- This group doesn't respect my time. The session ran for six and a half hours. Now, I've played in games that were four, five, or six hours and had fun, but I think that's the exception. Notably, none of them were on a weekday. For me, the sweet spot is around 3.5. I found myself loving @docsilence's shorter 2.5-hour sessions, too. They leave me wanting more, not itching to get away from the table. At one point, I told the group I had a hard stop in an hour. The game went on for another two hours after that. If I hear that as a DM, I'm rushing to get the player out of there.
Yeah no. If I say "hard out in an hour" it means -
hard out-. You get a 15 min heads up and then I'm leaving. I got places to be. A DM or players that let that slide aren't respecting the table. I'm in three groups now, one I DM and two more including the AT one, and I can't imagine any of them doing that. As a DM if a player gives me that heads up I make it happen.
My 'home' game, the one I DM, is a strict 4hrs. front to back. That's enough time to fart around for half an hour if we want to talk about a tv show or politics or life, but still enough time to get some good progress on a story. Granted, there's always 10-30 mins of pregame table talk since most of my group has known each other, or at least me, for upwards of a decade or more.
When I set up my sci-fi campaign, I didn't self-select my players. Big mistake. I was strong-armed into including the internet troll. I'm only planning to run this game once a month (and it hasn't happened since our session 0 back in August), but that's still a lot more of this guy than I would choose. I was planning to run it in perpetuity. If I can't handle this guy, I guess that's no longer an option?
So if you want to go a softer option, bring the current story section to a close, retire the game, and then wait a couple of months. Come back, re-assign your group (say you'd like to run with a smaller crew this time, easier for you as DM to manage, which is true) and pick up the story after a time jump.
This is actually how I would advance my settings after aborted games for years. If a game fizzled (always due to scheduling), I'd DM fiat the ending (usually a mix of happy/sad, so I could carry forward villain plots but I wasn't totally funking the characters if a player returned) and then fast forward the world six months, a year, ten years, and pick up anew. It has a nice bonus of giving your world a lot of free texture because your old PCs become NPCs in the world and their half-adventures become history or legend.
I do recommend being *extremely* selective with your tables. They should be like the exclusive section at a club. You gotta know the club owner and the owner needs to like you. Pretend you just don't like running for large groups if you want to be nice, but police the shit out of who you run for. You're putting in too much effort as DM to be miserable doing it.
That said, you can just kick the guy, it sometimes sucks, but sometimes it's the right thing. That or...
The only other option - besides sacrificing your own mental health for his sake - is to call him out on his shit right at the table, mid-session, and be aggressive enough about it that everyone kind of needs to get involved and pick a side. That's a gambit, and can be really uncomfortable for everyone. But sometimes it's necessary if you're reasonably sure everyone agrees with you and will be like 'yeah dude, you gotta tone it down.'
This is a good option, I think. Don't make it about the game you want to run, make it about the table and respecting the game everyone else wants to play. "Hey, that behavior isn't in keeping with the tone of game your fellow players are trying to achieve. You could play any number of characters that would match what everyone else is going for, why are you choosing to be the wangrod? If you'd rather play another game you don't need to play this one."
Fair warning, you might lose the group over it, but I promise there are better groups out there. I'm currently playing with
three of them.
He's a cunt. He revels in getting a reaction, even (or especially) shock or disgust. I find him an unpleasant person. I don't understand why they're still friends with him.
One member of my friend group has the Damien gene of assuredly expressing himself. He makes a fuss when the other guy is around. "Why are you like that?" "Nobody thinks that's funny." "Just ___ being a child."
Agree loudly with that member of the group when they speak up. "Yeah, I really don't dig that behavior either." "Seriously, can you tone it down?" "He's right, that ISN'T funny." The more it becomes apparent that this idea is the majority POV, the more people feel comfortable policing a peer. Eventually the peer either becomes socialized properly, or they get evicted from the group and find some other poor souls to torment.
I have never been described as 'assuredly expressing myself.' That's a nice way of saying I'm blunt asshole. I like it. Might put it on a t-shirt.
Interacting with you live has given me added texture and I'm finding your bluntness more charming the longer we play. Sincerely. No bullshit. Also you hate the monarchy enough to refuse to pledge to them and I respect anyone who would tell them to fuck off.
And that's the biggest part of it; sometimes there's no 'fixing' the problem between people at a table. Sometimes someone just has to go. When you take on the role of DM, you definitely take on the responsibility, in my opinion, of dismissing disruptive players. 'If you behave this way, you're not welcome at the next game.' If anyone else has a problem with that, maybe it's time to reevaluate the entire group and what everyone wants from it.
100% this. There was a moment in my last long game where there was some friction at the table and it was sort of threatening group cohesion, and I took everyone aside and did a one on one where it was like "hey, if this is where we're at I just don't want to run" and because we're all adults, it got sorted, and that game kept going for like two more years. And we're all still playing. Sometimes the adult conversation is exactly the right thing. If nothing else it sorts out if these are the players for you.
I feel like I would hate playing in a game I paid for. I think I would put too much pressure on myself to make it 'worth it' - and also not to disrupt anyone else's enjoyment of something they paid for. Now I'm second-guessing everything I do and say in the game to try to avoid harming the experience for anyone else, and ultimately end up not enjoying it for myself.
Agreed. I'd also hate being a paid DM because then I'd be an employee of the players. Nah. This is my hobby. A hobby I like and take seriously as a hobby, but a hobby none the less. I'm not clocking in for it. We're here to have fun and I'm playing host, but that's it. I don't want to owe anybody a game because money changed hands. I want us all to just enjoy showing up.
