ITT things that can kill even a great game for you

>Have a really cool, attentive, and invested player
>Their character is well-developed and gets really deeply involved in the game
>Actively investigates on things and gets their opinion known
>Get well-tied to the plot as a result
>Quest givers address him directly
>Personally involved with the villains
>Important to the relationships of other PCs, even romances
>Gets little side quests during downtime
>Then suddenly he disappears without a trace
>Playing without him is nearly impossible
>Entire sessions are lost without him
>Ultimately keep going but it's not the same
>Half the plot crumbles because it had tied itself around this guy without me even trying
>The once so living world feels dead now and can never recover

This has happened to me more than once, and nothing over my entire time in this hobby has made me so permanently bitter.

If you're listening, Praetus, Ayla - fuck you.

Are you sure they're both still alive?

>great player invites friend
>player's friend is an absolute piece of shit
>worst roleplayer and an annoying asshole
>nobody likes him but his buddy
>kick him because he is making the game an absolute chore
>great roleplayer leaves in protest

Third Degree on all players.
NO! EXCEPTIONS!

This is even worse when you're the DM and a friend wants in on your game. You allow it thinking it will be cool to get a friend interested in the hobby, only for that friend to be the piece of shit that all your players hate, who shows no signs of ever getting better or treating the campaign with any more respect than a videogame.

Bonus points if he keeps bringing up "Why are you all so serious, it's a fucking GAME" as a defence.

Double Bonus Points if you're roomates with the asshole and kicking him out of the game means you have to hear bitching about it every day for weeks.

>Game gets to the level where the wizard can bypass almost every encounter or obstacle with one or two spells.

I have NEVER seen a system that includes multiple types of magic be able to work around this without resorting to sheer attrition to wear the casters out of spell-slots.

I HAVE seen a few systems where magic itself is limited in scope (magic can only summon elements, it can't teleport/mind control/shapeshift/ect) but unfortunately none of those games are popular enough to find groups for, and trying to apply those principles to popular systems like DnD gets a chorus of autistic screeching from retards who don't understand the game gets really fucking boring if the wizard can rewrite the rules of reality by level 10 or so.

Have you tried talking through it with your friend or explaining your players' perspectives, user?

Yeah, but he's one of those bro-dudes who keeps falling back on the "Stop taking it so seriously, it's a game LOL" defense and refuses to understand that even as a game it's more fun if everyone takes it seriously.

Ironically after kicking him from the game, he contacted everyone wanting to run his own game... which nobody has since shown interest in, despite pestering every couple of weeks.

Have you tried playing loud music to drown out his bitching, possibly combined with an obscene gesture in his direction?

Fuck you back.

You can easily restructure the plot to "Oh noes! This guy is missing! Possibly even dead? How will we ever possibly recover/go forth with our plans?" And pick it up from there.

>It's just a game
Man, if I tried that shit with hardcore football fans while changing the channel away from the Big Game, I'd get my ass kicked.

Just because it's a game doesn't mean it doesn't matter to some people.

The problem isn't the character being gone. It's the absence of the player.

The presence or absence of one person can absolutely make or break the group dynamic, especially if they're the most engaged player. Having that degree of engagement and then losing it can seriously fuck with a GM.

>One player gets a kick out of bullying anyone and everyone
>Insists it's in character
>The GM does nothing about it
>We bring it to his attention and vows to do something about it
>"I talked with player and he says it is in character, so it's okay."

Wew, one of those might be me. What games were you running OP?

I hate player vs player, but if neither want to stop that shit. Just ditch him in the next time and leave with the rest of the party or duel him the next time he fucks shit up.

My sort of situation. The best player will leave if I kick the worst one. And they aren't even friends, they just play together more than six years.

Last time we did that, we skipped step one and just threw him over a cliff, then the GM decided to stop the game because we bullied the poor asshole with a power complex away.

>Thinking someone this invested into a game would just leave for shits and giggles
>Why worry about them when I can just be groundlessly pissy for the rest of my life?
>I'm the victim!
You deserve worse than a broken game or two.

Which systems would those be?

Im left wondering why YOU cant be the cool attentive and invested player.

Are you saying he should make a DMPC?

Or stop being foreverDM?

>It's ok for this guy to be a total shitbag to everyone IC and OC because that's his character
>it's not IC for the group the get fed up with his bullshit and murder him

>Great player invites a friend
>He's okay but then he becomes very cool
>Great player invites another player
>He's HELLA COOL, but is in town just while he's not studying, so he leaves after a Mutants and Masterminds game
>Great player proceeds to do the same

Everyone else is cool too. One of my first players was kinda shit, barely roleplayed, and never read the rules but he left when he got too busy, and then got engaged.

Something very similar happened to my group except the GM lied to the player and told him he couldn't handle a group that big.
A few weeks later he invited another person to join despite my numerous warnings. Needless to say it didn't work out well.