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<blockquote data-quote="TheAlkaizer" data-source="post: 8433134" data-attributes="member: 7024893">In my experience, these veiled questions came from a place of lack of trust. Either they were players I had never played with, or maybe I had made a bad call a few sessions earlier, or wasn't in my usual good shape. They fear you shutting down their plan and want to get a firm information from you. &quot;But you said the ceilings were twenty foot tall, why couldn't I climb?&quot;I don't appreciate these questions and I tend to just say &quot;What are you trying to do ?&quot;. The truth is that it doesn't come from a place of malice, and that is the thing that calms me down.The solution is obviously to have them trust you and feel like you will enable what they want to do as much as possible. Sometimes, this can be fixed with a very simple chat at the start of a session. Nowadays, it's something I generally mention at the start of a campaign.But it's also possible that this mistrust is a bit too strong. There could be plenty of reasons for it: you have a bit of an adversarial style of DMing, the player has experienced ton of adversarial DMs in the past, etc. If it's something that can't be fixed with a short chat, I would look into making concrete actions to demonstrate openness.&quot;How tall are the ceilings?&quot;He obviously doesn't care about the ceilings, he's asking this because he has a possible plan in mind.&quot;What do you want to do?&quot;&quot;I want to use Spider Climb, to [...]&quot;Use NO BUT or YES AND to demonstrate your willingness to enable or even enhance what they want to do.&quot;The ceilings are not very tall (no), BUT there's very little light and you could get an ambush on whoever is chasing you.&quot;&quot;There's plenty of space for you to climb (yes), AND there's a large pack of cargo held by a claw on a rail.&quot;Hopefully, within a few sessions, showing your willingness to enable and even open new opportunities for them will change their behavior.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TheAlkaizer, post: 8433134, member: 7024893"] In my experience, these veiled questions came from a place of lack of trust. Either they were players I had never played with, or maybe I had made a bad call a few sessions earlier, or wasn't in my usual good shape. They fear you shutting down their plan and want to get a firm information from you. [I]"But you said the ceilings were twenty foot tall, why couldn't I climb?"[/I] I don't appreciate these questions and I tend to just say [I]"What are you trying to do ?"[/I]. The truth is that it doesn't come from a place of malice, and that is the thing that calms me down. The solution is obviously to have them trust you and feel like you will enable what they want to do as much as possible. Sometimes, this can be fixed with a very simple chat at the start of a session. Nowadays, it's something I generally mention at the start of a campaign. But it's also possible that this mistrust is a bit too strong. There could be plenty of reasons for it: you have a bit of an adversarial style of DMing, the player has experienced ton of adversarial DMs in the past, etc. If it's something that can't be fixed with a short chat, I would look into making concrete actions to demonstrate openness. [I]"How tall are the ceilings?"[/I] He obviously doesn't care about the ceilings, he's asking this because he has a possible plan in mind. [I]"What do you want to do?" "I want to use Spider Climb, to [...]"[/I] Use NO BUT or YES AND to demonstrate your willingness to enable or even enhance what they want to do. [I]"The ceilings are not very tall (no), BUT there's very little light and you could get an ambush on whoever is chasing you." "There's plenty of space for you to climb (yes), AND there's a large pack of cargo held by a claw on a rail."[/I] Hopefully, within a few sessions, showing your willingness to enable and even open new opportunities for them will change their behavior. [/QUOTE]

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