Booting players - What are your nightmare stories?

[BlueBlackRed]

Ok, my group is about one hair from booting a player.

Not going too much into the specifics, he's a great guy, but just takes away from the table more than he brought.

This past week we had a "this is your last chance" meeting with him.

He says he's going to work on it, but nobody is expecting anything more than a 2-4 week attempt before he's back to his old self. (And if you're thinking we're being hard on him, everyone who knows him thinks that we're saint for playing with him this long.)

So I'd like to here everyone else tell their nightmare player stories and the bad things that happened when they got booted our of your group.

 

[Psion]

My horror story.

After putting out ads, we found a gaming couple who were very enthused by the game. They hadn't played 3e before, but that wasn't a huge obstacle.

The woman was a very enthusiatic player. She made interesting, detailed characters and really got into the game.

Her bf, however, was another story. He wasn't a gaming problem but a social problem. He was very snippy and disdainful with the other players, especially the women. He played "dice police". He'd confront anyone who expressed an opinion he didn't agree with. He'd play dice games while he was waiting for his turn. He'd scrutinize every point of damage that happened in combat; the monk and the rogue player had gotten the flank-stun-sneak attack thing down by that point and were a very good team, and you could expect him to whine about rogues being overpowered every combat.

I hated to lose the woman, but the man was pissing off everyone in the group and all of the players were expressing to me he sucking the fun out of the game. I hated to lose the woman, because she was a credit to the group, but I did not see booting just one.

I never heard from him again, but the woman did not take it well. We got snippy emails about how mean we were and how unfair it was that it was them that I was booting and not the rest of the group (that all got along with each other.)

 

[Rasyr]

Okay, here is an interesting one, sort of...

Was running a game every Sunday. Player shows up for the three sessions, no problem. Sort of built a couple of plot lines around him...

Week 4, get a note from him that says he got called into work....
Week 5, get another note that says he has to work..
Week 6, he shows up, spends half the time talking about other things rather than playing.
Week 7, get a note saying that he has to work
Week 8, repeat of Week 7
Week 9, repreat of Week 7
Week 10, repreat of Weak 7

At this point, I am kinda fed up about having to drag his character about as an NPC, so I email him an ultimatum. He needs to start showing up more or I will remove his character from the game.

Cut to several months earlier ---
Setup: I belong to a private mailing list of ICE authors and playtesters. I am one of the three mods for the list. One of the things we decided, at the suggestion of ICE, no less, was that no ICE employees would be members of the list.

One of the authors on the list announce that he is going to start working for ICE soon. He is reminded about the rule that says no ICE employees (note: this was around the time that a couple of authors were having legal issues with ICE over products that they had written). My problem player, mentioned above, was also on this list.

Well, the author who started working for ICE was removed from the list, against his will, so he was not pleased with us.

After being removed from the list, this author was not very fond of us, to say the least.

Over the course of the next few months, we also discover that somebody on the list is feeding our discussions to ICE. The editor, and the author now working for ICE, have been mentioning this in their posts that they should not have had access to. (IIRC, one of the things mentioned was an email sent to the private list detailing the author's side of the story - which the editor later obliquely refuted publicly - that letter never being made public...)

Now we had our suspicions as to who the leak was, and the other moderators set a trap for him. I stayed out of the process, because.... you guessed it, the leak was my problem player. He was a good friend of the author removed from the list, and had moved to my area and joined in my game.

Well, of course, things all came to a head at the same point. I gave him the ultimatum, and his response was not a very nice response. He said that his schedule had been changed (first I had heard of it), and that it would be that until after x-mas, several months away. Told him sorry, but that I was going to have to remove his character from the game then. When he was able to play regularly, he would then be welcomed back.

A week later, the other mods got the proof that he was the one who had been leaking the private conversations. We held a vote, 2 for removing him from the list, and I abstained as he had been a member of my group.

A few days later, I get a blistering, nasty email from that author who went to work for ICE. He was not very happy, called me all sorts of names and things. Blamed ME for removing his friend (and source of information) from the private list and for telling him that he was out of my game (since he could not be there every on a regular schedule). He pretty much accused me of everything but killing Santa Claus....

So... in short, I got a nasty letter from a an employee of a game company for kicking somebody out of my game...

*Note: this was all before TE killed the old ICE.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

We have booted players on several occasions. The first time, it worked out very well. The player was very upset, but realized he needed to get his head on straight. The next time it did not go well. I realized at that point that what really needed to have been done was to start over. I "cleaned house" and realized that I needed to game with people more in my age group. Some of the players I kept from my original group have since left, but it has generally been for the better.

Suffice it to say that there is no easy or painless way to "boot" a player, especially if there is friendship involved. If you do it, do it "right." Give them face to face consideration, explain everything explicitly and do it as a group if appropriate. Good luck.

DM

 

[Wombat]

In thirty years of gaming, I have never directly booted a player from a game.

I was in a game (not one of mine) where it was politely suggested to one player (who showed up very irregularly) that this might not be the hobby for him, and he agreed without rancour.

I guess I've been very lucky this way.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

I have booted a PC, unintentionally after she called me saying she was goiong to leave the group. Being concerned, and wanting to be a good friend I asked why, and if there was anything I could do. Should we as a group discuss her concerns as adults? This is when things went down hill. Everything was everybody elses fault. Nobody treated her with the respect her years of gaming experience required. I played favorites. This person was a min-maxed twink. Etc. At this point I realised maybe it was the best for her to go if she felt this strongly about eveybody in the group, including my wife, her biggest suporter in the group, always acting condescending torwards her.

Things built from there and it ended in a great big fight amongst the whole group. I shut down the campaign, and restarted a new one with only the players I felt I could game with. I'm still not sure what caused her to go off on everybody, but, I have to say she had a real over inflated view of her own gaming skill after listening to her. IMO. She had no problems with the rolepalying, no clue how to run any of the mechanics. Which was normally fine, we could help, but this I think was one of her sore spots.



On the other hand I've been removed from a group as well. The DM had an issue with me, and I'll admit I was not having fun, and this was most likely evident. The vibe I got from the DM was that he really didn't want me there and he could not seem to get beyond his issues with me no matter what I tried. He and I had been frineds since high school, close ones I had thought. So when he asked me to leave I did so without an issue and an apology. It was when he told me that everbody in the group had a problem though that I really took pause. These were my friends, and I didn't want them to think of me as a jerk.

I called each of them to offer my apologies, and to tell them I had no hard feelings, and no problem gaming or hanging with them any time. This is when I found out none of them had any issues with me, and that they had no clue what the DM was up to until after they got there that night to game, and I wasn't there. They each told me they would game with me any time. I took them up on it and formed a new group and gamed on a differnt night. This became the core of my first group that I DMed for over two years.

So a word of advice. If you're going to remove somebody from the group, make sure you do so honestly. I still would have bowed out, even if it was only the DM having an issue. But he felt the need to make it the whole groups decision instead of his alone. By putting words in his friends mouths, he ended up losing a few of them, and they still have yet to forgive him several years later.


-Ashrum

 

[Rashak Mani]

We've had bad players and the campaigns they were in would just kind of die... we would eventually make a new campaign but "forget" to call the bad player. I've never seem anyone booted for personal reasons though.

 

[Christoph the Magus]

I've never personally booted anyone out. I did game in a group several years ago with 2 extremely unpleasant people (dice throwers, whiners, etc). Another member of the group finally decided that he'd had enough. He put together a new group (a couple of new people and the "good" people from the old group) and planned to meet at the same time as the original group. He then called the 2 problem players, explained that he had started a new group, and that he and the rest of the group were leaving. When asked if they could join the new group he said "We're full. Sorry." and that was that.

One of the players did call me to ask what was going on. I stuck to the basic facts and didn't give a reason as to why he had not been invited to play in the new group. I've never heard from either of the problem players again.

 

[Nellisir]

I've mostly booted people for schedule problems. I give plenty of warning beforehand, but the rule is, 3 unreasonable absences and you're out. Having to work is reasonable (assuming it's not every game night). Falling asleep isn't. Forgetting isn't. Having to do homework isn't (if you have that much homework, you shouldn't be gaming). Missing a game to "get some", while great for you, isn't reasonable and erodes group morale as we all go green with envy.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Chimera]

I tried to boot a player from my game group way back in highschool (late 70's), but the other players refused to go along with it. Stayed friends with the individual in question, but there was some tenseness for a long period of time. Of course, we've long since drifted apart.

Booted a long-time friend from my game four years ago. I've explained that one to death on this board so I'll let it go.

Voted (as a player) to boot someone from another game. Shortly thereafter a relatively new player gave the GM a "him or me" ultimatum about ME and the GM decided to simply end the game. Given the loss of players and his own personal situation, it was the right move. Funny thing is that I'm now friends with the player I voted to boot and we play together in another game (started after this one).

Had the GM of another game break up his group because he didn't like several of the players in that group. Later invited me to join another group where he was a player. I played about a dozen sessions before deciding that I wasn't having fun and didn't like the GM's adversarial style.

Been booted from one group. That being this last winter. The GM gave me clues up front that he wasn't comfortable with me being there, which was really odd since he didn't know me from Adam. He seemed to own every PDF and rule book in existance and told me that he would be strict with certain rules. Then when I pointed out an error made on a Tumble roll, he seemed to completely lose it, told me that it was a "rules lite" campaign and disinvited me from the game. Um....yeah, sure. Given the other things going on in his game, I'm not too worried. I doubt I'd have played more than 5-6 sessions.

Have quit several other groups over the years due to issues with the GM's game style. Don't have any problem walking away if I'm not having fun or I don't like the style of play.