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Message: <blockquote data-quote="merelycompetent" data-source="post: 2964961" data-attributes="member: 33830">Well, I guess we can stick to just politely posting on Enworld then. Yes, it can. Total Party Kill because the newbie turned out to be a PKing psychopath, deriving most of his joy from causing as much strife as possible by sneak attacking the cleric in the middle of a major fight and taking him down. Required booting the player, resetting the game back to the start (and incidentally pretty well ruinning several surprise twists in the plot), and picking it up next week knowing that we'd still have a bad taste leftover from the previous experience. DM spent 6-8 hours preparing for the game, plus 4 hours playtime - all pretty much down the drain now. Add in the 4 hours of play time for each player (5 total): 30 hours of our free time wasted by one bad player.In the group I DM for, we looked at that wasted time, noted that if we'd gone through a 2-3 session screening we'd probably have avoided it. 30 hours of our time vs. 12 hours of the potential player's time. For me, and also for the group, that's an easy decision to make.Now, if I'd just been running a one-shot, an event, or an open session, it wouldn't have been such a problem. I let just about anyone who doesn't give off a dangerous vibe into those, and they serve as an excellent substitute for the campaign screening I described in the previous post. But in a campaign... sorry, I need to get to know you first and so does the group. I and the other players have sunk too much effort into it to want to see another session ruined by a disagreeable individual. Again, this doesn't work for everybody. It does work for us. YMMV.</blockquote>

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