I think I still have that case they left...I don't even drink the stuff.

There was the guy who would not quit hitting on the very engaged and unavailable only female player in the group. The same day that he was thrown out of the group, she sent us an email saying that she felt too uncomfortable afterwards to keep playing. In response to all of the preceeding, he threatened suicide. She and I still remain friends, but she rarely games anymore.

There was the guy who claimed to be an expert experienced gamer, who fucked up so badly the first session that his mindless action killed off two other player characters. He had just pissed everybody off, and so was asked to leave.

There was the family unit which included an autistic boy. The father kept messing with his son's character and trying to be a spotlight hog. He also was jealous that his wife, who had never played before, was doing a better job than he was. It was just kind of creepy bad. They dropped out of the group without any heartache from the rest of us.

I've never had to actually ask someone to leave, but I have had a couple problem players who disappeared from my games just as I was getting sufficiently tired of their rules-lawyering that I was starting to think about making that request.  In one case, I heard later through the grapevine that he'd left because he didn't like my position on how I handle PC death, even though no PC had ever actually died in the several months he'd been playing with me.  The other, I don't know the actual reason, but he disappeared without a word at exactly the time that the rest of us decided to try running a couple sessions (of the same campaign) using a different rules system, so I assume that he was just unwilling to try the new system.

I do mostly miniature wargames these days (it's harder to find a good group of players for an RPG when you travel as frequently as I do- it's quite easy to roll up with a box of minis and find a battle at the FLGS in a random city).  So I have to ask, what counts as 'run off'?  I posted the other events earlier.

Incident:

I was playing at a store many, many years ago with an Imperial Guard army.  I was playing against a guy that wasn't filthy, but he certainly -looked- gross (obese, unshaven, poor grooming, unkempt shoulder-length hair, ill-fitting clothing that looked worn out).  I know this sounds pompous to point out, but the truth of the matter is that this guy had SEVERAL boxes of professionally-painted and high-end minis ('Forge World' was pricey for a reason back then).  I will call him Neckfat.

Neckfat was kind of rude, not very chatty, and I could tell he was a WAAC (Win At All Costs) player.  When he asked if I wanted a game, I was delighted- I was an Imperial Guard rookie.  So he watches me lay down my minis- and then proceeds to put down some Chaos Daemons (mostly Nurgle).  At this point in time, Daemons were outright BROKEN and absurdly hard to beat unless you built for them (fucking Matt Ward).  I knew I'd lose, but the first step at being really good at something is to be really lousy at it- so I had to learn, and I don't mind getting my ass outright handed to me as long as I can learn what something can do, what I should do, and what I shouldn't do.  
 
Neckfat started by complaining that two of my Leman Russ tanks were different colors- but I'd explained that one was a gift and was a used tank.  He then proceeded to interrogate me about why I'd modified certain models, etc.  Nothing absurd, but he just couldn't grasp that I kinda wanted a Commissar with a gas mask even though my dudes were Catachan.   One guy was like, "just play him, man- he's new and we need new players".  This guy from the peanut gallery was essential later...

Truthfully, I had a few lucky rolls.   I took out some of his stuff and I was pleased, but I knew the ass-whoopin' was on its way.  In my second turn, all he does is start double-checking EVERYTHING I do to absurd degrees (checking his codex, MY Codex, the rules, etc.) and it started becoming annoying.  He was actually winning- I'd just killed a handful of his Plaguebearers.  It got so frustrating and ate so much time, I just needed to breathe.  I was like, "Dude, can I go take a piss at the end of this turn?" He nodded and grunted, and when I finally got through the turn- I stepped away.  I didn't have to piss, I just needed to breathe and calm myself because this dude was getting on my nerves.

Lo and behold, when I return- Neckfat has his army packed up and he's scrambling to get all his boxes together.  In his stuffed nasal and pretentious tone of voice, he says: "I don't play with cheaters.  He's using loaded dice!" He bellowed the last part loud, loud enough everyone in the store looked up and his neckfat jiggled.  The owner of this store, a really kind Polynesian man that used to tuck extra bits and dice in peoples' bags, walked over and asked "[Crüesader], may I see your dice?  I just want to see if you may have bought the wrong type of something by accident."  I nodded, and went to look for mine on the little rolling cart that the man provided to every table (each held scenery, tape measures, laser pointers, etc.).  My dice were gone.

Keep in mind, these dice were a mix-match batch, but a good chunk of them were from Circus Circus, the Casino in Vegas.

Me and at least three people looked all over for the dice, and I even allowed them to look in my little gym bag for the dice and turned out my pockets. Neckfat, already at the door goes, "He probably flushed them down the toilet!" And one guy- the dude from before goes, "Hey man, just in case can you check your boxes and make sure you didn't accidentally grab his dice when you gathered your things?

Neckfat's eyes go wide, and he turns and bolts.  Before any of us can realize what's happened, he's speeding through a parking lot.  

Dude accused me of cheating and stole my dice.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the flipside, I've had groups run ME off- not asking me to leave, but certain things have irked me to the point where I no longer wanted to play with them.

I played with a group of people in an game that absolutely could not stop arguing, and the GM had no balls.  People would sit there and bicker about the rules, and nothing could progress.  My first red flag was that they were arguing in my character creation about character creation, and I ended up having to take the books and go to another room to finish the process.  It got to a point where we'd had ONE monster encounter in my first mission and we'd been going for three hours.  I went to piss, set the alarm on my phone to a ring- and then sat down and used the phone ringing as an excuse- "Sorry guys, that was my roommate and he's locked out of the house.  I need to go let him in."  I seriously never went back.

I went to a 40k tournament once in one of the cities I traveled to.  I looked it up online, and spoke to the guy running it that owned the store.  I explained that I was traveling into town, and I wired him my admission fee and he said that was all I needed.  When I showed up to the recreation center, I'd just left a seminar and was wearing a shirt and tie.  I had picked up a cooler and stocked it with Red Bull, Mountain Dew, and Water and brought it with me.  When I went in, this group of guys was staring me down.  They acted at first as if I wouldn't be allowed to play because I hadn't entered, but I gave them the information from the man I'd spoken to and called him (at first, they acted as if they didn't know who he was).  As I was setting up to play my first opponent, several people kept coming over and looking at my stuff.  When I went to start playing- my tape measure had vanished (something that I never forgot).  The judge INSTANTLY said, "Sorry, you're required to have all materials for play.  I've got to disqualify you" - even though there was a Lowe's right next door.  As I packed my stuff, everyone there was staring at me and watching me leave- no one was playing.  I found out later that these guys were known to rig tournaments so their pals could win the prize.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;913933Don't play with assholes.

Okay, we're done here.  Somebody fetch me a beer.

You forgot "No Gaming is better than bad gaming!"

I am dissapointed.

Oh wow bringing up miniatures brought an unpleasant memory back.

I got heavily into miniatures for a few years as there was an active local group (not interested in roleplaying ) I really enjoyed the modeling part of it as I am a bit of an artist myself and it allowed me to merge the two interests of gaming and art. My favorite part was building terrain.

Heres a couple examples of how serious I took the hobby.





One summer I decided to do something special. I took a 4x8' piece of heavy plywood and started applying plaster. I fashioned a diorama for the American Civil War game we had been playing. No separate pieces of terrain on felt here but a complete diorama. Grass, shrubs, trees, fallen leaves (it was an autumn scenario) a riverbed, roads, farm houses, crops and so on. The group was thrilled with the result and thought it so cool as to invite some guys from nearby town. (No Harlock, it wasn't San Angelo but rather the unwashed of Midland)

One of the visitors starts placing his troops and actually scrunches then down into the carefully modeled turf, cracking plaster, breaking shrubs. Then he leans on a tree..snap. Reaches out to move ssome troops and uses a farmhouse for leverage...crunch! Finally he knocks a stack of hand painted miniatures onto the floor and picks them up by the HANDFUL and tosses them on the table.

I had had enough, I asked if he could please be more careful as I worked very hard on the table. His answer was that it was supposed to be a game, not a museum piece. If I didn't want it damaged, I shouldn't  play on it.

I asked him to let me move his troops then, he could tell me where and I make the moves. He declined and said he would rather not play then. I said fine, as did a couple others. So he picks up his troops, the entire Rebel flank, and sat there brooding for the next 4 hours. He wouldn't let us use his miniatures so we had to improvise by thinning lines and such, it was a real pain.

Fun fun.

Quote from: Crüesader;913966On the flipside, I've had groups run ME off- not asking me to leave, but certain things have irked me to the point where I no longer wanted to play with them.

Yeah, there have been more cases where I've split from a gaming group than where I've had to chase a player out of my group. Usually because I've been either disgusted by the other players, or cheating and arguing has annoyed me. In those cases, I've been invited along by a friend, or met them through a 'blind' advertisement.

Quote from: K Peterson;914007Yeah, there have been more cases where I've split from a gaming group than where I've had to chase a player out of my group. Usually because I've been either disgusted by the other players, or cheating and arguing has annoyed me. In those cases, I've been invited along by a friend, or met them through a 'blind' advertisement.

Yeah, I'm pretty selective about who I bring in.  I've always believed in the rule "you are entirely responsible for the behavior of those you invite".  Some people balk at this rule, but at the end of the day- you're not inviting shitheads over.

Okay I have one.

This guy is nice enough in real life. He has some issues and is going through stuff, but is generally quite likeable.

However, once he played RPGs... his characters always... ALWAYS devolved into sadistic, misogynistic lone wolves.

I gave him three strikes (three different campaigns).

First one was Dark Heresy.

Yeah that's a game that seems to bring out the evil asshole in just about every player, but he was worse. Always going off on his own, starting arguments in and out of game. Also murdering and torturing NPCs out of nowhere (no escalation at all). That campaign sort of fell apart for a heap of reasons, but he didn't help.

Second one was WFRP 3rd ed.

For that game I tried pre-creating basic character "shells". That meant that each character's race, career, starting stats and basic background fluff were all premade by me to ensure a solid party composition and to avoid the appearance of certain tropes. Otherwise personality, goals, beliefs were entirely up to each player.

He picked my favourite among the character concepts that I had made for them: a female pit fighter who was very popular among the downtrodden (women, elderly, second class citizens etc) 'cause she often fought for them (in the judicial pit fighting system).

ANYWAY, she quickly devolved into another brutal sadist enough to make Khorne blush. Again, this caused friction in the party, in game and out as people became uncomfortable with the grim tone (even for WFRP).

Last strike was D&D. Yeah I was being generous.

He jumped in mid-campaign, taking over an NPC of his choice from a roster of supporting characters. He picked one of the nicer ones: a jovial, handsome guy who looked like Chris Hemsworth (Thor). A ladies man who was already infatuated with one of the female PCs.

The campaign was based on a mythical Zoo from Vornheim.

Here is a list of way that he threatened both the session and the overall campaign to the point that my regulars all threatened to stop playing if I allowed the guy to continue.

SPOILERS for Vornheim:

- In the very first room at the very start he decided to shoot the harmless Nightingale flitting about. He rolled a critical hit and killed it. That nightingale was the main villain who held the entire dungeon together. I was flabbergasted. My players were confused. His reasoning? He wanted to see what his character's potential was. The other characters were annoyed.

- He charged headlong at the face of a mega giant turtle after the rest of the party had decided to back off and leave it alone. Another character had to save his life and convince him to give it up.

- He attempted to (awkwardly) seduce an NPC noble lady who just wasn't interested (she was there for the giant octopus). But because she turned him down, he proceeded to force himself on her. When she fought back, he tried to kill her. This made EVERYONE at the table uncomfortable. We knew that shit was bad when one of my other friends at the table, who's usually the creepy one, was the first to intervene and attempt to diffuse the situation.

- He decided to charge at a monster after the rest of the party had decided to leave it alone and sneak past it.

- The party befriended two spirits of ancient Chinese warriors who promised to follow one order each before returning to the spirit realm. The guy immediately ordered one to attack the other, pissing off the entire table for wasting one of the ghosts.

We ended shortly after that. The silence was really awkward as people packed up.

Needless to say I told the guy that his playstyle didn't quite mesh with the others. He was going through a divorce at the time so I tried to be nice about it.

Yikes.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914006(No Harlock, it wasn't San Angelo but rather the unwashed of Midland)

To be honest, I'm not too fond of the miniatures gamers here. Way too much focus on the end rather than the game itself. Nice paint jobs by the way. If we add miniature gamers into the mix, there was a fellow I never invited back to my house after a couple of times. I was just learning a new game against a veteran player and in posting an after action report to an online forum, it was pointed out that several of the things my opponent had done were not legal. Now, I can understand a mistake here or there, but there were frequent misrepresentations and bald faced cheating going on. I just don't understand cheating. Isn't it supposed to be the game and not the result that is fun? And where is the victory if you cheat to get it?

I concure - as we have no doubt established I am all about the experience (story), winning and losing just aren't a priority. Ive actually been criticized for making moves in wargames that were logical from a local commander's perspective but not from a gamer wanting to win's. Like not pushing headlong into an objective position to win the game on the last turn because in reality you would have no hope of holding it. Sadly this attitude has ticked off a few players. Grognards and miniatures gamers are their own breed.

Quote from: rgrove0172;9138622) A young kid about 18 joined our group at one point, goth looking kid - bleached white hair, eye makeup and black fingernails. You know the type.

The Goths and rural-American Satanic teenagers I've met have been two very different types. The Satanists were the ones talking about sacrificing dogs. The Goths were nicer than conformists.

I'm not remembering having to actually eject anyone who had made it into a game... I address problems very quickly, so problematic people tend to get filtered before they get to their first session. Like I tell them about my campaign and GM style and they don't choose to play because they want easy magic healing or equal experience points at all times or don't enjoy detailed deadly tactical combat. Or we start talking about the character they want to play, or they submit a sheet, and I tell them what does/doesn't make sense in the game they're joining, and they leave because they wanted to play a were-ferret or a pink ninja or wanted to play their D&D character who already has more magic than any NPC anywhere in my campaign. But even that only happened when I was open to random unknown players, in days of yore. Mostly in recent decades, people are pre-screened because they weren't the ones invited by me or my friends based on already knowing they were a good enough match.

As for people shouting what everyone is doing, even much slighter out-of-character assertions get addressed right away. "No, you don't all do that. Why are you shouting? Is your character yelling at everyone to do that?" (asks each other player one at a time what they are doing. NPCs make appropriate reaction rolls if someone other than their leader is trying to command them).

Quote from: rgrove0172;914006Oh wow bringing up miniatures brought an unpleasant memory back.

I got heavily into miniatures for a few years as there was an active local group (not interested in roleplaying ) I really enjoyed the modeling part of it as I am a bit of an artist myself and it allowed me to merge the two interests of gaming and art. My favorite part was building terrain.

Heres a couple examples of how serious I took the hobby.





One summer I decided to do something special. I took a 4x8' piece of heavy plywood and started applying plaster. I fashioned a diorama for the American Civil War game we had been playing. No separate pieces of terrain on felt here but a complete diorama. Grass, shrubs, trees, fallen leaves (it was an autumn scenario) a riverbed, roads, farm houses, crops and so on. The group was thrilled with the result and thought it so cool as to invite some guys from nearby town. (No Harlock, it wasn't San Angelo but rather the unwashed of Midland)

One of the visitors starts placing his troops and actually scrunches then down into the carefully modeled turf, cracking plaster, breaking shrubs. Then he leans on a tree..snap. Reaches out to move ssome troops and uses a farmhouse for leverage...crunch! Finally he knocks a stack of hand painted miniatures onto the floor and picks them up by the HANDFUL and tosses them on the table.

I had had enough, I asked if he could please be more careful as I worked very hard on the table. His answer was that it was supposed to be a game, not a museum piece. If I didn't want it damaged, I shouldn't  play on it.

I asked him to let me move his troops then, he could tell me where and I make the moves. He declined and said he would rather not play then. I said fine, as did a couple others. So he picks up his troops, the entire Rebel flank, and sat there brooding for the next 4 hours. He wouldn't let us use his miniatures so we had to improvise by thinning lines and such, it was a real pain.

Fun fun.

I agree with him.  Now, I'm no hamfisted moron and I do respect other people's stuff, but seriously, something that fragile should not be used for wargaming.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;914032I agree with him.  Now, I'm no hamfisted moron and I do respect other people's stuff, but seriously, something that fragile should not be used for wargaming.

The rest of us had no problem with it, nor any of the other layouts Ive provided. It takes a little care sure but the payoff is worth it. Playing with rubber terrain or clumps of moss and legos just doesn't cut it for some.

Wow I probably would have a "no damaging my terrain or I place your figures for you" rule stated as early as possible. I can see one or two accidents, but not being righteous about accidentally Godzilla-ing a well-done diorama. That sounds suspiciously like jealous destruction to me.