DISCUSSION: Have you ever had to boot somebody from a game?

Flexor the Mighty! · Aug 2, 2018

Ralif Redhammer said:
Oof, that’s rough. I’ve been there, too. Where the one problem player has the potential to take other, decent players with them if they leave.

The way I see it, you can work to minimize whatever problem behavior is going on for the sake of those other players (that’s what I did at the time), or just directly address the problem player or outright boot them and take the possible hit. When the person’s a friend, it’s already a difficult thing to address. In an ideal world, you could tell a friend, "Hey, this behavior that you do is making my job as a DM harder, and making the game less fun for all. Please don’t do it anymore." But no matter how polite you are, they’re more likely to ignore the request or deny that they’re doing anything wrong, and/or get angry over it. It’s a no-win situation.

I've started emphasizing that they need to change their approach to this and we need to stay on point and it worked last night at least, I'll keep my fingers crossed. I run a fairly beer and pretzels game and I think things drifted a bit too far off at times.

Umbran · Aug 2, 2018

Once, sort of. I was hosting a game, but I was not the GM.

Outside of the game, one of the players pulled some non-consensual touching and emotionally manipulative incel bullcrap on one of the ladies of the group. The lady was having none of it, and I was made aware of the situation.

This jerk was not going to be allowed in my home. He had the sense to not come to my door again - so you could say he quit before I could expel him.

Fleetwood C. DeVille · Aug 2, 2018

MNblockhead said:
(emphasis added)

If I had a player doing this, I would be moving treasure locations and switching certain NPC motivations. Add in some NPCs, encounters, and traps not in the adventure. I wouldn't change too much, not only because why make a lot of work for myself because of a McSpoiler in my group, but because having 98% of the adventure the same, with just a few critical plot items changes would drive a player like that nuts.

Holy Flashback Batman!

My first D&D group (high school). I was DMing Temple of Elemental Evil. The party RP'ed in the nearby village, everything was great. They get to the Temple and entered a room with a fireplace with a snake hidden inside. They all hugged the far wall and exited out another door.

"That's odd. They ALWAYS search things like that...."

Later there was a room where the floor was covered in shiny rocks or dust or something. Lost on the floor was a magic ring where the only way to find it was with Detect Magic.
(DM) "You enter a room. The floor is covered with small pebbles..."
(players) "WE CAST DETECT MAGIC!"
(DM) "How odd. They NEVER cast detect magic." (thinking quickly) "You don't detect any magic."
(players looking confused) "Hey, do you take out items in published adventures?"
(DM watching the clue-bus pull up) "It depends. This adventure is pretty difficult so I left everything in place."
(players) "Come on guys, player conference time."

At which point they left the room. I counted to ten and tiptoed to the closed bedroom door. BAM! Caught them with another copy of the adventure. I packed up my things and left.

The thing that irritated me the most was the lost prep time.

Ralif Redhammer · Aug 2, 2018

Hahahahah, busted! Surprisingly, back in the day no one ever did anything like that when I was running a module.

These days, if I discovered that a player had read the module we were running, they would be booted immediately.

If a person had read an adventure in advance (say they had DM’ed it themselves), the proper thing to do by my book is to let the current DM know beforehand, and offer to either pass on playing that module, or to promise the DM to not act on said knowledge while playing it.

Fleetwood C. DeVille said:
At which point they left the room. I counted to ten and tiptoed to the closed bedroom door. BAM! Caught them with another copy of the adventure. I packed up my things and left.

The thing that irritated me the most was the lost prep time.

BookBarbarian · Aug 2, 2018

Ralif Redhammer said:
If a person had read an adventure in advance (say they had DM’ed it themselves), the proper thing to do by my book is to let the current DM know beforehand, and offer to either pass on playing that module, or to promise the DM to not act on said knowledge while playing it.

I had this happen to me with Lost Mines of Phandlever. I bought it expecting I would run it, but a friend volunteered to DM since he knew I would prefer to play. But I had already read the first chapter.

When we played the first session. I kept quiet during of all the decisions. I just threw out some Roleplaying comments and fought the combats. We still fondly remember it as one of our best sessions.

I would expect the same kind of courtesy if one of my players had prior knowledge of the adventure.

toucanbuzz · Aug 2, 2018

Most of the time players just part ways if their personality or play style clashes with the group, but have had a few boots over the years where they weren't ever going to be welcome back and it wasn't worth trying.

1. Cheating (fudging his d20 rolls, caught by other players).

2. Reading ahead and acting, pretty obviously, on that knowledge. While it wasn't a group effort, player bought a module for group, promised he didn't read it, then tried to steer the group away from every trap and, without rhyme or reason, to every treasure hoard. Talked with other players, and like above, moved things around to see if we could call him out. Unfortunately, in-game remedies like this rarely ever seem to work.

3. Not a team player. Declaring if the party doesn't go his way, he will abandon them in a fight, etc.

Oofta · Aug 2, 2018

Ralif Redhammer said:
Hahahahah, busted! Surprisingly, back in the day no one ever did anything like that when I was running a module.

These days, if I discovered that a player had read the module we were running, they would be booted immediately.

If a person had read an adventure in advance (say they had DM’ed it themselves), the proper thing to do by my book is to let the current DM know beforehand, and offer to either pass on playing that module, or to promise the DM to not act on said knowledge while playing it.

I've hit this once or twice, I just promise to play dumb and only act on character knowledge. Of course it's easier for some of us to play dumb than others, for me it comes quite naturally. :hmm:

oreofox · Aug 3, 2018

I have luckily never booted a player. However, at one point I basically booted the entire party, which means I cancelled the game. I felt bad, but I felt it was justified. Back in like 2013 I had started up a Pathfinder game of Kingmaker. I figured I could trust the players by not changing anything (there are hidden areas to be discovered on the different regions of the adventure path), but apparently this trust was misplaced. One hidden POI or treasure being found easily, eh I can chalk that up to chance. Two being found easily, I start to get suspicious. Once the 3rd was found with no problem, I knew one of them was cheating. I didn't think I could boost just that player, as his brother and mother were playing in the group as well, so I made up the excuse that I had to cancel due to getting a job or some other conflict to the game time. After about 8 months later, I started up a 5e D&D game with a couple of the players from that group that I knew wouldn't cheat, and had some fun with that before that game died due to holidays and people just stopped showing up.

That last part has happened way too damn often (even had one game last a month before it died due to holidays).

Fauchard1520 · Aug 21, 2018

oreofox said:
...had some fun with that before that game died due to holidays and people just stopped showing up.

That last part has happened way too damn often (even had one game last a month before it died due to holidays).

I think these are the saddest. So much potential lost due to ambivalence rather than malice.

Zardnaar · Aug 21, 2018

oreofox said:
I have luckily never booted a player. However, at one point I basically booted the entire party, which means I cancelled the game. I felt bad, but I felt it was justified. Back in like 2013 I had started up a Pathfinder game of Kingmaker. I figured I could trust the players by not changing anything (there are hidden areas to be discovered on the different regions of the adventure path), but apparently this trust was misplaced. One hidden POI or treasure being found easily, eh I can chalk that up to chance. Two being found easily, I start to get suspicious. Once the 3rd was found with no problem, I knew one of them was cheating. I didn't think I could boost just that player, as his brother and mother were playing in the group as well, so I made up the excuse that I had to cancel due to getting a job or some other conflict to the game time. After about 8 months later, I started up a 5e D&D game with a couple of the players from that group that I knew wouldn't cheat, and had some fun with that before that game died due to holidays and people just stopped showing up.

That last part has happened way too damn often (even had one game last a month before it died due to holidays).

This happens a lot. I had a core group of 3 or 4 players for 10 years most of whom I went to school with. One lasted 14 years. Problem was I lost them to attrition and as each on dropped out due to RL (wives, career, moving etc) it got harder and harder to replace them so the long campaign is basically over. Those types of players I only found 1 replacement so I can get the numbers but the old social contract is gone. You know the ones who bring food, turn up reliably, don't stink up the house, and you can give them $100 dollars and you'll get it back sort of people. Mates basically.

DISCUSSION: Have you ever had to boot somebody from a game?

Flexor the Mighty!

18/100 Strength!

Umbran

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Fleetwood C. DeVille

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Ralif Redhammer

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BookBarbarian

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toucanbuzz

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Oofta

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oreofox

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Fauchard1520

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Zardnaar

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