Ah... work on a monday morning isn't so bad anymore...
I had a similar case of a drunken player that would get aggressive and sometimes abusive with everyone towards the end of the sessions. It lasted three sessions, and was the first time things went badly for his character during a fight (poor dice rolls along with some poor decisions), and the party retreated to lick their wounds when he started trying to pick a fight with the other weaker PCs. I don't like PC in-fighting, actually I hate it, as I like to see the players act as a team because if they don't they tend to fail. I tell him this bluntly, but he doesn't care, and I suspect he just wants to fight someone that he can beat to feel good about his PC, as he is pretty loaded at this time. I wonder how he is going to drive home, and tell him to cut it out or he's cut off. He says I can't tell him what to do, standing up, and says his PC attacks the wizard. I tell him the NPC dwarf fighter now stands in his way and says "if you attack anyone the I will attack you." He is insulted, of course, and throws some of his dice across my apartment. Everyone is stone silent.
I calm down, take him aside and apoligize to him for a bit, and tell him we will end the game early. He is fine with that, we all calm down, try to add some levity with some jokes on their characters, and I tell everyone I will calculate XP and do character changes now instead of between games to give someone time to sober up. We split up and in between sessions I tell him via email I don't want him with our group anymore. He writes an angry email back, so I say his behavior was unforgiveable. He changes his tone to apoligetic and I explain to him why we didn't like what happened, that he was a good role-player (which he was) but couldn't handle failing well enough while drinking. He sent an email defending himself, trying to build sympathy, and it ended with him pleading to rejoin the group. I really felt like giving him another chance right then, to say that mistakes happen, that everyone can learn how to be. But then I thought it's not our group's responsibility to teach this guy patience, nor how to accept defeat gracefully. We are all adults, and having him back would make the rest of us a little uncomfortable and would make us all a little on edge around him... as a whole, it would be 'weird.'
So on the phone I told him that it wasn't the other players (which I sorta used as a scapegoat in my emails, sorry 'bout that) that didn't want him back, it was me. That I didn't like him throwing things in my place, and I was afraid of what would happen next time he had too much to drink. We were both at work at the time, and I think at the end of the conversation he was crying, and it made my heart sink to the floor, as I didn't think the guy was all that bad, but just couldn't fit into our group after that episode.
I felt like I was breaking up with a girlfriend more than anything, that he didn't want the rejection and would say a lot to just be accepted back again. Anyone else feel that sometimes you have to end it like a sig other relationship??
