What do you do with difficult players?

[Kzach]

There have been a few discussions recently about difficult players and let's face it, it's an ongoing theme that's been a part of the hobby since the hobby began.

So I'm curious how the majority of people handle such players.

Contrary to popular belief, I really hate conflict and do my best to avoid it. I am, unfortunately, a naturally contrary person to whom conflict sticks to like an example I can't print here. Point being is that as soon as I see that a person is going to cause problems for me or others in the group, I nip it in the bud and get rid of them. I don't want to deal with them or accommodate them, I just want them out of my sphere of radiant calm and tranquility.

Either that, or if I'm not in a position to get rid of them, I take myself out of the situation altogether. I'd rather not expend the energy to sort it out with them since I believe people either gel or don't gel, and nurturing a situation only creates ongoing subsurface tension that will eventually find an outlet.

But, other people would rather deal with the situation and confront it head on. Still others seem to just be able to let it pass, whether it phases them or not. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to see people's views on the matter, consolidated to one thread.

Below are expanded explanations of the poll choices.

Deal with it.
This covers all situations in which you prefer to sort out the problem in some manner, whether confrontational or congenial, even if it takes some doing.

Nip it in the bud.
This covers all situations in which you prefer to just be rid of the problem altogether, either by ousting the player/GM or by extricating yourself from the problem.

Avoid it.
This covers all situations in which you prefer to just let things go as they are. Either you can put up with it, or it just doesn't bother you that much.

 

[Jack99]

My players are never a problem. They are my friends.

 

[Rechan]

You kill them and take their stuff.



...What?

 

[Teflon Billy]

My players are never a problem. They are my friends.

I'm with Jack here.

A long time ago there was a poster at EN World named Alsih20, and he coined a phrase that really sort of stuck with my group and I.

"If I don't like just sitting around and having a beer with you, I don;t want to game with you"

My gaming group is large, and folks come and go every few months or so, but we all do stuff together outside of gaming. Our families are friends and nobody gets invited without us already knowing/liking them.

So yeah, it never really gets to the point of "having to deal with problem players"...I'm too old to bother coddling someone if they are socially retarded and our group is popular enough to have a wait list.

 

[Roger_the_jolly]

My answer is two fold - when the case is with a friend and when the case is with someone whom I know only casually.

When we are talking about friends, as is the case with the main group I play with, I prefer talking with the player.
The reasoning is this: we are all adults with many pressures on our lives and all of us come to the game wanting to have fun.
If one of us have an idea of what is fun that is destroying the fun of all or many of the rest of us then that person needs to tune it down if he wants to continue playing with us. many times the behavior is happening because of an increase in pressure on that person in some other place in his life.

So far, Talking has helped solve \ tune down the problems that rose in my main group.

When we are talking about a situation not involving a friend, I still try to talk and explain first, but if I see it is not leading anywhere, I just quit and save myself the aggrevation.

 

[C.W.Richeson]

My players are never a problem. They are my friends.

Yeah, this is my immediate response as well.

That said, I'm more likely to "deal with it." I instinctually want to fix problems. It's unfortunate.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

This is an interesting question. Up until a year or so ago, I would have said "problem players" were a relic of my teenage gaming years, or something mature gamers only run into at conventions.

In the years since I was a kid, I've been in games with players who weren't really a great fit, but weren't what I'd call "problem" players, either. Generally speaking, players who didn't fit just tended to drift off into oblivion ... whether they didn't care for our gaming style, or they could tell we weren't too attached to them, or some combination of the two, they just stopped showing for games.

(As an aside, part of this tranquility might be attributed to, well, my physical characteristics. I'm a pretty imposing guy, so the more "active" problem player archetype would, maybe, tend to be nullified. People tend to avoid nastiness when there's a guy around who could pass for an Oakland Raiders offensive lineman.)

About 18 months ago, a guy joined our group, eventually ending up in two separate games. I'll call him Eugene. Eugene was supposedly an actor, and clearly financially challenged. He was quiet and brooding, but moody. His default mode of communication, in and out of character, was sarcasm. Part of the fun of D&D to him was clearly his character being advantaged over other characters.

(This is not how we generally play, nowadays ... our sessions are very cooperative. Until this guy, I honestly can't remember the last time we had a player who would, for example, have his PC steal from the group. That's not to say the PCs don't have personality conflicts, because they do. But there's no doubt amongst the players that the PCs are on the same team.)

Now this sounds bad, and I suppose it was worse than I thought. Maybe because of my own personality quirks, excesses, and flaws, I'm very easy-going when it comes to accepting those things in other people. There are really only a few things that get me riled up, most of them having to do with willful ignorance and social injustice.

So I overlooked Eugene's pilfering of food from our kitchen. God knows I've been poor. I overlooked his lack of generosity. (Not once, in over a year, did he bring so much as a bag of chips to share. For himself, yes. To share, no.) I overlooked it when he'd make jokes in bad taste, because, honestly, I am the king of jokes in bad taste. I overlooked that his characters were all exactly the same in personality and attitude. I overlooked his absolute reluctance to roleplay, despite its oddness given his aspirations as an actor.

But everything I overlooked was, for someone in the group, the last straw, and one by one the group turned against Eugene. When he canceled out of one game session at the last minute because he "just wasn't up for it today," the DM recruited a new player. When Eugene asked -- about four weeks later -- when we were playing again, he was told we'd assumed he'd quit and he wasn't welcome back. In a second game, when I, as DM, went out of my way (at his request) to give him a backstory tightly interwound with the ongoing campaign and rife with the potential for roleplay, he rejected the hooks of the background (in character) in favor of playing the exact same psycho-killer loner-stck-with-a-group archetype he played every time. When his PC was faced with in-character consequences, he threatened to quit the game.

And that, apparently, was my last straw. I told him not to worry about coming back.

As I reread this, I haven't done a very good job at evoking the subjective weirdness of this situation. It'd just been so long since I'd had anything but good experiences with people in our ongoing games, even players who didn't really fit in ultimately, that the whole situation was a little surreal. This guy managed to alienate my girlfriend, who barely even met him. (I've had many experiences with problem players at conventions, but that's a totally different type of thing.)

So, long story short, I'm not sure how to answer your poll. When I have an issue with a problem player, I address it. But apparently my tolerance is sky-high, because it clearly takes me a lot longer than most people to recognize a problem player.

Oh, as an addendum: we auditioned a new player on Sunday. Quiet guy. Seems easy-going and funny, and tolerant of our crudity and pop-culture nerdescence. And, first session, he brought boxes of snacks and a case of Coke to share. In future posts, I'll refer to him as Anti-Eugene.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If the problem is circumstances, such as divergent PC goals, then fix the circumstances. If a person is the problem, then kick them.

We had a couple of problem players in our group a while ago. Neither was a team player, also one was checking her emails when she was supposed to be gaming, the other couldn't seem to grasp the concept of his character being an adventurer rather than a normal person. Tbh the lack of team play alone was enough to make them dead weight. We got rid of them by telling them we were stopping the campaign and started a new one at the same time and place.

 

[Wormwood]

My players are never a problem. They are my friends.

This.

If I wouldn't play Rock Band with 'em, I sure won't pretend to be an elf with 'em.

 

[Mallus]

The short answer is: I don't game with them.