JackOfAllTirades
Explorer
It's absolutely not worth the trouble to keep this guy in your game.
That's what I'd like. Though I suggested the idea to my roommate, the other DM at our public games. He seems to think that attempting rational dialog with the person in question is impossible. He has known him for just as long as I have. He pretty much said that attempting rational dialog with someone who stormed out of a game because his plan didn't work the way he wanted it to was inevitably going to end in another fit where he stormed off and decided not to speak to me at all again. He suggested I don't talk to him at all about the issue and pretend like it never happened and just show up for our next Dnd session without ever mentioning again. He said the person in question had such a short memory that he likely forgot about it by the next day.You really need to sit down with your friend and talk things out. It may turn out that playing D&D together is not worth it. Maybe you can reach a happy compromise in your play styles.
While I totally sympathize with players who feel the DM isn't giving their plans a fair chance of success, there isn't any excuse for behaving in the manner described. Many DMs in my experience look for reasons why a player's plan can't work instead of imagining how it can and presenting the players with fair, interesting, and fun complications to overcome (which may or may not call for rules and dice) to make it happen. This can be exceedingly frustrating. I can't say with any certainty that's what happened here, but it's a common enough thing to make me wonder if it is so.
While I totally sympathize with players who feel the DM isn't giving their plans a fair chance of success, there isn't any excuse for behaving in the manner described. Many DMs in my experience look for reasons why a player's plan can't work instead of imagining how it can and presenting the players with fair, interesting, and fun complications to overcome (which may or may not call for rules and dice) to make it happen. This can be exceedingly frustrating. I can't say with any certainty that's what happened here, but it's a common enough thing to make me wonder if it is so.
I admit that my DMing style is much more "realistic". I don't like saying yes for the sake of saying yes. If someone tries to convince the guards of a castle that they are a plumber and there is no such thing as plumbing in the world, the guards like likely going to arrest the person on the spot and hopefully ship them to an insane asylum for making up words and speaking in tongues.
I know many other DMs like to say yes to plans no matter how silly or unlikely they are simply to keep the game moving and to make their players happy. That's not me. Attack head on a castle with 100 soldiers and you are dead. Try to cast charm person on the leader of an army while the army watches and they'll open fire on the caster assuming he's doing something hostile. I know many other DMs subscribe to the "rule of cool" and will allow anything that sounds cool or looks awesome to succeed, sometimes without rolling. In my games you tend to die when trying outlandish ideas.
Though I don't say no to all ideas either. If someone comes up with a well thought up plan, I give it a reasonable chance to succeed.