Booting players - What are your nightmare stories?

[Odysseus]

I've kicked a few players out over the years. Usually players with attendance problems are reasonable , and if you ask them for a minimum attendace level, they'll agree or leave.
My one nightmare story was a guy , who was a serious power gamer and rules lawyer. Which wasn't a problem by itself . However his reaction to not being able power game, or change the rules as he went to enable him to power game, was a high degree of fustration. Which he took out on the other players. After one session where he was fairly insulting and intimidating to the other players. It came to a choice he went or I was going to lose the rest of the group. So I warned the guy to cut out the insults , bad language and bossy behaviour. And in return I got a extreamly foul rant from him. And he started flaming me on various message boards, which wasn't particualry pleasent.
The two main issues with problem players are. Either they have social problems, they are unable to work as a team, and D&D is a team game. Or there not allowed to do what they want in the game. Which manifests itself in argumentative beahviour.

 

[fredramsey]

First, my GM philosophy: I welcome any "style" of play to my table. If you play because you liked the Diablo computer game, and want to kill stuff, cool. If you never want to drop out of character, and want to have an in-depth conversation with the innkeeper, welcome. If you are somewhere in between, that's cool too.

But this one guy just couldn't live with that idea. He said that he could NOT enjoy playing the game because a couple of other people were not playing their characters the right way. His way. Not rule-breaking, but style and personality wise.

Now, if you're nodding your head and saying, "I can see that," you might want to quit reading now.

He was far beyond rules lawyer, far beyond a "realism fanatic", etc. I talked to him several times about these issues before he got the boot. If there is one "rule number 0" at my table, is you cannot tell someone else how to play their character.

He also had something negative to say about every other character's chosen action every combat round without fail.

He was constantly calling me on my decisions, even when I told him my style included allowing things sometimes for "dramatic effect", even if that violated some (what I consider minor) rule, like letting someone draw a sword and attack. I did not exclude him from the "dramatic moments", and he never complained when he got to break a "rule".

So, in the end, I came to the conclusion that the only way he could enjoy an RPG is if all the players were clones of him. It was one of the hardest things I had to do, but he was told not to come back.

And now, I have the greatest group of players anyone could ask for. The further I get away in time from that decision, the more convinced I am that it was the right one.

 

[kenobi65]

I've had to remove 3 players from my campaigns, over 20+ years. It's never been easy, and never been pretty.

In the first case, the guy was a serious power-gamer, combined with a dice cheat. This was back in 1984, when most dice didn't come pre-inked...and he never colored in his dice. The players began to suspect that he was lying about his dice rolls, and one of the other players decided to start "spying", and reported that the Problem Guy was way overstating his rolls. Beyond that, he always tried to take over the game, making his PC the star.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when, over the course of 6 attack rolls, Problem Guy "rolled" five 20s. We, as a group, decided to ask Problem Guy to leave.

The discussion was extended, and ugly, and Problem Guy punched a phone booth in frustration during the discussion (breaking his hand). He just didn't / couldn't understand that we didn't want him in the group anymore. The fact that he considered us (the game group) his only real friends certainly didn't help. Finally, he did agree that it'd be better if he didn't play with us anymore. Some of us were eventually able to maintain a friendship outside of gaming with him, but it was always awkward.

The other two were years later, in a different group. They were two sisters, both of whom had been in the group for several years. Both of them had some manner of psychological issues, and both of them tended to be very disruptive during the game. In this case, we took the "chicken way out"....we just stopped talking to them, and stopped telling them about upcoming games. I'm quite certain that both of them eventually figured it out, and both of them probably strongly dislike me now. What can you do?

We've got one guy in our current group who may be walking this line, too. He can get loud and aggressive during games, and he particularly ticks my wife (who's also a player) off. I really need to have a talk with this guy, and have been ducking the issue.

 

[Waldorf]

What is it about this hobby that attracts such people with alarming frequency?

 

[fusangite]

I've only booted a player out of a game once. And I wasn't even the GM.

Basically, this player, a longtime friend of mine (and one to this day) had recruited every single player in the game by the time I joined. She recruited me and my then-girlfriend to what turned out to be an amazing, fascinating campaign run by a very socially retiring GM.

I was surprised because, frankly, I can barely tolerate gaming with this friend and was stunned that she had found the second-best GM I have ever worked with. The main problem playing with her was recently expressed by a college professor from whom she took a course recently: "Is it just me or does _________ tend to remember me saying things I haven't said and recall events that haven't happened?" Another, of several lesser problems gaming with her, is her tendency to play any scene that isn't a conversation with an NPC in a kitchen sink kind of way. What I mean by this, for those of you who played Zork and the other old Infocom games is, "GET ALL. USE ALL WITH ALL."

Anyway, this was all tolerable until the Seasonal Affective Disorder kicked in. These days, my friend manages her illness much better but that year, it was a living hell. Her depression that year was premised on the following idea: she deemed herself to be a worthless human being; her character, on the other hand, was everything she had ever wanted to be. (It's strange how so many female gamers aspire to be unemployed harp players.) Therefore, anyone who had a problem with her highly erratic character or whose in-game agenda differed from that of her character must actually hate her and wish to harm her IRL. Any disapproval of her increasingly insane character was taken as the deepest-possible insult -- "People can say whatever they want about me. But if people don't like Emmanuelle it shows that they totally reject everything I love and believe in." Just imagine being the GM designing threats this character has to cope with, every one perceived as a personal attack on the player.

So, despite the fact that every one of us was a personal friend of this woman and had, in fact, been recruited to the campaign by her, we all unanimously voted to throw her out. (Her fiance abstained.) Mysteriously, although I was the instigator, and told her so, she forgave me first and has never forgiven the GM (it's now been 10 years) who essentially had this imposed upon him by all the rest of his players.

 

[reveal]

What is it about this hobby that attracts such people with alarming frequency?

It probably has to do with the fact that people with social problems can "escape" into a fantasy world where they can be anyone they want or act like anyone they want; something they can't do IRL.

Example:

IRL, I can't yell at my boss simply because his behavior irritates me.

In game, my 20th level wizard can fireball an entire tavern when the bartender doesn't serve him a drink fast enough because it's "in character."

BTW, I am not the example.

 

[DonTadow]

horror stories

I've been both booted out and had to boot out players.

The only group I had ever been booted out from was last year and it was something neither the DM or I wanted. I was playing a pirate very much in the style of Jack Sparrow from the pirate movies. The group was great, but from the beginnings I sensed that one of the players didn't like me, because of the way I played character. She was the only thief in the group before I got there and I think she felt threatened. She also hated the lewd "pg" way I played Sparrow which none of the other players seemed to have a problem with. I had one private conversation with the DM about toning down the language which I quickly complied to after the second week. Things seemed to be going great for 7 more weeks and then the treasure inncident happened. There were mounds of treasure at the bottom of this underground lake and only my character had the capability of swimming. I scooped up all of the treasure I could and came across a pearl why i was down there. The player's character whom did not like me, had a love for pearls. My thought was that the coniving guy my character was, he'd pocket the pearl and present it to her later as a way to mend some peace with her, or at best bribe her in some way to be more warm to me.

We ended session with me telling the dm that i was going to pocket the pearl for now. My intentions seemed obvious that I was not going to sell it and that I had no use for the pearl. That week the GM called me and told me that several players didn't like Sparrow as a character, and that I should return the pearl. I told the dm my intentions and he said they were good but that they felt i was trying to be a treasure hog, which made no sense to me because i could not "spend" the pearl. I agreed to give up the pearl during the next session as peace was more important to me. I also began working on a backup character that i told the gm i wanted to replace the current character in the next few weeks, as i felt i couldn't play the sparrow like character the way i wanted to. A few days later i get a call from the dm telling me that the players didn't want me to return, it completely stunned me and i could tell the gm was disappointed to. It took me a couple weeks to figure out why. One of the players wives, whom once came as a guest player, soon took my place as a permanent player. The good thing is I'm still really cool with the DM as I don't think neither of us wanted me to go.

 

[Ranger5]

I've only ever had to do it once in 20+ years of gaming which I find very lucky after having read some of the stories above.

Mine came a few years ago when 3.0 was around before 3.5 came out. I was running a game and this guy I knew who I played miniature battles with said he was interested in playing DND. Now I should have known better since I knew him to be kind of a butthead when we played B5 Wars but I think it was mainly because he was so darn good at it and won most of the time. However he did not have a lot of experience with DND so I thought he would just sit back and play well.

I could not have been more wrong. He was a constant rules lawyer and pouted everytime he missed an attach role. The bets came when he rode his character rode his heavy warhorse into combat with some trolls. Well some attacked him and one attacked his horse. Well the troll scored a crit on the horse which ended up killing it. He was so mad he threw his dice and pouted the rest of the game. After that session, I sent him an email explaining how much that distubed the rest of the group as well as myself. He did not respond but also didn't show up next session. When I called him he said he was not feeling well. I then learned that he had ditched the session to play at another local game store. So then I knew he had lied to me.

After that I sent him an email explaining he was no longer invited and he he pratically through a hissy fit over email to me. I pretty much ignored him after that and he eventually moved away.

 

[Nailom]

I kicked 2 players from my game

The first one always wanted to play the stupid ogre and wasn't much more intelligent either.

The second one cheated, ruined my gamesessions with wirred ideas and couldn't even realize that he was playing absolutly self centered. He wasn't interested in the plot or the other players actions. He killed other players for XP's, so that they didn't want to come anymore and was angry because I didn't gave him XP's for it. The whole game was nothing but a large stage for him. He "lost" two CD's I borrowed him and I'm pretty sure he has stolen some of my more expensive dice.

 

[reveal]

Let's see:

(6 years ago) My wife and I left one group because the DM decided that my Bladesinger (2E) didn't follow the Law of Armed Conflict (a real life set of rules in regards to war).

(5 years ago) My wife and I left another group because one of the players told my wife he loved her.

(4 years ago) I got kicked out of one group because.... well, honestly, I don't know. I was called and told I was out of the group and to come pick up some stuff. The hubby, the guy who called, was nice but his wife never looked at me or said a word to me. I assume it was her call. Neither of them actually told me why I was being kicked out.

I've never actually kicked anyone out of my group before but then I've been lucky enough to be with the same core group, plus or minus a few people, for the past 3 years.