"....so we tossed the jerk out...."

[diaglo]

Do people just ever decide, "Look Bob, you're a powergamer. This current group is heavily into role playing. If we switch styles, I'll let you know."

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2590182&postcount=3



i guess it depends.

i know some people can be reasoned with in real life. and others... well ...there is this whole thread and many, many more on multiple message boards.

 

[StupidSmurf]

Yes, there's certainly no harm-no foul if you're talking about incompatible DM-Player styles. If a DM wants a richly-detailed high fantasy game with well-thought out backstories and noble quests, and a player wants an item-grabbing, hack-and-slash, blood and thunder, sheep-rogering campaign, then no one's really "wrong".

I once tried that approach, in fact it's the SECOND nasty incident, implied in my previous post. Here's a dialogue sample, for your enterainment:

ME: Well, you want the campaign to be "this" way, but I want it "that" way. That's how I run it, and that's how a healthy number of my players like it. If you're not happy with that, then maybe my DM style's not for you, and you might want to find one that's closer to what you like.

EASILY ANGERED SUB-PAR PLAYER WITH CHIP ON SHOULDER: Oh, so what you're telling me is that it's "my way or the highway, huh?"

ME: Your words, not mine. You want to attach more nastiness to the matter than is really there, that's your prerogative.

 

[tensen]

Unbelievable to me to this day!

• We had never met this guy before
• His first action upon meeting us was to try and roleplay out a rape scene
• He started this basically as I said "you all meet in a tavern"
• he was going to do this in the presence of someone he worked with!

I think my followup would be. I'm scheduling the next session.. it will be in a bit of an odd place. Give me a moment while I check the time and location.

Schedule him to meetup with me at the next time I have a meeting with my associates.
I happen to be a trained Rape Care Advocate. I think he'd get a kick out of going to a session with one of the groupings of my associates. If he makes it out of there alive.. with or without being castrated... he may make for a better roleplaying afterward

 

[TheGM]

In twenty seven years I've thrown out exactly three players. One came back after he had spent some time GMing elsewhere and is a pretty good player, though infrequent.

The other two can stay gone.

One - Looks at me and says "If my character dies here I'm going to kick your @%%."
Me "The spider bites you. Roll a save."
One - "Ha! Nineteen!"
Me "Too bad, you die anyway."
One - "Hey! Why?"
Me "Because you weren't joking, and I don't want you here. Goodbye."
One - "I'm gonna..."
Other Players "The GM said leave, do we have to help you?"

Two was much more complex, mostly because he was a friend of my wife's and several other players. He would do things like cheat, roll his eyes, get up and walk out of a session because I was 'such a jerk', smirk at other players while I was giving them descriptions, etc. Once he said "your games always suck" to me at the table. I told him "no one makes you come."

I put up with it for over a year, tried talking about it, tried just about everything I could think of. Finally, I ended the campaign to get rid of him without causing direct problems for the others in the group. Then I reformed a new campaign without him. Two months later we had it out, and I basically told him he was the worst player I'd ever encountered and I wasn't certain why he roleplayed other than to make the rest of the group miserable.

We occasionally talk these days, but he'll never sit at my table again. He's had similar problems in other groups, so I'm just glad I got out without a huge blow up that caused my wife and mutual friends discomfort.

 

[WampusCat43]

-Comes to sessions as the only one drunk, stoned, etc.

Fortunately, I'm the DM!



Wait...

 

[Nebulous]

We've never tossed a player out, but we have hidden from one or two when we found out that they were just too freaky to be friends with. We simply told them we weren't playing regularly, and we just made sure not to invite them back. Probably should have told them outright, but given their natures we were unsure how they'd react (in a 'will they stalk me & put a horse head in my bed?' kind of way). Other than that, 90% of people I've gamed with I didn't dislike, and I'd easily game with again.

Yeah, that's what we had to do. We didn't know the dude at all, turns out he didn't have a car, and needed to be picked up half an hour away and then returned home after the session. Maybe for a friend, but a complete stranger...nah...the DM's not driving two hours for ya.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Reading these threads is like observing a gnarly traffic accident. I don't want to read/watch, but I just... can't... help myself.

Let's see if I can dig up the story about when I, the DM, was kicked out of a group by the players.

Several minutes of searching later...

Well, crap, I can't find it. More later when I do.

 

[jasper]

I started to number them but lost count but since I was in the military and college afterwards I guess I got a lot of bad players. So all those who had good players need to thank me for collecting the bad ones.
Hmm goober who met in Fort Ord Ca in community center. Wanted a Quasit at first level. First game night went okay. Second game night got mad due to me not giving in kill the new guy who was his first game and then said his friends teleport in to the dungeon fireball the group and retrieve his pc body and stuff.
Goober who was horny all the time and more interested in play bog mags than game.
Goobers G and S they said they were best friends but spend more time dinging each other pc than moving the game along. If only one played we advanced more in one hour than we did in three hours with both.
Goober who was rules lawyer and splat book lover. When I told he was welcome at my home but not my gaming table has not talked to me in eight years and he lives four blocks away.
Some of you have mentioned some the other gamers I gamed with so I won’t go on

 

[Wolv0rine]

I've posted this before, but it never really gets old...

<snipped story of El Creepo>

Unbelievable to me to this day!

• We had never met this guy before
• His first action upon meeting us was to try and roleplay out a rape scene
• He started this basically as I said "you all meet in a tavern"
• he was going to do this in the presence of someone he worked with!

It's one of the few times in my gaming life when I actually "hit the reset button", announcing that none of that had happened and calling the game for that week.

Amusing, this antecdote coming up while the topic of FATAL has been brought back up in another thread. Sounds like you had one night of gaming 'bliss' with a potential FATALite, which should really rack up the Karma points in your favor.

 

[jdrakeh]

I used to never beleive in screening players. Then "the couple" happened.

The Couple is always bad. I recall meeting The Couple in Topeka, KS. I immediately knew that there was a problem when I stated that we would be playing a core book AD&D 2e campaign (this was back in 1997, IIRC) and asked everybody to openly roll character stats (unknown to The Couple, this was requested by the rest of the group who had played with them in the past). They said thay had no problem with the core book campaign, but were vehemently opposed to openly rolling dice.

Their first response was flat-out refusal on the grounds that rolling dice openly violated their religious tenets (I s**t you not). This then turned into an incredibly defensive "You're singling us out!" (note that [i[everybody[/i] was openly rolling dice). And then came the inevitable, 'If you don't trust us to roll in private, then we're not playing in your game!' (which, at that point in time, sounded great - except that they were hosting said game). I relented because of that part.

First session of actual play rolls around, and the party consists of... an Elven Ranger with average ability scores, a Halfling Thief with slightly above average DEX, a Cleric with above average WIS, and... an AD&D 1e Human Monk with ability scores all above 16, and a !@#$ing Wemic Ranger with scores of 18 in all of his attributes, save for one. At this point, I say... I don't believe for one minute that you actually rolled all of those ability scores and I know (obviously) that those classes aren't in the 2e PHB...

WTF?

To which The Couple reply "Well, we're actually going to be running our campaign instead!" - now, I've heard of GMs pulling a Bait & Switch setting swap, but players hi-jacking an entire game before it ever begins? In 10+ years of gaming I've never seen it or even heard of it, save for this one instance. All of the other players just kind of look at me dumbfounded for a second, while I'm still trying to absorb the situation. Finally, I say the only thing that I can.

"Well, damn... I gues I'm going to have to run my game down at the FLGS, then."

I picked up all of my books and walked out. The other players followed me. Long story short, AFAIK, only one of the other players ever spoke to The Couple again (which in and of itself is another gaming horror story).