When to Say No as a DM (and Which Yes You'll Regret)
It’s 10:40 on a Tuesday, the fight has been going for fifty minutes, and your wizard has just asked whether she can cast shape water on the blood pooling under the ogre to freeze it into a blade. Everybody at the table turns to look at you. She has the book open. She’s already found the paragraph that says the spell works on “water,” and she has a very reasonable case that blood is mostly water, and the ogre is at nine hit points, and the whole table wants it to be yes. Somewhere in your head a decade of DM advice is chanting yes, and, and you’re wondering, with the pizza box still on the table, whether saying no to your players makes you the kind of DM people quietly stop showing up for. ...