I feel like ****

[VariSami]

While I'm not informed on the specifics, I believe the following link includes some good advice:
Five Geek Social Fallacies

Basically, not everyone needs to be friends just because they share a hobby. In this case Flumph was brought in by a friend (strike one, he didn't understand the incompatibility) and then said friend left him with you and you endured it (strike two, you didn't discuss the problem to begin with). This translates to fallacy #4 and fallacy #1 in my eyes.

While it's not Flumph that has committed these fallacies (he might have committed #2 , though), there is no duty to endure him. It might be incompatibility, like you've said. He might not be a bad person, that is. But it's a good enough reason if you judge it not worth the effort to fix.

Our group endured a resource-grabbing, foul metagamer that always played the same CE character in different guises (Not literally. He just always played the same way.). I and our current DM got very tired of his presence and when he starts his next campaign, the player will not be informed. We've always worked by the principle that people are summoned to take part in campaigns and said player has not been part of all campaigns we've played. I haven't asked him to play in my games in a year already. He's still got other company to play with but we're simply incompatible with him.

Oh, and unlike the OP, I'll give a few examples to avert critique due to inadequate details.
1. He eats greasy foods with dressing and prefers to use the pencils and dice of others. Once he slipped his hand in an Uncle Ben's jar, grabbed the rest of the sauce and licked it off his hands. And then he tried grabbing people's dice. We seriously told him to go wash his hands.
2. "My character's not chaotic evil - it's chaotic to randomly mug and kill people and neutral to be selfish." This was his about his Warlock that was not sharing the loot with my dumb tank character and whose idea of a good plan involved torture, larceny and murder. Oh, did I say these were the attributes of his character? Pardon me, I meant the player: since the character was used as nothing but his personal avatar in the world. It had no personality of its own whatsoever.
3. Whenever we undertook or completed a quest, he would haggle about the prize. Hot damn, he even tried to negotiate with overzealous Paladins that were making it very clear that they'd let us go since we did them a huge favor but people like us would no longer be welcome within city borders. And the things he tried? Essentially Intimidating them to give us a right to stay. That's just damn stupid but he'd grab any opportunity to try and enforce his personal will.

 

[Umbran]

While it's not Flumph that has committed these fallacies, there is no duty to endure him.

I don't think anyone here's arguing that there's a duty to endure him. There is a duty to treat him with a modicum of respect, though.

 

[VariSami]

I don't think anyone here's arguing that there's a duty to endure him. There is a duty to treat him with a modicum of respect, though.

But my hypothesis is that if the OP is committing any of the geek social fallacies, the main reason he feels like **** is because he feels that he has the duty in question and that he has committed a crime against it. Of course the reason he feels like this might as well be that has breached against the norm you described. I call it a norm instead of duty, though, since one can always choose to ignore it if he is ready to face the consequences. The sense in which I spoke of duty is more of a psychological thing. Basically, you're self-burdened by it, instead of it being placed on you by social norms. Not to say that social norms don't have a tendency to be accepted as duties.

 

[Janx]

On whether the OP had the authority or responsibility to kick the Flumph out of the group, aside from the fact that it was his house and he had the most legal authority to grant/deny access over any other group member, consider this:

I heard this tale on NPR. Hurricane Irene whacked a good junk of new england (or somewhere). This guy named Geo gets the idea to start fixing up his neighbor's houses because they are all in shock (so is he, can't bear to look at his house). He figures out the first step to organizing is to wear Orange Vests. Because everybody thinks you're in charge. Before you know it, this guy's got command of the whole recovery effort for the town.

Somebody asked him how he got the job to be the recovery organizer. He says he just did it, because nobody else was doing anything.

Same thing here. The OP just bought himself an Orange Vest.

We don't know why Flumph isn't liked For all we know it's a racism thing, and not likely to be corrected. That could mean the OP's friends are racists or that Flumph is racist. We don't know. It's just an example of something the OP might not want to delve into. I suspect he'd have given an example if it was as simple as not flushing the toilet.

I would treat the problem like dealing with a problem employee. We're already at the last stage, firing. Try to be nice about it. Don't give lots of reasons to be argued. Just say, "I'm sorry that there's not a fit for you here. Good luck in your future endeavors."

Normally, I have a simple catch-phrase: Correct, Deflect, Eject. Try to correct the problem before it gets out of hand. If that doesn't work, try to keep the employee from the area he's not good at (if he's not good at dealing with end users, don't make him do that). That way you can still get work out of him. If that don't work, because he just isn't working out, eject him from your group or company. Carrying a problem person hurts team morale as everybody else sees him as an expense and hassle to getting stuff done.

That relates to what [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] says, which is be diplomatic, explain problems before they escalate and give the person advance notice and a chance to change. Treat them like you'd want to be treated.

 

[was]

It sucks, but this happens to every group eventually. Since it sounds like the group, at least the majority of them, determined this player to be a disruptive influence, I'd not disuss it further. Simply advise him/her that it was a group decision and let it drop. Letting it drag on any further, is only going to cause more frustration and anger to everyone involved.

 

[Lwaxy]

So if in your company people would talk behind someone's back without naming a concrete issue and then call in sick because of that someone, you'd rather fire the guy that gets mobbed?

I agree about the orange vest comparison, I've been in such a position before for various reasons. Sometimes, this set me up for more problems in the long run, though, including being seen as the bouncer type person in one of my former social groups which couldn't just include any type of geek and being expected to solve all sorts of issues without anyone else trying to lift a finger but then getting blamed if it didn't work out to everyone's satisfaction.

One needs to be careful not to walk in such traps.

 

[Desdichado]

I heard this tale on NPR. Hurricane Irene whacked a good junk of new england (or somewhere). This guy named Geo gets the idea to start fixing up his neighbor's houses because they are all in shock (so is he, can't bear to look at his house). He figures out the first step to organizing is to wear Orange Vests. Because everybody thinks you're in charge. Before you know it, this guy's got command of the whole recovery effort for the town.

Somebody asked him how he got the job to be the recovery organizer. He says he just did it, because nobody else was doing anything.

Same thing here. The OP just bought himself an Orange Vest.

That might be comparable if that guy Geo (is he related to Neo?) had no idea what was causing the home damage, or why anyone else was concerned about it.

Here, the OP can't even articulate what the problem behavior actually is! Granted, maybe he's just deflecting and doesn't want to tell us, but it seems pretty clear that he's not exactly sure what the issue is exactly, since he said as much directly.

 

[rogueattorney]

A gets along well with B, C, and D, but for whatever reason B and C can't stand D. D is oblivious to B's and C's dislike of him.

Is A doing anyone any favors by continuing to host social occasions to which B, C, and D are all invited?

Of course not.

The nicest thing for A to do is to be honest with D.

 

[Janx]

So if in your company people would talk behind someone's back without naming a concrete issue and then call in sick because of that someone, you'd rather fire the guy that gets mobbed?

Assuming you're talking to me, I'm not sure if you're saying I'd just fire the guy whom other people are talking about. That would be the exact opposite of what I meant, which what I said echoes what Umbran said in business terminology.

bad mouthing people behind their back is a different problem. That's I'll get to.

To be clear on my prior post, I am talking about dealing with a person who I see is having problems and I am in authority to deal with them (I have fired and laid people off before). It is best to identify a problem and try to fix it before it gets worse. If you can't fix it (maybe Bob is really good at coding, and just lousy at talking with end users), keep Bob at coding and keep users away from him because it is expensive to replace Bob, compared to the work he does when you avoid his problem area. If you can't find a balancing solution to get value from Bob, and avoid agitating his weakness, then it is time for Bob to go. But in all those steps, communication with Bob over what he needs to work on is crucial. It should not be a surprise to Bob, that's bad management and not fair to Bob.

On bad-mouthing, that's actually a complicated problem. You don't know it's bad mouthing until it crosses a line.

At some point 2 people who have a problem with Bob are going to talk about it, so they can determine if there's a problem. It will probably be an informal conversation. Nobody books a meeting to talk about that thing Bob did at the last game. It just kind of comes up.

This is a normal human trait. Humans are always talking about things that are not present at the time and place of the conversation. It's probably why we invented words. Otherwise I could just point and motion to smash it with my club. You don't have to travel to the Grand Canyon just to talk to your friend about it AT the Grand Canyon. Same thing for people as the subject. Otherwise, you'd never be able to to plan a surprise party.

So, you and I are for example are talking about Bob. I notice he's kind of surly whenever he talks to end users. I'm curious to see if you've observed the same thing, or if I'm just being over-critical, since he's not doing it how I would do it. I don't think there's anything wrong with that conversation, as that's how people work, and it's not likely to change.

Couple this hypothetical conversation we're having to what you'd think of me if I confronted Bob about it at the last team meeting. It's not cool to call people out like that. So that would make me be the bad guy. So instead, I've got to build consensus that there's even a problem.

This gets twisted when there's manipulative people involved. If you and I are just engineers who want to get stuff done, and represent our team in a good light, our concern over Bob is genuine, as is our discussion. A manipulative person uses these conversations to win people over to their viewpoint and get an outcome they desire (kill Bob, so they can move up in the hierarchy). I hate those kind of people.

But back to our fairly inocuous conversation. Wearing my manager hat, I've learned a useful metric. If everytime you and the leadership talk about an employee it's always about problems and dissatisfaction, you have a problem with that employee. Follow the nice steps to fix it that Umbran ascribes to. There's a difference to the last time I screwed up, and nobody remembers it from the guy who is always late with his code, never meets the requirements or follows the standards. Outside of management role, if your conversations turn from genuine perspective gathering to a form of mocking entertainment, you're bad mouthing.

There's an old indian saying that you get to tell your story three times (story being about how you were wronged, typically). After that, you're just milking it, and the tribe turns their back on you when you tell that story.

Same sort of thing should apply to talking about a problem person. When it starts getting into telling it for griping's sake, and swapping stories, that's not really nice. It's aggravated by then not taking any kind of action to help correct the problem.

In the OP's case, this group sat for a year complaining to themselves about this guy. By the third gripe-session, those people should have gotten to the "what should we do about it" conversation.

Anyway, that's just some long thoughts in my head on the topic.

 

[Dordledum]

Thanks for chiming in all. I acknowledge that we could've done things a lot better and smoothly.

A gets along well with B, C, and D, but for whatever reason B and C can't stand D. D is oblivious to B's and C's dislike of him.

Is A doing anyone any favors by continuing to host social occasions to which B, C, and D are all invited?

Of course not.

The nicest thing for A to do is to be honest with D.

This is what I was trying to achieve. There was also E who is the DM, who is a too nice guy and didn't want to get messed up with it all. He has thanked me yesterday for asking Flumph (D) to leave. He acknowledged that the situation was getting out of hand.

The orange vest analogy is pretty accurate as well. Nobody did anything, so I felt I had to step up. I tend to orange vest a lot. Even though I'm not the GM, I do plan all the gaming meetings, coordinate the communication etc.

I do admit we as a group approached the issue wrong. It took about 8 months of bi-monthly gaming sessions before B and C indicated their issues with D. Just after F quit our gaming group (the guy who had introduced Flumph), they told the DM and me that they didn't wan't to play with Flumph anymore.

But they didn't tell him or act upon it. They assumed the DM would fix this. The DM said: "I don't see the problem, I'll stop inviting him, but when he asks to play, he's welcome." A few months later, he moved away, so we didn’t feel any action necessary at that time.

We did tell Flumph off when he did something we really didn't like on several occasions. He laughed everything away, and even when we told him we were serious, he thought we were joking. Some of their issues I personally never noticed before they spoke out.

I'll just give some examples of stuff I have to agree with where annoying, but to me were not worth booting the guy. To note, he played a Lawful Good City Guardsman, most of his actions weren’t very lawful or good

• When discussing in-game tactics and we all agreed on a plan. Upon execution, he tended to abandon these plans at first chance. This had had several severe in-game consequences (character deaths included, never his).
• He always wanted to pick a fight with the NPCs. Always. Even when they are Archons and Angels.
• He wanted lots of loot and xp, even for battles he did not participate in. And whined about it.
• He rewrote his character sheet before everytime we played. Changed his character name, stats, his abilities, everything except the fact that he still was the Lawful Good City Guardsman we new previously.
• He made jokes nobody thought were funny, and didn’t get any of the jokes the rest of the group made.

These and other problems which I gathered B and C had with Flumph combined spoiled their evenings. They also said they just didn’t like the guy. When he was there the atmosphere soon got grimmy, so that started to spoil my evenings too. (Flumph however didn't notice).

My personal issue is that I actually still liked the guy, but felt this could not continue.