As a person who spent a lot of time feeling rejected and unsure of why people were happy to be my acquaintance but not my friend, never getting any explanation why I wasn’t good enough (the answer was undiagnosed autism and the trouble with social skills that comes with that), ghosting with no explanation hurts me in my soul.
I get why people do it though. How do you know if it’s a person who was clueless to what their bad behavior and is desperate to have literally anyone tell them what they do wrong so they can change, or someone who will flip out and get violent or stalkery or super spiteful towards group members once ejected from the group? How do you know it will not spiral into some giant drama, especially if you were wrong or others disagree about if their behavior was objectionable? Conflict avoidance, whether for justified reasons or not, is very very common.
I think ghosting is a bit much. I know it sucks to bring the player aside and have the talk if something isn’t going quite right, but I’d usually much prefer to allow them to try and course correct a bit.
One of the first times I ever joined a DnD campaign I got ghosted and it sucked. I wouldn’t want to inflict that feeling on other players if I could help it.
It is also something I also want to avoid as much as possible. I’d rather have the uncomfortable conversation with someone than ghost them and I have actually walked that walk before, having uncomfortable conversations I wanted to avoid in order to not ghost someone else. Just wanted to show empathy for people who do it and maybe provide an explanation to the rest of us wondering why others hurt us that way.
Nope, you just don’t realize that people come in all sorts of personality types, and many will just throw you away, once they have no use for you. So, it’s a picking better groups to be with problem.
Or don’t even tell the other guy. Just make a new group chat and invite the new player into the existing campaign.
If they behave badly enough to kick them from the table, ghosting them in general doesn’t seem unreasonable tbh.
As a person who spent a lot of time feeling rejected and unsure of why people were happy to be my acquaintance but not my friend, never getting any explanation why I wasn’t good enough (the answer was undiagnosed autism and the trouble with social skills that comes with that), ghosting with no explanation hurts me in my soul.
I get why people do it though. How do you know if it’s a person who was clueless to what their bad behavior and is desperate to have literally anyone tell them what they do wrong so they can change, or someone who will flip out and get violent or stalkery or super spiteful towards group members once ejected from the group? How do you know it will not spiral into some giant drama, especially if you were wrong or others disagree about if their behavior was objectionable? Conflict avoidance, whether for justified reasons or not, is very very common.
I think ghosting is a bit much. I know it sucks to bring the player aside and have the talk if something isn’t going quite right, but I’d usually much prefer to allow them to try and course correct a bit.
One of the first times I ever joined a DnD campaign I got ghosted and it sucked. I wouldn’t want to inflict that feeling on other players if I could help it.
It is also something I also want to avoid as much as possible. I’d rather have the uncomfortable conversation with someone than ghost them and I have actually walked that walk before, having uncomfortable conversations I wanted to avoid in order to not ghost someone else. Just wanted to show empathy for people who do it and maybe provide an explanation to the rest of us wondering why others hurt us that way.
Nope, you just don’t realize that people come in all sorts of personality types, and many will just throw you away, once they have no use for you. So, it’s a picking better groups to be with problem.