Never understood the "mother may I?" analogy. Players describe what theyre doing, I apply or invent rules as needed. Theres no discernable difference in application to a game where the GM is strictly following a rules-set, except maybe that players arent limited to options pre-anticipated by a system.

But I guess thats all part of the "every GM is a bad GM but for the constraint of a system keeping them in thier place" mindset.

Quote from: Mistwell;723275I have no fear of debating law professors, as I did it for years, and three of my friends are professors.  As for socialist, that makes him naive (and my brother is a socialist professor).  But, all that does explain the didactic, authoritarian, and theory-over-practice based rhetoric he's fond of.  He's always struck me as someone who reads RPG theory a heck of a lot more than he actually plays RPGs, and him being a socialist professor just reinforces that perception.

That doesn't sound like Pemerton to me - he often talks about his 4e campaign that he is actually running, and how he applies Forgisms to it. I get more from his discussiond than I ever did from Edwards & co.
I hate Socialism, the most evil ideology in world history, both the Nationalist & Internationalist versions (I guess Aztec sun worship was pretty bad, too). I get to sit in staff seminars while socialist fellow law professors declare the need to strip us of whatever vestigial freedoms we still have left. But Pemerton pretty well never brings that stuff into his RPG discussions. Heck, he practically gives Socialism a good name.

(Oh, and he's probably reading this thread now - I PM'd him Kyle Aaron's nice comment).

Quote from: TristramEvans;723277Never understood the "mother may I?" analogy. Players describe what theyre doing, I apply or invent rules as needed. Theres no discernable difference in application to a game where the GM is strictly following a rules-set, except maybe that players arent limited to options pre-anticipated by a system.

Because you're a good GM.

Some other GMs will only allow specific things that they think 'make sense', and say 'no' for almost everything that's not their anticipated response to the situation at hand.

That doesn't mean that you need strict rules to deal with crap GMs, though.  It means you don't play with crap GMs.

Quote from: robiswrong;723282Because you're a good GM.

Some other GMs will only allow specific things that they think 'make sense', and say 'no' for almost everything that's not their anticipated response to the situation at hand.

That doesn't mean that you need strict rules to deal with crap GMs, though.  It means you don't play with crap GMs.

You don't fix bad GMs with rules, nor bitching about "social contracts" being broken, for that matter.

Quote from: Benoist;723289You don't fix bad GMs with rules, nor bitching about "social contracts" being broken, for that matter.

Yeah.  A bad GM is going to be a bad GM.  You may be able to stop one type of behavior, but they'll just do something else instead.

Social contracts... eh, meh.  I just see it as a fancy way of saying "are we all sitting down at the table expecting the same thing?"  And if you're not, trouble will ensue.

Quote from: robiswrong;723294Yeah.  A bad GM is going to be a bad GM.  You may be able to stop one type of behavior, but they'll just do something else instead.

Social contracts... eh, meh.  I just see it as a fancy way of saying "are we all sitting down at the table expecting the same thing?"  And if you're not, trouble will ensue.

Yup. That's exactly what I mean. Brandishing the "social contract" as some sort of rule or checklist that's been broken "therefore you are an asshole", or that you start thinking about it in this way when you sit down for the first time at the game table with a new GM and draw a sheet of paper going "SO, let's draft our Social Contract here," then it is a recipe for disaster (and might very well reveal itself to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, point of fact).

If, on the other hand, you take it as simply talking things over together casually to know what everyone expects, and you know, act before, during and after the game like it's a social thing where people talk to each other and behave on the basis of mutual trust and so on, then yeah, that's going to solve 90+ percent of issues around the game table.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;723198Rules matter.

*chortle!*

Quote from: Mistwell;723275He's always struck me as someone who reads RPG theory a heck of a lot more than he actually plays RPGs, and him being a socialist professor just reinforces that perception.

I wouldn't know since I'm not in contact with him, but I doubt it. When I knew him, he loved to play (mostly GM) and thought about things very deeply. Taught me a lot about GMing and many other things.

If you become an academic, then you tend to like to break the world down into categories, that's how you analyse things. He's made it his profession to think about stuff in more detail than anyone else does. Many of us will view our hobbies through the filter of the worldview we've got from our careers.

Quote from: TristramEvans;723122All I know is I bristle whenever someone calls 13th Age a "retroclone"

Yeah. That's a term that had a really specific definition. I'm really annoyed that people seem to be trying to murder it.

Quote from: TristramEvans;723277Never understood the "mother may I?" analogy.

From my observation, it tends to be a confused "movement". Half of the people talking about "mother may I" are advocating narrative control mechanics that equalize or moderate control of the game world. (I can at least comprehend what those people are arguing for.)

The other half, OTOH, are advocating for something that seems utterly incoherent to me: Basically they want the game to dictate a precise resolution method and difficulty number for every possible action. If the GM ever needs to, say, make a judgment call about what the difficulty of a task should be the system has failed. This camp tends to take guidelines and treat them as ironclad legal contracts. (The fact that their "ideal" could never actually be achieved at a gaming table also leads me to suspect that they don't actually play.)

Or Magic Tea Party...

Quote from: Daztur;723311Or Magic Tea Party...

Im at the point now where I think just ignoring anyone who uses that phrase is the best bet. The Denners who periodically stop by here spouting that one inevitably turn out to be trolls.. Arduin, Rooster, Mister GC, etc

I agree that "Mother May I", "Magic Tea Party", and "fantasy heartbreaker" are all dumb terms to use.

It's one thing to insult someone else's way of pretending to be an elf. Come up with an argument of why they suck and make your point. Spreading insulting terms, though, is empty posturing and name-calling.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;723310From my observation, it tends to be a confused "movement". Half of the people talking about "mother may I" are advocating narrative control mechanics that equalize or moderate control of the game world. (I can at least comprehend what those people are arguing for.)

The other half, OTOH, are advocating for something that seems utterly incoherent to me: Basically they want the game to dictate a precise resolution method and difficulty number for every possible action. If the GM ever needs to, say, make a judgment call about what the difficulty of a task should be the system has failed. This camp tends to take guidelines and treat them as ironclad legal contracts. (The fact that their "ideal" could never actually be achieved at a gaming table also leads me to suspect that they don't actually play.)

QFT, nice summary.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;723310From my observation, it tends to be a confused "movement". Half of the people talking about "mother may I" are advocating narrative control mechanics that equalize or moderate control of the game world. (I can at least comprehend what those people are arguing for.)

The other half, OTOH, are advocating for something that seems utterly incoherent to me: Basically they want the game to dictate a precise resolution method and difficulty number for every possible action. If the GM ever needs to, say, make a judgment call about what the difficulty of a task should be the system has failed. This camp tends to take guidelines and treat them as ironclad legal contracts. (The fact that their "ideal" could never actually be achieved at a gaming table also leads me to suspect that they don't actually play.)

My understanding of the term - which seems to fall halfway between your two options - is that the MMI? crowd don't want to have to ask the GM if they can scale a nearby building and then drop behind the enemy to administer a backstab. Rather, they want to have a power on their character sheet which grants them the ability to manoeuvre using relevant encounter geometry to get in to a position to administer a backstab. It's kind on a edge case of the "whatever is not permitted is forbidden" school of thought - the view is that if you don't explicitly have the ability to do something guaranteed by your character sheet, then you are just at the whim of the GM.

I'll admit to liking Burning Wheel's "MMI?" solution on skills - if you made the PC's skill roll, then the PC has succeeded, end of discussion. I've played in way too many D&D sessions in wich my character had to succeed at a ridiculous number of skill rolls in order to succeed...sooner or later the skill roll fails.