Have you ever driven a player from a game?

[Jeff Wilder]

I lived in Louisville.

Might be before your time, but my uncles owned, and I managed the kitchen of, Jockamo's on Bardstown Road. Even when I didn't live in the Highlands (my last apartment in Louisville was on Everett), that neighborhood was the focus of my existence in the city. My aunt still runs the descendant of Jockamo's, now called Prestigiacomo's.

(The best game store I've ever known was in St. Matthews, BTW. Little place called Games Galore. Roger E. Moore used to play there with us. Or, rather, they let me, as a snotty teenager, play with them. GG closed for good in ... '89, maybe? So, like I said, maybe before your time.)

 

[jasper]

There been so many.
When station at Ft. Ord. Had a player wanting an Imp. I finally gave to him after the second session since I needed the players. His pc died and he was suprise I allowed the Imp to steal his soul and take it to hell. And would not allow him to be raise. He quote" my two high level pcs teleport into the dungeon, cast fireball, take up the dead pc body and all the magic items and teleport out." He grab his stuff and stormed out.
One player who would talk about his bed room activities was not invited back.
One former good friend. This guy was okay as long as I was player, he was player, or if it was UNO night, Bad video night, pot luck night. But if I was Dming and he was playing 90% of rules/calls challenges was from him. Basically told him he was welcome at my house at any time except when I was dming. 2 weeks later he and his wife had a public arguement at my house and they both stormed out. Only seen them at supermarket since.
One player I told off. He had great talent as artist and script writer. I told him to quit saying he going to submit his work and just submit it. He still won't talk to me after 15+ years. Even last weekend when we were both appeared at the same get together.
There been others but these 3 are the most unusal.

 

[CuRoi]

At least three players come to mind over say 15 years or so (there may be others I'm forgetting).

The first was a player in a campaign during college. It was a Dragonlance campaign where one of the characters was going through the trials at the Tower of High Sorcery to become a full fledged mage (well, become a card carrying one at least. You could pursue magic in Krynn without taking the test, but the collections agency always came looking for you...) At any rate, the player was failing the test miserably. As the DM I was a bit befuddled and wasn't sure if it was my test being that difficult or just the player misunderstanding things.

Well, it just so happens that the mage brought along the Minotaur cleric to his test, simply to accompany him and bear witness. The cleric, I suppose being wiser than the mage, figured out the test and pretty well helped the mage complete it. I went ahead and allowed the mage to be accepted into the Order, to which the Minotaur cleric cried foul. He felt I wasn't being hard enough on the mage and he stopped coming to games after that.

...

Years later, I had a new player and his son join my fairly well-established campaign. I should have booted the dad when he said "I want to play Chaotic Evil", (actually he was incapable of playing Chaotic Evil. He instead played what I call Chaotic Neutral and insisted he was being evil and that evil was a subjective term. My response was it ain't subjective in my campaign where someone can talk to their god and tell whether you are evil or not, but I digress.) One session, his son fell under the wiles of a Succubus demon.

We had two younger players so I was very careful not to keep things "T" for teen and gave the whole scenario more of a humorous bent than anything. At this point the other younger player started calling out the seduced player for falling for the succubus' charms. I should have stopped it sooner, but honestly their exchange was pretty hilarious and the whole table was laughing.

Well, the parent of the player with the seduced character hauls off and cusses at the other younger player. I was a bit taken back and told them all to knock it off and I apologized for not putting a stop to things sooner. I also mentiond that I expected the adults to be adults. The father son team finished out that session and left. I emailed the father afterward to discuss things and got back this really long old testament meets Cuthulu email where the first letter of every word was capitalized and it spoke about men and women and religious themes and was completely and utterly bizarre.

I'm just glad I survived that one.

...

The final player that I "ran off" just got up during a session, started getting their things together with great fury, stomped over to the door, walked out and slammed it shut leaving the pictues and such on the wall rattling. All this without a word. They had been coming for perhaps 6 months or so and we were all pretty well stunned - which after a few minutes turned into some serious laughter. I never got any answer as to what was wrong (they had tried speaking to an NPC using a poor charisma and made some mediocre rolls which granted little information. This was just prior to their departure). However, I made it clear through another player that they probably shouldn't come back if they weren't having any fun.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I once temporarily drove off my whole group! A combination of hard-core rat-bastard DMing and an out-of-game problem of not being able to keep secrets made the whole group decide not to play with me anymore. I had to earn back their trust before I was able to sit at a D&D table with them again.

Another time I got into a heated argument with a friend that I always seem to get into heated arguments with. He finally got up and stormed out. He didn't return for a few months. Turns out his father was terminal and he hadn't told any of us. My unrelenting arguing (and his I guess) was too much for him at that time. He and I try to curb our arguments nowadays.

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

It is interesting to me, from this thread but also countless others, that the DM has proviso to tell players "where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are", but rarely do we see instances were a player carries the same cache with regard to DM behaviour.

By the way, my statement is not an attack, just an observation.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

It is interesting to me, from this thread but also countless others, that the DM has proviso to tell players "where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are", but rarely do we see instances were a player carries the same cache with regard to DM behaviour.

Is there a correlation between "GM" and "alpha geek"? My suspicion is "yes, and probably a pretty strong one," which would go a long way toward explaining this. Other supplemental, alternative, or complementary reasons probably exist, such as, "There's probably a correlation between 'GM's home' and 'game location.'"

 

[kitsune9]

Might be before your time, but my uncles owned, and I managed the kitchen of, Jockamo's on Bardstown Road. Even when I didn't live in the Highlands (my last apartment in Louisville was on Everett), that neighborhood was the focus of my existence in the city. My aunt still runs the descendant of Jockamo's, now called Prestigiacomo's.

(The best game store I've ever known was in St. Matthews, BTW. Little place called Games Galore. Roger E. Moore used to play there with us. Or, rather, they let me, as a snotty teenager, play with them. GG closed for good in ... '89, maybe? So, like I said, maybe before your time.)

I had just moved to Louisville in late '88/89. I don't remember Games Galore as I lived in Valley Station at that time, but eventually moved somewhat close to St. Matthews (Lake Terrace specifically). The game stores that I used to go to were the small bookstores, a place called Book & Music Exchange, and a comic book / game store called Comic Book World. I heard that Larry Elmore lives/lived in LaGrange. My brother met him when my brother was trying to break in as an artist, but I didn't get the opportunity.

 

[catsclaw227]

It is interesting to me, from this thread but also countless others, that the DM has proviso to tell players "where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are", but rarely do we see instances were a player carries the same cache with regard to DM behaviour.

Believe me, there are plenty of "creepy-DM" threads floating in the archive...

Other supplemental, alternative, or complementary reasons probably exist, such as, "There's probably a correlation between 'GM's home' and 'game location.'"

There's something to this. It has been my experience the DM most often hosts the game and generally has some authority to say what is OK in their house.

In these cases, the player simply leaves the game instead of trying to tell the creepy DM what is acceptable or not.

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

Jeff, I agree. It would be interesting to hear if any Players have fired their GM, on an individual basis.

 

[jonesy]

Jeff, I agree. It would be interesting to hear if any Players have fired their GM, on an individual basis.

We have. But it's not like we kicked him out of the game. He just became a player. And considering how hard the running of things seemed to be for him I think he was happy not 'having to' do it anymore.