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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SiderisAnon" data-source="post: 3645670" data-attributes="member: 44949">The Scariest Player I Ever HadI 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.</blockquote>

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