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

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I mean, I can't judge anyone who reacts this way, as I said, I've done it more than I care to. I always tell my players to come to me first about stuff like this, and maybe I can help them make it work.

But instead, they always want to spring this stuff on me out of the blue, and then complain if I shoot it down.

Well, there's a thing that can lead to that: the expectation that if they tell the GM about it in advance, he'll come up with some way to make it not work. Unfortunately, some GMs really do use any information about player plans as ammo in a negative sort of way.

 

[Cadence]

You know, man, while I entirely believe you've had problems here, you do realize that responding to every thing that might empower a player as though all players (or even the majority) are massively abusive, and if not managed carefully will do the worst things for the game possible at every opportunity isn't a good look, right? Its right up there with assuming every single GM ever is looking for an opportunity to bring the hammer down and knock the players into line if they step even an inch out of what they expect.

Basically, if its not hyperbole, its pretty indistinguishable from it from the outside.

Well, there's a thing that can lead to that: the expectation that if they tell the GM about it in advance, he'll come up with some way to make it not work. Unfortunately, some GMs really do use any information about player plans as ammo in a negative sort of way.

Reading them back to back sounds a bit like "It's unreasonable to expect players to be bad, but watch out for those DMs!"

 

[Thomas Shey]

I may have been less clear than I intended & caused misunderstanding, My post was talking about the reason why I usually wind up shutting down those abilities when I feel the need not the reason why players choose them. The post has been edited to reflect that. If we are talking about things that a gm should not do is there a reason that we shouldn't also talk about things that sometimes cause them to do it while behaving quite reasonably?

But that's the gig. It isn't reasonable. Its an unreasonable response to an unreasonable action.

Game dysfunction is often an appalling cycle of player-GM-player-GM trauma reactions, sometimes carried over to other GMs or players than initially triggered it.

It's entirely possible for a player todo these kinds of things without even realizing it because 5e is written in a way that does not present any advice or responsibility to players. I don't believe that the players I've seen do those kinds of things because they want to be abusive or toxic. I think that it's more because they are often newer & given guidance from wotc that is lacking in areas that might have set them off to a better start had it not been given.

I'm not sure post #1679 reads like a "thing that might empower a player" though, it seems more "gms shouldn't do this because roleplaying is good". There's been plenty of calls for quotes from the DMG that show various things the gm is expected to do but I don't believe any for players & the PHB. Much of the quotes from the PHB seem to have been things showing why a gm is not making a bad call when they do one thing or another. Can you quote some PHB guidance that helps guide & encourage players to be positive elements working towards a well functioning game? Maybe something like the rule zero justification max posted earlier?

Again, remember when I'm posting, I'm doing so in regard to general RPG issues that happen to also apply to D&D. I'm not a 5e player. I don't own the 5e books. I've read through them in a cursory fashion once, so trying to put things in a specifically 5e context would be vastly arrogant on my part, especially since I wasn't particularly fond of what I saw.

But 5e isn't a special snowflake here just because its the big dog, either. The way to deal with player/GM expectation clash is to have a discussion with people and work out what your common expectations should be. Anything else just propagates disconnects, and that's true in pretty much any game ever.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Reading them back to back sounds a bit like "It's unreasonable to expect players to be bad, but watch out for those DMs!"

I'm primarily a GM, so that'd be a little hysterical on my part.

The most I'll say is I do not consider the power dynamic symmetrical here, but--look at the second sentence in the first post you quoted and see if you still read it that way.

 

[FrogReaver]

But 5e isn't a special snowflake here just because its the big dog, either. The way to deal with player/GM expectation clash is to have a discussion with people and work out what your common expectations should be. Anything else just propagates disconnects, and that's true in pretty much any game ever.

Not just in games either, but life as well.

 

[Maxperson]

If you're suggesting it's absurd to posit that, in a fantasy world, one noble would recognise the nobility of another, I disagree. The trope is well established - see eg LotR, versions of the Robin Hood story, etc.

I don't see what heraldry has to do with anything. Heraldry is not mentioned in the Position of Privilege feature.

What magical power gives nobles the ability to instantly and unerringly tell the difference between a noble from anywhere in the world and someone who is impersonating a noble?

 

[Malmuria]

@Manbearcat I didn't read your comments as necessarily implying that one had to be cognitively impaired to prefer a particular style of game. At the same time, I do get uncomfortable when discussions go in that direction, because there's an unfortunate history in the hobby of essentialism and ableism from prominent figures--Gygax's claims about the capacity for women to understand ttrpgs, Jonathan Tweet's general affinity for race science, and of course Ron Edwards' ableism. Indeed, this thread featured a cancer analogy earlier. My broader hope is that we in the hobby can accept the diversity of other people's experience without trying to rationalize that experience within our own world view. That is, if people play Call of Cthulhu, and don't experience the game as involving MMI or railroading or force, can we take them at their word rather than overwriting their experience via some external set of terms (participationism, MMI, railroading, etc)?

 

[Maxperson]

I assume by "D&D" here you mean 5e D&D?

1e, 2e, 3e and 5e at the very least.

In my 4e D&D game the players would invoke "rule zero" - ie insisting that resolution incorporate/honour/respond to established fiction, genre logic, narrative trajectory, etc - quite often.

Was this one of your personal rules for 4e, or was that part of the official 4e rules? If it's the former, then the above listing of editions also includes 4e.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I don't think we do all know. That's why I asked!

I've run AD&D games where "rule zero" as you seem to be using it wasn't confined to the GM.

House rules do nothing to counter the claim that all editions have rule 0. Your personal changes are not part of the edition rules.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not just in games either, but life as well.

Yeah, but experience suggests game groups are particularly poor about this, for reasons I can only speculate on.