I am running a campaign and have been for about 5 months now. All of my players are pretty new to D&D. All except one. He is honestly my worst player despite all of his experience. He is constantly complaining nonstop.
He didn't like his first character, so he asked for me to kill his character so he could play a different character. Fine. I want everyone to have fun so no big deal. I am also all about homebrew but only premade homebrew found on dandwiki. I constantly give them all sorts of rare to legendary items, weapons, and armor. He is ALWAYS complaining about what I give him and saying how he wishes he had what I gave another person… but what I gave him was better than the item he wishes he had. He even gave one of the items I gave to him to somebody else because it was "useless" and now that other person uses that item every single session and this guy is so irritated that the person knows how to use it.
He will criticize my DMing but only in a super undercut way where he is pretending to be nice, so its hard to defend myself. He also makes racist jokes and he even made a joke about rape.
Honestly, I'm beginning to hate the guy. And now he just up and told me 2 minutes before a campaign that he is going to multi-class, but I had already told everybody at the beginning of the campaign that we aren't multiclassing because everyone is pretty new. Then when I was like "wait.. what? You're multiclassing?" He whipped back super aggressively "YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF MULTICLASSING!" My blood boiled… Yes I know what multiclassing is. And I have at least 2 times the experience with DND than he does. He is driving me crazy.
One time he yelled at me in front of everyone because HE forgot which undead he had done a spell to and which ones he hadn't, and I informed him that he never cast the spell on this particular undead.
This is an online campaign using Roll20. He is my husband's coworker. He is about 30. The rest of us are in our mid to late 20s. Also, any time I try to talk to him about any of his behavior, he either yells at me or interrupts me and doesn't let me say what I'm trying to say. He will usually turn the conversation around from his behavior to what mythic items he wants instead. I am not giving him the item he wants because the item conflicts pretty heavily with the layout of the story.
I honestly am at my wits' end. But if I lose him on the campaign, I won't have enough people to run the campaign at all. (There is me as the DM and three players, including him.) I am so lost on what to do. What do you guys do when one of your players is making everyone else miserable?
Best Answer
Either the player changes their behavior, they leave, or you leave.
1. Talk to the players and enforce a social contract.
The first measure in a problematic player situation is to talk to the players as part of an out-of-game discussion to ensure that everyone is on the same page about what game you want to play and the social rules of your gaming group. Most conflicts are due to mismatched expectations about the group's social dynamic and the game itself, likely from habits they picked up in previous games with other players. Simply discussing this outside of the game fiction can do wonders to resolve interpersonal conflicts and improve the gaming group's atmosphere.
If you haven't already, have this discussion (often called session zero) ASAP. You may have house rules, or rules that differ from this player's previous games, so it can help to write some of them down. Maybe they simply forgot that you banned multiclassing from the campaign. Write it down.
You need to assert (or re-assert) a social contract and some safety tools for your group. Regardless of their fantastical in-game characters, these are human players and they have human flaws such as emotions and poor communication skills. Enforcing safety tools for a game may sound restrictive, but it helps keep your table a fun environment where players feel comfortable with each other. Right now it sounds like your group doesn't have that, because one player is angry and you are unhappy. Odds are that the other players don't like this situation either.
For starters, you could set some ground rules like...
Ensure that these discussions are about out-of-game factors, and don't get distracted by in-game details like magic items or numerical bonuses. This is a human player problem, not a character problem. Out-of-game problems require out-of-game solutions, and they cannot be resolved by in-game changes to the fiction or character abilities. It is extremely unlikely that addressing the character (e.g. penalizing, or killing, or buffing, or rebuilding) would be productive without first managing the interpersonal conflicts at the heart of the issue.
Note that these should be discussions, and will require you to hear out this player's perspective. It's possible that you may need to make compromises and meet them halfway, such as being more patient when you interact as the DM. Maybe they lack self-awareness and don't realize how their behavior is affecting you, and they won't know unless you discuss these issues with them.
2. If that fails, remove the player from the group.
Sometimes a player is just a bad fit for your game. Sometimes talking to a person respectfully and clearly just isn't enough, and they won't change their habits. Then they leave. No negotiation, they're just out. The point of the game is for the participants to have fun, and if one of the participants is preventing that and is unwilling to change their antagonistic behavior, then you are at an impasse until they are gone.
Their frequent criticisms might suggest they dislike the game. If they're unhappy with the game, and unwilling to compromise, then it would be best for everyone if they parted ways with the group.
Don't make yourself (and your other players) unhappy just to entertain a toxic player. Sure, without that player, maybe it will be logistically difficult to run the game. As the DM, you might need to rewrite large portions of the story to accommodate their absence, which requires work. On the other hand, maybe it will be easier running a game for a smaller group, since you won't be as miserable with the problematic player around. Having a 2-person party is very feasible. Kicking out a player is never a fun experience, but it may eventually be necessary for your sake.
3. Stop playing altogether.
If none of that works, and you absolutely can't boot the problem player from the group, then you can walk away. Refuse to keep running the game as DM because it's making you miserable.
This option will terminate the campaign, probably without a conclusive ending, and that's unfortunate. But your real needs as a human being take priority over a fictional story. It is better for you and your mental health to abandon a game, versus participating in a game that is actively making you unhappy. No gaming is better than bad gaming.
Then you can start looking for a new gaming group.