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

[FrogReaver]

If the Noble background is relative to region/culture, is the same true of the CHA stat and associated skills like Persuasion? If not, why not? Are the stat and skill magical? Or is there some other explanation?

I often like posts I find thought provoking. This is one of them. I've not thought through my position on this yet, but it's a great question.

 

[Irlo]

If the Noble background is relative to region/culture, is the same true of the CHA stat and associated skills like Persuasion? If not, why not? Are the stat and skill magical? Or is there some other explanation?

I’d certainly consider applying disadvantage to some cross-cultural CHA checks. And to WIS (Insight).

 

[FrogReaver]

Have I been quoting passages from the books that explain how the DM has all the authority?

Don't remember, have you?

*Nor do I immediately see the relevance, but I assume you have a good point riding on this.

 

[FrogReaver]

The basis for Free Kregspeil was mentioned earlier in the thread. It relies on an expert to make adjudications based on their expertise. IMO, the DM being the creator of the setting/dungeon/world places him in that expert position for D&D.

It is a bit odd in structure that the DM controls both the opposition's behavior/numbers/terrain advantage/social advantages (the game isn't just combat), etc, while simultaneously determining how well the PC's tactics work against that opposition.

In old school play this oddness was avoided by focusing on designing the whole dungeon before play, then attempting to stay neutral during play as the PC's tried to overcome it. This is why I don't think the notion of MMI really came up much in old school play (i'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong). But now, unlike with a dungeon, the whole world in all it's detail cannot be designed ahead of time. So sometimes the DM is simultaneously creating content and adjudicating player actions upon it - or at least nearly so.

To me that's the area that's causing the real contention, and the area that really could have the most structured improvement for D&D. Thoughts?

 

[Thomas Shey]

The basis for Free Kregspeil was mentioned earlier in the thread. It relies on an expert to make adjudications based on their expertise. IMO, the DM being the creator of the setting/dungeon/world places him in that expert position for D&D.

I'm going to put my oar in a bit here, and I'll ask people to bear with me for a moment.

Its a big assumption that the GM being the creator of the setting makes him an expert about it.

What I mean by that is that GM's often make decisions about how a setting they're making and the way that should work out based on their understanding of real-world historical parallels. The problem with that is its not at all uncommon for people's understanding of such things to be to one degree or another, in error.

Now, of course, there's no assurance that a player understands the matter at hand any better than the GM. But it doesn't take many repeats of a GM saying with assurance that "just like historical situation X, things work like this here" that they have some reason to question before they start to take such statements with more than just a grain of salt.

So the problem with the basis of GM control being expertise is not exactly unquestioned, and I'd suspect in most cases the acceptance of that authority has only passing connection with that.

It is a bit odd in structure that the DM controls both the opposition's behavior/numbers/terrain advantage/social advantages (the game isn't just combat), etc, while simultaneously determining how well the PC's tactics work against that opposition.

In old school play this oddness was avoided by focusing on designing the whole dungeon before play, then attempting to stay neutral during play as the PC's tried to overcome it. This is why I don't think the notion of MMI really came up much in old school play (i'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong). But now, unlike with a dungeon, the whole world in all it's detail cannot be designed ahead of time. So sometimes the DM is simultaneously creating content and adjudicating player actions upon it - or at least nearly so.

I'd argue it was more a case of accepting a necessity. Its easy to underestimate just how schematic some of the oldest versions of the game were in how much mechanical support they gave for many things. As I've noted, OD&D did not give you even a hint about how easy or fast it was for a random character to climb a cliff face with handholds. It was going to be left to someone's idea, good or bad, and that was usually the GM because why the hell not?

To me that's the area that's causing the real contention, and the area that really could have the most structured improvement for D&D. Thoughts?

Well, in general, the farther you get away from combat the worse most games are about providing thorough objective support.

 

[pemerton]

The basis for Free Kregspeil was mentioned earlier in the thread. It relies on an expert to make adjudications based on their expertise. IMO, the DM being the creator of the setting/dungeon/world places him in that expert position for D&D.

Personally I don't see it.

In Free Kriegspiel, there is a shared goal, in a teaching/training context, of doing a thing well. An expert in that thing helps with the teaching. In some ways it's like when I judge a moot, and I use my knowledge of law and legal argument to pretend to be a judge and put the student advocates on the spot.

The students can get better by going off and studying more law and more advocacy. And I'm a better moot judge now than I was fifteen years ago because I've had more experience and training of my own.

Likewise, the junior Prussian officers can go off and study more, speak to other more experienced soldiers about their experiences, etc; and then they will do better at Kriegspiel.

Both the wargaming and the mooting can work like this because there is an external reference for adequacy: the real worlds, respectively, of warfare and of legal practice.

In the D&D case, what is the GM an expert in? What is the external reference that establishes criteria of adequacy? How does the GM know better than the players what will happen if you strike a bronze statute with a war hammer, or if you try to seek an audience with a noble, or if you prey to Corellon in Orcish?

All we really have is the assertion that the GM should enjoy authority over these things. Cloaking it in the language of expertise is just misleading.

I already quoted, upthread, the text of the Hermit background feature which tells the player to work with their GM to establish the details and implications of that feature. So 5e D&D in its core rules rejects the proposition that the GM should enjoy sole authority over setting. Clearly some people don't follow the rules of 5e D&D in that respect. Of course that's their prerogative to do so. But the notion of expertise, which does a lot of work in the context of Free Kriegspiel, does none in this case. Its authority over the fiction that is at issue.

It is a bit odd in structure that the DM controls both the opposition's behavior/numbers/terrain advantage/social advantages (the game isn't just combat), etc, while simultaneously determining how well the PC's tactics work against that opposition.

In old school play this oddness was avoided by focusing on designing the whole dungeon before play, then attempting to stay neutral during play as the PC's tried to overcome it. This is why I don't think the notion of MMI really came up much in old school play (i'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong). But now, unlike with a dungeon, the whole world in all it's detail cannot be designed ahead of time. So sometimes the DM is simultaneously creating content and adjudicating player actions upon it - or at least nearly so.

To me that's the area that's causing the real contention, and the area that really could have the most structured improvement for D&D. Thoughts?

For many years I've posted on these boards that the idea of map-and-key adjudication isn't able to be operationalised outside of the artificially sparse, and highly conventionally governed, domain of classic dungeon-crawling. (Here's just one example of the conventions I have in mind: it's mandatory for a classic dungeon key to give you room shape and size, but not for it to give you the colour of walls or the number of pebbles on the ground.)

I'm currently sitting at a desk where it would be a real pain to itemise every item within reach, let alone every item in the room, let alone everything I can see through the window.

It would be, in practical terms, impossible for me to list every person I know, and everything I know about them and how they respond to various things, what they do and don't like, who their friends are (some of whom I know, some of whom I've only heard of), etc.

I think it's obvious that map-and-key resolution can't possibly work for a "living, breathing" world.

EDIT: Map-and-key resolution, and authority over the fiction, are related in this way (maybe other ways also, but this is at least one salient one):

The players are expected to declare actions for their PCs that will engage with the mapped and keyed fiction - moving objects, poking surfaces, opening doors and lids, peeking around corners, etc. And the GM uses their knowledge of the map-and-key, which is itself treated as authoritative, to extrapolate what happens as a result of those actions.

Map-and-key resolution will break down if the the participants don't do their bit. For instance, if the players start focusing on the colours of floors and ceilings, and the GM hasn't got those things in the key, and so just makes up answers on the spot without telling the players that this is what is going on, play will become inane - because the players think they're doing their thing of "cracking the GM's code" by gradually collecting information from the authoritative key; but in fact it's all just sound and fury signifying nothing.

This is a small illustration of the reason why @Campbell posted, way upthread, that one of the key things for successful exploration-focused play is GM care in designing and communicating the setting/situation.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That major distinction is what made @pemerton's statement both arrogant and condescending.

Mod Note:

Your post was mostly OK until you put this sting in the tail. Calling someone out like that makes it personal. Making it personal escalates tensions in the thread and that makes it a problem for the moderation staff.

Do better going forward, or there will be an escalation of a different kind.

 

[Campbell]

Perhaps we can go one step further and posit that the GM is acting in good faith, following the rules of the game and taking its advice to heart. Both GM and players are occupying their roles, as designated by the game, with an aim to produce a fun and collaborative experience/story. In this case I would say the possibility for MMI is very low, occurring mostly within the category of "human error." The GM is using theater of the mind and is unable to accurately describe the fictional space, or there's a miscommunication. There were established setting details or house rules, but they were located in the lovingly crafted 10-page campaign guide that the players didn't read. The GM neglected to craft obstacles that took into account all the ribbon abilities PCs have (because they are a human person and hard to keep track of all that), with the result that they didn't come up. GM or player misinterpreted the text of a spell (perhaps one that was poorly or confusingly written by the designers in the first place).

In sum, though MMI might arise when a rule/ability is unclear, it is largely not a design issue, but rather a people issue. The best thing a game can do is provide advice on how to handle communication at the table.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to discuss system design as distinct from people issues. Fundamentally all a game system (whether written or unwritten) consists of is how we structure the conversation of play. How we decide what happens in the shared fiction. Game design is fundamentally social. How much we want to take the structure of play from a text is a personal question we all have to answer for ourselves. I think the assumption of good faith is the starting point for game design and analysis of what makes for highly effective play, but it's far from the ending point.

One way game design can help with this stuff is by providing a way to structure negotiation between players and the GM. Things like table facing DCs, not committing to an action until we know what success and failure actually look like and clarity over where a GM is expecting to exercise judgement can help structure the conversation to help us come to a better shared understanding of the fiction.

How we structure this stuff matters even when we all have the same purpose and are acting in good faith. Especially when we do. We may opt to design more of this process inside our own groups, but that is still fundamentally game design. The system isn't contained inside a book. It's contained in how we play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To me that's the area that's causing the real contention, and the area that really could have the most structured improvement for D&D. Thoughts?

Seems reasonable.

Main problem is, DMs will freak out and tell you you're trying to kowtow to player entitlement and box them in if you give any systematic improvement, and any unsystematic effort won't actually address the issue.

 

[hawkeyefan]

1) That is possible, depending on fictional circumstances. It is not something that is going to override fictional consistency, though.

That it’s possible is all that’s needed.

What’s the distinction you’re making here between fictional circumstances and fictional consistency?

2) Leverage from some minor noble from the other side of the world? There's no leverage to be gained if the PC is telling the truth.

The truth about what? Why would there be no leverage to gain? Treating people well can be rewarded… alliances can be formed that way. People can be obliged to return the favor.

Again, you seem very closed to many possibilities.

3) Fear of repercussions from turning away a minor noble from the other side of the world? There's nothing to fear.

Of course there could be. Perhaps my fellows will look down on me for not treating this foreigner with proper respect. Perhaps my house will gain a poor reputation in those nations with which we do engage in diplomacy. Perhaps another noble will wind up assisting him and gain some unforeseen benefit.

Again, it doesn’t take a lot if work to come up with answers to the question “why would this work?” It certainly doesn’t seem like significantly more effort than to come up with reasons it wouldn’t.

Those customs are almost surely not going to be the same on the other side of the world. He's unlikely to even know them.

“Almost surely” and “unlikely”… opinions about how things should go.

Not all accounts. I shared that they would work anywhere in the home country as well as any neighboring countries that are not enemies. PCs generally don't travel all that far until mid to high levels, which most campaigns never reach. The ability can see constant use as nobles are everywhere.

There are a lot of assumptions in here, all made with the goal of shutting down a player idea.

To work it has to do 8d6 damage. Fire immunity means no damage, 8d6 or otherwise.

It seems I was unclear. Yes, fire immunity is a defined trait that affects fire damage in a clear way in the game.

What similarly clear rule would you jnvoke to have a noble NPC resist the use of Position of Privilege?

They aren't.

I’m struggling to see how they’re not.