How have you gotten rid of unwanted players?

[lukelightning]

I've never evicted a player but I have been involved in the, um, "retirement" of a certain player's character, a Vow of Poverty monk who we all loathed. We didn't kill this character, but were just less than hasty when the monk was surrounded by orcs chopping him up with axes.

 

[hafrogman]

Cancel the game forever.
Wait two weeks.
Call back the players you want.


We probably could have been more forthright, but the player in question was a blood relative of the game's host.

 

[Oryan77]

I told our problem player, "Look Mom, we don't like playing with you anymore. If you don't stop showing up to the game I'm gonna move out of your house next month on my 30th birthday".

 

[ThirdWizard]

I've never had to get rid of a player.

 

[EricNoah]

None of the above. Never had a problem with a player that had to be solved this way.

Tardiness/infrequent attendance is about the only problem I've had, and it eventually sorts itself out -- I keep on scheduling games whether that person can make it or not, and eventually their schedule either starts aligning with mine (and the rest of the group's), or it doesn't and they stop coming to games.

 

[EricNoah]

I told our problem player, "Look Mom, we don't like playing with you anymore. If you don't stop showing up to the game I'm gonna move out of your house next month on my 30th birthday".

LOL

 

[sniffles]

I'm lucky that my group consists of people who are all my good friends and we've seldom wanted to 'evict' anyone. But I did assist in evicting one player from one campaign. We still play with him in other campaigns and he also GMs several campaigns for us.

We were preparing to start a new campaign with a different GM. The GM of the new game was a player in another campaign that included the player in question. Then the player in question took some in-game actions that left us all scratching our heads and muttering, "WTF?".

The GM of the new game decided at that point that he didn't want this player in his new campaign. We had intended to play the new game at the home of the player in question because he doesn't drive (and doesn't accept rides). So we just told the player that for reasons of scheduling and convenience we would be moving the game site to the GM's house. I think he might have been a little disappointed that he couldn't play, but otherwise the rest of our gaming interactions with him have proceeded as normal.

I have also been the player who was almost excluded myself. After we completed a long-term campaign and the GM started thinking about a new game, he emailed me that he wasn't happy with me and wasn't sure if he wanted to include me in his next game. I had done some things I knew annoyed him, such as reading or drawing during game sessions. I'd tried for a while to stop doing that but backslid. I also complained a lot about anything I didn't like in the game.

After the GM emailed me I admit I was upset. I hadn't realized just how much my behavior was annoying him. I think we could have done a better job of communicating with each other before it got to that point. But after I assured him that I would do my best to straighten up, he included me in his next campaign, which has been going on for 3 years now. I don't read during the game anymore, and I don't whine about stuff all the time, so hopefully I'm no longer doing anything to irritate him and he'll keep wanting to game with me.

 

[Rika]

We've actually done two things on the poll.

The first player we tossed was very creepy and gave me and another female player the willies. This guy showed up for one session 3 hours early. It was not long after my son was born and thankfully my father was visiting at the time. He stayed until my husband got home because the player creeped him out too. With him we just told him we were taking a break and we'd let him know when we were starting up again.

The other time we asked them to leave via email after a very heated discussion at the end of a session. We'd just found out that night that all of the players were in agreement that we'd rather not play with them anymore and so that helped. Afterwards they accused me in particular of being unable to associate with people that didn't share the same views as I did. Kind of pissed me off because I'd been the one saying that I didn't want to just kick them out since it's always the GM's wife that gets the blame for it. I even agrued against it when my husband brought it up at first 2 months before I'd had enough.

 

[Emirikol]

I have a 3 absense policy in my online games. If people miss three sessions without any prior notice, they get a politely worded email asking them to stop showing up. The joys of online play. Sigh. It has done the trick though. I've had to remove two players from my World's Largest Dungeon game and, really, it was for the best.

Holy crap man. People just don't show up to your game and you give them two more tries? That sounds liek the construction industry to me

jh
Having recently built out a business and having had to put up with the most unprofessional industry in the world...

 

[Emirikol]

Tell them not to come back. Like Frukathka advises, I've tried to lay out what is causing the friction and see if the player is willing to change. I'd like to say it helped, but in my experience (three times in the last decade) two players flipped out with completely out-of-the-blue reactions and a third changed for all of an hour before reverting to his anti-social behavior.

Same here. It sounds all noble and whatnot to be civilized, but they're the ones being rude in the first place too. Fact is, I'm wondering if Ftruthaka has ever been in that situation. It's always personal and by the time that someone says something, it's best that the other person just leave.

I've walked away from DMing RPGA tables. I've cancelled games. I've never murdered, but I did finger a four sider and wonder how much damage it would do if I jammed it in the idiot's eye once.

I've had players freak out on their way out the door, throw tantrums at RPGA tables, whine, cry, beg. Maybe I've been playing too long, but it seems like there's a lot of gamers out there who don't belong anywhere out of a cannibal hut in Java.

There ought to be a new T-shirt: I've been kicked out of my D&D group.

jh