Jaded Gamer - Saying Yes

I've seen the line "Never tell them no" when it comes to player requests or actions they want to take. Or also "Tell them yes but...." is another common phrasing for the same thing. It means that you should never tell your players they can't have something or can't do something. All I keep thinking when I see this is "Damn they must not have had any asshole players in their GMing experience.".

Seriously if I told some players I've had over the years "Yes" on some of the things they wanted to do I would probably be out of the hobby by now. Just from stress alone. I mean there have been things that go against all good taste, things that would make other players just get up and leave and things that would just suck all the fun from a game except for the person wanting to do it.

So my advice is this "Be ready to say no when the player is being an asshole.", pretty straight forward and simple.

Now I have seen the say yes work in amusing ways. One GM whom I hold in high esteem would ask us to submit a 'wishlist' for new characters. A list of things we want our new characters to start the game with. He would then go through and check off what we can and can't have. Every now and then we would toss in something for fun (I asked for the Devil in a Dorito bag but didn't get it). One player asked for a thermonuclear warhead in a trailer hooked to his vehicle.

The GM said yes, sure, you can have that.

Later I asked why he allowed that. His response was simple, "He wants his character to live so what is he going to do with it? He can't set it off without killing himself." Yeah that was a brilliant move by that GM.