Most advice on this starts by sorting people into types. The murder hobo, the rules lawyer, the one on their phone. It reads well and it is close to useless at the table, because you cannot run a conversation with a category. In our experience almost nothing that gets called a problem player is a problem person. It is a mismatch nobody named out loud, and it gets worse every week it goes unnamed.
Describe the behaviour, don't diagnose the person
"You're a murder hobo" is an argument. "Twice now you've attacked someone the rest of the party was still talking to, and it ends the scene for everyone else" is a fact, and facts are much harder to defend against. Before you say anything to anyone, write down what actually happened, twice, with dates. If you cannot fill in two specifics, you have an irritation rather than a problem, and irritations usually pass.
This also protects you from the mistake that costs DMs their tables: deciding privately that someone is a bad player, then treating them like one for three weeks without ever telling them.
Have it privately, between sessions, within a week
Not at the table. Not in the group chat. A direct message or a ten-minute call, in the days after it happened, while everyone can still remember it accurately. Handling it in front of the group turns a conversation into a judgement with an audience, and whatever the outcome, the other players now know that is how you do it.
Within a week matters as much as privately. A month of resentment turns a fixable habit into a character flaw in your head, and it will come out sideways in the game — quietly harder encounters, fewer spotlight moments, a plot hook that never lands.
Three sentences that do the work
What happened, what it costs the table, what you need instead. In that order, and then stop talking.
"Last two sessions the shop scenes have turned into combat before the others got a turn. It means the people who built talkers aren't getting to play them. I need you to hold off until the scene has gone round once — after that, do what you like."
The last clause is the one people skip and it is the one that works. A request with a limit is something a person can agree to. "Stop being disruptive" is not.
Then let them answer. Roughly half the time you find out something you did not know: they were bored because their character has had nothing to do for a month, which is your problem, not theirs.
Four things that get called the same problem and are not
- The player who won't engage. Usually not disinterest. It is a character with no reason to care about the plot, or a person who cannot find a gap in the conversation. Both are fixed by the DM, not by the player: give them a hook that is theirs alone, and ask them directly, by name, once a scene.
- The player who takes every scene. Rarely selfish, usually just faster. Say it privately and give them a job: "you're quickest to jump in, so I'm going to come to you last in social scenes — hold your ideas for the gap." Most enthusiastic players are relieved to be told where to put it.
- The rules lawyer. Nearly always trying to help. Give them the role formally: they look things up between turns and you keep the ruling. What breaks a table is not the correction, it is the ten-minute debate, and that ends the moment everyone knows who decides.
- The one whose fun costs everyone else's. Stealing from the party, attacking other characters, "it's what my character would do." This is the only one of the four that is actually a boundary problem, and it is the one to address fastest and most plainly. The character is a choice the player keeps making.
Removing someone, which you will do about once
It is rare and you should still know how. It happens when you have had the conversation, been clear about what you needed, and nothing changed — or when someone crossed a line the table agreed on in advance. Do it privately, do it in one message, do not litigate it, and do not do it in the group chat.
Tell the rest of the table something short and neutral afterwards. They already know. What they are actually watching for is whether you handled it, because every player at that table is quietly working out what would happen if it were them.
If money has changed hands, refund the sessions they have paid for and did not get. It is not a negotiation and it should not feel like one.
Most of this is prevented before the first roll
Nearly every one of these is a session zero that did not happen, or happened without the awkward half. If the table agreed in advance how lethal the game is, whether characters can turn on each other, what content is off the table and what happens when somebody misses a week, most of what looks like a problem player never forms. The agreement is what lets you say "we talked about this" instead of "I've decided."
The part nobody tells new DMs
You are allowed to find this hard. Running the game is a craft you can practise; telling an adult that their behaviour is a problem is a different skill entirely, and most people running a home game have never had to do it before. It gets easier, mostly by having done it once.
That is the part Crit Fails Academy is genuinely useful for. The video library covers the craft, but the weekly office hours are where members bring the specific thing that happened at their table last Tuesday and ask working DMs what they would have said. It is $25 a month, and free while you are running an active table through our community.
And if you would rather see how a table like this gets run before you run one, sit in on one of ours. Watching somebody handle a scene well teaches this faster than reading about it, this page included.
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