by Michael Strauss

Created on: April 04, 2011   Last Updated: April 07, 2011

“Karl, that is third time you’ve spilled your drink on my books this month!”  If that exclamation sounds similar to one that you’ve made while running a tabletop role playing game, you probably have a disruptive player on your hands.

Disruptive players come in many different forms, but they all have the same effect: they interrupt the flow of a game.  The result of these interruptions is that you have less time to play the game and that other players often become annoyed.  In the long run this can lead to players leaving the game or even to your campaign ending prematurely.

The simplest solution to a disruptive player is to remove the player from your game, but this solution is often untenable for many role playing games.  First, most of the people you play games with are probably friends.  Removing a friend from your game can create friction in your friendship and possibly in your whole social circle.  In addition, the community of people who play role playing games is quite small and many role playing games require a minimum number of players to remain viable.  Removing a player could easily cause the premature end of a campaign simply based on numbers.

When dealing with a disruptive player, you need to first identify how the player is disruptive.  Not all disruptive players are created equally.  In fact, there are almost as many types of disruptive players as there are types of quality players.  How you deal with a disruptive player will be different depending on the type of disruptions that player is causing.  The following are common archetypes for disruptive players and how best to deal with them.

Star of the Show – Some players absolutely have to be the center of attention.  They constantly comment on what everyone else is doing and try to interject their character into every situation.  When some portion of the game entirely ignores their character, they will often whine or complain about when they get to act.  As awful as it seems to reward this behavior, bribery is a good way to end the disruptions.  Privately tell the player that if they restrain themselves you will include some future plot that features them.  Of course, nothing is stopping you from also creating future plots that feature the other characters, so really the bribe is just giving foreknowledge of something you probably would have done anyway.

Messy – Some players simply

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