Mother May I Gaming

I'm not sure who coined the term 'Mother May I Gaming', but I've always considered it a apt one to describe what these days seem to be a very common type of play- one that removes objective information from the game and along with it the ability of the players to make decisions based upon that information. With respect to RPGs, the concept is at most basic an appeal to authority to grant something that the player by any normal gaming approach should be able to do for himself- but isn't allowed to. Or to do something the player isn't allowed to, but wants to anyway.

Time for some examples.

Example 1

Let's take a very common one from way back, AD&D (and 3.x) gave ranges for its spell effects right in the player guide- and thus would be information one would think the player could act upon. The rules also detailed movement rates. The traditional and objective method for keeping track of and using such details is a grid with miniatures although drawn maps and/or other types of markers could be (and often were) used. The important point is the that player using the information in the player's guide, the playing grid and the starting setup provided by the GM could completely and without the GM's input or permission determine if he was in spell range or not, he could also determine the effect from his movement on his own. And he could also predict (and thus take into account) the movement options of others (assuming he knew how fast they moved). That is, he had the tools to make tactical decisions on his own, one up to date with each passing action.

The GM has no input, other than making sure the player are using the rules correctly. A good section of the game was actually out of the GM's control and passed to the player.

However many GM's refuse to use a grid and miniatures, and instead just 'mentally keep track' of everything in his own head. In this case the player is forced to constantly ask the GM for information he should already have, such as "Am I within Magic Missile Range?".

This is Mother May I. It removes the player's access to direct information and the ability to act independently upon it- instead turning the game into one of asking the GM if this or that can be done. A GM that I might add that really isn't keeping a good objective model of what's really going on himself but is instead just estimating everything. There is no real certainity he's correct or even close in his decisions (except in the most simple cases- basically two dimensional hallway fights) and indeed it's highly likely he's inaccurate on the scale of the game as presented by the rules.

In general, the more rules are ignored (or not present) and the more objective information is moved to the GM instead of being displayed to the player, the greater the degree of Mother May I we see.

Example 2

Many GM's don't feel themselves limited by the rules, and make up new ones on the fly sometimes due to a player's request. For example in a game system too abstract to consider (i.e it doesn't have rules for) throwing dirt your opponents eyes, the GM will suddenly allow just that at the player's request.

Not only is this basically breaking the rules of the game (can you imagine an on the fly call at the Superbowel allowing a team to score a touchdown by first throwing the ball to a fan who then throws it to player?), it also makes the tactical situation on the board unpredicatable as in-game reality itself changes from moment to moment. Tactics isn't making stuff up, it's predicting the actions of your foe and taking the best option in response. When completely new actions can suddenly be created- prediction becomes impossible and tactics worthless.

Instead victory is to be had by finding a new method the GM will agree to. Again Mother May I.


Some groups are good with Mother May I, and games based around the concept are certainly easy to design or use- being but one step removed from children games such as Cops and Robbers. I however find it rather pointless, if I can't have objective information to act upon as a player- I have no desire to play. Watching a movie or a TV show gives me nearly the same degree of control, and are more fun besides.

Star Trek Online- the Weakness of MMORPGs

I actually rather like the MMORPG Star Trek Online, however a cute sig on one of the forum posts reminded me of one of the game's failings. That being the lack of a Tier 5 (i.e the top level of ships in the game) Constitution class ship (either original or movie refit). There are many player who say such a thing would ruin their immersion in the game because according to 'canon' the design wasn't in use in the time frame the game is set in it.


Quoting the sig by thecosmic1:

"STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game."

A perfect summary of the current state of the game. About the only thing I'd add is the fact that it already includes a Tier 5 Original Show Klingon D7 and the T5 Andorian ship from the show Enterprise (set almost a hundred years before the the original show).

The worst thing about anything (MMORPGs, PnP RPG, etc) are the other players. No matter what, there's  a vocal group who hate whatever is done.

Which is why I think games are best at the small group level where they can control what is and is not accepted between themselves. For myself, this is the real joy of PnP RPGs over MMORPGs, one owns and controls system and setting. It's the one place you don't have to put up with the greater stupidity of the world and can do your own thing.
  Note: There is same claim that the reason for the game lacking a T5 Constitution is that CBS (they owns the IP) will not allow it. I don't know how accurate that statement is.

Can These Really be Called Campaigns?

I wish another company would release marketing information like WotC did back in the day. I imagine that they thought people would take their new version of D&D more seriously if they showed how seriously they were looking at their possible customers. Companies still do this sort of thing, but they keep the results close and don't talk about them in public.

So until one does, one is left with data that's more than a decade old. A lot can change in a decade. Even so, one of the most interesting things in the old WotC release was average time for a campaign reset (i.e. everyone rolls new characters and a new campaign is started).

Players who have gamed longer than five years have the longest campaigns, but they're only 19.6 sessions. And they play *a lot*, an average of 5.9 games per month. So basically a campaign lasts all of 3 months.

This is one of the things that make me feel greatly out of step with the typical gamer. My shortest campaigns tend to be at least 2 years long, but I play around twice a month. Even with the lower frequency, that's still almost five times as long as the average. And I often return to a previous campaign adding a another few years to the same setting and characters.

For myself, that fast turnover would turn me off the hobby. It's takes me that 19.6 sessions just to get a good investment going.

But beyond my reaction there is another interesting question, knowing those values- what kind of game would you design to meet them?

I'm not sure I would have gone the path of 3.x, for such a short experience why use a complex character generation? My first reaction would be that the characters were expendable and short lived. Thus they should be easy to create, and just as fast to get rid of.

Instead WotC went with a very detailed character generation, and they might have been right- assuming that many groups didn't start over with 1st level characters but started at higher level. A major part of the game in that case would be generating the character, testing it for a while, and then trying something new.

It does however seem to explain why they wanted to farm out adventure modules. It would take too much to keep up with that frequency of play and campaign turnover. They needed third parties to keep up.

I'd love to see what the current numbers are after the balkanization of the hobby between 4th edition, 3e edition clones, OSR clones, and the also ran games out there. My guess is that the session number has declined on average.

Do Settings need Custom Systems?

It was a long standing 'common wisdom' (i.e. not really common, but still accepted by a good number of people) that universal rules such as HERO or GURPS did not serve a setting as well as a set of rules designed specifically for it.

Like many things online, few if any actually backed up this assertion with real examples, and when they did- they often were little more than Chrome style rules and had little to do with the core mechanics themselves. As a result I was always doubtful and I think the passage of time has basically disproved the concept.

Let's talk about a few often quoted examples.

Let's take Call of Cthulhu. This one was a bad example out of the gate as the original system was that from the earlier game (by three years) Runequest which was about fantasy adventure- not 1920s dark investigations. It did introduce the insanity tracking mechanic- but that was just a bit of Chrome easily added to any game. And the monsters were powerful, but that was just powerful monsters. Rules wise, there's really little there really related to the setting and there have been a number of very successful conversions to other game systems including (in the judgement of some people) D20.

The original Deadlands is a better example, sort of. Here you have the use of playing cards and poker chips, which reflects... well a bit of the Old West if your version of the Old West happens the Old TV show Maverick. Actually, it doesn't provide much of even that to be honest. Beyond the cards and the chips, it's just a handful of dice game paired with a magic system offering a high fumble rate. We can see how important all the system flavor was when it was dropped in the newer editions of the game for a universal system with some setting related Chrome.

All in all, I'm at a loss to point out a real example where the rules really reflect and invoke the setting. The actually work is done by setting fluff, renaming common concepts and using them, constructing NPCs to the proper power level, or a bit of Chrome here and there. I'll be interested if anyone can point out a true example.

Thus I've sided with the Universal Systems that I can learn once, take off the shelf and add a bit to. The final result is every bit as good as anything a custom rule set has ever offered- but with additional expandability built right in.

Game Design by Exception

Many RPGs work in a somewhat confused way- they have a small set of core mechanical rules that are applied generally, and then a whole bunch of exceptions to those rules.This is a long standing tradition in RPGs dating back to original D&D and before that to wargames where you had the basic mechanics of the game and then 'Chrome' rules added on top for flavor.

In the days of wargames, designers were careful to keep the amount of Chrome limited. Chrome was to be little highlights to make the core more interesting, i.e. basically the same purpose chrome on a car design served (and hence the name). It wasn't suppose to be key to the game,as the game was to fun and involving itself. The law was simple: Thou shall not use Chrome to support function.

RPGs changed this, basically making Chrome the game itself. Some of this is unavoidable, if you're to have a extensive list of spells for example (as opposed to a spell design system) you end up with more pages describing that 'Chrome' than you do core mechanics. Besides, the very birth of D&D was in Chrome added to the end of a wargame (Chainmail by many accounts).

D&D however took things much farther, with individual rules for individual classes. And then things got worse with various skill or weapon packages that modified things even further. And then on to Feats. As of today, the list of exceptions far outweigh both in number and importance any core values such as stats or basic resolution mechanics.

The reason for this is rather simple, the basic game is... boring. Always has been. So lacking any real interest in themselves, the rules needed Chrome to inspire at all. And over time, it just plied higher and deeper.  It becomes increasing difficult to know how any combination of Chrome will react to another combination. Both the GM and Players ability to judge and thus control results are degraded.

Attempts to avoid this include the OSR method of burying one's head in the sand, i.e. go back to an old edition (with less Chrome) and spend as little time as possible in combat because it's now boring. I suppose a victory dance of some type helps one deal with this self-defeating option.

Another example of this type of design can be found in the 40K RPG products like Only War and Dark Heresey. Limited to a closed ended d100 system, things are only vaguely interesting when effective chances for success hover around the middle of the random number span- say 30-70 percent chances.

This results in a game that represents the mighty genetically enhanced superhuman Space Marines with stats only 10 points higher than normal men... so maybe a base 58% to hit instead of 48%. The mind is underwhelmed by such power. Instead it's 'Talents" (i.e. special abilities, i.e. Chrome) that's suppose to make up the difference. There are more Talents in the game than all the core rules (stats and skills) combined. And once again, the core rules are by themselves, rather boring to play.

I believe that Design by Exception is by its nature poor design. Instead the core mechanics themselves should scale from the lowest creature to the mightiest. Chrome should be just that, little things that makes those core mechanics pop just a bit more, not be something that buries them.

To pull this off those core mechanics need to be interesting of and by themselves. A fact that is basically impossible individually, but quite obtainable in combination. Consider the individual chess pieces, by themselves their movement rules are simple and boring, but in combination against the board the result is vastly more engaging.

I don't see any modern designer attempting such outcomes. Raised on endless D&D editions, they are only recycling failed concepts while wondering why their market is shrinking. They have only themselves to blame.