[RPG] How to deal with players persistently arguing for rules loopholes, even after I’ve tried to finalise the rulings

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TL:DR question is at the bottom.

I'm pretty new to being a DM (2nd run) and started with a party of 6 (I know, it's a tough way to start) players who are all incredibly inexperienced. We had a session zero where I outlined a bunch about the world and how I would be handling things. I asked everyone for their expectations and took them all into consideration.

Now I have two gamers who like to dig through the rules and find loopholes. I knew they were going to be tough to deal with, but I didn't realize they would be this bad. It's quite stressful.

Here's an example of a ruling I made outside of the game session — it's not the worst that's happened, just the most stressful. (The TL;DR for this paragraph is we spent a lot of time and made a ruling that he agreed made sense.) This ruling involves the darkness spell. The wizard wanted to have it up, cover it then take his turn and uncover it at the end to basically sit in a darkness spell whenever it wasn't his turn and then be completely unaffected by it whenever it was his turn. I decided that I didn't want the spell to be working that way as it felt wrong (because all of the turns in turn based combat are actually simultaneous, not consecutive). I ruled that I would only be ok with him covering or uncovering it on any given turn. This is how darkness would work. I should mention, we talked for almost an hour and we were sending links from research back and forth. Ruling made and done, right?

Fast forward 2 weeks:

Player: "Can my character have lip piercings?".

Me: What? I mean, yes… Of course. Weird question…

Player: Ok, so I could cast darkness on the lip piercings and just put them in my mouth and not have to…

Me: No, we already made a ruling on this. This spell will work this way for the campaign.

Player: But what if we change the spell?

Me: We already made a ruling. I am standing by it. I'm not changing how the spell works for this.

He keeps giving more and more random arguments, completely ignoring that I said I wasn't going to change my ruling, then gets the other rule lawyer player to try to help him. Once he contacted me, he opening claim was that he and the other player looked at some stuff and figured out what the ruling should be. Keep in mind, I have reruled the same way after extensive research six times now, and have told them the issue is done. I tell him I am not listening into any more arguments as I have literally spent the entire morning before work doing nothing but that.

One of the two players chose to leave because I wanted to sit the two of them down to talk about how I am not going to have all rulings up for argument indefinitely.

Now, I understand I could have just let them have their way and then used in game mechanics to rain on their shiny new darkness tank, but that would be setting multiple precedents that I wasn't ok with.

  1. The spell is changed to work that way, which I felt defied how the world of turn based combat works

But much more importantly

  1. The DMs ruling lasts only as long as it takes you to argue with him enough that he will cave in and give you what you want

Question: regardless of the ruling, how do you deal with players that refuse to respect the ruling you are making and will continuously bring up old rulings with new arguments (not the rulebook says I can. More the rulebook doesn't say I can't) forcing you to have to keep defending things that should have been left alone forever ago?

Update: convinced them to have the chat, finally. Used a lot of the stuff here to make an outline to help move the conversation along and stay on point. For the discussion I had these notes. They listened and agreed to follow the guidelines and we are meeting again tomorrow. I used a lot of points from here to help.

Best Answer

Don't accent the rules — describe what happens in the world

Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it. As a DM, you help guide the narrative and bring the world of the adventure to life. From this perspective, the rules are not directions, but a tool:

The rules serve you, not vice versa. (DMG page 235)

When you make a ruling, in order to prevent arguing, ensure you provide a plausible in-world explanation for players (e.g. "you can't put this trinket in your mouth, because you have no time", not "because the rules say so").

Considering the provided example — casting the Darkness spell on an item and hiding this item in a mouth is actually a clever idea. But your player's intent wasn't to invent a smart tactical move, but to "trick" the game world by abusing the turns mechanic.

But you can't trick the world. Unlike a computer game, the game world in D&D is not the mechanics, that's why DM is needed in the first place. Distinguish between what happens in world (what character see) and what mechanics do you, the DM, use for resolving the situation. Explain, why sitting in complete darkness is a bad idea:

— I could cast darkness on the lip piercings.
— It will effectively render you blind in the middle of the combat, are you sure you're doing it?
— But I can cover the darkness when my turn starts, can't I?
— Not exactly. We (players) use 6-second round mechanics to organize the combat pace, but for your characters there are no "turns". They are just fighting the bad guy and all act simultaneously. You can dismiss the darkness when you hear something, I will use the Ready action to resolve it. Do you do this?

More info - How does time pass in combat?

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