With the end of year, one of my gaming groups took the initiative to do an "end of year state of the gaming group shakedown."

It's a long running Sunday group, we've been running mostly D&D for years with two DMs. What we've been doing is having DMs running sessions on alternate Sundays.

Earlier this year one of our players wanted to start running a third, non-D&D, game. As it turns out, his sessions are hit-and-miss, and alcohol is a definite factor in this issue.

After the end-of-year discussion was initiated, a majority of parties wanted to have more D&D and have the new GM run less sessions. Folks wanted the D&D games to be the focus of Sundays, and there were concerns that with a three week interval between sessions of the individual games that the individual games were losing steam.

We had a meeting at our last Sunday session and the consensus was to have the new GM run a half-day session every fourth weekend with the other half of the day for other non-D&D games, one-shots, and the like. As well we are doing two shorter D&D sessions with the two DMs every regular Sunday, so that there's only a week between the individual D&D games.

This is a a schedule we're going to try out for one month and see how it works.

The third GM didn't come to that Sunday's game and thereby missed the meeting; but we had a clear majority, so we went ahead and implemented the new schedule.

We're fine with implementing this, but it's kind of weird doing it w/o the third GMs input. On the other hand, we were explicit about what we wanted to do in the email discussions, and he didn't make the meeting. It's not like we're trying to be jerks; we just are fine-tuning the weekend gaming machine for optimum performance.

Have any of you ever had to handle a gaming group issue like this?

Grow some testicles, and tell your friend he's spazzing on all his friends in the group, so you all decided to drop his game?

Now, that's not to say you should tell him he's ugly and smells at the same time (even if true); but be nice and honest with him, rather than accepting a compromise that will make no one happy.

We do three month rotations when we have too many gms. I couldn't handle your rotating schedule.

I'm sure that demoting the other gm is easier when he isn't their. Even so, it's the right thing to do. No one wants to play a game they don't like.

I've seen it happen. Usualy though we just focus on how much fun we're having with the good games and the unpopular GM takes the hint that the game must improve or come to a close.

I've been an usurper, but the only vote was when I said, "fuck you, I'm taking over this game," and everyone in the group defected.

This is fucked up story, so I'll tell it.
Alcohol wasn't out problem though. It was a V&V game and the GM had a an unbeatable GMPC meant to keep up is line. Of course, we ridiculed the shit out of the character (his name was Commander Flag; I think you can work out what we nicknamed him).  The GM got really fucking butthurt over the whole thing and in retaliation, ran a scenario where we stood by powerless and watched while a super villain molested a child behind an impenetrable force field.
That was the absolute last time we ever gamed with the dude. FWIW, this incident was the tip of the iceberg. Some of the guys in out group roomed with him, and they actually went to university housing not long after and got him moved out of their room.

We have had to tell a GM, his games were not working for us. Difficult too because he was extremely enthusiastic and a good friend. We stuck on for some time but we came to dread the weekends he was supposed to run a game. Finally we decided enough is enough. We broke the news gently but he was extremly dissapointed.

Regards,
David R

If he's an alcoholic or problem drinker, then you did the right thing. You have to set clear limits and make clear demands of them, and hold them to account for not meeting them regardless of the excuses and pleas they make. Your average alcoholic has many, many layers of self-justification and self-exoneration shielding them from taking responsibility for how their alcohol abuse is not only hurting themselves, but others too. Don't bargain or cajole - demand.

With a large group, it can be rough just to say "fuck you, I'm taking over this game".  Diplomacy and all that.

I've had to let some GM's down.  We had a similar scenario early last year, where we had a vote about our games and one of the GM's wasn't there.  We didn't downgrade his time slot, but myself and three other GM's took him aside one game day and let him know we expected more from him than just obviously pulling silly shit out of his ass.  

This prompted the whole No Text / No Game discussion I had to bring to you guys here, the text which was used as an evidence that it was in the club's best interest and was formalized on our game group's blog in this post.

Anyway, he took it as well as he could, I suppose.  The rest of his games were a proper smash.

On a side note, never had a "problem" with alcohol at the table - though sometimes characters will excuse themselves before the close of the game session!

Quote from: Blackhand;496438With a large group, it can be rough just to say "fuck you, I'm taking over this game".  Diplomacy and all that.

There were 10 of us, which is fairly sizable. We were just all tired of him and knew it. However, at that point, not a single person in the group had any interest in keeping him as a friend, so it was merely the first step in a general shunning. I actually felt bad for him at the time, but he had set sail on a journey onto the sea of catpiss men, and that is trip best taken alone.

Anyway on topic. Speaking as a former drunk, I have to say I agree with pseudo.

We've come close with a guy we know that occasionally runs a game for us. He means well, but has control issues. We outright refused to play with a friend of his who embodied every bad stereotype about gamer's in one stank, touchy feely lack of hygiene package.

Quote from: Novastar;496352Grow some testicles, and tell your friend he's spazzing on all his friends in the group, so you all decided to drop his game?

Now, that's not to say you should tell him he's ugly and smells at the same time (even if true); but be nice and honest with him, rather than accepting a compromise that will make no one happy.

We have pulled out our balls in the past and regulated him; I 86'd him from playing in my games due to his drunkenness being disruptive, and more recently he was put on notice regarding his behavior.

And we were (halfways) honest and nice, "We want to play more D&D" vs. "We want to play more D&D instead of dealing with you getting blackout drunk while running Call of Cthulhu."

But the dude is an alcoholic, with all that entails, and so instead of dealing with defensiveness and excuses his GMing responsibilities have been reduced.

Quote from: Cranewings;496354We do three month rotations when we have too many gms. I couldn't handle your rotating schedule.

I'm sure that demoting the other gm is easier when he isn't their. Even so, it's the right thing to do. No one wants to play a game they don't like.

That's certainly part of it; with three full-time games the individual campaigns were suffering.

If he had been there when we had the meeting the outcome would have been the same, just awkwarder.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;496437If he's an alcoholic or problem drinker, then you did the right thing. You have to set clear limits and make clear demands of them, and hold them to account for not meeting them regardless of the excuses and pleas they make. Your average alcoholic has many, many layers of self-justification and self-exoneration shielding them from taking responsibility for how their alcohol abuse is not only hurting themselves, but others too. Don't bargain or cajole - demand.

From my years of dealing with addicts everywhere in my city, I have zero tolerance for enabling their shitty behavior; that's why he doesn't play in my games. Other folks in our group are more tolerant or passive.

Quote from: Blackhand;496438On a side note, never had a "problem" with alcohol at the table - though sometimes characters will excuse themselves before the close of the game session!

If he did excuse himself that would be much better; but he's one of those lifer alcoholics that gets waaaay drunker that he lets on and doesn't seem to be capable of regulating himself or have any awareness of how his behavior of affecting those around him.

I fired a DM about 3 months ago.  He was cancelling way too many games, I had to keep running an emergency filler campaign in the time slot, which the group was enjoying more.  So I announced that in 2 months' time I would begin running my filler game as a regular campaign.

I didn't actually say "You're fired", I was fairly diplomatic, and he's now playing in my campaign.