Kicking out a player: share your stories/advice

[Treebore]

I really hate passive aggressive methods that "avoid" confrontation. I think that if you have to boot someone, have the cojones to do it privately, be honest with him and tell him exactly why. He doesn't have to like it, but he's going to have to accept it.

The idea of lying leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When they find out you lied to ditch them, it's even worse -- and if you don't tell them what they're doing wrong, they can't help improve it.

Ditto! This is how I do it. Yeah, you feel sorry for the guy (unless he was really bad), it hurts their feelings, etc... But at least I showed them enough respect and consideration to tell it to them straight.

I was also annoyed that every time the players who wanted people out didn't have the spine to tell the player they were out. I always had to do it, even when I didn't agree with the reasons.

Just a matter of showing respect to tell them face to face, in my opinion.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

I really hate passive aggressive methods that "avoid" confrontation. I think that if you have to boot someone, have the cojones to do it privately, be honest with him and tell him exactly why. He doesn't have to like it, but he's going to have to accept it.

The idea of lying leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When they find out you lied to ditch them, it's even worse -- and if you don't tell them what they're doing wrong, they can't help improve it.

Yeah, so I tried the restart in secret once, after deciding not to invite one of my players.

There we were, gaming and having fun, when the other player walks in.

She's like, "Hey, I thought that you weren't playing anymore."

We're like, "We aren't playing."

She's like, "Yes you are, I can see you playing."

We're like, "No we aren't...and besides, we didn't invite you."

She's like, "I live here and I'm married to the GM."


Let me tell you, the passive aggressive booting never works with your spouse...ever.

 

[Treebore]

The only time I would consider llying is if your worried about the mental stability of the person.

Like the last person I kicked out, I was seriously worried that he might suicide or react in some other seriously irrational manner. I still ended up having "the talk" with him, and it turned out OK. Still, I checked up on him for months afterwards to be sure.

So if you have similiar concerns, or worries about them coming back with weapons and opening fire, then I can see using deceitful means of getting them out of the group.

 

[haiiro]

Shameless plug: I put this question to the TT community at the end of 2005, and turned the responses into How to Kick Out a Player and Respect Yourself in the Morning, a step-by-step guide to doing exactly that.

A lot of what that post covers has already come up in this thread, including the excellent advice to be adult about the whole thing -- being direct and polite goes a long way. I mention it primarily because of the step-by-step aspect, which can be helpful if you're after a script (of sorts) to follow.

 

[rgard]

We're talking about the reverse over here in this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=201513

 

[Midknightsun]

I've used both methods in the past.

If I give a damn about the player being kicked, I usually have "The Talk " with them (not working out, different play styles etc.). Usually we part amicably.

If I literally don't ever want to see the person again, I usually just stop inviting them.

Honestly, I don't care if they find out and I'd rather have the half-hour I'd spend on "the talk" to spend with my wife, catch up on emails or dozens of other things besides letting some jerk down easy.

Yeah, I agree with TB here. Some players are so horrible that honesty or an explanation is a waste of time, and they'll just argue with you anyway to prove how "wrong" you are about them. Some just aren't working out, but are basically good people. Those are the ones I have the talk with.

But out of the last few players that left:

Note that I'm a really laid back kinda guy, so it takes a lot of BS to get to me.

1--Our first DM. He was BAAAAAAAAAAD. His idea of an exciting encounter invovled pimping out his new minis of the week. And he loved Warforged Titans. Our group joked once that we must have destroyed all the WFTs in existence . . . that, or there's a factory somewhere in Xendrix pumping them out at a rate that would put Ford to shame. . . . and Fiendish T-Rexes. Some demon apparently couldn't get enough lizard love, I guess. . . .and I'm still not sure if that qualified as beastiality or not, but I digress. When he was a player he purposely screwed up adventures by doing the obviously BAD thing (you know what I mean). His games were horribly boring . . . and his wife . . .oh dear god . . . the woman was extremely intrusive and attention seeking. He musta got our "we're really not keen on you" vibe, because he eventually uninvited himself.

2--An extreme munchkin player. The guy himself was large and intimidating. he liked to make characters in the same vein. . . He also had a penchant for finding all the loopholes in the rules that made for horrible brokenation--and he admitted more than once that he took great pleasure in seeing exactly how far he could break any given rule. He also played his characters like royal jerks, and eventually started getting on the other players' nerves. During one session when he snapped the necks of a couple npc's (in a campaign that was neutral to good slanted--no evils allowed) against npcs that were either helpless or who had done nothing to harm them. I confronted him. He basically told me to blow off and that I couldn't tell him how to run his character (I was DM). When other players brought up the same concerns, he said "tough nuggies" (well, not really, but you get the drift). He left after I basically told him that he was being an unreasonable jerk, and it was getting old.

3-- Younger player who's maturity was in question from the get go. I told him it wasn't going to work out after the first session. He had a bit of a spasm. *shrugs*, but complied.

4--Player who had a bit of a scary fondness for some bizarre and disturbing character concepts. The player himself gave us all some weird vibes. Also, his characters were all Rogues who basically hung back and did nothing . . . . from a safe distance. We reconvened the group on a different day. . . . so that he could really do nothing, a safe distance from us.

5--and yes, the token poor hygiene player. He was the roommate of one of the other players. I'd try to describe his funkyness, but words fail me. He used gaming to unleash his own twisted fetishes upon us, and attack (verbally) and belittle players he saw as quiet and easy targets. Yeah, not worth the effort to give the talk to . . . . reconvened on another day, and not too worried if he found out.

 

[sniffles]

I can't agree that there are any players who aren't worth talking to. If they aren't receptive to the discussion then you can tell them politely that you are not comfortable playing with them any longer and leave it at that.

 

[SiderisAnon]

I too agree that talking to the person and giving them some honesty is a really good idea. "Restart in secret" is just cheesy. It's a horrible cop-out. If you don't like gaming with the person, let them know. If no one ever tells they WHY they don't want to game with them, they have no real hope of ever improving their play style.

I have had to remove a number of players from my game over the years. For most of them, it was fairly painless. For some, a little less so. Maybe these examples will help someone else.


One player showed up less than half the time. I spoke to him, said the group needed people who showed up regularly (we had 5-6 players, so losing one wasn't a problem), and if he couldn't show up, he couldn't play with us till his schedule cleared. He quit at the time, but played with us later in several different campaigns.

One young lady only showed up because her boyfriend was in the game. She didn't play, she socialized. When she did try to play, it was all about having all the attention on her. I told her that if she didn't want to play the game, she shouldn't be playing. In her case, I did NOT tell her the rest of the group agreed, because that would have really hurt her feelings. She ended up dropping out of the game because she "wasn't have any fun anyway." (Yes, honesty is good policy, but sometimes you can leave things out.)

I had one player who was so awful that everyone in the group wanted him gone, except for two people. One was the player in question. One was the player who brought him into the group. That player might have wanted him gone, but I chose to not ask him to save him some grief. I took a vote of everyone else in the group on through phone calls -- it was unanimous. I then called the friend who brought the bad player in and told him what was going on and said I wasn't asking for his vote to keep him from being in a bad position. I called the bad player, told him the bad news and a couple of sentences of why (basically, that he was completely disruptive), and I also told him that I had not asked his friend who brought him in to vote because I already had a majority before I called him. I never heard from the bad player again, but I also didn't hear anything about him taking it out on the guy who brought him in.

I had the player with unfortunate hygiene. However, in his case, we had already made it clear that he either fix it or he wouldn't be welcome. With this guy, it was fairly easy, because his hygiene was such a problem that he'd been told about it by numerous people. He did end up getting kicked from the group, but because he was very obviously cheating, denied it when I warned him, and kept doing it. So, that solved the hygiene issue too. (He was only there for maybe four session, having originally been brought in as a favor to my girlfriend at the time.)

Point in case I've had two overegotistical players in the past 10 years who I have TRIED having "the talk" with, only to get involved in a giagantic "but, look, I'm so great and obviously such a super guy you are obviously mistaken" argument with. I'm not talking about avoiding a confrontation as much as putting up with massive BS from a guy who refuses to beleive he's flawed in any way and WON'T leave.

I had a player like this. He had been a friend for a number of years and his personality got progressively worse over that time until he was a complete jerk in the game who sucked all the fun out of the room and made me consider giving up DMing. I tried to have the talk with him on three occasions and it failed miserably each time. His ego simply wouldn't let him admit he could be any tiny bit at fault. So, after the third conversation I called him a few days later and told him that I thought we should not game together for a few months because we were obviously butting heads too often and needed a cool-down period. He's still a jerk out of game, so he's not getting invited back to any gaming group.

Unfortunately, this player no longer speaks to me. However, this is not really about the gaming, but because his personal life has gotten to the point where he's really not speaking with anyone anymore. *shrug* Some people you cannot help.

 

[SiderisAnon]

The Scariest Player I Ever Had

I am putting this in a separate post because it really deserves its own. Maybe someone else can learn something from the problem our group had.

About a decade ago, we had a player in a game who was ... well, crazy. None of us realized just how crazy until at least six months after they joined. I don't mean just a little cracked, I mean someone who thought their character was a fully functioning separate entity and has actually asked other people in the game to talk to that character because he was saying things that were annoying the player.

The player didn't just need to get out of the game, they needed serious help. Unfortunately, they were quite happy the way they were and didn't want help. They were also very intelligent and capable of fooling the shrinks. We know, because this person was committed for a week or so by their parents a few years before this and convinced the shrinks that they were completely fine and the parents were just overreacting to a fertile imagination and a love of fantasy literature.

A number of the players and I all considered this person to be a friend. We got together and talked about the situation, but we simply could not find a way to get the player help. They were not actually dangerous to themselves or others, they managed to go to school and have a "reasonably normal" life, and they didn't seem to want any help at all. We finally had to accept that there was nothing we could do.

However, none of us was willing to rise to the occasion and actually throw this player out of the game. We were all afraid that whole "not of danger to themselves" might change.

An opportunity came up and we did try one thing, which was probably a mistake from a psychological standpoint. I killed off the character in the game. It was not a railroad. Two characters had gotten themselves into an impossible situation and knew there was a really good chance of dying. The other player pulled me aside and said to kill their character too, just to make sure it was clear that it was all in-game. (In truth, they should have had zero chance of survival, but I was at the time a little more loathe to kill characters who'd been around a long time.)

The character died, the player quit the game. We were relieved to have them out of the game, but concerned as to what would happen next.


I have to say that even ten years later, I am not sure if I know any better way to handle the situation. I think we should have gotten the player out of the game sooner, just so the rest of us weren't walking a tightrope because of one player's problems. I just don't know, thought, how I'd handled it if it came up again.


To the best of my knowledge, the player is still alive and still untreated, though I haven't heard anything about them in at least five years, no longer being part of any social group that overlaps this player. I do know that after the death of their beloved character, they started their own game in the same system. They backed it up in time about 10 years and ran that beloved character as an NPC. This was somehow acceptable because then the character hadn't died yet.

 

[chakken98]

Personnally I have in the past removed many ppl from my games, I tend to hear out what is going on as in most cases I am not paying any heed to what is going on. After hearing all the complaints or issues at hand I will speak to the player and ask him to either cut it out or he will be asked to leave the game. I also will hear his/her side of the story to find out if there is anything shady going on. Which I have found to be helpful in my decision. To this day I have only had to kick out 3 ppl. As the other 4 have been able to overcome any problems they had with the group...Though one was found not guilty (shadyness from the others.)