Quote from: Exploderwizard;843306Don't let the latter happen. Give every player equal time.

Its fortunate that my players aren't annoying with their solo activities because I have a terrible sense of time when I am gaming. I'd need a timer to manage the time allocation evenly.

Quote from: Beagle;843176I fear after a oh so serious talk with the group an hour ago, all bridges for a potential round trip have been thoroughly burnt.

What happened?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;843341What happened?

The short version is,  I told the loving couple that playing with them has become like watching one's parents argue in public.  
There is slightly more to it (The loving husband) ran a game, and specifically created a situation where his wife's character could no longer interact with any of the other characters or the setting in any way, except as a watcher (she turned into a ghost), which was like a carricature of everything wrong with these two.
So we shared a few unkind words with each other (apparently, my dog (see picture to the left) is an annoying little monster and bringing that terrifying beast has suddenly become a major source of destruction and confusion. Their dog of course, has never done anything wrong). And I left.

Good on you for standing up to your dog!

I understand that splitting groups and having solo prima donna players can be a problem. However I've also had many games where it's worked quite well to have players split up frequently. It would've detracted a lot to try to force those games to have the players stay together all the time.

On reflection, I think maybe my least favorite player behavior is when the players decide to murder, torture, betray, or otherwise have their PCs do horrible things, when their PC wasn't really horrible before.

It creates a dilemma for me, because it seems to me I then need to either interrupt them and have a big OOC morality/character conversation with them, or let them go ahead and be horrible. If I let them be horrible, then I need to decide what that means for their character, and for the other NPCs who see or feel it. For example, if the PC's friend NPCs see or learn what the PC did, they now have to either be sucked into staying friends with someone who did/does horrible things, or stop being friends with the PC. Or I need to pretend that horrible things aren't so horrible, or not care and run a sociopathic game, which I've done before and don't like to do unless we've agreed that's what we're doing.

Although actually, I think it's a pretty interesting topic, and players who do this force attention onto the topic one way or another. So maybe it's only really my least favorite thing when it's a real discontinuity - e.g. if we'd been playing people with morals, and suddenly the player says he wants to shoot the witnesses and doesn't get what's problematic about that.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;842965I'd never do that.

On the other hand, it's what the wandering monster tables are for, both for dungeons and wilderness.  I don't have to "invent" an encounter to kill the player, the rules are already set up to do that for me.

Hell, the OD&D wandering monster tables give the possibility of a Wight on the first level.  That's certain death to any first level player, and actually a potential TPK right there.  (Silver or magic weapons only)

Yeah, that's how I'd handle it too.