Latest / Sessions Canceled / Is It Really A Problem In Table Top?: Ep. 157

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Is It Really A Problem In Table Top?: Ep. 157 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:11
  OK, pause. All right, now we're back.
• 0:16
  Everyone had to keep really awkwardly asking the GM to do
• 0:19
  anything, like, could I go to the bathroom?
• 0:22
  Can I have a slice of pizza? Can I please have my dice back?
• 0:25
  Can you please untie me? They just had to kept asking
• 0:28
  over and over again. Everyone just got really
• 0:30
  uncomfortable at a certain point and left.
• 0:31
  So the G Ms. alone and session is cancelled.
• 0:34
  Also couple people might need therapy, you know I'm.
• 0:38
  Going to be honest, if my GM took my dice and didn't give
• 0:40
  them back, I'm beating your ass. Especially if you're handcuffed.
• 0:47
  Oh, no, yeah, I look, I am hashtag Mr. I can break these
• 0:50
  cuffs. I don't touch my dice.
• 0:52
  Hands will be thrown dog. What if you're handcuffed to the
• 0:56
  bed frame though? Have you?
• 1:00
  Seen Oh God, what's the movie? What's the game?
• 1:04
  Yeah, Yep, I will absolutely deglove myself to kick your ass
• 1:08
  for stealing my duck. Jesus Christ.
• 1:11
  I will beat you with my bloody stump.
• 1:14
  I'm getting my dice back. That game is so fucked.
• 1:18
  That game, that movie is so fucked.
• 1:23
  That's another It's fucked, but it has such a funny opening
• 1:26
  premise. It does a little bit, yeah.
• 1:29
  Like it is funny when you think about the fact that my bro just
• 1:31
  takes way too many Viagras. He.
• 1:33
  Just checks out because he wasn't paying attention.
• 1:39
  Also side note, apparently that's another movie where the
• 1:42
  like Shining, The Shining Cinematic Universe is relevant,
• 1:46
  yes. I did know that, which is why
• 1:48
  the lady. Has it I think.
• 1:50
  Right. Yes, she shines.
• 1:51
  Yeah, both of them do. The murderer dude and her.
• 1:55
  So that's interesting. I didn't know Stephen King had a
• 1:58
  fucking. Cinematic universe, yeah.
• 2:01
  Yeah, I or literature universe. What?
• 2:04
  Literary universe. Yeah.
• 2:05
  No, he does. It's odd, I know.
• 2:06
  Very odd. Yeah.
• 2:07
  Didn't know that was the thing. But anyway I wonder when that
• 2:12
  started. Like did he have that plan from
• 2:14
  the beginning? I feel like he didn't.
• 2:16
  Well, so I mean, he retroactively made a lot of it,
• 2:20
  part of it. Like there were some things
• 2:22
  after the shining that he's like, actually this person is
• 2:24
  shining. You're like, oh, weird.
• 2:26
  OK. Isn't that the kids had the
• 2:28
  shine? Isn't that why they could beat
• 2:31
  anyways, right? Not all of them.
• 2:35
  Bill does, I think. Bill and what do I can't
• 2:37
  remember what her name is the girl race.
• 2:40
  No, that sounds right. Anyway, I don't know what I'm
• 2:46
  talking about. I'm not a huge Stephen King fan,
• 2:47
  although I do like the hit movies.
• 2:50
  Fun fact. I do too, I I think the new ones
• 2:53
  are the the first remake is I fucking the second one is less
• 2:57
  good but still good. I watched the miniseries a
• 3:00
  little bit before the remake movies came out and I was like,
• 3:02
  oh I actually like the remakes quite a bit.
• 3:03
  They still kept him as a spider monster though.
• 3:05
  I still thought that was stupid. I mean, he he stays that he's
• 3:09
  that's what he is in the book. So like.
• 3:10
  I know I don't like that. I think that's dumb.
• 3:13
  That's just, I just hate it. I just will never forget.
• 3:15
  They're like, he's a mythical alien creature.
• 3:18
  You're like, oh, sick, he's just a spider.
• 3:20
  All right, well, that's stupid anyway, Not important.
• 3:26
  Not talking about Stephen King. This isn't a book.
• 3:27
  This is not a book club. God damn it.
• 3:29
  We don't read here. We're tabletop players.
• 3:32
  We don't know how to fucking read.
• 3:34
  Rather, we literally read 2 almost 500 page blue books back.
• 3:38
  There's no reading involved. You don't read when you play
• 3:41
  tabletop games. The GM just tells you how to
• 3:43
  play the game. Isn't that how it works?
• 3:46
  No, you're. Supposed to back me up on this
• 3:49
  is that. How you've been writing, is that
• 3:51
  how you've been running games? You just.
• 3:53
  Yeah, yeah, Just ask people online and shit and they I
• 3:56
  figure it out. I've never looked at the
• 3:59
  fabulous playbook, the fabulous core book, A day of my life.
• 4:09
  Yeah, I'm going to go lay down. OK.
• 4:13
  Just take your mic with you. You can, Yeah.
• 4:17
  OK, I should do that one of these days.
• 4:18
  I should just record for my bed. Just.
• 4:19
  Record laying down. Yeah, I can take out a blue
• 4:22
  snowball. I can just fucking rewrap it
• 4:23
  around my computer and just kind of talk shit in my bed.
• 4:26
  It's true. I mean do.
• 4:27
  It the way Jacob does, he just records on his floor in his
• 4:29
  bathroom or something. Why does he do that?
• 4:33
  I like my man, wants to be comfortable and I appreciate him
• 4:35
  for it. I guess anyway, what the hell
• 4:41
  are we talking about? It doesn't matter.
• 4:43
  Before we say what the hell we're talking about, hit the
• 4:44
  subscribe button on your platform of choice.
• 4:48
  Now what the hell are we talking about?
• 4:51
  We're doing a spur of the moment thing here because I say Isaiah
• 4:56
  suggested it and I liked it. Someone made a we're stealing
• 5:01
  from Reddit. Kind of, sort of not really.
• 5:03
  I mean, we're giving our own opinions.
• 5:04
  What we're stealing the the premise from Reddit, I suppose.
• 5:08
  So the idea of the original, I guess.
• 5:12
  Should I just read the post? It's not long.
• 5:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK so there's a Reddit post
• 5:16
  where someone the title said mother.
• 5:19
  May I? Does it exist when they said I
• 5:23
  think anyone who has spent a little bit of time in this hobby
• 5:26
  has run into accusations of their sister, their system or
• 5:30
  procedure of doing things relying on a mother may I
• 5:33
  attitude. And I used to pay a lot of
• 5:36
  attention to this mindset and fretting over and fretting over,
• 5:41
  oh, fretting over if my rulings and other decisions as a game
• 5:44
  master were falling into that category.
• 5:47
  But as I have played more and more systems, from crunchy
• 5:50
  things to story based stuff, I think that I'm coming to the
• 5:53
  realization that it doesn't really exist in a meaningful
• 5:55
  way. There's always going to be some
• 5:58
  negotiation that happens at the table during play, no matter the
• 6:01
  system. I guess what I'm interested in
• 6:03
  hearing is what all of you think this is supposed, What all of
• 6:07
  you think about this supposed issue.
• 6:11
  So this person's basically saying the problem of mother may
• 6:14
  I doesn't really exist and everyone's sort of blowing it
• 6:17
  out of proportion and worried about something they don't need
• 6:19
  to worry about. The first obvious immediate
• 6:25
  thing we need to clarify is what the fuck does mother may I play
• 6:30
  mean in this context? I don't know if this is like an
• 6:34
  America only kids game thing. So like this might have less
• 6:42
  context in other countries and stuff, I don't know.
• 6:44
  But basically there's a game called Mother May I?
• 6:47
  And it's like one of the kids pretends to be the mom or the
• 6:49
  dad and you have to ask them permission to do stuff.
• 6:53
  And the objective is to like, if I remember correctly, you have
• 6:57
  to kind of word play the mom or the dad into into like tagging
• 7:02
  them or getting to them like they're at the other side of the
• 7:04
  room or something like that. I don't actually don't totally
• 7:07
  remember. I don't know if you remember.
• 7:08
  How? I don't think I've ever actually
• 7:09
  played the game, I'm gonna be honest.
• 7:11
  I think I did, but I don't remember enough to like say, but
• 7:14
  if I remember correctly, they it's like they're at the other
• 7:16
  side of the room and you have to kind of like finagle.
• 7:18
  You have to be like mother may I can I like mother may I walk
• 7:21
  closer? And then they can say yay or
• 7:24
  nay. And there's like a there's like
• 7:25
  a mind game element to it. If I remember correctly.
• 7:27
  Either way, the idea is that you have to ask permission to do
• 7:30
  stuff in the game. So in the context of tabletop, a
• 7:35
  mother may I attitude is basically constantly being like
• 7:41
  GM am I allowed to do this? GM, can I do this?
• 7:44
  GM, can I do that, please? GM like let me do it.
• 7:48
  And it's the idea that you're always trying to do something as
• 7:52
  a character and the GM is constantly, you know, either the
• 7:58
  GM has established ahead of time or you feel the need to
• 8:01
  constantly check in with the GM to let you do a thing.
• 8:08
  Do you have any any other clarification to what it is?
• 8:11
  Yeah, it's, it's a, it's no, I mean basically pretty much what
• 8:14
  you said. It is a incessant having to
• 8:16
  request permission to do anything, make any role, argue
• 8:22
  for any ability. It's just using your GM as the
• 8:26
  the the magic pool cue or magic. You know, 8 balls the magic.
• 8:31
  Conch shell, Yeah, may smoother have a bite of this delicious
• 8:34
  sandwich. No.
• 8:39
  The conscious smoker. I love that episode.
• 8:43
  It's cool. So I this is a slight tangent,
• 8:49
  but I just need, I'm just going to break it up real quick.
• 8:52
  Not even a slight tangent. It's a major tangent.
• 8:53
  But we've, we've talked about how Lita didn't watch SpongeBob,
• 8:57
  right? I've I've brought that up
• 8:58
  before. No, you have not brought that up
• 9:00
  before. Oh so she's never watched
• 9:01
  SpongeBob? So I constantly make SpongeBob
• 9:04
  jokes and she will always be like what the fuck are you
• 9:06
  talking about? And it has.
• 9:07
  Gotten to the point, yeah. I know it's gotten to the point
• 9:11
  where I say a really obscure or weird joke and she either will
• 9:15
  say is that a JoJo reference or is that SpongeBob and it's off.
• 9:22
  To one of the two. So, you know, it's, it's a valid
• 9:24
  question. The reason I thought about that
• 9:27
  is because I brought up the conscious spoken joke and she
• 9:29
  just looked at me like, what the fuck are you on about?
• 9:37
  It was. It was very funny.
• 9:39
  Oh my God I fucking love that. I love that so much.
• 9:41
  Is this a JoJo reference or is that SpongeBob is a wild fucking
• 9:47
  dichotomy you have to choose from?
• 9:50
  It sounds like it's like a fucking game show premise.
• 9:53
  Yeah like, take this quote. Is this a SpongeBob quote or a
• 9:57
  JoJo quote? Anyway, so yes, constantly
• 10:04
  having to ask the magic conch shell to be able to do anything
• 10:07
  in your game. That's the basic idea of the the
• 10:12
  mother. May I So I I hate saying the
• 10:19
  phrase OP it just I just it always has sounded dumb to me.
• 10:22
  But OP, in this case, the original poster case, anyone
• 10:25
  doesn't know what that stands for the original poster of
• 10:28
  Reddit. Basically the person is saying I
• 10:31
  don't think this does exist. Like I think this is just
• 10:34
  horseshit that everybody's like stressed out about for no
• 10:36
  reason. So do we think it exists?
• 10:42
  My bit. But actually, no.
• 10:45
  OK, yeah, we have the exact same thought, all right.
• 10:48
  Like, yeah, but no, yeah, I'm basically going to be, I'm going
• 10:53
  to be a solid fence sitter in this situation with the post way
• 10:56
  up my ass. I do think it exists, but I
• 11:01
  don't think it's the strict binary that a lot of people seem
• 11:05
  to think it is or want to say it is.
• 11:08
  And I'd also don't think it operates on a singular paradigm.
• 11:13
  And what I mean is that mean by that is that I think there's two
• 11:17
  separate tracks of the mother may I problem.
• 11:20
  One of them is mechanical and then one of them is like GM ING
• 11:23
  style because you can have mother may I shit in a
• 11:29
  mechanical sense, but you can also have it where the GM is
• 11:35
  just doing it too much or or pushing it on the group.
• 11:40
  Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, Mother, my eye is
• 11:43
  really a symptom of a inexperienced or railroaded GM
• 11:46
  and not of a system. Like, well, you see what you get
• 11:51
  What I mean though that it can also come into the mechanics
• 11:54
  too, right? It can, yes, but like basically
• 11:58
  what what what the original poster said, it's sort of a
• 12:01
  nebulous thing that's part of every RPG.
• 12:03
  There is a level of consultation and conversation you need with
• 12:06
  the GM. Like to alter your game or style
• 12:11
  of play because of this mystical mother may I syndrome I find
• 12:16
  foolish or misguided. Yeah, I mean, I, I have a couple
• 12:23
  of examples of what I mean by it coming up in the mechanics
• 12:26
  themselves too. But yeah, I just, I think the
• 12:30
  main crux is that it is not, it's just not binary, right?
• 12:36
  Like it's not, it's not like you have this behavior or you don't
• 12:41
  have this behavior. It operates on a scale and the
• 12:45
  percentage is basically never 0 because it literally can't be.
• 12:49
  But it's about how you use it, where you use it, how annoying
• 12:55
  it is. You know, there's like a
• 12:56
  tactfulness to how you get to do it.
• 12:58
  Because at the end of the day, the whole point of AGM is to be
• 13:01
  the adjudicator of the situation.
• 13:03
  Like the GM is the referee. One of your jobs, one of your
• 13:06
  listed jobs on your, I was about to say, your resume.
• 13:10
  That's not the word. One of your listed
• 13:12
  responsibilities is to be a referee of some nature.
• 13:16
  So there's going to be that mother, May I in there
• 13:19
  somewhere? Sorry, I just paused for saying
• 13:27
  I thought I saw lightning, but maybe not.
• 13:29
  Maybe I'm going crazy. I don't know.
• 13:35
  It's completely killed my train of thought.
• 13:37
  No, All right, I guess explain what I mean about the two
• 13:42
  paradigms here. So well, maybe I'll start with
• 13:46
  the GM one for I wrote the mechanical one first, but now
• 13:49
  maybe I'll start with the GM one first actually.
• 13:52
  So mother, may I win in terms of how your GM is handling the game
• 13:59
  running things broadly speaking. So we'll talk about this problem
• 14:03
  in regards to your GM. It's it's more about whether
• 14:07
  your GM gives you permission to even attempt basic fictional
• 14:15
  actions. So, you know, allows you to say
• 14:21
  my character does XY and Z and doesn't question it because it's
• 14:25
  a given that your character could do XY and Z like what
• 14:28
  degree of that they allow. And when you're talking about
• 14:32
  how your GM handles it, this can this problem can also really run
• 14:38
  in tandem with what we keep calling the role to take a piss
• 14:43
  problem. Yes, which is like the GM will
• 14:47
  say, yeah, you can do it, but you got to make a roll for it,
• 14:50
  even though it's something really fucking stupid.
• 14:52
  Like can I open the door? And the GM is like make an
• 14:55
  athletics chick to open the door and the door is not locked or
• 14:58
  anything. You're just opening the fucking
• 14:59
  a door. And it just sort of exacerbates
• 15:01
  the problem when you when you tie it into the roll to take a
• 15:06
  piss issue. Yeah, you're just having like a
• 15:10
  OK, but why though moment. Yeah, like, why do I need like,
• 15:17
  is there any reason that I shouldn't immediately be able to
• 15:20
  do this? And the gym is like, no, but I
• 15:22
  want you to roll. And it's like, cool, so why are
• 15:24
  we rolling dice? It's it's yeah, I look, she gets
• 15:27
  out of hand quick. Normalize players just telling
• 15:30
  their GM no. Yeah, you know, I.
• 15:34
  Kind of love that mood where it's like, roll for it, no?
• 15:37
  Yeah, listen, I've I've definitely.
• 15:43
  Actually, I have a funny example of this.
• 15:46
  So I was playing a board game, right?
• 15:49
  It wasn't a tabletop game with a different friend who I won't,
• 15:53
  you know I won't, I won't name Blast 'cause I'm I'm going to
• 15:55
  assass him a little bit here I. Don't know.
• 15:58
  But we're playing a board game, and it was sort of like, it was
• 16:03
  one of those board games that's like emulating the D&D dungeon
• 16:06
  crawl vibe. And part of the premise of the
• 16:10
  board game is that you, you know, you move however many
• 16:15
  squares or whatever, you know, you roll and then you move based
• 16:18
  on your role. And you have to you have to
• 16:20
  declare like if you get to like an intersection in the dungeon
• 16:26
  halls, you have to declare if you look down the hallway or
• 16:29
  not. Like, OK, I checked this hallway
• 16:31
  and then I look down this hallway, right?
• 16:34
  And I kept forgetting to say that because in my mind I was
• 16:39
  like, obviously it's a fucking given.
• 16:41
  If my character walks forward and gets to an intersection,
• 16:44
  they're going to look down the halls of the intersection,
• 16:47
  right? Why do I have to say that my
• 16:50
  character, who's a in the, in the premise of this board game,
• 16:53
  you're like a seasoned adventurer.
• 16:55
  The seasoned adventurer's gonna look down the fucking halls.
• 16:58
  But I as a player was not saying it.
• 17:00
  And he was like, oh, that's what you didn't say.
• 17:02
  You got to look down the hallway.
• 17:03
  I was like, really, really. We have to declare we're going
• 17:05
  to look down the hallway every fucking time we move just to
• 17:08
  waste time. And this was like, we hadn't.
• 17:10
  This was like. I think I know who you're
• 17:12
  talking about. I don't know if you do know home
• 17:16
  talk, but you might. You might.
• 17:18
  Is it Mookie's boyfriend? No.
• 17:20
  No, no, no. OK, OK, OK.
• 17:23
  No, no, no. Although I I could see him maybe
• 17:25
  doing that. Who else could it be?
• 17:30
  Not somebody you know very well, but so like we're he kept doing
• 17:38
  that or he was like, oh, well, you didn't say.
• 17:39
  I'm like, yeah, OK, first of all, we were learning the game,
• 17:43
  right? We had never played before, like
• 17:45
  anyone except for him. No one had played before.
• 17:48
  And he was the one who was sort of like running the, you kind of
• 17:51
  had like a pseudo GM for this game who ran like the monsters
• 17:54
  and stuff. No one had played the game
• 17:56
  except for him. So us as players, we're trying
• 17:59
  to like learn the game as is. And it's not, you know, things
• 18:04
  are slowed down when it's the first time you've played a game,
• 18:06
  right? So we're trying to say what
• 18:10
  we're doing. We're trying to focus on how
• 18:12
  does the game actually fucking work?
• 18:13
  And then you're bitching about are we looking down the hallways
• 18:16
  or not? And at some point I literally
• 18:18
  said to him, I was like, stop asking me.
• 18:20
  Yes, I'm looking down. Just assume I'm looking down the
• 18:22
  hallways every fucking time because this is a stupid thing
• 18:25
  to like, spend mental energy on. Do you look down the hallways?
• 18:28
  Like, yes, obviously. He looks down the fucking
• 18:30
  hallways. You know what I mean?
• 18:31
  Yeah. And it was basically that
• 18:33
  example of like roll to take a piss.
• 18:36
  No, fuck you, I'm taking a piss. Like it was pretty much that.
• 18:39
  And it it it actually not exactly, but it is in a sense a
• 18:45
  little bit of a mother. May I situation because you have
• 18:49
  to be like, please mother, may I check the hallways?
• 18:52
  You know, like when really you should just be checking the
• 18:56
  fucking hallways and it goes back to that whole thing.
• 19:03
  You know, it's the thing where my wizard character has 20
• 19:05
  intelligence. I as a real human being don't
• 19:07
  have 20 intelligence. So like can we assume that my
• 19:10
  character could probably figure it out that?
• 19:12
  Kind of probably. Dude, I've had that so many
• 19:14
  times playing my first character Ilias in in my GM being like,
• 19:18
  well for that it's like brother my with 20 intelligence, my
• 19:24
  character is one of the smartest people in this universe.
• 19:29
  Like like full sail right? If I know.
• 19:35
  Depends on setting I would say, but yeah.
• 19:37
  In like a medieval setting, a character who, like, is an
• 19:40
  engineer and knows magic and like has done all that jazz.
• 19:43
  I mean, definitely. Top, top scientists, Yes.
• 19:46
  Yeah. I remember literally it was
• 19:49
  like, oh, I'm going to find out what direction we're in or no,
• 19:52
  it was, I'm going to see how much longer, how much much time
• 19:55
  is left in the day, right? And then you do the like finger
• 19:57
  for every 15 minutes on the sunset thing.
• 20:01
  And I was like, oh, that works. What's up?
• 20:04
  I said I sort of know how that works.
• 20:05
  You, you basically you, you put your, your, you flatten your
• 20:09
  hand out in front of the sun, right.
• 20:11
  So like you're, you're doing like roast hand cut that in a
• 20:16
  90° angle to the sun and then every finger is 15 minutes and
• 20:21
  then you just put that till you hit the sunset and that's how
• 20:24
  much time you have left before the sun falls.
• 20:28
  I'm sure that makes sense, but you just describing that to me
• 20:31
  without showing it to me. I my I just was trying to move
• 20:33
  my hands and I could not make sense of.
• 20:35
  What you're saying it's a pretty simple thing, And then being
• 20:38
  told yes, yeah, we got a roll for it?
• 20:40
  It's like brother, if I know how to just tell me what the God
• 20:43
  damn answer is like. Yeah, if I know how to do it in
• 20:47
  real life. Yeah, or like that would be like
• 20:50
  you telling me like, OK, roll to use a, a, a a dust bomb with
• 20:55
  Django with a sack of flour. Like, brother, I can't uncast
• 21:00
  that catapult. It's done right.
• 21:03
  Yeah. Yeah, so a basic to to to give
• 21:14
  this the two extremes of the pole here in terms of this like
• 21:17
  mother may idea actually hold on, hold on, hold on.
• 21:20
  Let me let me crack the other cold 1 real quick.
• 21:23
  Oh boy. Oh, there it is.
• 21:25
  Oh yeah, that's probably not going to come through on
• 21:27
  recording, but it might. It came in for me, so it almost
• 21:30
  certainly will. Well, maybe we'll it's a cider.
• 21:34
  But anyway, so the, the, the far the, the non permission end, as
• 21:43
  I called it, like not having to ask for permission in terms of
• 21:47
  how the GM handles the game. Any kind of simple declaration
• 21:52
  of a character action, You know, walking into a room, walking
• 21:55
  down the street, talking to any, talking to an MPC, opening a
• 22:00
  fucking door, looking at the sun.
• 22:03
  Like any of those kinds of things that have no role
• 22:07
  required that you generally take for granted, but the GM is never
• 22:10
  going to really question. Those are like the the the far
• 22:14
  opposite end of the Mother Mother may eye problem, right.
• 22:16
  You're just the GM describes a room.
• 22:20
  You say GMI walk over to the desk that you don't have to ask
• 22:24
  permission. Can my character walk over to
• 22:26
  the desk? Like, given the circumstance,
• 22:30
  given the room that was just described to you, yes, you could
• 22:32
  walk over to the fucking desk. That's on the that's on the far
• 22:36
  like not worrying about it on the other end of needing
• 22:39
  permission for every little thing basically asking anytime
• 22:44
  if you're asking the GM if it is feasible to take an action that
• 22:48
  is where you're floating into that mother may I territory.
• 22:52
  This is generally going to, this should come up for things that
• 22:58
  are up for debate where I, I'm looking at my notes and
• 23:08
  confusing myself 'cause I think I typoed or something there.
• 23:11
  But like anytime something's up for debate and the shared
• 23:13
  circumstance of the game is not 100% agreed on.
• 23:17
  So, you know, the GM describes a wall, but doesn't say if it's a
• 23:22
  Stonewall or a wooden wall or something like that.
• 23:25
  So you as the player have to be like, well, could I break the
• 23:28
  wall and the G Ms. like, no, it's made of steel and you're
• 23:30
  like, OK, well, all right, this can be used really poorly,
• 23:39
  right? This could be a bad thing in the
• 23:41
  sense that the G Ms. denying like a totally straightforward
• 23:47
  class ability, for example, because there's some sort of
• 23:51
  circumstance going on that they just decided but did not explain
• 23:57
  or have given you no hint. So if you're in some sort of
• 24:00
  like anti magic wishy washy zone or something and you as the
• 24:06
  sorcerer character try to use, you know, try to cast a spell
• 24:10
  and then G Ms. like, oh, you can't and then doesn't explain
• 24:13
  anything. And then the next round you're
• 24:15
  like GM, can I cast a spell this time?
• 24:19
  And you just keep doing that over and over again because of
• 24:22
  some arbitrary shit. The GM decided that's a bad way
• 24:25
  to do it. But it can also be not that big
• 24:29
  of a deal because it could be a situation of the GM tells you
• 24:34
  there's a wall in front of you and you as a player say, can I
• 24:37
  climb the wall? And the gym's like, no, it's
• 24:39
  mossy and wet. It's too slippery for you to
• 24:41
  climb. That's not a big deal.
• 24:42
  The GM didn't necessarily declare that.
• 24:44
  So you double checked and asked. That's like a very gentle, not
• 24:49
  super aggressive mother. May I type situation?
• 24:52
  I would go as far as say that's not a mother, May I?
• 24:54
  That's conversational, right? GM, we're in mossy ruins.
• 24:58
  OK, GM, can I climb this wall? No, it's a there.
• 25:01
  It's a sheer Cliff face of Marvel covered in Moss.
• 25:04
  There you go. Oh, OK.
• 25:05
  Right. It's it's Yeah.
• 25:06
  Mother May I is is is much like most things, it's hyper
• 25:09
  dependent on context. If you are provided context,
• 25:14
  then it's not a mother. May I?
• 25:15
  It's a conversation. Oh, you know.
• 25:16
  Oh. GM, we're in a beholder's lair.
• 25:20
  I cast the spell. You try to cast the spell and it
• 25:23
  doesn't work. And even that right, that's not
• 25:25
  saying you can't cast a spell. It's you tried it failed because
• 25:30
  and once you say something like you try, it failed, then the
• 25:32
  player goes, oh, OK, there's a reason why it failed.
• 25:34
  It didn't I, I, I can't just not do it.
• 25:36
  There's there's a puzzle here. There's something I have to
• 25:38
  figure out. If the GMG goes Nope you can't
• 25:41
  do that, then it's like well why the fuck not?
• 25:45
  Yeah. And then and then in the
• 25:47
  subsequent scenario, you have to be like, all right, can I do it
• 25:51
  now? You know, And then you, if you
• 25:54
  have to keep asking over and over again and there's no,
• 25:59
  there's no clarification or anything, that's when you're
• 26:02
  starting to drift into that like shitty mother may eye behavior
• 26:05
  where it's like, I have to ask you to do every little stupid
• 26:08
  fucking thing. That's when you're getting into
• 26:11
  the, like, unpleasant territory. Yeah.
• 26:15
  And I saw some people, you know, looking through that Reddit
• 26:18
  post, some people are saying that this is like a symptom of
• 26:24
  older school DND where you have to constantly ask the GM, like,
• 26:28
  can I check under the bed? Can I check behind the
• 26:31
  bookshelf? Is there anything under the
• 26:33
  tile? And I kind of get what they're
• 26:35
  meet, what they mean, but I don't even think that's really a
• 26:38
  good example because the style of play was a little different
• 26:41
  back then where fishing around the room, as it were, was part
• 26:47
  of the IT was more part of the game than it is now.
• 26:51
  You know, it wasn't how you handle the search.
• 26:55
  The dungeon type behavior was different than how you do it
• 26:58
  these days. And going into the dungeon for
• 27:02
  several weeks of real lifetime, like several sessions of real
• 27:06
  lifetime and slowly working your way through the dungeon.
• 27:09
  That was the game back in the day.
• 27:11
  That was what you expected to do.
• 27:12
  It wasn't. Nowadays, if you spent, you
• 27:16
  know, 8 sessions in the same dungeon, you'd be like, Jesus
• 27:19
  fucking Christ, we're still in this dungeon.
• 27:21
  But back in the day that was more expected.
• 27:23
  And part of the reason for that was because of that slower
• 27:27
  fishing around, very carefully searching every nook and cranny
• 27:31
  type behavior. That's not even really the
• 27:34
  mother May I think. I mean, it is to a degree, but
• 27:36
  again, it was more expected back then.
• 27:38
  So it wasn't that annoying. Nowadays, if you're like, all
• 27:42
  right, GMI searched the room, how do you search the room?
• 27:46
  All right, can I check the bed? Can I look in the wardrobe?
• 27:50
  Can I? Is there a desk in the room?
• 27:52
  That's when you're getting into that annoying mother.
• 27:54
  May I territory where like where you're like, GM, please can you
• 27:59
  tell me what about this thing and what about this thing and
• 28:01
  what about this, you know? And it's just like, we don't
• 28:04
  really do it that way anymore. The culture has shifted.
• 28:07
  The vibes have shifted. I saw some other people's too.
• 28:14
  Apparently some people use the Mother May I thing as a way to
• 28:19
  talk about an individual system, like a game they don't like, and
• 28:24
  say that the game itself has an excessive mother May I attitude,
• 28:29
  which I thought was interesting. I don't know if I've ever
• 28:33
  personally felt like that about a game itself, like GM without
• 28:37
  the GM part of the equation. You know what I mean?
• 28:44
  So what you're describing AGM list system where characters
• 28:47
  have to where players have to ask questions of each other, I
• 28:51
  think or consult the. Book I think what people are
• 28:54
  saying is some people will say that a game system has a lot of
• 29:00
  mother may I baked into the design where you constantly have
• 29:05
  to ask the GM permission to use your like character abilities
• 29:10
  and stuff and that's a reason to avoid the game.
• 29:13
  I think, I think what that what they're talking about is, is
• 29:21
  kind of a misunderstanding of how like Pbta works, for
• 29:25
  example, where they think they have to ask the GM permission to
• 29:28
  like use a move, which is not actually how Pbta works.
• 29:32
  But I think some people have this misunderstanding that
• 29:36
  that's how it works. You get what I mean?
• 29:38
  Yeah. So I, I, I think people have
• 29:41
  used it as a defense to just not engage with a game that they
• 29:45
  don't like. So like literally that to
• 29:50
  context for what I mean the the top comment on this post the
• 29:54
  person said. I usually find it's just a
• 29:57
  derogatory way people describe games they don't like, and not
• 30:02
  liking those games is fine, they just feel like they have to
• 30:05
  belittle them into the bargain. I don't think I've played in an
• 30:10
  RPG where there's zero discussion about what might or
• 30:13
  might not be possible in the game world, even if it's just.
• 30:16
  Will this approach work here? The answer is no, but something
• 30:19
  else might I guess. Maybe combat encounters in
• 30:22
  something like DND 4th edition where that's what you spend most
• 30:26
  of your time doing. You have your set of powers,
• 30:31
  they and any in the games and any in game conditions tell you
• 30:36
  when and how often you can use them.
• 30:39
  But it's about as light on conversations adjudication as I
• 30:42
  can think from think of from what I've played.
• 30:45
  So I think what that person, I think what that person's getting
• 30:48
  at is that, yeah, a game where the rule where a game that
• 30:52
  people consider more rules light, which I think a lot of
• 30:56
  people call certain games rules. Like this is kind of its own
• 31:01
  topic, but I feel like a lot of people call games rules light
• 31:04
  that aren't actually rules light.
• 31:05
  They're just the rules are focused on a different thing
• 31:08
  than they're used to. Like I've heard people say
• 31:11
  Daggerheart is a rules light game and I'm like go play
• 31:15
  Daggerheart for literally one session that is not a rules.
• 31:17
  Light game? Yeah, not even a.
• 31:21
  Little bit dude. So I think a lot of people
• 31:24
  really misuse the term rules light.
• 31:26
  I would say Monster hearts is a rule light system because
• 31:30
  there's literally not that many rules in it.
• 31:32
  Well, Monster Hearts is a rules light system.
• 31:34
  Because you need power by the apocalypse.
• 31:36
  Yeah, as soon as you slap in power.
• 31:38
  As soon as you slap Apocalypse world onto monster hearts, it's
• 31:41
  not a rules like. Like I wouldn't call Apocalypse
• 31:44
  World a rules light system. We've actually said apocalypse.
• 31:48
  Have we? Yeah, yeah.
• 31:50
  We actually, we had a then we had a whole episode about this.
• 31:53
  Did we? I don't remember if we did, but
• 31:57
  I would say like Apocalypse World I would describe as it's
• 32:02
  it's sort of in the middle. Like it's not a super crunchy
• 32:04
  system. Obviously it's not Pathfinder,
• 32:06
  but there are rule, a lot of rules to to keep, you know, keep
• 32:12
  in your mind, but they're just not, they're just not as
• 32:16
  numerical and mathy as a lot of people are used to.
• 32:19
  So people think it's rules light, but it's not.
• 32:22
  Actually, there's plenty of rules.
• 32:25
  They're just not the rules you're used to, you know, either
• 32:32
  way, not really the point, but I I yeah, I think what the person
• 32:36
  is getting is that some people who use this mother may I as
• 32:39
  like a defense to say this game is bad.
• 32:43
  It has too many mother, mother may I style mechanics, which I
• 32:52
  don't know. That's a that's a tough one to.
• 32:58
  I'm sure everyone would have like a different answer about
• 33:00
  what they mean. In that sense, you know what I
• 33:02
  mean. I don't I genuinely, I don't
• 33:08
  know if I could, if I could call it a single game that feels like
• 33:11
  a mother. May I kind of because I've I've
• 33:14
  never like I've never thought that DND was one of them.
• 33:17
  And that's like the gold standard that that that's
• 33:19
  literally why they've shifted away from a lot of the mechanics
• 33:22
  I liked. Right, Yeah.
• 33:25
  Well, D and DI don't think anyone would say D and DD and D
• 33:28
  is a game that is is that. But I think people have argued
• 33:33
  that D&D has a lot of those style of mechanics.
• 33:36
  I think so. Like the example I'm thinking in
• 33:39
  my head is if you going back to the Apocalypse World example, if
• 33:47
  the player character, you know, the player character is getting
• 33:50
  shot at and they want to run down the hall to safety.
• 33:55
  So the the player describes what their character does and then
• 33:59
  the GM says, OK, you have to roll to act under fire, right?
• 34:05
  I think some people might be interpreting that as mother, may
• 34:10
  I please roll this move? That's not actually what the
• 34:14
  game is saying, right? But I think that's how people
• 34:17
  interpret it because they, a lot of people misunderstand how the
• 34:22
  move structure of any kind of Pbta game is supposed to work.
• 34:26
  You know what I mean? Yeah, 'cause what the game is
• 34:29
  saying is if a character does something that activates a move,
• 34:35
  then the move is activated. Actually, Apocalypse World is
• 34:41
  saying the complete opposite of Mother May I Apocalypse World is
• 34:44
  saying if this thing happens, you have to roll dice, no
• 34:47
  questions asked. That's what Apocalypse World is
• 34:49
  saying. People read it as if this
• 34:52
  thing's happened. Ask your GM if you can now roll
• 34:55
  dice. Not what it's saying.
• 34:59
  Right. So I, I really think, I think
• 35:01
  that's what that person was talking about, where people will
• 35:04
  deride a game as being to having too much mother.
• 35:06
  May I type shit? I think that's what it is.
• 35:08
  I'm guessing. I'm really not 100% sure on
• 35:11
  that. But judging by what some of the
• 35:12
  other people were saying in the in the thread, I think that's
• 35:16
  what they're getting at. It's kind of hard to tell to be
• 35:20
  honest, I think. Yeah, it's I think.
• 35:23
  People kind of wishy washy. Right, well, I I think it's like
• 35:27
  many things that bother me about this world that is ill defined
• 35:30
  right, like it's. Yeah.
• 35:32
  It's it's it's based on vibes, right, because you're like, Oh
• 35:35
  well, a a thing that makes you have to like request permission
• 35:39
  for your DM while you're doing that, no matter what, right, you
• 35:42
  go DM. Can I roll the hit?
• 35:43
  Just make just so you know if it's fucking possible or not.
• 35:47
  And if that's if you have a problem with like basic
• 35:50
  conversation with your game, then yeah, you're going to say
• 35:52
  everything is a fucking mother, man.
• 35:54
  But. I yeah I I, I guess the retort
• 35:58
  would be that something like an attack role does not require GM
• 36:03
  permission in the game like DNDI.
• 36:06
  Would say it does I like. I think the argument, well,
• 36:11
  we're we're going to get into this with the next one.
• 36:12
  I think the argument is that mechanically speaking, the game
• 36:17
  rules is written, the game does not say you need permission as
• 36:19
  long as you fulfill all the like requirements.
• 36:22
  You know what I mean? I suppose so.
• 36:28
  Well, so the OK, so let's let's get into the mechanical part of
• 36:30
  this, right? So when you're talking about the
• 36:34
  mother may I stuff in terms of mechanics, it's the idea that
• 36:41
  either the mechanic is very explicit about whether you can
• 36:45
  or cannot do what you're trying to do, or the game basically
• 36:49
  says you need permission to even try and use the mechanic.
• 36:52
  So in five EA basic attack, if you meet the requirements of
• 36:58
  your weapon and your general character status was just to say
• 37:02
  like you're not unconscious, you're not stunned, you're
• 37:04
  within range, blah, blah, blah. You can make an attack rule
• 37:08
  against the enemy. And rules is the rules is
• 37:11
  written. The GM can't tell you no, right?
• 37:15
  Like very strictly speaking, there's all sorts of stuff that
• 37:18
  can intercept that. But basic just on paper rules is
• 37:25
  written. The GM cannot say no, you can't
• 37:27
  make an attack role or no, you're not allowed to make an
• 37:30
  attack role because as long as you fulfill the requirements.
• 37:34
  An example of a game of a mechanic where you need
• 37:40
  literally need permission from the GM is the old way the
• 37:44
  Sorcerer's Wild Magic table used to work, right?
• 37:49
  So that literally required you asking the GM if the thing
• 37:51
  procked? Close.
• 37:55
  So the wording of it was that the way the actually hold on let
• 38:01
  me pull up the exact wording because why not?
• 38:04
  So the way it was phrased, hold on wild spell.
• 38:12
  OK, immediately after you cast a sorcerer's spell of first level
• 38:17
  or higher, the DM can have you roll AD 20.
• 38:23
  So literally, and this is this is where I think this may have,
• 38:28
  I genuinely think this may have been what sparked this whole
• 38:32
  topic back into life. Like I think it was a topic that
• 38:37
  was sort of dead and this resuscitated it when the 2024
• 38:41
  rules were coming out. Jeremy Crawford, Right.
• 38:44
  They did an episode talking about the sorcerer.
• 38:46
  While they did, you know, a couple of the classes, one of
• 38:48
  them being the sorcerer. And Jeremy Crawford literally
• 38:51
  said the wild magic table is a mother may eye mechanic.
• 38:56
  That's what Jeremy Crawford said verbatim, Right?
• 38:59
  Yeah, and he said, because you have to ask your GM if you can
• 39:02
  roll that D20. So we changed it.
• 39:05
  So the way it works now is when you cast a leveled spell, you as
• 39:12
  the player can choose to roll that D20 if you want whenever
• 39:18
  you cast a leveled spell as a sorcerer.
• 39:21
  And like I said, Jeremy Crawford explicitly called this one out.
• 39:24
  So in the new rules, you decide. In the old rules, the GM
• 39:28
  decided. So that's the scenario where
• 39:30
  mechanically it's literally a mother may I situation and that
• 39:39
  that's a mechanic that is designed like that.
• 39:42
  Where, like, please, GM, can I roll on my Wild Magic table?
• 39:47
  I think is the kind of thing that people are talking about
• 39:50
  when they say that a game is mechanically designed with too
• 39:53
  much mother may I stuff. But I do think a lot of people
• 39:59
  are probably misattributing how mechanics work and calling it a
• 40:04
  mother may I when it isn't right.
• 40:06
  You get what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:08
  So there are scenarios where I do think it can happen
• 40:11
  mechanically, where the game basically tells you as a player,
• 40:15
  this mechanic only works if your GM says it works in this
• 40:18
  scenario like otherwise it doesn't work.
• 40:21
  And then there's other mechanics where like an attack roll, the
• 40:25
  game doesn't say you need permission.
• 40:27
  The game is just saying if you meet the criteria, you can do
• 40:30
  this. And there is a fine line because
• 40:37
  it is true that like an attack role, for example, you could
• 40:42
  just, you know, your GM could be like you try to make an attack
• 40:47
  role, but the creature is incorporeal and your sword goes
• 40:51
  right through it or something like that, right.
• 40:53
  Like there's some of that. But the way the rule is written
• 40:57
  just in the book as, as is, is not saying that the you have to
• 41:03
  ask the GM for any kind of permission to do that.
• 41:10
  So that's what I, that's what I mean when I'm talking about it
• 41:13
  coming into the mechanical paradigm.
• 41:16
  So there's the GM paradigm and then the mechanical paradigm.
• 41:20
  Is that making sense? Yes, OK.
• 41:25
  I think another, I think another case of where I could see
• 41:29
  somebody sort of attributing it as a mother man mechanic
• 41:34
  situation is like in Dungeon World, monsters have special
• 41:40
  features where they're little tags that make declarations
• 41:46
  about the monster. And for example, a monster, one
• 41:49
  of them is incorporeal and the game literally says if a monster
• 41:53
  is incorporeal, you cannot attack it with physical weapons.
• 41:57
  So the player character, the fighter character tries to
• 42:01
  attack the the like ghost with the sword, with a sword.
• 42:06
  And the GM says, oh, you go to swing your sword and it goes
• 42:09
  right through the ghost. Someone could make the argument
• 42:13
  that oh, I need the G miss permission to hit the ghost
• 42:17
  character. That's not actually what's
• 42:18
  happening. But if you don't, if you're not
• 42:20
  understanding how the rules work, you could, I could see how
• 42:23
  you would think that's what's happening.
• 42:25
  You know what I mean, that that goes back to the again, not
• 42:28
  you're not asking permission. You're testing to see what you
• 42:32
  can do. You go, OK, I shoot the, the,
• 42:34
  the ghost with my bow. The GM should and and this, this
• 42:39
  does provide that the GM knows what to say in a given
• 42:42
  situation, right? The GM just says you can't do
• 42:45
  it. Then then you're like, what?
• 42:48
  What? But if they tell you, yeah, you
• 42:50
  shoot your bow, it passes through it, it's a ghost.
• 42:54
  Yeah, you go. It's about how you deliver the
• 42:57
  information too, yeah. And that is a that's a huge part
• 43:00
  of the mother may I is, it's about delivery, it's about
• 43:02
  context, about information, about the conversation, really.
• 43:07
  Well, and, and also, I, I do think this is probably a, an
• 43:10
  issue that comes up for newer GMs more often because there's,
• 43:17
  there's this desire when you're GM ING, when you're, when you're
• 43:20
  early on in your GM ING phase. I feel like everyone goes
• 43:23
  through this where your desire is to sorry, my cat's doing
• 43:33
  something weird. There's a desire to be a little
• 43:39
  cheeky with your information, right?
• 43:41
  Like not give it out too freely when you're a newer GM and
• 43:46
  sometimes that. Oh, excuse me.
• 43:50
  Burping. Sorry, Sometimes that desire to
• 43:53
  be cheeky turns into this weird mother may I situation because
• 44:00
  you're withholding so much information that the players
• 44:02
  don't actually know how to respond anymore.
• 44:05
  So now they're asking you permission to do really basic
• 44:08
  shit because they they lack so much information.
• 44:10
  You know what I mean? Truly a terrible fucking place
• 44:13
  to be. It is a bad place to be, but I
• 44:16
  think a lot of people end up there by accident, right?
• 44:19
  I I, I don't think it's intended, but because I think a
• 44:22
  lot of people have this idea when they start GM ING that I
• 44:32
  don't, I don't really, I don't know where this comes from
• 44:34
  exactly, but there's this vibe that the, the GM is the
• 44:40
  mysterious cloaked figure in a black.
• 44:43
  Like I almost feel like when people think of AG actually, not
• 44:46
  even I think any time you, you see someone depicted as like a
• 44:50
  game master in art, right? They always look like a Naz
• 44:53
  Ghoul, right? They have a hood, they have the
• 44:56
  robes. You can't see their face or
• 44:58
  their faces shrouded, right? Even Critical Role when they did
• 45:02
  their very first intro, Matt Mercer is the GM.
• 45:06
  He took off a mask that was concealing his as someone else,
• 45:10
  and he's wearing black robes and he has eyeshadow on.
• 45:14
  So he looks like a mysterious wizard dude, right?
• 45:17
  So there's this, there's this vibe, there's this mental image
• 45:21
  that the GM is the Keeper of Secrets.
• 45:25
  And so as the Keeper of Secrets, you can't just give away your
• 45:28
  secrets freely. The players must work for your
• 45:30
  secrets. The problem is you have to.
• 45:35
  It's a delicate balance between the players working for the
• 45:38
  secrets and you just not telling them important information that
• 45:41
  they need. Right?
• 45:43
  If the players walk into a room and there's like 4 zombies in
• 45:49
  the room, but you as the keeper of secrets, just say they walk
• 45:54
  into a room and don't mention the very obvious zombies, That's
• 45:57
  not being a keeper secret. You're just not telling them
• 45:59
  information that they should have that is important.
• 46:01
  You're just withholding shit. Yeah, like they should know
• 46:04
  that. So I think that's that's becomes
• 46:08
  the problem where a newer GM has this this vibe where they're
• 46:13
  like, ah, I'm the dungeon master.
• 46:16
  I am mysterious cloaked figure. And then they go, why do my
• 46:21
  players keep asking me if they can do really basic shit?
• 46:24
  And it's like, well, 'cause you were so mysterious that they
• 46:27
  don't know what they can do anymore, like they're confused
• 46:30
  is essentially what's happened. That was yeah.
• 46:32
  So I have AI have a this is this is the thing that happened to me
• 46:35
  where again, my character, I think I had I also I didn't have
• 46:38
  20 wisdom, but I had very high wisdom.
• 46:40
  They took the alert feet. So my passive was crazy.
• 46:45
  It was like 20. It was over 20, I think I told
• 46:48
  this story about the the fucking room with the acid and the clay
• 46:50
  golem and I nuked the entire party because I just was tired
• 46:52
  of this encounter. And like my character with crazy
• 46:56
  high passive perception somehow didn't notice a very obvious
• 47:00
  pressure plate at the top of the stairs.
• 47:01
  That thing that I would have been at eye level with at some
• 47:04
  point and what it went right? Why is that tile raised?
• 47:07
  No, I stepped on it and you're like.
• 47:09
  What? How?
• 47:11
  What? I don't how could I have
• 47:15
  whatever, you know what I mean like.
• 47:18
  And then in it, and then what ends up happening is you get
• 47:20
  into a little bit of a mother mayor situation where you're
• 47:22
  like GM, can we say that my character saw that tile, right?
• 47:28
  That would be your next probable question.
• 47:31
  Yeah. Because you as a player go,
• 47:33
  well, that would make sense. So GM, can I, can we say that
• 47:36
  that's the case? And now you're in this weird
• 47:39
  negotiation with the GM over something that feels a little
• 47:43
  silly at the end of the day. Yep.
• 47:47
  Yeah. So it's like, yeah, it's it's
• 47:50
  such a it's such a fucking, it's such a tightrope situation
• 47:55
  because it is true that you will be, at the end of the day,
• 47:59
  you're always going to be in negotiation with the game master
• 48:03
  because that's just how the game works, right?
• 48:06
  I mean, why am I free balling this?
• 48:09
  Hold on, let me read my fucking notes that I wrote down.
• 48:14
  All grains require some degree of negotiation to truly function
• 48:18
  right? Tabletop IG?
• 48:20
  What tabletop RPGs? Are a shared IGN?
• 48:24
  For a second I was like, what? I don't know what I was trying
• 48:26
  to say. There are a shared ephemeral
• 48:29
  mental space. At the end of the day, there's
• 48:31
  no way to make sure that what everyone is imagining is exactly
• 48:37
  the same. The reason it becomes a problem
• 48:41
  is because of games or GMs that are having a little bit of a
• 48:46
  power trip in how they adjudicate play.
• 48:49
  People like people like the one in the Reddit post are saying
• 48:54
  it's not a problem that exists because they are thinking of it
• 48:57
  of a as a binary that's on or off.
• 48:59
  But really it's about degrees of how much it gets used.
• 49:04
  You can easily abuse your GM power by overexerting the mother
• 49:09
  may I attitude. But simply getting or giving a
• 49:13
  clarification on events is not an inherent problem.
• 49:18
  And I was I was calling it out from the GM standpoint, but also
• 49:21
  from the game standpoint itself. Asking a clarification on the
• 49:25
  thing in terms of how the game works itself is not inherently a
• 49:29
  problem, right? But if the game is designed in
• 49:33
  such a fashion where it basically wants you to be always
• 49:37
  checking in. Like imagine if you will, let's
• 49:41
  say, let's say you had a game where everyone is some sort of,
• 49:48
  you're playing like Mage the Ascension or something like
• 49:51
  that, where all the characters are Wizards of some kind, right?
• 49:53
  Some kind of spellcasters. And you have an ability that
• 49:57
  says you can pull from the font of magic around you to cast a a
• 50:04
  destructive spell. Ask your GM if there is a
• 50:08
  powerful enough source of magic around you, right.
• 50:11
  If the game does that kind of a mechanic over and over and over
• 50:15
  and over again where it's like ask your GM, ask your GM, ask
• 50:18
  your GM, that is like over abusing that attitude.
• 50:22
  You get what I'm saying? But if it's there for very
• 50:28
  specific mechanics or specific scenarios, or it's a mechanic
• 50:33
  that works with something else, then that's OK.
• 50:36
  A a good example actually, since we we're playing fabulous
• 50:40
  Ultima, we have a character who has an ability that says if she
• 50:44
  is in sunlight, she can cast a spell freely, right?
• 50:51
  The player is always saying to me, are we in sunlight?
• 50:55
  Now you can now that is absolutely a mother may I
• 50:58
  mechanic, right? You know, mother, are we in
• 51:01
  sunlight? Can I freely cast my spell?
• 51:05
  But most of the time the answer to that question is very
• 51:09
  obvious. So it's not a big deal, right?
• 51:13
  I specifically said it's the middle of the night.
• 51:15
  Obviously we're not going to ask, are you in sunlight?
• 51:17
  Oh, you're in a cave? No, you're not in sunlight.
• 51:19
  Oh, you're out in the middle of the field?
• 51:21
  Yes, obviously you're in sunlight, right?
• 51:22
  Most of the time, not a big deal.
• 51:25
  Every once in a while it's a little ambiguous.
• 51:27
  And then we see that do that for a couple of, you know, for some
• 51:34
  mechanics here and there. That's not a big deal if the
• 51:36
  game uses that for every fucking mechanic in the game or
• 51:39
  whatever, or like every class ability has a rider like that.
• 51:43
  That's when it starts to become a problem and there's a there's
• 51:46
  a delicate balance. And also I think it's important
• 51:52
  to not tie a mother. May I mechanic to a really core
• 51:57
  ability, right? Imagine if you will in 5 E if
• 52:01
  the fighter had to ask the GM like maybe the like the the
• 52:07
  fighter's accent surge ability, right?
• 52:10
  If it says you can use accent surge if you are emboldened by
• 52:16
  your team mates. So every single time the fighter
• 52:19
  goes to use accent surge, they have to say GM am I currently
• 52:23
  emboldened by my team mates? That would be fucking annoying
• 52:27
  because it's a really core ability.
• 52:29
  So you don't want to be doing that all the goddamn time.
• 52:32
  But if it's a little side ability that you use from time
• 52:35
  to time, but it's really cool when you get to use it less of a
• 52:38
  problem. It's it's all about that
• 52:40
  delicate tightrope, right? That the perfectly balanced is
• 52:45
  those things should be. OK, Thanos.
• 52:48
  Yeah, but you get them. You know what I'm saying though,
• 52:50
  right? Yeah, no, I do in like this is
• 52:57
  that weird thing where like, yes, you, you definitely.
• 53:02
  Oh, no, please don't start coughing.
• 53:03
  Don't do this. I'm so good.
• 53:05
  It's where you have a better time when it's not tied to core
• 53:10
  mechanics. But I think there's even room
• 53:12
  for that. Like people argue that the the
• 53:16
  Rangers old abilities were mother may eyes and I don't
• 53:18
  think they were because, again, similar to the doing things
• 53:22
  during sunlight. I'm gonna know if we're in my
• 53:25
  favorite terrain. If my favorite train is caves
• 53:27
  and we're in a cave. Yeah, I'm not going to ask.
• 53:30
  I'm just going to assume and roll using my And then like if
• 53:34
  the GM goes, are you rolling with your stuff?
• 53:36
  And I go, yeah. And if they ask me why I go,
• 53:40
  'cause we're in a cave, you know what I mean?
• 53:43
  Like, yeah, yeah. Or if my favorite terrain is
• 53:47
  goblinoids and we're fighting orcs, which I believe are, are
• 53:51
  they're humanoids. But like, if we're fighting
• 53:53
  hobgoblins, I'm just going to go, all right, I'm going to roll
• 53:55
  it, you know? Yeah, same thing with Dragons,
• 53:58
  right? Rolling against cobalt.
• 53:59
  I'm just going to roll it. Well, now, not before, but now.
• 54:05
  Yeah, right. It's, yeah, a lot of the time
• 54:09
  it's, it's clear and it's not a big deal.
• 54:11
  And yes, I'm not saying you can't have it on the core
• 54:14
  mechanic, but I'm saying if it's on a core mechanic, you have to
• 54:17
  be a little delicate, right. There's there's a little more
• 54:19
  wiggle room in terms of it becoming a bit, you know,
• 54:24
  flavorful thing versus annoying. I mean, actually using Fabula
• 54:28
  Ultima again, another great example is the invoker class in
• 54:34
  Fabula Ultima. If if you wanted to look at it
• 54:38
  uncharitably, the invoker class is an entire class based around
• 54:42
  mother. May I right, Because it requires
• 54:46
  you to be near like to perform and perform your invocations,
• 54:54
  which is the classic score mechanic.
• 54:56
  You have to be near a wellspring of that element, right?
• 55:02
  So you could make the argument that that entire class is
• 55:05
  mother. May I?
• 55:06
  Because you constantly have to say to the GM what elements are
• 55:10
  around me. The way that Fabio Ultima kind
• 55:15
  of weaves the tightrope with that particular mechanic is that
• 55:20
  it basically says every single area you are in should fulfill
• 55:27
  one of the invoker's elements. So it's not a question of, you
• 55:33
  know, GM, can I use my ability? It's a question of all right,
• 55:37
  GM, which abilities do I currently have access to?
• 55:40
  Right? It is still a little bit of a
• 55:42
  Mother May on mechanic because maybe you want to use an air
• 55:45
  spell, but there's no air element around you.
• 55:48
  OK, so there's a little bit of a question there, but you're, but
• 55:51
  the GM is never going to say to you, there's no elements for you
• 55:55
  to take from right there. There's you can't.
• 55:57
  They're, they're almost, I mean, I shouldn't say never, but most
• 56:00
  of the time they're never, they're almost never going to
• 56:03
  say you cannot use your invocations.
• 56:07
  And that's where the game walks that little bit of a tightrope.
• 56:12
  So that is an example where yes, it is a core mechanic with a
• 56:17
  little bit of that Mother Maya element, but handled I think
• 56:20
  relatively well. The other way that that class
• 56:24
  handles it too, is that each each element that you can pull
• 56:29
  from. So the what is it?
• 56:34
  Air, fire, lightning, water or no?
• 56:37
  Sorry, it's air, fire, earth, water, lightning I think.
• 56:44
  I think that's what it is. Every single one of the elements
• 56:49
  has a couple of basic abilities that are the same amongst every
• 56:54
  element. So you might not have access to
• 56:57
  fire, so you can't cast the Geoblast ability, but you have
• 57:02
  access to Earth. I'm sorry, you might not.
• 57:04
  You might not have access to fire, so you can't cast the
• 57:07
  Pyroblast ability, but you have access to Earth, so you can cast
• 57:10
  the Geoblast ability. It does the same thing, just
• 57:13
  with a different damage type. So even if you're cut off from
• 57:17
  the one you might have wanted, you still have access to the
• 57:20
  same basic abilities. So no matter what, you're not
• 57:24
  like you're never gonna be in a position where you're useless or
• 57:27
  you just don't have access. You know, you're gonna have
• 57:29
  something. It might not be exactly what you
• 57:31
  want, but you'll have something, and basically what Fabula is
• 57:35
  doing with this particular with the Invoker class is making a
• 57:40
  little bit of a concession and saying it's really cool and
• 57:44
  flavorful to play a Avatar style character where you're pulling
• 57:51
  from the elements around you, right?
• 57:52
  You're playing a water Bender or a fire Bender.
• 57:54
  That's a cool vibe. To make that vibe feel good in
• 57:59
  this game, we have to put a little bit of a mother.
• 58:02
  May I mechanic to it to make it actually hit the fantasy that
• 58:08
  you want right? But at no point we're going to
• 58:14
  try and avoid the problem of you becoming completely useless.
• 58:18
  So you don't say to the GM mother, may I have this element
• 58:22
  and the GM just says no, get fucked right?
• 58:24
  The the game avoided that problem.
• 58:27
  Right. It could have very easily landed
• 58:29
  there and I think if I remember correctly Speaking of Avatar, I
• 58:33
  think Avatar legends also brings this up and basically says fuck
• 58:41
  I. It's been a minute but if I
• 58:43
  remember correctly. Like if you're playing a water
• 58:45
  Bender in that game and there's no water nearby, I think the
• 58:50
  game says that you can kind of assume that the players have
• 58:54
  their element on them in some capacities.
• 58:57
  So like, you know, in Avatar, Katara used to carry water skins
• 59:03
  around so she wouldn't have her full capabilities 'cause there
• 59:07
  wasn't a river nearby, but she could throw out like ice knives
• 59:10
  and basic water whips 'cause she had enough water on her person
• 59:13
  to defend herself, right? And I think the game basically
• 59:16
  says that's how you should handle it.
• 59:19
  And again, that is a little bit floating in that Mother May I'm
• 59:25
  territory because if the water Bender character wants to create
• 59:28
  like a big tidal wave but there's no river nearby, they
• 59:32
  can't do it. But the game is like you should,
• 59:36
  as the GM should assume they have some access to their
• 59:39
  element on them like 95% of the time.
• 59:43
  Like it's a rare circumstance where they won't.
• 59:45
  Well, even then I I would still say that that's not a mother may
• 59:48
  I like. I think as a player you should
• 59:51
  understand. Yeah.
• 59:52
  I'm not near a body of water. I can't do the crazy octopus leg
• 59:56
  thing that fucking Katara does, You know what I mean?
• 59:59
  Yeah, well. I would say.
• 1:00:01
  I can do like, you know, the shit you were talking about, the
• 1:00:04
  ice knives, the the water whips that like basic whip, Yeah,
• 1:00:07
  doing that fucking sick laser disc thing she does like, yeah,
• 1:00:11
  yeah. Stuff that's within reasonable
• 1:00:14
  parameters. Yeah, the reason I say it's
• 1:00:18
  Mother May I is because there's a little bit of an element of
• 1:00:22
  you try to describe your character doing something
• 1:00:25
  fictionally and the GM then goes like, well, you don't quite have
• 1:00:29
  enough water. Like there's a little bit of
• 1:00:31
  that back and forth. So it it teeters into that
• 1:00:34
  mechanical mother May I asking for permission?
• 1:00:37
  But it's not. It's not so egregious that it's
• 1:00:41
  going to be a huge problem. You know what I mean?
• 1:00:43
  I suppose. It goes back to that.
• 1:00:46
  It goes back to the saying about walking that tightrope, right?
• 1:00:49
  As long as you're good about the tightrope, it's not a problem.
• 1:00:52
  If like if Avatar legend said to the player, you know, said to
• 1:00:58
  the players, you always have to ask your GM whether or not you
• 1:01:04
  have access to water or earth, right?
• 1:01:06
  If you're an earth Bender or water Bender, you every time you
• 1:01:09
  engage in a fight, you have to ask your GM.
• 1:01:13
  That would be bad, right? That would be too much.
• 1:01:15
  That would because now you're at the space where you're like, OK,
• 1:01:18
  I literally have to check in permission wise.
• 1:01:21
  Even if logically I know there should be some earth around me,
• 1:01:25
  I still have to ask. That's bad.
• 1:01:27
  But if the game says you can assume you have a little bit of
• 1:01:31
  water on you, or maybe you carry those like stone discs from the
• 1:01:35
  pro bending matches, like maybe you have some of those in your
• 1:01:38
  back pocket. The game says you have something
• 1:01:41
  like that on you. OK, cool.
• 1:01:42
  So I don't need to ask permission.
• 1:01:44
  But if I try to do something big, then I can check in with
• 1:01:47
  the GM. Like that's where you get into
• 1:01:49
  that. It's it's it's weaving that
• 1:01:52
  delicate thread in the middle of in the middle there.
• 1:01:57
  And again, I could see how if somebody doesn't really know the
• 1:02:01
  game very well, they could look at a problem like that in a game
• 1:02:05
  like Avatar Legends and be like, oh, this is AI constantly have
• 1:02:10
  to ask my GM to do anything. That's bullshit, you know?
• 1:02:13
  Like I could understand why someone might get a mad about
• 1:02:16
  that if they don't read carefully enough or or don't
• 1:02:19
  understand, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:20
  Yeah, I guess. I'm not saying, I'm not saying
• 1:02:24
  it's good to be, you know, getting pissy like that, but I
• 1:02:27
  can understand how somebody would.
• 1:02:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll give it to you.
• 1:02:33
  Like again, that's why that's why I keep saying it's, it's
• 1:02:36
  that delicate balance because it is, it is flavorful, right?
• 1:02:44
  Like especially when you're talking about Avatar, like the
• 1:02:47
  the setting of Avatar, you are trying to operate within the
• 1:02:52
  flavor. You're trying to operate within
• 1:02:53
  the vamilieu of the setting. If a water Bender character
• 1:02:58
  could just create a tsunami out of thin air, you're not really
• 1:03:02
  hitting the vibe right? That's going to feel weird,
• 1:03:05
  especially if you're a fan of the series prior to playing the
• 1:03:08
  game, which I would assume most people would be.
• 1:03:12
  That would be weird. So you have to make a degree of
• 1:03:16
  concession to make sure that the vibe feels right.
• 1:03:21
  And that's kind of now actually, since I said that shifting over
• 1:03:26
  to the DND part of this situation, that's what the DND
• 1:03:32
  Ranger was doing that they have sense got rid of, right?
• 1:03:37
  The DND Ranger vibe was we, we want you to feel like you have
• 1:03:44
  this like a special enemy and a special terrain.
• 1:03:48
  And in order to make that vibe feel good, there's a little bit
• 1:03:53
  of an element of asking the GM permission in a sense, because
• 1:03:58
  you might need to double check with the GM, does this count as
• 1:04:01
  my terrain or what kind of terrain are we in?
• 1:04:04
  Right. But it is for the concession of
• 1:04:08
  making the mechanic cooler. 5E has kind of given up on that
• 1:04:15
  these days, and that sucks. Yep.
• 1:04:23
  You know, like So what? What I wrote is 5E has
• 1:04:28
  essentially tried to design this problem out of the game by
• 1:04:33
  removing as many mechanics as possible that require any kind
• 1:04:37
  of heavy GM adjudication to work well.
• 1:04:41
  Class abilities have effectively become as declarative as they
• 1:04:45
  possibly can without room for any debate.
• 1:04:49
  Or if they were, if they were too hard to fix, they've just
• 1:04:52
  been removed. Like the Rangers favorite
• 1:04:55
  terrain just completely removed. The example I gave actually two
• 1:05:00
  from the druid. Funny enough, the druid doesn't
• 1:05:06
  have the bit where it says that druids don't wear metal armor
• 1:05:09
  anymore. They took that out because a lot
• 1:05:13
  of players would basically end up doing this weird back and
• 1:05:17
  forth negotiation with their GM where they're like, oh, so I
• 1:05:22
  can't wear scale armor, but can I say it's made of like bone
• 1:05:26
  armor? And then that counts for the AC
• 1:05:29
  bonus, right? Like, and then you have this
• 1:05:31
  weird mother mayor of like, all right, I can't wear plate mail,
• 1:05:34
  but mother may I wear bug giant bug Kaiten armor.
• 1:05:39
  Can that count? You know the other example with
• 1:05:43
  the druid was the way wild Shape used to work.
• 1:05:47
  I think most people ignored this rule, but technically rules is
• 1:05:51
  written. The way wild shape used to work
• 1:05:53
  was the druid has to have seen the animal to turn into the
• 1:05:58
  animal right? So you can't say I turn into a
• 1:06:02
  whale if the character has never seen a whale.
• 1:06:06
  What this often ended up turning into was the druid player asking
• 1:06:13
  the GM. Oh, I want to turn into an elk
• 1:06:17
  and then the G Ms. like have you seen an elk?
• 1:06:21
  We haven't seen an elk in our game and the Druid care player
• 1:06:24
  goes, Oh, well, can we say I've seen an elk in my past because I
• 1:06:28
  lived in the woods? And then the GM has to decide if
• 1:06:32
  they want to let them do that or not.
• 1:06:33
  That is a classic mother. May I situation right that?
• 1:06:36
  Is, yeah. Mother, Mother, may I turn into
• 1:06:39
  an elk? Let me think about it.
• 1:06:41
  I guess I'll allow it. So to avoid that problem,
• 1:06:48
  because it seems like 5 E is a little bit scared of that
• 1:06:52
  problem question mark, they've just taken out any mechanic that
• 1:06:57
  is even remotely close to that issue.
• 1:07:01
  And as you pointed out, as a with the Ranger situation,
• 1:07:07
  things have gotten a little sauceless because of it.
• 1:07:09
  Yep. Right.
• 1:07:11
  Like we've gotten, I mean, we were talk actually we were kind
• 1:07:16
  of talking about this with the with the artificer, the
• 1:07:18
  reanimator subclass. Right.
• 1:07:21
  Because we were saying we're like, oh, the Reanimator
• 1:07:25
  subclass can summon this walking corpse monster and they don't
• 1:07:30
  have to ask for any kind of permission for the GM.
• 1:07:33
  But it feels really weird because rules is written they
• 1:07:38
  can just make a little zombie guy poof into existence out of
• 1:07:42
  thin air. You know, like it doesn't say
• 1:07:47
  that, oh, you have to collect bodies or get pieces or or buy
• 1:07:52
  components. It doesn't say any of that.
• 1:07:54
  And the reason they did that, I, I think, is because they want to
• 1:07:59
  avoid the situation where the, the artifice or character has to
• 1:08:04
  say to the GM, mother may, may I say that I'm carrying around
• 1:08:10
  pieces of a corpse to summon my reanimated guy.
• 1:08:13
  And then the GM has to decide, right?
• 1:08:16
  So it it did avoid that problem, but it does mean that the
• 1:08:21
  reanimator feels just a little less flavourful than it could.
• 1:08:25
  Yeah, yeah, that is I. Don't know.
• 1:08:32
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know if you can
• 1:08:33
  think of any other examples, but like I feel like there's quite a
• 1:08:35
  few of those floating around. If I I mean.
• 1:08:40
  Just I mean, the biggest one for me is the, you know, revised
• 1:08:50
  divine intervention. Oh yeah.
• 1:08:54
  That's it. Just had such good sauce and
• 1:08:56
  like, yeah, you had to like, yeah, was it a mother?
• 1:08:59
  May I? Yeah, but it was a fucking cool
• 1:09:01
  one and like. Yeah.
• 1:09:04
  The the cool thing about that is that the way by which a thing
• 1:09:09
  happened was up to the GM, but you always got what you asked
• 1:09:14
  for, right, Right. And like, it wasn't like a
• 1:09:18
  monkey's paw thing like most GMs run wish as, which is fucking
• 1:09:21
  annoying, by the way. It was literally like GM, you
• 1:09:26
  know, you're like I, you know, I, I, I ask my God to save us to
• 1:09:31
  like to, to help me restore my allies to their health.
• 1:09:36
  You would hope that Lithander isn't being a Dick with a fucked
• 1:09:40
  up sense of humor today. And if he is, again, just look
• 1:09:46
  at your GM and be like, no, that's dumb.
• 1:09:49
  Why are you doing that? Look, I stand by it.
• 1:09:55
  We're going to put that on a shirt.
• 1:09:56
  It's just going to be just say no like.
• 1:09:59
  Just say no to your GM. Yeah, look, I'm sorry.
• 1:10:02
  I've been AGM for for better part of half a decade.
• 1:10:08
  I have done this as a player. I've just told my GM no.
• 1:10:12
  Now granted you as a player you shouldn't do it Willy nilly.
• 1:10:15
  You shouldn't just fucking be like Nope, not doing that.
• 1:10:17
  There is a level that you need to like give it up to the GM
• 1:10:21
  because they're doing so much work for this game to even
• 1:10:23
  happen. But if they do something that
• 1:10:28
  clearly contradicts and I'll Perfect example, way back in the
• 1:10:34
  way back to the way way back, I played a we were in a session
• 1:10:36
  with Ant. It was me, Brett, Ant and our
• 1:10:38
  and our crew from the first campaign.
• 1:10:41
  And some ooky spooky shit happened.
• 1:10:44
  And the GM was like a cell, which is Ant's character.
• 1:10:48
  He was like roll constitute A roll wisdom randomly.
• 1:10:53
  And it was like, why? It's like to see if you piss
• 1:10:54
  yourself. And he's like, no, I'm not doing
• 1:10:55
  that. And that was look at the end of
• 1:10:59
  the conversation. Yeah.
• 1:11:02
  To see if you piss yourself. Yeah, to see if you like if you
• 1:11:05
  piss your pants out of here. And he just like, Nope, not
• 1:11:07
  doing that. I.
• 1:11:08
  Don't know. What?
• 1:11:10
  I, you know, I, I talked to that, I talked to him about like
• 1:11:13
  that. I talk about that campaign a
• 1:11:14
  lot. And he's like, brother, please,
• 1:11:16
  I'm begging you, don't make me relive it.
• 1:11:18
  Please. Like what?
• 1:11:20
  So you don't want to, you don't want to relive your GM pass.
• 1:11:22
  He's like, no, like frankly, I fucking do not.
• 1:11:25
  He's a fair, he's aware he fucked up.
• 1:11:27
  Yeah, no, look, I I give him shit for it whenever we talk.
• 1:11:29
  It's so fun. I mean, that's it's, it's better
• 1:11:32
  to be, yeah. Yeah, look, I mean, it's quite
• 1:11:37
  hard to. I'm not like you're shit, you
• 1:11:39
  know that, right? I'm like, remember that?
• 1:11:40
  Remember this thing. And I just hear him groan.
• 1:11:43
  Well it's it's better to acknowledge it now and and and
• 1:11:48
  learn from it than just completely ignore it, right?
• 1:11:51
  So yeah, of course is it. I feel like a lot of GM horror
• 1:11:57
  stories would just not happen if players were like no.
• 1:12:01
  It's like, ah yes, the orcs prepared to do the bad thing and
• 1:12:03
  you're like, no. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:06
  I mean, I think for sure that would deter some people.
• 1:12:11
  For sure. Yeah, Fuck damn it, Train of
• 1:12:18
  thought, God damn it. What was I going to say?
• 1:12:23
  5V. Actually, hold on, I got a
• 1:12:24
  question for you. OK, about the wish spell,
• 1:12:28
  because that is that is the biggest mother may I straight up
• 1:12:31
  in the game because it is 95% played as a monkey's paw, which
• 1:12:37
  it very specifically in the rule says is not the case, but
• 1:12:42
  depending on the ridiculousness of the spell it could be.
• 1:12:46
  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a little bit of a Gray area on how much
• 1:12:49
  of A monkey's paw it is, for sure.
• 1:12:51
  And like, I'm not going to lie, if you give your players the
• 1:12:55
  luck blade or whatever, or like access to a gin and this has
• 1:13:01
  happened. This has happened in a game I
• 1:13:02
  was in where one of the wishes got instantly monkey's pawed and
• 1:13:06
  we're like, OK, we're never going to use this item again.
• 1:13:09
  We're just not going to do it. And the GM was like, well, you
• 1:13:11
  guys are in a tough spot. You could use the thing.
• 1:13:13
  And we're like, no, because why would we?
• 1:13:18
  Because he like, you know, I remember, God, I don't even
• 1:13:21
  remember what game. I think it was a one shot or
• 1:13:23
  something. It was like a mini campaign.
• 1:13:25
  Wait, what was the question though?
• 1:13:26
  Wait a minute. Oh, which is like what do you
• 1:13:28
  think about it? Like do you think the amount
• 1:13:30
  that it's monkey's pot is bullshit?
• 1:13:32
  Do you like just general thoughts on the wish spell in
• 1:13:34
  terms of it being a mother? May I And why do you think it is
• 1:13:38
  so much? I think it yeah, it definitely
• 1:13:41
  is a mother may I mechanic. I think the reason it is is
• 1:13:44
  because if you want to get a really cool effect like that,
• 1:13:49
  you're gonna you have to have some agreement with your GM for
• 1:13:54
  the cool effect to work. You know, like you can't, you
• 1:13:59
  can't expect to have something as crazy as the wish spell
• 1:14:05
  without a little bit of a negotiation back and forth.
• 1:14:07
  So there has to be that permission asking element,
• 1:14:11
  because at the end of the day, if there wasn't that element of
• 1:14:15
  the mother, may I to it, then players could just turn the
• 1:14:19
  campaign off at any moment. And sure, in the moment that
• 1:14:25
  sounds like a really fun idea, like I just made the campaign
• 1:14:28
  stop. But you know what happens after
• 1:14:31
  that, bud? Cool.
• 1:14:32
  You don't get to play fucking DND anymore, bud.
• 1:14:35
  Good job. No, true.
• 1:14:36
  Like the game's over, you know? Here's the thing.
• 1:14:38
  Yeah. So there has to be an element of
• 1:14:41
  of asking that permission. You can't.
• 1:14:43
  Absolutely does. Like I'm not saying that the
• 1:14:47
  wish spell should be free, you know, free 99.
• 1:14:49
  Just do whatever you want, but I I take umbrage with the amount
• 1:14:54
  that the wish spell is used to fuck people over despite how
• 1:14:57
  rare it is and how difficult it is to get access.
• 1:15:00
  To I think that is another symptom of unconfident or
• 1:15:05
  unexperienced DMS panicking a little bit and going straight
• 1:15:10
  for the monkey's paw answer because they don't see, They
• 1:15:16
  feel like they've been backed into a corner and their only way
• 1:15:19
  out is the monkey's paw answer. You know what I mean?
• 1:15:22
  No, see I disagree with you because I know several GMs who
• 1:15:25
  hand the wish spell out and they're like, you're going to
• 1:15:28
  use it. You're going to do it because
• 1:15:31
  they enjoy the like watching the players struggle for 30 real
• 1:15:35
  time minutes as they try to construct the perfect argument
• 1:15:38
  for their wish if, which is so fucking annoying.
• 1:15:43
  OK, if you're explicitly handing the players the wish spell to
• 1:15:50
  then monkey's pot on purpose, that's a Dick move.
• 1:15:54
  Like that's unnecessary because in that scenario, just don't
• 1:15:59
  give them the fucking wish spell.
• 1:16:00
  Like that's just being mean a little bit.
• 1:16:03
  Because if you're doing that, essentially what you're saying
• 1:16:09
  is like, here's this nice toy, it's going to be a real shame
• 1:16:12
  when I take it away from you. You know, like or take your
• 1:16:15
  other toys away for even looking at this toy.
• 1:16:18
  Yeah, it'd be like, all right, should I do the sex analogy or
• 1:16:25
  no? I I've already said something
• 1:16:30
  completely out of pockets the way that most people play this
• 1:16:32
  game, so you might as well. OK, it'd be like if you you have
• 1:16:37
  to chat with your partner and you decide to get a little more
• 1:16:41
  adventurous than usual and you know that that you're
• 1:16:45
  restrained, you're tied up, the toys have been brought out.
• 1:16:49
  And then they decide at the very last minute, I'm a go, I'm a go
• 1:16:53
  make dinner and eat. You could just hang out here.
• 1:16:57
  You know, like it's that kind of like if you're explicitly going
• 1:17:01
  through all of the work to hand your players the wish spell to
• 1:17:05
  then just Dick tease them and take it away, Like that's pretty
• 1:17:09
  fucked up, you know what I mean? Yes.
• 1:17:15
  So yeah, if that's your goal or or if that's if that's what's
• 1:17:18
  happening, you cut that shit out.
• 1:17:22
  If it is a symptom of you gave the players A wish spell because
• 1:17:26
  you thought it would be cool and then they used it and then you
• 1:17:28
  panicked because you didn't know how to handle it, I give you a
• 1:17:31
  little more leeway in that situation because I understand
• 1:17:34
  why you might stress out. Right.
• 1:17:37
  Especially if you know, so like for example, if you usually play
• 1:17:44
  for a four hour session and then the players use the wish spell
• 1:17:48
  at the 2 hour mark and then whatever they do with the wish
• 1:17:52
  spell completely up ends everything that was going on.
• 1:17:55
  Then you as the GM freak out because you're like, what do I
• 1:17:58
  do? We still have two more hours in
• 1:18:00
  the session and an inexperienced GM is gonna go for the monkey's
• 1:18:05
  paw to shut down what the players are doing so they can
• 1:18:08
  keep the session rolling. And experienced GM is gonna go,
• 1:18:11
  OK, you could do that. But just so we're just so you're
• 1:18:15
  clear, we're done for tonight because now I have to figure out
• 1:18:20
  what's gonna go on next week and I'm gonna need time to think
• 1:18:22
  about that. So the session tonight's ending
• 1:18:25
  early if you do that. You know what I mean?
• 1:18:27
  I am absolutely equal opportunity.
• 1:18:29
  If your players do some fuck shittery and you're like, I'm
• 1:18:32
  not running this right now, not doing it.
• 1:18:34
  Yeah, I think you're 100%. And you're right.
• 1:18:37
  If your player's like, yeah, we're going to the Astroplane
• 1:18:39
  now. Bye.
• 1:18:40
  Right. If they do the great joke, yeah.
• 1:18:42
  If I was mad, I'd be like, no. Like no, they could do it, but
• 1:18:48
  session's over now. Right, that's what I mean.
• 1:18:49
  You can do it. I gotta figure this out.
• 1:18:51
  We're done for the day 'cause I don't even know where to begin
• 1:18:55
  with that adventure. Yeah, what am I supposed to do
• 1:18:58
  now? You know, Like that's crazy.
• 1:19:01
  So that's, that's another one of those things the experienced GM
• 1:19:06
  is willing to the the experienced GM is willing to, in
• 1:19:11
  that situation, say, OK, here's the rules though.
• 1:19:15
  Here's the deal. The inexperienced GM panics and
• 1:19:19
  so tries to keep things going out of this like obligatory
• 1:19:23
  sense of we have to or whatever. And you never have to, you know,
• 1:19:29
  you feel like literally never. So yeah, it's all it's a lot of
• 1:19:35
  it comes down to being comfortable experience.
• 1:19:38
  But again, yes, if you're literally handing out the wish
• 1:19:41
  bell so you can just take a shit on their chest afterward, like
• 1:19:44
  fucking cut that out. Stop that Dick move.
• 1:19:49
  Yeah, it's dude. It just sucks.
• 1:19:50
  It just like blows. I've never heard of that
• 1:19:54
  specific. Scenario.
• 1:19:55
  So yeah. In a separate campaign, I was
• 1:19:58
  offered the wish. The one that went nuclear, I was
• 1:20:00
  offered the wish spell. I was like, Nope, because I've
• 1:20:04
  just been traumatized to be like that's, that's literally Mad
• 1:20:07
  Max. That's bait.
• 1:20:08
  That's bait. Yeah.
• 1:20:10
  Yep, Yep. Oh, I get it.
• 1:20:14
  And again, that's that that is an example of where the the
• 1:20:20
  mother may I power that the GM has is just being completely
• 1:20:27
  abused. And then by abusing it, you have
• 1:20:31
  now pushed over the threshold. You've gone to the far end of
• 1:20:36
  the spectrum and pushed over to the threshold of.
• 1:20:41
  Now you're just actively ruining like the fun, as it were.
• 1:20:45
  Yeah. And that's why I say it's a
• 1:20:48
  spectrum, right, Because the wish spell it you're, you're
• 1:20:53
  right in that it is the ultimate mother.
• 1:20:55
  May I in that you have to, there's no way to use that
• 1:21:00
  ability without having that negotiation with the GM.
• 1:21:05
  But once you let it off, it goes off.
• 1:21:10
  The player uses it. You as the GM.
• 1:21:14
  Now you're sitting in the middle.
• 1:21:17
  You perfectly as soon as the spell goes off, you as the GM
• 1:21:20
  land perfectly in the middle of the spectrum.
• 1:21:23
  On the left is let the players do whatever the fuck they want,
• 1:21:27
  I don't care. On the right is I'm going to go
• 1:21:29
  out of my way to make sure that I stop them at every turn and
• 1:21:32
  monkey paws the shit out of them.
• 1:21:34
  When the spell is cast, you're in the middle.
• 1:21:37
  By the end of the negotiation, you want to stay as close to
• 1:21:40
  that middle point, that middle part of the spectrum, as you
• 1:21:43
  possibly can. Because if you could stay in
• 1:21:47
  that middle zone where the player gets their part of the
• 1:21:50
  argument and you get your part of the argument, then
• 1:21:52
  everybody's happy. If you tilt 1-2 too far to one
• 1:21:57
  end or the other, that's where things get out of whack.
• 1:22:00
  And that's why I think that's why I say it's a spectrum.
• 1:22:06
  Yeah, I agree. It's always in degrees.
• 1:22:13
  No, I mean, I, I totally, yeah, I, I'm there with you because
• 1:22:15
  like, if you as the players are like, can we just not fight the
• 1:22:20
  final bad guy with a wish spell? And you're like, no, because I
• 1:22:25
  put 20 plus hours in this encounter.
• 1:22:28
  I'm going to say, and you as the GM have a right to say that a
• 1:22:30
  wish spell just doesn't work. But you also have the
• 1:22:35
  responsibility to say, I'm going to tell you that that doesn't
• 1:22:38
  work, but I'm not going to make you waste the spell, so think of
• 1:22:42
  something else. Right, this, that's where you go
• 1:22:45
  into the the the yes and or the no but scenario, right?
• 1:22:49
  That's what that is. Yeah.
• 1:22:53
  And just as a as a final curiosity, I think I know the
• 1:22:57
  answer to this, but as a curiosity, do you feel like DND
• 1:23:01
  in particular like talking about 5 E has overcorrected on this
• 1:23:05
  problem? Absolutely.
• 1:23:07
  Not even a fucking hesitation, Yeah.
• 1:23:09
  Yeah, OK. Yeah, that's.
• 1:23:11
  How they are afraid of this mystical boogeyman that barely
• 1:23:16
  existed in 5 E 2014. It it it literally barely
• 1:23:22
  existed. I can only think of druid, the
• 1:23:26
  wish spell, divine intervention, and a couple spells like a
• 1:23:30
  legend, lore or find the path which are still in the game.
• 1:23:35
  Which are? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:38
  Like my my frustration is with D&D always is that I like to
• 1:23:44
  consider myself a pretty ever tempered person.
• 1:23:47
  I think I can see most perspectives and half the time I
• 1:23:50
  just don't get it. With Fivey, I don't get the
• 1:23:53
  thought process. I honestly think, God, I wish I
• 1:24:03
  could remember who said it, But remember that thing that we
• 1:24:06
  heard a little while ago where D&D someone on the D&D design
• 1:24:10
  team was like, we don't design for assholes.
• 1:24:13
  I think that was Perkins. It might have been.
• 1:24:16
  It was either Perkins or Draw Car.
• 1:24:17
  It was one of them. It might have been Merles,
• 1:24:20
  actually. Oh, it might have been Mike
• 1:24:23
  Merles. I'm not sure.
• 1:24:24
  I don't know. But The thing is, is like that
• 1:24:30
  idea we don't design for assholes, it feels like they
• 1:24:33
  are. They are these days.
• 1:24:37
  Actively designing for assholes. Yeah, they're like capitulating
• 1:24:40
  too much to the assholes. Yeah, like for the sake of
• 1:24:45
  trying to avoid the assholes. It feels like they are trying to
• 1:24:51
  design the problem of assholes out of the game, which is like
• 1:24:55
  ultimately impossible. It's it's fucking it's, it's
• 1:24:57
  just a test of insanity. But also they're manifesting
• 1:25:00
  boogeymen based on like Reddit. They're like creating the
• 1:25:04
  problem, yeah. And like don't get me wrong,
• 1:25:08
  those people fucking exist but that is a community issue not a
• 1:25:12
  game design issue. That is up to us as the players
• 1:25:15
  and game masters to check that shit with a 12 gauge.
• 1:25:20
  If you see the weird, like, you know, hey, yo, no, look, if you
• 1:25:24
  see people doing the weird thing with the orcs or goblins or
• 1:25:27
  whatever, right, They're pulling a goblins layer.
• 1:25:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're AGM, you go abso
• 1:25:32
  fucking lutely not, no Sir, right?
• 1:25:34
  And if you're another player, you stick up for that player and
• 1:25:37
  go, no, go away, you weirdo band, you know what I mean?
• 1:25:43
  Yeah, yeah. No, it, it really is.
• 1:25:46
  It really is manifesting your IT.
• 1:25:49
  It's like they're creating more boogeymen by trying to avoid the
• 1:25:52
  boogeymen like they're making it.
• 1:25:56
  It's almost like the the problem is getting pushed to the
• 1:26:00
  surface, even more so by trying to tamp the problem down.
• 1:26:04
  Right. They, they have sort of they've
• 1:26:06
  blown those the, the, the straw man's head off and went, wait,
• 1:26:09
  there's more. And then someone goes, no,
• 1:26:10
  there's not. And then they built another one,
• 1:26:12
  went there it is right there, and they blew it's head off
• 1:26:14
  like. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:16
  It's like they're creating both the problem and the solution at
• 1:26:19
  the same time or something. Yeah.
• 1:26:23
  All right. Yeah.
• 1:26:24
  I mean, that's how. Yeah, that that's pretty much
• 1:26:25
  how I was feeling too. I was just.
• 1:26:27
  I was curious if you were on the same page.
• 1:26:31
  Yeah, Yeah, 'cause you really you.
• 1:26:34
  Yeah. You can't design for assholes
• 1:26:36
  like you. It's.
• 1:26:39
  Do you know what it is too? The reason why I agree is
• 1:26:41
  because I have branched out of D&D so much and I find the
• 1:26:46
  conversation stuff fun. Right.
• 1:26:50
  Yeah, yeah. It's interesting and it like a
• 1:26:52
  little. Bit of that negotiation can be
• 1:26:54
  fun, yeah. Yeah, like the use of fabulous
• 1:26:56
  points is fun. And there there has been a time
• 1:26:58
  where you've even been like, Nah, I'm sorry, man, Fabulous is
• 1:27:00
  not going to cover that. I'm like, alright, fuck it.
• 1:27:02
  Yeah. And.
• 1:27:04
  If you. If you again, if you take that
• 1:27:09
  mother may I spectrum and try your best to teeter in the
• 1:27:14
  middle of it as much as possible, then it's generally
• 1:27:18
  not a. Problem like do you know what it
• 1:27:20
  is genuinely? OK with it.
• 1:27:22
  Sorry I. Didn't mean to cut you off.
• 1:27:24
  What were you? Saying no, no, no, that that's
• 1:27:26
  all. That was the end of the
• 1:27:27
  sentence. No.
• 1:27:27
  So you know what it is, genuinely.
• 1:27:29
  You talked about this, I think either last episode or the
• 1:27:32
  episode before. When you play other games, you
• 1:27:35
  realize that you as a player have way more agency than you do
• 1:27:40
  in DND. Yes, you get to you get to
• 1:27:44
  dictate so much about your stuff in other games that the places
• 1:27:49
  where you have to negotiate don't feel like what you're
• 1:27:52
  taking my only thing away. Please.
• 1:27:55
  May I have some more? It's like, all right, well, you
• 1:27:58
  know, like Goro's ability with the the protect counter attack.
• 1:28:04
  You don't really have a say in that.
• 1:28:05
  I just do it. I'm like, I'm just going to I'm
• 1:28:06
  going to protect the attack missed anyway.
• 1:28:08
  Even rumbers I counter attack, which has effectively helped me
• 1:28:13
  save Senna how many fucking times and Irena how many fucking
• 1:28:17
  times? A lot.
• 1:28:20
  So when I go, OK, I want to chase down the Baron and you're
• 1:28:22
  like, I'm sorry, dude, Ultima points going to outrule that.
• 1:28:25
  I'm like, all right, fuck it, I've done what I wanted to do.
• 1:28:29
  It, it Yeah, it's, yeah. It's like DND has become so
• 1:28:37
  afraid of this problem. And, and maybe I I I would argue
• 1:28:42
  maybe DN DS always been afraid of this problem a little bit to
• 1:28:45
  a well, maybe not in like first edition, but I feel like since
• 1:28:47
  3rd edition it's been afraid of this problem.
• 1:28:49
  I don't know. So I haven't read 4th edition
• 1:28:52
  but 4th edition has so many powers that just say yeah you do
• 1:28:55
  a cool thing. It it seemed like 4th edition
• 1:28:58
  didn't just didn't give a fuck. Well, so 4th edition, a lot of
• 1:29:02
  people have said that the thing that's kind of interesting about
• 1:29:06
  fourth edition is 4th edition is so tightly designed that 4th
• 1:29:10
  edition can basically play itself without AGM.
• 1:29:15
  Interesting because the particular when you're talking
• 1:29:19
  about combat, because the the balance of powers versus enemy
• 1:29:25
  abilities versus enemy types and the stuff that they can do and
• 1:29:29
  the order of operations and how you use their abilities is so
• 1:29:34
  tight that you there's like almost 0 mother may I involved
• 1:29:41
  at all? But what did what was a lot of
• 1:29:46
  people's criticism of 4th edition, it felt too much like
• 1:29:49
  an MMO, too much like a video game.
• 1:29:51
  Because obviously a video game by design has to have 0 mother
• 1:29:57
  may I? Because you can only do what
• 1:30:00
  designers allow you. Or I guess depending on how you
• 1:30:03
  phrase it, it's 100% mother, May I?
• 1:30:05
  Depending on how you look at it. But the point is, a video game
• 1:30:08
  has to be on the far end of the spectrum because there is no
• 1:30:11
  negotiating with the code of the game, right?
• 1:30:15
  And 4th edition, a lot of people said felt too video gamey in its
• 1:30:21
  design. Tell that to and says the game.
• 1:30:24
  Well, yeah, you. Know no you cannot teleport best
• 1:30:28
  I can to wooden plate in a corner of a wall.
• 1:30:32
  You know what I mean though, I do.
• 1:30:34
  I do. So it's like, yeah, when you
• 1:30:38
  push so far in the other direction where you try and
• 1:30:40
  avoid the mother may IA 100% you get 4th edition, which again has
• 1:30:44
  really cool elements about it. But people said, why is it so
• 1:30:48
  video gamey? You know, so you have to, again,
• 1:30:54
  don't design for assholes and accept that idea into your heart
• 1:30:59
  a little bit to a certain degree and just try your best to sort
• 1:31:03
  of walk that tightrope between you have to ask for permission
• 1:31:07
  or and you could do the cool thing, you know?
• 1:31:11
  So you know what's funny? I'm going to bring up a Dune
• 1:31:13
  reference. We talked about people being
• 1:31:16
  assholes in the PvP at the end game right?
• 1:31:20
  And one of the things I read 1 server has just enacted a full
• 1:31:25
  like policing system where the high the strongest Guild they're
• 1:31:31
  called they they the person. The OP separated them into
• 1:31:35
  lions, hyenas and vultures. So vultures are like small
• 1:31:39
  guilds or you and me like just going out to get some spice.
• 1:31:42
  Vultures are the are the the hyenas are like the smaller to
• 1:31:46
  medium sized guilds who a pick on the smallest people and the,
• 1:31:52
  you know, the biggest guilds are called the lions.
• 1:31:54
  And some, and one of his point talking points was like, if
• 1:31:58
  you're a vulture, get prepared to get ganged.
• 1:32:00
  It's going to happen a lot. But if you're a pack of hyenas
• 1:32:04
  and you start griefing people like relentlessly, the lions are
• 1:32:07
  going to come down on you and they're going to make, they're
• 1:32:10
  just going to ruin your time until you quit the server.
• 1:32:13
  That's just how it's going to be.
• 1:32:16
  And I was like, yeah, I mean, that is Funcom.
• 1:32:19
  And to be fair, they need to do, they need to, you know, fix
• 1:32:22
  their shit? Absolutely.
• 1:32:23
  But to some point, the community is taking care of the problem in
• 1:32:27
  its own weird little fucked up way.
• 1:32:29
  But it is trying. Right.
• 1:32:31
  Yeah. And some of that I think is what
• 1:32:35
  Funcom wanted to a degree. You know, like, I think they do
• 1:32:38
  want a little bit of that element of big Guild sort of
• 1:32:41
  policing the situation. I I do think that was what they
• 1:32:45
  want to a point. The problem is, you know, it's
• 1:32:49
  hard to facilitate, facilitate that like on every server and
• 1:32:52
  stuff. So it's a right, again, a
• 1:32:55
  delicate balance. But yeah, it, it is, it is kind
• 1:33:00
  of a similar thing. The GM is the lion, always.
• 1:33:05
  And. Yeah, they have to walk that
• 1:33:10
  tightrope. Or I guess, I guess the GM and
• 1:33:14
  the game in tandem with each other are the lion in this
• 1:33:18
  example. Probably a better way to put it.
• 1:33:21
  Yeah. But yeah, it is.
• 1:33:26
  It is disappointing to see D&D be so afraid of this problem,
• 1:33:34
  particularly because DND is the you know, the what's the word
• 1:33:43
  I'm looking for? Like the flagship game, you
• 1:33:49
  know? Yeah, it's the Titan of
• 1:33:51
  industry. Yeah, it's the yeah, It's the
• 1:33:53
  Titan of the industry. It's the main flagship thing.
• 1:33:55
  So it's yeah, it's a little. It's a little to see them again,
• 1:34:08
  to to see them designed for assholes.
• 1:34:09
  That's really what. Yeah, it's it's literally.
• 1:34:11
  What they did, yeah, they designed for assholes.
• 1:34:13
  They designed against assholes. Afraid of the assholes?
• 1:34:16
  And to a similar degree designed against asshole players like.
• 1:34:21
  Yeah. It's very frustrating.
• 1:34:26
  Yeah. But you know, we'll see.
• 1:34:29
  DND is kind of in an interesting spot right now because it's a
• 1:34:33
  lot of fresh blood is going to probably be coming in.
• 1:34:37
  Likely, yeah. The the a lot of The Maine big
• 1:34:40
  boys have left the scene, so we'll see what happens.
• 1:34:44
  Should be interesting. But also, I've got my eyes on
• 1:34:47
  Darrington Press now that Jacra and Perkins are over there,
• 1:34:49
  because I'm very curious to see what the hell they're actually
• 1:34:51
  going to do over there. That is wild, yeah.
• 1:34:55
  Like what? What is their job going to be?
• 1:34:58
  You know we don't know. I'm really fascinated to find
• 1:35:01
  out. Yeah, All right.
• 1:35:06
  Well, Taz. Taz been us.
• 1:35:10
  Taz been us. Taz.
• 1:35:11
  I'm making up words. Has been us.
• 1:35:17
  What? The episode's over.
• 1:35:19
  That's what I'm trying to say. OK.
• 1:35:25
  Bud, the episode is over, and if you made it all the way to the
• 1:35:30
  end, give us the old follow on the social medias down in the
• 1:35:34
  description. Should know, yeah.
• 1:35:37
  Should know, yeah. Always eat your vegetables,
• 1:35:42
  kids. You like tomatoes?
• 1:35:47
  I like all vegetables. My you know, my stepmom really
• 1:35:52
  likes the the like Korean style fried cauliflower with the
• 1:35:56
  gochujang sauce and that shit is.
• 1:35:58
  Not bad, not bad. Oh it.
• 1:36:00
  Slaps so hard dude there's literally there's some in the
• 1:36:03
  fridge. I'm going to go eat it right
• 1:36:05
  now. OK, you do that.
• 1:36:08
  I'm I'm going to hit the button now.
• 1:36:10
  Not right.