[RPG] How to uninvite a friend from a campaign

parting-ways-with-playersproblem-playerssocial

I'm am prepping to DM a campaign for some of my friends. Until that starts, I'm just playing in the campaign of one of those friends. A few months ago I had invited a few of them to join the campaign I'm prepping for. One of my fellow players(I'll call him John) asked to join, and I said yes. I even invited his nephew to join too. This was a few months ago.

But over the last few months of playing with John I've noticed the way he plays, and am not sure I want him in my campaign anymore. Things like changing his characters class/background/stat arrangement(we use standard array) without talking to the DM, ignoring decisions that other characters make when dealing with a problem in-game that relates personally to another character, going off on his own in-game, rolling his eyes when other people are talking.

It's gotten to the point where I don't want to have to DM for him.

Problem is he has bad depression, especially during this time of the year, and talking to him about this could make him very upset, and I want to avoid starting something. John isn't a bad person, I just don't have the emotional energy to deal with this, and this is a homebrew world of mine and I don't want to sour the experience by having a player that makes running the game unfun for me.

I'm looking for advice on how to tell him I don't want him in my campaign. I've talked with my current DM, but he's too nice for his own good and doesn't have much for advice. He's already tried talking to him about a few of the issues, to which John hid his character sheet(we use dndbeyond) which didn't matter because the DM can still see it, and he stopped using video in our game calls when talked to about the eye rolling.

Table Environment: we use a Discord server for gaming and chatting

Best Answer

This might not be the answer you're asking, but maybe it's the answer you need:

Simply enforce the rules. You are the DM. You make the rules at your table.

Did he change his character without telling you? Tell him while playing that you did not approve this, and he plays with the original approved character. Too bad for him, because now he didn't have time to prepare new skills for his recently gained level.

Going off on his own? --> only touch his side track briefly and spend the majority of your time on the main story line.

Interrupting actions/decisions of his fellow players? --> ignore what he said and keep interacting with the player that was performing an interaction (e.g. let him roll, or describe the outcome).

There's two things that can happen: either he will change his behaviour to what is acceptable to you; or he will simply leave the campaign himself.