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

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not looking for ways to say no. Quite the opposite. They just have to make sense in-fiction as well. I'm not going to allow ridiculous situations to occur just because a rule says something. That's the purpose of the very repeated advice to the DM that the rules serve the DM, not the other way around. It's an admonition to the DM to follow the rules until the rules hit a snag, and then to unsnarl them the way the DM feels is best for the game.

I would say that your take on "ridiculous situations" to include a noble being diplomatic and hospitable to another person they believe is a noble is exactly "looking for a way to say no". It's a perfectly plausible and believable outcome of such an interaction, but you are placing your preference... your perception of your world as "more realistic" than that... above the player's ideas and the rules of the game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here was the example:


Nothing in the example says anything about anyone having a problem. It's certainly implied, but the details are missing. What prompted my comment was the assumption that the player's idea would in some way be bad. Why is that always assumed?

So you've taken that assumption into your explanation (which is understandable based on the implication from @AnotherGuy 's original comment). And I think what you've suggested as a solution... table consensus... makes sense.

What if it was a case where most participants are on board with the player's idea? Let's say 4 players are for it, the other is unsure, and the GM is against it... what happens then? Majority rules consensus? Something else? Does the GM's opinion carry more weight than any other participant's? If so, does that say anything about Mother May I?

I don't think there's really one answer because folks' opinions will vary wildly, and group dynamics will be different from table to table. But it's an interesting thought.

My thoughts on this are I generally want one person making the call and not seeking input from everyone on each instance (i.e. I prefer the standard GM has final say), but I also think that shouldn't be used as a green light for the GM to not feel the room on things. I don't think I've ever had a situation where I felt outcome A should happen and all the players felt it should be B. But I think if I made a call and it was clear a majority of players disagreed with that call, I'd feel like I have an obligation to either make a change, or at least get involved in a deeper discussion on the why's and see if that shift's opinions. There also may be moments where I would be more rigid on the matter (i.e. if there is some foundational element to the setting being challenged by whatever the player is trying to do and going with what the group wants would effectively ruin the setting itself in a big way: and here i am not talking about scenery smashing or killing important NPCs, or the PCs gaining a bunch of power, but of something seriously violating the purpose of the setting itself, its tone, its aesthetics, etc).

I don't think there ought to be an assumption the player is wrong. In the example given, I can see though how a GM might conclude the nobles wouldn't know each other, and as a player I'd probably be fine with that ruling (since it seems to make sense). I wouldn't expect every GM to rule that way though.

 

[clearstream]

Not precisely, no. I've been saying that I tend to view MMI as a negative all along. However, the things that cause it are not negative.... they simply are.

Suppose we have the following notion

IFF A and B are true, C is true.

We know it's faulty to conclude that where B is true, C is true; notwithstanding that in some cases where B is true, C is indeed true. (Just those cases where A is also true.)

Supposing further

IFF A and D are true, C is not true.

In this potted construct, B and D are of course my stand-ins for individuals with different preferences. I think it would be perfectly fine to use some neutral label for A... and you have said that -

I am not saying that MMI is good or bad.

Perhaps meaning that for you, "Mother May I" is a neutral label. But let's just check what we're labelling...

"Mother May I" rightly labels C, not A.


EDIT A of course being factors like system features that together with B, lead to C.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.



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.

If shutting down an unreasonable action through whatever means is unreasonable in itself you seem to be saying that the gm should allow unreasonable actions from players or they themselves are being unreasonable.

When it comes to solving dysfunction its important to consider and advise both sides. If that is not done then you just wind up blaming one side while excusing the other to continue contributing towards the initial dysfunction as they were before. In this matter though there are a few reasons why 5e is very much a "special snowflake" as you put it.

There is no debate that a lot of areas within d&d like risk lethality magic item needs and do on were scaled back dramatically in 5e, wotc even regularly points out a few. Some of those were done to make certain aspects easier to fit the needs of story and/or minimize harm caused by bad gm'ing practices, others seemingly in service of an omission. Most if not all of them however were tools that a skilled gm could use to exert soft power against "unreasonable actions" or to incentivize desirable actions. using those tools as a gm in 5e really only matters if a player chooses to care or the gm employs it to an unreasonably brutal & punishing degree.

5e does not stop with just scaling back tools though, it includess an omission that would have provided an alternative set of tools for the gm to use. If you jump to about 1:21:20in this 5 generations of d&d design panel you can hear Mearls talk about a proto5e version where a player needed to make a save in order to avoid acting like the "greedy rogue" they were playing when enticed by a shady npc & what happened when they failed that save. Many of the problems with backgrounds being specific in wildly overbroad natural language empowered possible fluff would be shifted to one of give and take where no side of the gm screen would be without responsibility to avoid what you called unreasonable actions. If the gm makes a bad call players rarely have issue pointing it out, but as is in 5e if the player wants to make an unreasonable action there is little the gm can do to push the player towards a reasonable one that does not involve making a bad call. It was omitted so fully that it doesn't even seem to be mentioned as a stray optional variant or advice tidbit.

Also we are discussing 5e specifically, would you agree that the nuances that 5e as a system itself brings to the conversation about "general RPG issues" are pretty important to a 5e discussion.

Absent player facing guidance or tools for the gm to leverage advice that the gm "have a discussion" as if they had not considered or tried such a thing is unhelpful in the extreme. When a playeris given implications that a faulty baseline of expectations over responsibilities by the player facing text and is also acting in a problematic manner the gm needs to correct the the first while overcoming the shield provided to the player by the text. Doing only one results in a shifting chain of problems and attempting to do both together runs smack into that shield with "it's only a game, chill out" type dismissal or it winds up making the gm look ansl with a laundry list of gripes. Those missing tools even raise the bar by making it hard for the gm to incentivize working with rather than resisting the gm making efforts at "discussion"

 

[FrogReaver]

Suppose we have the following notion

IFF A and B are true, C is true.

We know it's faulty to conclude that where B is true, C is true; notwithstanding that in some cases where B is true, C is indeed true. (Just those cases where A is also true.)

Supposing further

IFF A and D are true, C is not true.

In this potted construct, B and D are of course my stand-ins for individuals with different preferences. I think it would be perfectly fine to use some neutral label for A... and you have said that -

Perhaps meaning that for you, "Mother May I" is a neutral label. But let's just check what we're labelling...

"Mother May I" rightly labels C, not A.


EDIT A of course being factors like system features that together with B, lead to C.

I’m Mathy and that was tough for me to follow.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:
Just read through the stack of reports this thread generated overnight. It has raised the question of whether this thread has outlived its usefulness.

Please consider that as you post.

 

[Maxperson]

I would say that your take on "ridiculous situations" to include a noble being diplomatic and hospitable to another person they believe is a noble is exactly "looking for a way to say no".

And you would be error.

It's a perfectly plausible and believable outcome of such an interaction, but you are placing your preference... your perception of your world as "more realistic" than that... above the player's ideas and the rules of the game.

It stretches plausibility beyond stretching and into snapping territory for a noble on the other side of the world or in an enemy country to put up some random person making a claim.

The example given earlier was of a count wandering around central Europe, a bunch of close by countries with similar systems of nobility. I doubt if he had gone to China that he would expected all the lords he ran across to put him up.

 

[hawkeyefan]

My thoughts on this are I generally want one person making the call and not seeking input from everyone on each instance (i.e. I prefer the standard GM has final say), but I also think that shouldn't be used as a green light for the GM to not feel the room on things. I don't think I've ever had a situation where I felt outcome A should happen and all the players felt it should be B. But I think if I made a call and it was clear a majority of players disagreed with that call, I'd feel like I have an obligation to either make a change, or at least get involved in a deeper discussion on the why's and see if that shift's opinions. There also may be moments where I would be more rigid on the matter (i.e. if there is some foundational element to the setting being challenged by whatever the player is trying to do and going with what the group wants would effectively ruin the setting itself in a big way: and here i am not talking about scenery smashing or killing important NPCs, or the PCs gaining a bunch of power, but of something seriously violating the purpose of the setting itself, its tone, its aesthetics, etc).

Yeah, I've had situations where the GM decided one thing and literally everyone else at the table disagreed. How we handled that in the past has varied over the years, but there's been a steady progression toward discussing with everyone and deciding as a group.

The only thing I'd say is that GM having final say is fine, but for me, that's more about when it's otherwise a "tie". Like I want everyone's ideas about the game to be considered equally.

I don't think there ought to be an assumption the player is wrong. In the example given, I can see though how a GM might conclude the nobles wouldn't know each other, and as a player I'd probably be fine with that ruling (since it seems to make sense). I wouldn't expect every GM to rule that way though.

I don't think the nobles need to know each other, or even of each other, for the ability to make sense. It's not contingent upon recognizing the specific person. And while I would agree with you that I wouldn't expect every GM to rule the same way, I would say my expectation is that the ability should work unless there's compelling reasons it shouldn't just as if I cast a spell and the GM decided that the typical results of the spell didn't happen. Can there be reasons? Sure, of course.... but in my opinion, those better be better than the GM saying "I don't like that idea".

 

[hawkeyefan]

And you would be error.

It stretches plausibility beyond stretching and into snapping territory for a noble on the other side of the world or in an enemy country to put up some random person making a claim.

The example given earlier was of a count wandering around central Europe, a bunch of close by countries with similar systems of nobility. I doubt if he had gone to China that he would expected all the lords he ran across to put him up.

No, not at all! There are dozens of examples from the real world, before we even need to get to fictional examples.

There really is nothing implausible about the nobility of a far away land taking a very considered and diplomatic approach to visiting nobility from other lands. It is literally how things developed in the real world.

Were there instances where it didn't go well? Of course. Does that change the fact that there are enough examples of it going well to support a fictional depiction where the noble of one land greets another instead of considering them some rando? Nope, not at all.

You've decided "this is how the world works, no exceptions" even when the rules say "here is an exception". That's you placing your ideas ahead of the player's ideas and ahead of the rules. And you have every right to do so if that's what you want, but I don't see how you can claim that it's contra to the idea of Mother May I.

 

[FrogReaver]

Mod Note:
Just read through the stack of reports this thread generated overnight. It has raised the question of whether this thread has outlived its usefulness.

Please consider that as you post.

Thanks Umbran. While you have vastly more information than us around just how many reports there have been made and the overall context of them I want to offer one point of consideration - while this thread has went off track into nastiness multiple times, overall we do seem to be working through that and are mostly able to get it back on track. You likely already are considering this but I wanted to call it out just in case. Obviously, however much you want to weight this consideration with the other information you have available is solely your prerogative.