I like most of the advice that's been given so far; trust me, the earlier you bring this up with him (starting via e-mail sounds "safe" to me, too), the better. He's not going to get better on his own, and he might not even get better at all, so you want to get to the "Nothing personal, but this is the kind of behavior that upsets us and will no longer be tolerated" stage as quickly as possible. It just gets worse the longer you leave it.
We actually had a similar situation in our group a while back. Someone one of us gamed with in college back east moved to our city and started playing with us. Over time, her behavior became more and more disruptive; in general, she hated everything we played but wouldn't say so to the rest of the group. Instead, she'd sulk throughout the entire game or fall asleep on the couch. At her worst moments she would attempt to hold the game hostage by simply refusing to participate at all (especially if the GM made her character important to the story). If you tried to get her involved, you failed. If you ignored her and got on with the game, she just kept sulking.
Oh, but then once she'd gone home, the e-mail would start. Generally she'd just mail the GM, and tell him or her what a horrible GM they were and how unhappy she was with her character and how NO ONE was having fun in the game (not even the people who said they were having fun!
). And if the GM tried to work through the problems with her, adjusting the game or the setting or her character to better fit what she claimed to want, it didn't change her behavior when gaming one tiny bit. She still sat there and sulked and then complained bitterly about all of it in e-mail. She tended to reject invitations to do other (non-gaming) things as a group, and if she accepted, she tended to sulk THERE, too.
I'll just summarize the next year or so of playing with her, during which time her behavior only got worse. Worse behavior during a game, nastier e-mail, becoming emotionally abusive (especially to her roommate) outside of the game, unrealistic ultimatums, and finally a veiled suicide threat.
Some of our group made one last attempt to get through to her, telling her that she was acting in scary and upsetting ways and that everyone would be very supportive if she chose to seek help with the things that were bothering her. And for her part, she acknowledged that she probably needed some professional help...but also that she would not, in fact, go get that help. And then, with more of a whimper than a bang, she stopped gaming with us and stopped answering e-mail, having successfully burned her bridges with three of the people in our group and done a fairly good job of alienating the other three.
And wouldn't you know it, the next series of games we played were really fun again. Makes me think that we should have pushed it to the full-on "your behavior worries us, and we can't let it go on like this" confrontation earlier, when she might have bailed out before wrecking a half-dozen games and making our friends miserable.
Maybe your problem player is better, or worse; I can't tell. I also don't know how bad it will be when you finally confront him (though I'm sure it will be bad). All I can say is, it is ALWAYS WORTH IT to confront the problem player and hold them accountable for their actions. Yeah, confrontation is agonizing and fraught with drama, but so is putting up with his bad behavior; it's better to just get it over with.
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good luck: it won't be fun but it
is the right thing to do
ryan
