Sode#36 – Kicking People Out (GM 05)

Brilliant Gameologists

Note: We are back on track bitches

News:

The BG’s are attending two conventions and one concert coming up soon!

• March 19: Uncle Monsterface concert at TT and the Bears in Boston. Good times for nerdcore!
• March 21: JiffyCon Boston. Our favorite real-play con is coming to our area! If you are anywhere in the area, we STRONGLY recommend attending! It’s a good time!
• April 3-5: I-Con, Long Island New York- we are featured guests and are going to record some of the guests in attendance! We have panels on Saturday and promise special prizes to anyone who comes and finds us!

Icebreaker:

There Are only 3 arguments More contested than kicking people out of your game

1) Who would win in a fight, a caveman or an astronaut?

2) Which is cooler, Ninjas or Pirates?

3) Who would win in down and dirty street hoops, Gandalf or Yoda?

Kicking People Out Part 1: Don’t Do it

Part 1: Defining terms and laying out the groundwork

• Don’t Kick people out of your games

Part 2: describing the phenomenon

• How often does this happen?

• Are they your friends? (The counter argument is “it is ok to treat people like shit” OR “kicking people out is not shitty”)

• What about using creative ways to kick people out? Changing the game night, not calling them? = passive aggressive = grow up

Part 3: When giving advice

• It drowns out useful conjecture. A person looking for advice is looking for actual help. They know they could kick the guy out. They do not need dozens of yes man sycophants, going on about kicking the guy out. They need, and want, actual help.

• Justification seeking behavior. Some people have made up their minds to be mean to their friend. And rather than down half a bottle of Jack to get their courage up, they are looking for reassurance that what they are doing is right. And it’s not. If you are going to be mean also be an adult about it.

• You will not actually see it. Statistically the likelihood of someone needing to be kicked out is extremely low. The problem here is margin of error and false positives. If you advise 1% of cases to kick out a players you are drastically over prescribing. 1% means that you will be misdiagnosing over 100 good games for the 1 real case.

• You Wont Need to. Because you will use problem solving

• Do Not Consider Failure. This is a big point we call “Assume success” If you assume you will succeed
  • You can work backwards to a solution
  • You will not be preparing for failure

Part 4: The Ethics of Kicking people out

• Kicking people out is bad. It is immoral of you to force out and shun your friends.

• Kicking people out is insanely passive aggressive – it is a lack of maturity on your part.

• don’t fix douchery with douchery

• You also miss out on picking on the sucker – schadenfreud

Part 5: what to do and who does it

There are three ways to look at responsibility

1. Everyone is Responsible
2. The GM is Responsible
3. The Venue Owner is Responsible

Trivia:

Last week’s answer is revealed!

This week’s question: Which one of the BG’s is a Geek because of Star Trek?

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Warning: This episode is tagged Explicit. It is intended for adult audiences.