Have you ever driven a player from a game?

[Crazy Jerome]

Oy, the early years! In the interest of full disclosure, I think I should say that the incidents are too numerous to list, where I did something that could have driven someone from the group, but the player took it good naturedly. I think most of these things I even realized later and apologized for, which is probably what kept them around. But it was nice of them to put up with my social learning curve.

 

[kitsune9]

Well Jeff, I would judge you and throw some rocks in your direction for egging the guys with the long fingers and your flamboyant bard friend; however, I recall where this was this one player who played 3.0 when it was still about a year old. Me and another buddy for some reason liked teasing him in game by pretty much always disagreeing with him. Of course, if he flubbed a roll or botched something, that would be fodder too.

After a while, I could that he wasn't taking our jibes in good humor anymore and I wrote to my buddy and told him that we should lay off, because we did like the guy, but we were rubbing him the wrong way. The guy played one more session with us and we didn't take any shots at him or anything of that, but the player thought something was up so that was his last session.

 

[kitsune9]

(1) I think it's mostly the same everywhere. Back in Kentucky, there were good players, bad players, creepy players, obsessive players, laid back players, and on and on. It's the same out here.

Jeff, you're from Kentucky too? I thought I was the only Southerner to come from Colonel Sanders' Land to the SF Bay Area. Yeah, I agree. I met a lot of gamers in KY and they were represented all across the board.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Interesting stories Jeff. I notice each of them is fairly different.

#1 Seems like a totally unintentional flub and the guy didn't take it well.

We all do that to one degree or another. I remember a second date I had with a girl...we were renting a movie. She suggested Glitter starring Mariah Carey, and I could only assume she was joking, so I laughed...No third date.

#2 The guy playing a dramatic bard. Sometimes people get out of control in annoying ways in game.

I've noticed it tends to go more poorly trying to correct habits in game rather than a conversation out of game. If you'd have said "Dude, try to mix up your schtick" things might have worked out better. But I, too, am guilty of in game "correction". I had a player in a game I was DMing who considered himself a suave swashbuckler who got all the ladies (fine by me). But he totally lost sight of the roleplaying aspect and got kinda creepy with the "I'm having the sex with the imaginary ladies". So, as DM, I gave him VD from sleeping with a succubus that made him impotent. I tried to encourage him to play up the supposed reason he wanted to play the character "being cool and having ladies swoon over him" but he said I ruined his character (I even tried to teach him a bit of a social lesson that the cool dude admired by all the ladies doesn't have to actually "get some" and could leave them wanting for more).

#3 This just sounds like a player issue. You DMed appropriately and he was a bad player, asking for too much and having an appropriate, self chosen, death . This isn't so much driving him away him not wanting to play by the rules and deciding to leave.

 

[Piratecat]

The very first time I tried to DM, at age 14, the module was "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks." As soon as the players realized there were robots, the game quickly went south.

"You enter a hall made from shining metal."
"Wait.. metal?"
"Yes. The doorways have shining, blinking lights next to them."
"We leave." The other players nod in agreement.
"What? You just got there. You can't leave!"
"We leave."
But.. but.. I couldn't let them do that! "You can't leave. The door closes."
"We wait until it opens, then we leave."
"It doesn't open."
"We wait until it opens, then we leave."
"You look down, and hey! There's a weird gizmo on the ground."
"We don't touch it."
"It's a laser pistol!" This was the coolest thing I could conceive of. Why didn't they feel the same way?
They look at one another and frown. "We definitely don't touch it."
I'm panicking. My first session as a DM isn't going the way I thought it would. Maybe a fight? "A robot comes down the corridor towards you!"
"We ignore it."
Sigh. I gave up. "Okay. The door opens."
"We run out." Pause. Awkward paper shuffling. Another pause.
"Hey, anyone want to go to the beach?"
"Yeah," say the other two players.
"Are you sure? I could run..."
"Beach," my friend says firmly.
And so we did.

I didn't DM for another few years after that, and I just realized that I never DMed for them again.

I got better. But it was a pretty poor starting track record.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The very first time I tried to DM, at age 14, the module was "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks." As soon as the players realized there were robots, the game quickly went south.

For your future DMing sake, I'm glad that your second group wasn't the group that handled my first use of the Deck of Many Things. As soon as they realized what they had, they went through these elaborate preparations to lock it up--magical locks, in a adamantine box, traps, and then the whole thing put into a bag of holding, which was then sealed in a water-tight box with its own set of protections. I thought they were a little paranoid about me having some NPCs stealing it, since I had let them find it in the first place, but I played along.

Then the next thing they did was drop all obvious adventure hooks, and commission a ship--a heavily armed and sturdy ship. They then consulted a sage to determine the deepest spot in the ocean. And then they hired a very experienced crew, and sailed out to said spot, where upon they cast the chest overboard. Then they sailed back to port, and before anyone could leave, had the wizard they had prehired cast some kind of mass forget magic on everyone in the ship (including them), for the duration of the voyage.

The whole thing cost a lot more than the other treasure they found in the haul, but I was really impressed with their sense of responsibility and dedication to their convictions ...

Edit: Also, my attempt at Expedition to Barrier Peaks went better, but not by much. We lasted an hour, but I had a year or so under my DM belt before I tried it. This probably explains your (and mine) aversion to firearms in D&D.

 

[jdrakeh]

Yes, but it was kind of a 'perfect storm' situation.

About halfway through the first session of a GURPS Supers campaign, one of my players comes to me and says that he thinks a different player has cheated by changing his point values after I looked at (and approved) his character sheet. The player that he has tattled on does have a history of being a cheat, so a little while later I ask if I can look at his character sheet again on the pretense that I need to make a note of something (he has no idea that the other player has ratted him out at this time). And, sure enough, dude has almost doubled the point value of his character since I approved it.

I have no idea how he thought he was going to hide that kind of blatant cheating, but he was apparently convinced that he could. Well, anyhow, I call him out and say something to the effect of "Hey, man, we agreed on 300 point characters. You have almost 600 points worth of character here. Fix it or GTFO." At this point, the dude absolutely flips out and starts screaming at the player next to him (the guy who finked on him). I'm a pretty big dude and, at that time in my life, was pretty muscular. So I get in the cheater's face and tell him that he better pack his stuff and get out of my house, or I'll pack it for him - right into a rear-facing orifice.

Well, the cheater leaves, but the game session is pretty much done and over. The next week, everybody except the cheater - and one other player - shows up. Turns out that this one other player who doesn't show later calls me and says that he didn't approve of how I dealt with the cheater, so he wasn't coming back to game with us anymore.

 

[Oryan77]

Jeff, you're from Kentucky too? I thought I was the only Southerner to come from Colonel Sanders' Land to the SF Bay Area. Yeah, I agree. I met a lot of gamers in KY and they were represented all across the board.

Yo, I grew up in Nashville TN! All of my family was born & grew up in Hopkinsville KY (several relatives still live there and I visit them every time I'm in Nashville). Me & my siblings were born in Tahoe CA but we moved to KY & then TN when we were kids. I came back to CA in 1998.

I only gamed with my friends when I lived in TN. So I didn't have much exposure to the gaming community.

 

[Oryan77]

"You enter a hall made from shining metal."
"Wait.. metal?"
"Yes. The doorways have shining, blinking lights next to them."
"We leave." The other players nod in agreement.
"What? You just got there. You can't leave!"
"We leave.".......

It wasn't fully your fault, so I wouldn't feel too bad. But then you tried to railroad them.....

I had a player do pretty much the same thing to me once. Except I was 22 y/o and he was 25 or so. He begged me to DM him and I hadn't played in a couple of years. So I refreshed my memory on the Eternal Boundary PS adventure and we finally got together. The adventure provides 3 different hooks to get players involved in the plot. This guy purposefully ignored all 3 different hooks, "A crazy ranting guy is babbling nonsense at me? Eh, I don't care and I just walk away. Someone in the alley is screaming for help? I don't care, I just keep walking. There's a dead guy in the road and some sinister looking guys are looting his body? That's not something my character would care about. I keep walking." Maybe he just enjoyed having his character walk down streets?

I was lucky to be old enough to know what to do instead of railroading him. So I put my books back in my bag and said, "Ok then, we're done here".

 

[Holy Bovine]

Have had players leave/be asked to leave on rare occasions re: playstyle differences, just not gelling with the group etc.

Had an odd one about 2(3?) years ago where a player found us through this board, showed up and seemed to have a great time for about 3/4 sessions. Then, despite a "see you next session" comment, never heard from him again (I even e-mailed him to make sure everything was ok because he seemed so enthusiastic about the game; but never received a response).

Had the exact same thing happen to me. We had a new guy join - he played for about a half dozen sessions and then never saw or heard from him again. He was a good player and was a dead ringer for Bruce Campbell!