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Author Topic: Kicked out of a game group  (Read 2178 times)

Kyle Aaron

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Kicked out of a game group
« on: March 04, 2008, 10:03:53 PM »
This rpg.net thread 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?
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blakkie

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2008, 10:24:49 PM »
Quote from: Kyle Aaron

Certainly 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.
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James McMurray

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2008, 10:26:13 PM »
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.

ancientgamer

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2008, 10:32:23 PM »
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.
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blakkie

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2008, 10:34:47 PM »
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.
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Kyle Aaron

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2008, 10:39:48 PM »
Quote from: ancientgamer
So, 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.
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David R

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2008, 11:35:27 PM »
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.)

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Abyssal Maw

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2008, 11:55:57 PM »
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.
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jeff37923

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #8 on: March 05, 2008, 12:28:33 AM »
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.
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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #9 on: March 05, 2008, 01:37:00 AM »
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.
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GrimJesta

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #10 on: March 05, 2008, 01:45:45 AM »
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.

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Halfjack

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #11 on: March 05, 2008, 02:33:54 AM »
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.
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arminius

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #12 on: March 05, 2008, 03:39:21 AM »
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.

O'Borg

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #13 on: March 05, 2008, 06:52:37 AM »
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.
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blakkie

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Kicked out of a game group
« Reply #14 on: March 05, 2008, 10:30:27 AM »
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.
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