table's shared fiction leaves it open for them to suggest, or stipulate (depending on how authority is distributed at EzekielRaiden's table) something about spirits and places of power.

That was more or less my intention, yeah. I absolutely run a game where the PCs are quite capable of knowing things their players don't. E.g., essentially every native of the Tarrakhuna region (except some of the really anti-city Nomad types*) would know basic devotional concepts from Safiqi religious ceremonies, because the worship of the One is by far the dominant religion of the region. The equivalent of things like a Catholic crossing herself or whispering a Pater Noster or Gloria Patri, for example. I, personally, have no idea what those things are because I haven't thought about it and it hasn't been relevant to the game yet. Should the player wish to declare such a prayer or devotional gesture, they'll get it, because I trust my players not to go for something that would be inappropriate.

*Essentially, this would only apply to a player who wanted it to apply to them. So there would never be a situation where this would hold back a player from doing something they want to do.