I had planned to write about Santa Claus in my campaigns over the years today, but I have to continue the saga of new player try-outs, first mentioned in this post last week. If you’ve read this post, you may remember that my campaign is losing a player which opens a slot for a new player. However, the first person with a chance at the shot threw a hissy fit over the fact that new players in my game have a try-out period so we can all be sure the potential new player is a good fit for our playstyle and personalities — and did so in spite of being told of this policy ages ago when he asked to be put on our “wait list” of people wanting a chance to play should a player spot open up. As the original post said, we ended up removing him from consideration and moving on the the next person on the wait list, who did not feel that try-out periods are inherently unfair. I thought this would be the end of it.

Sunday afternoon, I discovered I was wrong. As players arrived they all told me that they had received emails from this “try-outs are unfair” person both Saturday evening and Sunday morning — dissing the game and telling them to leave their horrible GM and come and play in the new game he would run for them Sunday afternoons. While this was a clear case of sour grapes, everyone was amused to see that as he could not handle more than five players in a session, if more than five players wanted to play, he would interview players and select based on how interesting their character was and how well they knew the rules. This sure sounded like a type of “try-out” to all of us. About an hour into the game, this guy called and accused me of “mind-controlling” the players in my game because they did not choose to leave my game and play in his. I just hung up and added his number to the block list on my phone.

This is the weirdest problem player experience I’ve had in many years.