This rpg.net thread (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=382566) made me think about this. C.W.Richeson writes that he was kicked out by way of a form letter email - apparently that's the group's policy, to avoid hurt feelings. Of course, it wouldn't avoid hurt feelings, since surprise and incomprehension make anyone feel bad, but it would avoid dramatic arguments and the hurt feelings of the one doing the kicking, which is probably the aim of it.
Anyway, who here has been kicked out a game group, how did it happen and why?
Thinking back, I've never really been officially kicked out of a group. There have been plenty of groups where we obviously didn't get along, so I didn't go back. There have been a few game group implosions, but no-one was kicked out of the group, it just ceased to exist as a group.
The summer holiday after my first year of uni my girlfriend (who I'd been with since 16) gamed with us and then hooked up with one of the gamers, my best friend at the time; his twin brother was GMing. I didn't try to go to the game sessions after that, I didn't imagine I'd be welcome, and didn't really fancy seeing them cuddling at the game table. But I suppose that's not really being kicked out, that's just Days of Our Gaming Lives ;)
The closest to being actually kicked out was my first ever game group, the two guys who introduced me to gaming when I was 12. But that wasn't "we don't want to game with you anymore" but "we're not your friends anymore." Hey, we were 13, what can I say. That could have been from my behaviour in the game group, but we also sat next to each-other in class, had lunch together, went to movies together and so on, so it's hard to say, could have been anything - including that we were just 13 and therefore a bit stupid.
Aside from those incidents, as I said there's been no actual booting out for me. Nor have I ever kicked someone out of the group - usually we have a purely social meeting first to see how we get along, occasionally after that there's no game invite, and sometimes there's been a single session tryout, so to speak, after which the person wasn't asked back.
Certainly people have left groups I've been in, but actually kicking people out is in my experience rare.
How about you lot?
Quote from: Kyle AaronCertainly people have left groups I've been in, but actually kicking people out is in my experience rare.
How about you lot?
I think the closest I saw to a "kicked out" of a more longterm group was sort of a reverse kick. Slowly everyone else left until it was just the nutcase and her somewhat less annoying husband remaining. He wasn't that bad at all, by himself. I kinda felt sorry for the guy sometimes. One time she got really pissed about something, stood up and left the house. He figured he should go out himself but came back shortly thereafter asking if anyone could give him a ride home since his wife had just up and drove off. :haw:
In retrospect she probably should have been booted straight-up but...
I've seen a few other situations where it would have been a kick but it was just pickup games and that person was just never asked to play again.
The closest I've come is having a GM kill my character for cheating, even though I wasn't at the session and the character was being NPCed. I wasn't kicked out, but I never went back.
Heck, that kind of stuff can happen at any time. To make a long story short, I met someone at college and we clicked, becoming best friends pretty fast. We talked and chose to do our business at the LFGS. Anyway, one day he comes to me and tells me, in so many words, that he is going to become friends with the game owner and staff in order to be hooked into the scene. I was excluded from all of the events outside of the store and I got the message...by that time, I had an okay job and I was getting married while the others were either single or divorced. So, in my experience, if you cut someone out of the gaming group, you cut them completely out of your social circle.
Oh, oh, there was this one time that I was really, really close to kicking someone out of my house. I wasn't the GM, it was just my house...in my book that trumps GM. :p And he was more hammered than anyone has the right to be in that close of proximity to my kids. But he managed to not throw up, or urinate on the floor, or break anything, and his brother (a group regular) was there to help keep him diverted. The brother later apologized profusely and the guy was never seen again.
Quote from: ancientgamerSo, in my experience, if you cut someone out of the gaming group, you cut them completely out of your social circle.
So it seems.
Which is a pity. There's one guy I know, I didn't like the games he runs, so I stopped playing in them, and told him why. I told him he was welcome to play in my games, or beside me as a player, I just didn't want to have him as my GM. But he only wants to GM, so we don't game together at all.
He got very angry and told me I'd never find the sort of game I wanted. Of course I did, many times and with many different gamers. But at the time I emphasised that he was my friend, and it was just his game I wasn't interested in. He took a little while to stop being angry, and now we're still good friends.
So I'd excluded myself from the game group, rather than been excluded, but still - at least part of the social circle goes on. That's probably different, though, since it was me stepping out rather than being kicked out.
This is one of the problems with gaming only with friends. The break up is difficult. It's not you ...okay it is....it's the way you game. Worse still if everyone else in the group is still gaming and meeting up with this person on non-game nights. Pretty difficult when asked - "how did the game go ?"....
(Never kicked anyone out of the group. Have excluded myself from a few groups. Didn't dig their style of play.)
Regards,
David R
I have kicked people out before. I explained that it was no hard feelings but the guy either missed too many sessions or just wasn't working out for whatever reason. I always offer to try and hook them up with other gaming groups in my area, give out emails.
I've kicked people out of my game group before, but I've never been kicked out of one (although I admit to abandonning game groups when they appeared to be All Fucked Up).
Kicking someone out via an email is the sign of a coward to me. If you are going to have to kick someone out, then at least have the testicular capacity to tell them in person. Otherwise, you just show that you have no respect for them.
I've been part of a gaming group that kicked out its GM. True story. The same 'Bad GM' I mentioned in another thread. They assigned one of the other players -- who he was using as his combat Sub GM anyway -- as the new head GM.
I wonder what it feels like to be kicked out of a game you're running.
Kicking someone out of a gaming group is usually more disastrous to your circle of friends than breaking up with your GF that also happens to share the same friends. Or at least that's been my personal experience. I've never been kicked out of a gaming group, but I've seen GMs kick other people out of their games. It's usually the guys that are either annoyingly negative and pretend they're sociopaths and have to remind everyone how sociopathic they are every five minutes or it's the creepy, smelly guy that thinks he's really a magic user and walks around with a rune carved walking stick and shit. Both examples are the two dudes that I saw get the boot, the former booted out of two games (the latter GM me and a friend had warned about the dude, but he swore the guy was 'changed'). All three times the GM did it to the guy's face. All three times it literally shook our large social circle of hombres (since we're almost all gamers or were once). It's a weird phenomenon.
-=Grim=-
I've kicked a few players out of a group, but always face to face. So far I haven't run into a case where someone I wanted to know wasn't good for a game, so it's been a net win.
I don't remember anyone being kicked out, but I remember people being pointedly left out. The main way this occurred was when someone started up a new campaign: the players would be drawn mainly from a subset of some other campaign's participants, and attention would sort of shift to the new game, leaving a few people out in the cold.
I do sort of remember one or two people being written out of an ongoing campaign, though. Reconstructing from hazy memory, I think what must have happened was that the GM and possibly some of the players close to the GM had tired of certain players, so people neglected to inform them of new sessions after a school break. It wasn't a very nice way of doing things, in my opinion, but I'm also willing to believe the games improved. The people who'd been excluded weren't completely abandoned, though--some of us still did other stuff with them, including board games and movies, but it was awkward since I think there was a bit of deception going on.
My group has an alarming churn rate for players. I can't quite decide if its pure bad luck or one(or all) of us driving folks away. I'm getting paranoid about it.
We havent had to kick anyone out, but the GM stopped sending two players details of the session date/time because they were either unreliable attenders or extremely hard to contact, or both.
We started with GM & five players. One player had some family issues, burned out on RPGing and quit until they got things sorted. They now game, but have never come back despite invites. Another two (partners) quit due change of work hours.
We trialled another guy who played once and decided he'd stick to his Sci-Fi rather than our fantasy.
After that we found another two guys. One of whom a good player, but proved unreliable and hard to contact, so the GM gave up sending him invites. Another was a good mate of the GM and a top bloke, but got a new job working variable shifts - he quit as he couldnt be sure when or if he'd make the game.
Some time later the GM recruited an old mate of his who had to travel some way - and he's never made it to a game yet - another young guy who said he loved the game, but quit due to change in work and personal circumstances. A third player we got at the same time also had to travel some way, but like his predecessor proved unreliable to contact so the GM cut him loose.
Frankly my efforts to find new roleplayers in my area have proved so fruitless I'm on the verge of trading in my dice & gamebooks and buying a WoW subscription. And WoW never wowed me.
You know, I guess there was one person that was recently "kicked out". I never really thought about it that way. I never asked how it went down, it wasn't my friend. She was new and she was GMing. She didn't do a bad job....when she showed up. Often with only very limited warning, so short that some people already had to be in transit to get to the game by the time she phoned. Dave, who she knew, just said she wasn't GMing anymore because it wasn't working out. She hasn't shown up for any games either since. That didn't strike me as odd though since she was dropping to 50/50 anyways.
The flipside of what David says is that hopefully you don't need to kick people out when you are friends, they just leave because they realize it isn't working.
Quote from: Kyle AaronHow about you lot?
I've been the kicker, but not the kickee.
Seanchai
Quote from: blakkieThe flipside of what David says is that hopefully you don't need to kick people out when you are friends, they just leave because they realize it isn't working.
And even sometimes when you're not friends.
It's the same with anything - work, gaming, whatever. Sometimes people become frustrated with one member of the group, and that member decides to leave. Most of us know when we're not welcome.
But again, most of the time I've seen that, someone knowing they're not welcome, it was after just one session which was supposed to be a tryout.
Simple fact is, not everyone gets along. And that's okay.
Being kicked out with a form letter after several sessions is just plain weird, though. Me, unless the person were actively nasty, I don't think I'd go into details. Most people ask for details, though, unfortunately.
Quote from: Kyle AaronBeing kicked out with a form letter after several sessions is just plain weird, though.
It does seem...odd, without more details. Especially if it really was without them saying "hey, this [thing] is an issue, could you work on that?" I saw the thread over on rpg.net, the form letter is apparently is according to the groups policy. Perhaps they'd had problems in the past? ...or they just don't like dealing with consequences of their decision? I'm not sure I'd be ready to get involved in a group like that to start with, that'd through up danger flags. :deflated:
The need for a form letter suggests they biff people out a lot. So either their game group is really awesome and only the best get to stay, or it's really crap and they get uncomfortable when a non-catpissman joins in. Or perhaps they're just cocksmocks who think they're super-groovy.
But whatever - a form letter is really wimping out. Out of a game group, out of a job, broken up with - none of this should ever come as a surprise to you. People should talk. Whatever is mentioned as reasons, all this stuff should have been mentioned before.
Poor O'Borg, sounds like you've had plain old shitful luck, mate. Hang in there, keep dicing.
Quote from: blakkieIt does seem...odd, without more details.
I didn't think it was too odd. We're a bit particular about who we play with. We have rules about how we play - you can't name your character Bob or act like a jerk, saying, "I'm just playing my character," for example. We also have an executor, who handles all the group business such as someone not following the rules. If we had more of a rotation of players, we might have a form letter.
On the other hand, it may not have been a form letter. That could have just been the OP's impression of it.
I'll be interested in reading it if he posts it.
Seanchai
Quote from: SeanchaiI didn't think it was too odd. We're a bit particular about who we play with. We have rules about how we play - you can't name your character Bob or act like a jerk, saying, "I'm just playing my character," for example. We also have an executor, who handles all the group business such as someone not following the rules.
Do you tend to have summary expulsion for an offense or do you say "hey, you know that's bad form?" I assume you give the list of rules out?
QuoteIf we had more of a rotation of players, we might have a form letter.
Indeed, if. :keke:
QuoteOn the other hand, it may not have been a form letter. That could have just been the OP's impression of it.
I'll be interested in reading it if he posts it.
Seanchai
It's his understanding that using a "form" letter is policy? I got the impression he knew this going in....which kinda kills my sympathy for him. :cool:
He's already said he doesn't plan to post it. Maybe he will change his mind?
It is all just really wierd. Although it could be something he might not be able to do much about either. I've had people tell me "I don't like you because you look like a relative I don't like". Yeah. I give that person credit for saying it, when I asked what I'd done to irk them. But not everyone is going to say that, even when you get to ask them directly. Especially someone that uses PFO emails.
Hrmm, I guess I should get an account there so I can view more than a handful of pages at a time? :haw: I missed something, looks like it was some sort of non-descript "personality conflict", he had gotten an answer. Also it suppositly wasn't a form letter? (( a group member posted to the board recently ))
Quote from: blakkieDo you tend to have summary expulsion for an offense or do you say "hey, you know that's bad form?"
No summary expulsion. A series of steps from "Yeah, how about no," to "Bu-bye."
Quote from: blakkieI assume you give the list of rules out?
Yeah.
But some of us are thinking we need an ambassador program. New folks are saying, "I didn't know that," and we're finding it because they're not being told. (Not everything is in the rules.) The idea is that we sit down as a group and come up with a list of information to cover with prospective players, then the player introducing the new guy or gal to the group is responsible for going over the information. The existing player is also responsible to going back to the new player if he or her behavior isn't up to par and redressing any issues.
I know it sounds anal, but when I read all the group drama here and on TBP, I have to say, I'm glad we have it.
Quote from: blakkieIt's his understanding that using a "form" letter is policy. I got the impression he knew this going in....which kinda kills my sympathy for him.
I've thought a bit about it and I find I'm neither sympathetic nor unsympathetic. I came to the conclusion that if I had to choose between a friend who I was already playing with and a new guy, I'd almost certainly choose the friend. The OP sounds cool, but if he's having a conflict with a buddy that can't be resolved some other way than one of them leaving, well...
Seanchai
Someone from the group responded:
http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=8554650&postcount=134
"Hello everyone.
I wanted to try to correct a couple of misconceptions that have been said in this thread.
1. It was not a form letter. I chose my words very carefully.
2. Chris was not kicked because he missed a session.
3. We still think very highly of Chris as a person, a gamer and what he has done for the RPG community.
4. Chris has already said why we requested that he leave. [I believe on second or third page]
I am curious to how many pages this thread will go.
I'm sure some kind of flaming will happen now but so be it.
Take care."
Seanchai
There has been one instance where there was sort of a "your fired/I quit!" situation which had as much to do with me falling out badly with the GM as anything else.
I was kicked out of one group, essentially because they had an extremely rigidly defined playstyle, never bothered to mention it, and I didn't work so well with it.
Two guys got kicked out of my highschool early college gaming group for hitting on my sister (she was 14 or 15, and they were in there twenties), and another girl got kicked out for being bugfuck insane.
Strangely enough, considering my blunt and taciturn nature, I've never been kicked out of a roleplaying group. In fact I've never heard of anyone being kicked out of any group here in Blighty. I've kicked someone out of my game, though. He was being a very unsuperheroic superhero and my game wasn't about being a rapist in spandex. So out he went.:D
Some players I know have a GM that railroads and gets irate at the drop of a dice. But they still put up with the duffer. I guess that a lot of groups put up with a lot of shit because they don't know that things could be different.
I've kicked and been kicked.
Been kicked - we started a 1e AD&D game that seemed awesome but were never invited back. Later, I became friends with the DM of that group and found out that it wasn't me they wanted to do without, but a kid that came with me. In retrospect, I understand. Let's just say I'm more tolerant of people's foibles than most, but eventually, he got on my nerves too.
Another time, I was never invited back for some time to one group. Later on, the DM of that group admitted she was being a tool and pandering to one of the older players.
As for the kicking...
We invited a pair of new players to my group--a couple. The guy would inspect other players dice rolls, accuse others of cheating, get jealous when the rogue would sneak attack and do lots of damage and rant about how it was, and say various things to piss of other players. And he would start dice games in the middle of combat. I'm pretty non-confrontational, but sooner or later, it became clear he had to go.
She on the other hand was a good role player and had interesting characters... but they were a couple; I knew keeping her around wasn't an option. So I sent an email as polite as I could put it that they weren't invited anymore (I don't do this pussy "schedule lie" thing).
Never heard another peep from the guy.
But the woman... man oh man! Month after month of accusing emails about what assholes we were and how wrong I was not to take her boyfriend's side (despite that the rest of the group got along fine but nobody got along with him.) She even noted we were Christian and tried to crank up the guilt about how a supposed Christian could do such a thing. She was clearly upset, and I felt sorry for excluding her.
As the go-to GM for years and years, I've had to kick people out of games. Usually, they got the boot because they were newcomers and the groups grew too large. It wasn't that they were crappy players. We just didn't have the room to accommodate them. Sometimes, I'd start a second or third group and run something different for the guys who couldn't play with the core group.
There was a case where a guy gave us the boot. I invited my brother to play a game of Warhammer with us. We had a tight Warhammer group and things were going well. My brother could to be an ass on occasion. This was one of those occasions. The guy, who I'd gamed with for five or six years (and been friends with for over a decade), got fed up with my brother's antics and more or less said, "Fuck you", to all of us. He never showed up for a game again. Ever! It didn't end our friendship. We still hung around a lot. He just never gamed with us again.
I have never been kicked out of a gaming group, even though there were a couple of them that I wouldn't have lost any sleep over, had I been kicked out.
I've only kicked two players in 27 years, but they were complete and total jackholes.
ffs if you can't speak to someone face to face and hide behind an email then you are a sad case indeed.
I've been kicked from a gaming group in just such a way. they were hopeless at communication, and socially cowardly. They weren't interested in trying new things - despite professing otherwise and thus couldn't deal with it. For example they were big on WFRP, which is perfectly fine, and kept a journal of their adventures, all smartly bound. But when I said hey let's try Castle Falkenstein which has more or less the same thing (players keep an IC journal of their exploits), they utterly balked at the idea. Then went on to suggest Earthdawn and gave me the job of keeping, guess waht, a written record of the group's 'legend' (apparently part of the game). This i did, as a poem because i was a troubador. Fine.
Go figure.
I have been part of a mutiny, wherein a group of players ousted the GM and one of us took over his campaigns (one V&V game, which I got and an AD&D game which someone else took), That was all face to face and very ugly, though. The GM in question was one of the top ten most fucked up people I've ever known, much less gamed with. I sometimes wonder if he's out there somewhere...
I
On a more pathetic note, I once worked with an guy who dumped his girlfriend with an Email.
Not so long ago I had to kick someone and to be frank I went the "cowardly way", too. At least in my eyes, as somehow, I have kicked him, just not fully yet.
But let me start at the beginning. One of my groups used to be my girlfriend, two of her (female) friends and me as the gamemaster. They are all socially well adjusted and stuff and love having hmmm lets say "weird adventures" throw some mythology or magic at them, a conspiracy on top of it and they are happy. They are not very geeky though, as in they are not very huge on the various geeky "in-jokes". Monty Python references do nothing for them and movies like the gamers do neither.
Well, one day a friend of a friend joined the game, your average nerd I thought at the beginning, normal guy in social situations, lots of in-jokes, it led to some confusion but was all fine, at least in my eyes. he talked a bit much ooc for my tastes, but hey... nobody is perfect and all that.
Then he started making remarks about women and gender roles as he percieves them and he wasn't nearly as well adjusted as I first thought, to be frank he has issues with women... needless to say, the group didn't like that a lot. So I called him and told him to leave his sexism at home when he comes to gaming. He had obviously been called out on that before because I hadn't even really started when he knew what I was talking about and agreed that he had done wrong and said he would change it. I was flattened of course, I expected a fight and a lengthy arguement and somewhat happy I hung up the phone and got back to learning law.
The campaign goes on (scion if you want to know) and at first it goes well and then it degrades again... rapidly, but the campaign concludes before the other players go verbally berserk or something similarly ugly, yet, they of course talk to me afterwards and make it quite clear, that they will not continue that way and honestly, I was sick of hearing the crap, too. Sexism is just ugly.
Anyway, the campaign is on hiatus because one of the players is on a trip around the world. The rest of the group spends the time doing one shots to which we have not invited him, but he still thinks the next semester campaign is on, with him in it.
I won't use a form email of course, but I really would like to do it in the least ugly way possible.
Quote from: signoftheserpentffs if you can't speak to someone face to face and hide behind an email then you are a sad case indeed.
I see that a lot. And yet, the stories here, on TBP, and elsewhere, all seem to feature phone calls and e-mails. Huh. It's kind of like the whole promiscuous women, chaste men thing. Who the hell are these girls supposed to be sleeping with?
Seanchai
There's a Ben Folds Five song where he's pissed off because he bought her dinner and she dumped him over dinner. "Give me my money back, give me my money back you bitch!" :cool:
So maybe a personal meeting isn't always the best thing.
Basically I'd say that if you're not actually friends, just gaming acquaintances, then doing it by email is fine; friends deserve something more intimate. But in any case you should give the real reasons for it, though obviously if the person being kicked was not actually maliciously offensive, then you ought to describe it all in as neutral terms as possible.
I'd generally say that unless you are dealing with a sixth degree wing nut, doing something at least interactive is required. If your going to do e-mail, be prepared to have an e-mail conversation. Over the phone is fine. This should not be like a dumping, where you need to do this after a dinner at a resturant that is not tied to you as a couple.
If you have attached yourself to a psycho somehow, then perhaps voice mail, or snail mail, or maybe note attached to a rock are more the way to go.
Never been kicked out of a group, but I've left one before. GM was an abusive a$$, the game was frustrating and, although I liked everyone else there and it was the "only game in town", I said screw it.
Wasn't long after I left the game folded...:pundit: