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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Admiral Caine" data-source="post: 4573835" data-attributes="member: 60438">I'm late to this thread, but I have been in this situation before. I was the DM. I felt it was my responsibility to deal with it. I still do. Admittedly, the guy is a friend, but he was closer friends with the other people at the table. Being DM is bloody hardwork, but in this case, I do think the buck stopped with me (or the responsibility fell to me, if you're not familiar with American catch phrases). I called the player up and I explained that I didn't feel he was having a good time. He brought up some specifics, which I addressed, but gently kept returning to the "big picture". The points I emphasized were: 1.) If he wasn't enjoying himself, he shouldn't be trying to force himself to like it. 2.) He needed to recognize that if he wasn't having a good time, others could sense it too.. and it was making them uncomfortable. 3.) I needed him to trust me as the GM. I welcomed questions about my decisions, but if he was worried about the motives behind my decisions more than the actual decisions themselves- that was a problem. 4.) Life is short. We shouldn't just make each other miserable, like a bad marriage where the people do care about each other but they weren't good in a close relationship. Yeah, I admitted that was a touchy feely kinda metaphor, but the comparison is valid. There's no sense driving each other nuts and having everybody else suffer with us. We can still like each other and not play together, I said to him. 5.) I appreciated that he didn't want to be excluded from his friends, and that he wanted to hang out.  I pointed out that there was still chance for him doing that, without playing in the game. All he had to do is talk to everybody and we could do stuff with him that wasn't the game. With all that in mind, I asked the player to make the call. If he wasn't enjoying the game, I respectfully asked him to resign. People should not being forcing themselves to do something they don't really enjoy. I never fired him. And he never quit. He's still in my group, and I am still GMing for him. The conversation sort of finally opened his eyes, when all the other conversations, arguments, and rules discussions failed. He took a good look around and realized that nobody was having any fun, because he wasn't having any fun. Now, I'm not a Shrink. I can't tell you exactly what sort of attitude adjustment he really made, deep down inside. All I know is that he did adjust his attitude and things got better.</blockquote>

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