[RPG] How to handle a group that questions every decision I make as DM

dnd-5egm-techniquesnew-gm

I am new to DMing. In fact, my whole group is new to D&D as a whole. The one struggle I seem to be facing (besides the fact that I have to look almost every thing up) is that 2 of my 5 players are never happy with any ruling I impose.

In my mind I am being fair, and any ruling I apply is carried forward and applied to all players. One example:

A monk is walking around on a platform that is clearly crumbling
during combat. Before the combat began, I already knew the weight
limit of this platform. For the description of this room, I used what was provided in the premade encounter. The monk ends his turn on this platform. An
enemy approached him and causes the platform to exceed its weight
limit. I roll to see if the platform breaks, it does. I allowed the an
athletics check to attempt to jump off before the platform crumbled
and he fail. He fell and took 1d4 damage.

To the monk this ruling was singling him out and not fair, even though the enemy also took damage and died from the fall. He said that he expected that because he was a monk and because of his back story (which contained a lot of information about his past training) that even while the platform was falling, he should have been able to make a second attempt due to his quick reflexes. He actually left the session and we stopped playing for the day.

Pretty much every decision I make in or out of combat is questioned, that was just one example it is always the same 2 people that take issue with my decisions. I'm trying to make it as fair as possible and I am fairly sure there is something I can learn from this to be better.

Did I do anything wrong? How can we continue to play when these types of arguments are becoming more and more frequent?

Best Answer

Telegraph your decisions excessively, and allow retcons

In my experience, what the DM is thinking is very different from what the player is experiencing. In the example you gave, while you "already knew the weight limit," the player did not. From his perspective, then, you randomly collapsed the platform.

I deal with this issue by not only telling the players what the characters see, but also what the characters judge. For example, instead of telling your player "you see a crumbling platform," you can tell your player "you think the platform might collapse at any moment". In "real life," the characters have a wide range of experiences and perceptions that you can't possibly convey in a reasonable time as a DM, so telling the players what their characters think is an easy shorthand--the players are always free to disagree or probe more deeply, if they choose.

It's always going to be a judgment call on whether you should call for some knowledge-based roll or how much information to give, but I would err on the side of giving more information, to avoid instances like the example above.

Additionally, I let my characters do minor retcons. When your player decides to go on the ledge anyway, you can say something like "the ledge feels like it's about to give way under your feet". If the player changes their mind about going on the ledge, I let them do it.

It's going to be annoying, and it will feel like you're giving everything away, but it ultimately leaves your players feeling like they have a much better understanding of the situation and the logic you're using. Moreover, there might be some situations where the players will want to go on the crumbling platform--in those cases, they will have a good idea of what they're getting into.

"Gotcha" moments suck: focus more on avoiding them and less on mechanical surprises

Here's the thing: even though you're literally pitting the players against adversaries, the DM-player relationship in 5e should not be adversarial. I put in terrain and traps so that my players can have fun defeating them, not so that I can spring surprises on them and laugh evilly.

Even for actual, hidden traps, gotcha surprises are terrible. From the player's perspective, they get put into difficult, damaging situations totally out of the blue. Indeed, when I play traps, I give the players a few seconds to try to respond to a trap activation, just so they have a bit of agency ("you hear a click when you open the door, what do you do?"). By boosting player agency and letting them understand what you're thinking, you can reduce the number of gotchas and likely reduce your perceived unfairness.

Reset your player's expectations

Now, in order to implement this new DMing style, you have to fix your relationship with your players. After all, this problem is not only coming from you, but from your players as well.

You should talk to your players, tell them that you're going to change how you're DMing, and see if they're willing to reduce their combativeness. Hopefully, this "reset" will help your future sessions go more smoothly. Again, you can see this as part of making your intentions more transparent and more explicit, and hopefully your players will appreciate that.