Ed. Note—this post contains some spoilers for the Adventurer’s League Oracle of War module The Scales of War. Consider yourself warned!

Last night, running one of the Adventurer’s League Eberron modules, I bumped into two (well, more than two, but two notable instances) moments in which I deployed two of the DM’s most powerful tools: the “Yes, and…” and the “No, why.” Most of us are familiar with “Yes, and!” The “Yes, and” is a powerful improvisation tool that amplifies and extends someone else’s idea. When you hear somebody’s idea or request and respond “YES! And not only are you able to sleight-of-hand the 300-pound Oracle of War out of the ancient dragon’s grasp, you’re able to wrestle it onto your soar sled and disengage safely” you build story on top of the player’s story. The above example actually happened. The party’s rogue wanted to wrest the heavy magic item from the dragon who was trying to steal it. The character in question had a +21 to his Sleight-of-Hand, and he beat the dragon’s perception check by 18. Did it make sense? Not totally. Was it awesome? Certainly. Was the player super stoked that he had been able to contribute in a powerful way? Definitely. I’m not going to go too deep into “Yes, and…” because its merits are already relatively well known: you should be “Yes, and”-ing most of the time as a DM/GM—remember, your job is to facilitate the players’ fun.

But now we’ll move over to the other part of today’s story: the “No, why.” Sometimes this second part gets described as “No, but” and it is used to tell a player that they can’t accomplish something they want to attempt, but there is possibly another avenue they might consider. The “No, why” is for when you need to tell a player “no” but also explain why you’re not letting something happen, and there really should only be one reason to do this: in order to make a player make a difficult choice that can raise the stakes of the game and drive story. Here’s the whole situation.

The party described above wanted to get the Oracle of War back from an ancient dragon that had stolen it from them. They also needed to rescue four generals that had managed to get themselves incapacitated by the dragon. There were five party members and four generals. The rogue extricated the Oracle from the dragon, and the party’s druid (a dragon himself at the moment because, druids) delayed their gargantuan adversary while the group tried to huddle close enough for the Warlock to cast teleport and whisk them all away to safety. One small problem, however: nine creatures, and teleport only allows for eight in D&D 5e rules. The player asked “Hey, I’ve got a hero point, any chance you would allow me to use that to…take another person along when I cast the spell?”

I thought about it. The player had a resource he had earned. They had a need, and was definitely heroic: rescuing a general who had gotten himself into a bad situation. I could see a case for deploying “Yes, and.” But I didn’t, and here’s what I said.

“I can totally see you wanting to do that, but since not allowing you to do it will force you to make a tough decision, I’m not gonna change the rules as written here.” The player agreed that was fair, and here’s what transpired:

1. The druid (still in dragon form) said “Take the general—I’ll try and hold off the dragon!”
2. The party assembled and the Warlock cast teleport. At the last moment he said “I leave the general and take Baku (the druid) instead.”
3. The druid’s player pointed out that teleport requires its targets to “be willing,” and he refused to teleport.
4. The artificer/wizard, seeing Baku pull out of the spell, also declared he was unwilling.
5. The player running the party’s fighter (unconscious) said “Good lord, get me out of here!”
6. The rogue said “In for a penny, in for a pound,” and pulled out his rapier again to face the dragon.”
7. The druid, seeing that the whole party was staying, and that the Warlock was about to lose one of his two 5th level spells, recanted and said “OK, let’s go,” and the party jumped to safety, leaving the poor Karrnathi general to his fate.

Afterward, the artificer/wizard approached Baku and said “Baku, I know what you were trying to do, but you’re always going on about tribes and, well, we’re your tribe now—you can’t expect us to just abandon you.” The other characters quickly piled on, and the druid (a player always ready to role-play) described giving the wizard (a hard-nosed, tough type) a big bugbear hug. The wizard stiffened up and then collapsed into the hug. I sat back and watched my group happily role-play a sweet scene, which should be the goal of any story-focused DM/GM.

SO. As promised, here’s when to deploy “Yes, and” or “No, why” with your group:

“Yes, and…”

Pretty much all the time. Like, 90-95% of the time. In the above example, allowing the rogue to Sleight-of-Hand a 300-lb magic item out of a dragon’s grasp is not rules as written (RAW), but it was certainly cool (observing the Rule of Cool or RoC), and (most importantly) if I didn’t allow it wouldn’t have resulted in any interesting choices or gameplay. The rogue simply would have felt defeated. This is the moment to remember that you should be a fan of your players, and allow them to do cool stuff. They will love you for it.

“No, why…”

Use rarely, and only use when saying “no” will force your player to make an interesting or difficult choice. In this case the Warlock had to decide the following:

• Leave Baku behind and save the general?
• Leave three party members behind and save the fighter?
• Stay and all fight together

In the end, the Warlock’s choice (don’t leave Baku behind) pushed the hard decision to Baku. Baku decided to leave the general behind to save his friends. Then the wizard picked up the pieces left behind and started a great role-playing scene out of it. At the end of the session, I could tell people didn’t want to leave: they re-hashed the moments, enjoying the cinematic spectacle they had created. As a DM/GM, these are the moments I live for, but you may be different. Tell me what you would have done in the comments!