Some of you ain’t gonna like this. Not at all. Fortunately, I don’t give a shit whether people like what I say.

A few months ago, I put the True Campaign Managery series on hold for… reasons. The problem that several of you very calmly and politely noted was that I had promised to deliver a series of lessons about conflict resolution. In fact, I promised to teach y’all conflict resolution an average of about seventeen times per lesson in that course. Well, consider your whiny-ass selves heard and validated, okay? I’m doing it. Starting today and ending whenever I drop part three.

Because it’s three parts.

But, like I said, some of you ain’t going to like this. In fact, I can name a few readers who are going to absolutely frigging hate this, and they’re probably going to get really bitchy about it in the comment section. Fortunately, no one’s ever going to know it because they’re stuck in permanent hold for moderation mode because of what happened the last time they got their dumbass panties in a jimmy.

You see, I made this comment a long time ago that sometimes owning games and resolving conflicts means taking responsibility for shit that isn’t your fault and apologizing when you’re never going to get an apology back. I said True Campaign Managery meant taking shit with grace and putting conflict resolution above one’s own personal, petty butthurtness. Some call it leadership, some call it being the bigger person, and I call it being a functional fucking adult instead of a pissbaby toddler who didn’t pick up basic human social interaction in kindergarten and who isn’t fit to host anything more social than a tea party with their action figures.

And your action figures probably hate you too.

Anyway, fully cognizant of the fact that some of you just aren’t cut out for this shit and that’s a you problem, I present…

The Campaign Manager’s Guide to Conflict Resolution

Welcome to The Campaign Manager’s Guide to Conflict Resolution. In this series, I — a dude who calls himself The Angry Game Master and who constantly insults his readers and gets pissed off anytime anyone disagrees with him even a little — intend to teach you how to calmly and rationally de-escalate, de-fuse, and de-… resolve conflicts at your game table.

I’m gonna do this in three parts. Part the first — this part — is going to be all about how conflict resolution actually works, and it’ll introduce a basic approach you can use when you have to confront a player about their disruptive or disturbing behavior.

Part the second is the one where I tell you how to referee when your dumbass players start sniping and griping at each other and you have to get them playing nice together.

Part the third is about reaching agreements and consensuses and compromisements, regardless of who’s involved. Whether you’re struck trying to negotiate a settlement with a disruptive player or trying to get the whole group to agree on policies, procedures, and pizza toppings, it’ll have you covered.

Anyway, that’s the outline outlined, so let’s get to it.

Because I Said So: Arbitrating Player Behavior

Like I said just three paragraphs ago, this part of The Campaign Manager’s Guide to Conflict Resolution is about the idea of conflict resolution and it’s also about how to handle it when you, as a Campaign Manager, have to confront a player because they’re engaging in disruptive or disturbing behavior.

Now, the first reason most Game Masters suck at this kind of conflict resolution is that they’re assholes. Sometimes they’re witting assholes, sometimes they’re willfully unwitting assholes, but the fact remains that they’re assholes. That ain’t a problem I can fix, though. So we’re just going to ignore them and consider the second reason why many Game Masters suck at this kind of conflict resolution.

The second reason most Game Masters suck at this kind of conflict resolution is that they don’t really get conflict resolution. They go in with the wrong goals and the wrong expectations and often try to do the impossible. Believe it or not, that ain’t the recipe for success you might think it is.

So before I give you an actual, practical guide to arbitrating player behavior, I want to unpack this whole conflict resolution thing.

The Point of Conflict Resolution is to Resolve Conflicts

I said above that I’m addressing the kind of conflict resolution that campaign managers like you use whenever you’ve got to confront a player that is engaging in disruptive or disturbing behavior. What does that mean?

First, notice my use of the word behavior. Behavior is actions. It’s doing shit. Or not doing shit. I will make it very clear below that none of this is about the player’s motivations, intentions, thoughts, or opinions.

Second, notice that I’m describing two different, specific kinds of behavior. Disruptive behavior is behavior that impedes the game in some way. It’s behavior that somehow gets in the way of the group’s shared goal to enjoy a tabletop roleplaying gameplay experience. Disturbing behavior is behavior that adversely affects others’ enjoyment of or emotional comfort in the game.

You can always tell when I’m getting real because I stop swearing and speak like some stick-up-his-ass professor of psychology in a tweed jacket.

Anyway…

The point is, this first lesson is all about dealing with players whose behavior is leading to a disrupted game or disturbed players or Game Masters. Or both. It can be both.

If a player frequently arrives late and delays the start of the game — or creates an interruption when they finally arrive — that’s disruptive behavior. That behavior is preventing the game from happening at game time. If a player constantly talks over other players or makes suggestions about what actions they should take, and it’s upsetting the other players, that’s disturbing behavior. A player who constantly cracks jokes even when you’re trying to build tension and takes everyone out of the game is both disruptive and disturbing.

Maybe.

See, the lines between disturbance and disruption aren’t always as clear as they seem, and disruption also often leads to disturbance. As a Game Master, the chronically late player and the jokester both piss me off. Anything that disrupts my game pisses me off, but there are other reasons that shit pisses me off, too. I’ll get to that idea below.

The point is that you’ve got some behavior — an action — that’s getting in the way of the game itself — disrupting the game — or is resulting in emotional friction — disturbing you or other players. In other words, there’s a conflict between what one player is doing and what you or another player or all the players want. And you’ve got to resolve that shit.

Because the problem is the conflict and the goal is resolution.

Conflict Resolution Isn’t Behavior Correction

Conflict resolution isn’t about correcting behaviors. Lots of Game Masters screw this crap up precisely because they go in with the idea of correcting the behavior.

If that player who’s always talking over other players agrees to stop, then the conflict is resolved. If the player is no longer at the table, the conflict is also resolved. But, if somehow, everyone stopped being upset about being talked over, the conflict would also be resolved, wouldn’t it?

Too much of a stretch for you? Try this one.

If the chronically late player stops showing up late, the conflict is resolved. If a compromise mitigates the disruption caused by the lateness, the conflict is also resolved. If the group agrees to just start later to accommodate the chronically late player, that also resolves the conflict, doesn’t it?

If the jokester stops joking, the conflict is over. If the jokester agrees not to get all butthurt and rein it in when you tell them to cut the crap during particularly tense scenes, that also ends the conflict. So does just not caring. If you, the Game Master, realize that the jokester isn’t alone in wanting a less serious game and you run lighter, more casual fare, the conflict is also resolved.

Lots of Game Masters just don’t get this shit. The problem is not the behavior, but rather the problem is the conflict between the behavior and either the group’s shared goals or their individual ideas about what makes for a good time. Yours included. Anything that ends the conflict fixes the problem. Anything.

If you go in — as a Game Master — with the idea that you’ve got to correct bad behavior, you’re not only limiting the solutions you can consider, but you’re also starting the discussion off on an adversarial footing. You’re creating a prosecutor versus the accused dynamic — where you are not only the prosecutor, but also the judge, jury, and executioner — and that’s going to put your player on the defensive. And you ain’t going to help anything when you start demanding the irrational or impossible.

Behavior Correction Ruins Everything

Let me show you just how the wrong attitude can ruin everything. We all agree that the chronically late player is disrupting the game, right? Even if we ignore the fact that punctuality is just basic respect and that, since the player made a promise to the group, they’re actually breaking their word by not showing up on time, it’s still just fucking up the game to lose fifteen minutes out of every other game session to wait for that dumbass to show up.

But let’s look at this a different way. Imagine the player… no, let’s make this personal. Let’s make it you. Imagine your work schedule changed. Imagine you have no say in the matter. Imagine management is cracking down and people are getting fired so you can’t speak up. Imagine you had to give up a bunch of personal activities but you held firm on game night. You told your boss, “Fine, I’ll do the extra hours and all that crap, but Thursday nights, I can’t do late hours. Any other time, any other day, but not Thursday nights.” Because you love gaming. But the schedule’s tight. You can mostly make it mostly on time by coming straight from work after a ten-hour shift and skipping dinner, but you get held up every couple of weeks and you just can’t help arriving a few minutes late every so often. Seriously, imagine that shit. You’re worried about losing your job, your life is falling apart, and the only thing you’ve got is that game on Thursday nights. Can you imagine it?

Now, imagine your asshole Game Master saying, “We agreed to start at 6:00 PM, and you keep showing up late. It’s ruining the game. Either you show up on time or you quit.”

And before you whine at me about communication failures, can you honestly tell me that when shit’s falling apart, you’ve never failed to communicate? You’ve never been embarrassed about your problems? You’ve never felt like you couldn’t talk to your Game Master? You’ve never been invited to a game run by a friend of a friend? You’ve never had a Game Master who was kind of hard ass and made a super big deal about scheduling and punctuality? This shit happens.

Now, consider the jokester. Imagine that’s you. Imagine that joking around is a kind of defense mechanism. It’s a soothing habit you’ve always fallen back on. You’re not introspective and you’ve never been to therapy. You don’t know why you’re always joking around; it’s just who you are. You like to laugh. Now your Game Master says, “I’m trying to run a serious game and you keep making a joke out of it. Can you just, like, not? It’s really annoying.” So you try. You really, really try. But your mouth opens and jokes come out. It should be easy to just not make jokes, but you just can’t control it. You just can’t frigging stop and your friend is going to kick you out of the game and what the hell is even wrong with you?

Ever tried to change a deeply ingrained personal habit? It ain’t as easy as you think.

That’s why you, as a Game Master, don’t go in thinking that there’s good behavior and bad behavior and that it’s your job to fix bad behavior. There’s behavior that’s aligned with the game’s goals and behavior that’s in conflict, and it’s your job to smooth out the conflict.

And that’s your only job.

Conflict Over Equals Problem Solved

This is gonna be really tough for some of y’all to swallow, but you’ve got to frigging swallow it if you want to resolve conflict like a True Campaign Manager. Your job ends when the conflict ends.

What does that mean? It means that it ain’t your job to persuade. You aren’t after agreement or understanding. You want an end to the conflict and that’s all you want. If the jokester stops joking — or you reach an agreement where he agrees to stop when you remind him to stop — that’s mission accomplished. If he goes right on thinking you take your game too frigging seriously and you need to lighten up, that’s his God-given right. He can think whatever the hell he wants. If a player acts like they respect you, it doesn’t matter that they think, privately, that you suck.

Worse yet, if you have to show a player the door — if the only way forward is with an empty seat at the table — it doesn’t matter whether they walk away agreeing it was for the best or they walk away hating you for kicking them out. It doesn’t matter that you’re the villain in their personal narrative forever after. All that matters is that the conflict is over.

This is one of those shitty but true facts about the world. You cannot control what people think. You cannot change the minds of people who don’t want their minds changed. You cannot make someone see things your way.

Now, that sucks when it comes to losing a friend over this pretending to elf bullshit. That risk is the price of admission, and it’s going to change your calculus whenever you’ve got to resolve a conflict with a personal friend. That’s normal and it’s human and it’s okay. But it’s also something you can’t do anything about.

I’m not saying this shit doesn’t matter. Of course it does. It’s better to keep a friend than lose one. It’s better to reach a point of understanding and mutual agreement whenever that’s possible. That’s always the best ending. The one to shoot for. But your locus of control may be limited to just ending the conflict itself. So, by all means, try to persuade and aim for understanding and look for mutual solutions, but always remember that they’re not always options and you don’t get a say in that. In the end, the only thing you must do is get your game past the conflict.

And if you think that’s a bitter pill to swallow, let’s talk about how it’s your fault your players’ behaviors piss you off. Really.

Facts Versus Feelings

External events — whether others’ behaviors or random acts of fate, God, or a mercilessly dispassionate universe — external events do not cause feelings. Late players don’t make you mad. Your feelings arise from the beliefs you have about external events.

You’re not mad because your player is late. You’re mad because the player is late and because you believe punctuality is a sign of respect. Or you’re mad because the player is late and people have a duty to follow through on promises they make to others. Or you’re mad because the player is late and the quality of your game depends on how much gets done at every session. Want proof? You’ve already got it.

Imagine you confronted your chronically late player and he told you that spiel I outlined above. He broke down and admitted he’s afraid about his job and he’s got nothing in his life except your game and he’s really trying, but he just can’t keep up with everything and he didn’t want to hurt your feelings but he knows how seriously you take the game and schedule and how hard you work and he didn’t know how to talk to you.

Still mad?

Are you mad if he says, “Yeah, I’m sorry, the chemotherapy for the cancer you didn’t know I had is really taking a lot out of me.”

Disruption is disruption. More or less. It’s a factual thing. Late is late and lost game time is lost game time. The difference between justified lateness and unjustified lateness is all about what you think of the players’ motives. It’s entirely in your head. And that’s the trouble with resolving disturbances. Disturbances arise as a collision between a player’s behavior and your belief about that behavior.

I get asked a lot about inattentive players. Most Game Masters have a visceral reaction to the very idea of a player being inattentive. One question I get a lot is “What do you do when you discover an online player has been dividing their attention between the game and something else?” What’s interesting about that question is that it implies the distraction isn’t really a serious disruption. If it was disruptive — if I found myself waiting for the player to respond or having to catch them up all the time — I’d have confronted it long ago. But if I learn, suddenly, the player is playing Mineblox or whatever while I’m running my game, now everything’s different in my brain, right? Even though there is still no noticeable disruption — because I didn’t notice a disruption — now, I’m hurt. Or angry. Or frustrated. That shit ain’t coming from the behavior, it’s coming from what I think the behavior means.

Am I saying those feelings ain’t valid? Of course not. Just because feelings aren’t facts and feelings aren’t objective truth doesn’t mean feelings aren’t valid. It doesn’t mean they’re not real. But people and events don’t make you feel things, you make you feel things with the stories you tell yourself about those events, and feelings alone do not justify your actions. You can’t blame others for your feelings and you can’t blame your actions on your feelings.

Campaign Managers have to be dispassionate. They’ve got to acknowledge where disruption ends and disturbance begins. They’ve got to understand that disturbance comes from interpretation and perspective, not from behaviors. When a dude’s showing up late for my game, that’s a disruption. When I get angry because he obviously doesn’t respect me, that’s a disturbance and it’s highly suspect. The anger ain’t about the behavior, it’s about what I think the behavior represents, and that’s based on beliefs, perspectives, and assumptions.

Moreover, it’s worth remembering that even actual, factual disruptions are technically disturbances. After all, why is a disruption actually a problem? Isn’t this just a hobby you do for fun? Who gives a shit if you miss fifteen minutes of game time really? Why is that upsetting?

The Peacemaker’s Burden

So that’s conflict resolution. For reals. That’s what it’s really about. If you can’t accept that shit as fact — because I ain’t pulling this stuff out of my ass; professional mediators and therapists would charge you for what I’m giving away here — if you can’t accept that shit as fact, just stop reading. You ain’t cut out to manage campaigns and your players secretly hate you. So do your toys. They told me so.

But don’t expect a trophy if you can accept all I said above. I haven’t gotten to the worst, hardest, suckiest part yet. The curse of the peacemaker.

Blessed are the peacemakers; they have to take shit from every side.

See, once you accept what I’ve said above and learn the techniques below — and in the next two lessons — you’re going to realize pretty quickly that you’re the only asshole in the world that actually gets this shit. You’ll be listening and reflecting and validating and de-escalating like a motherfucking boss and everyone’s going to love you for it and not one single, solitary soul is going to extend you the same courtesy. Not one. Your players are going to go right on sucking at basic conflict resolution and you have to let them.

Remember, your job is to resolve conflicts, it ain’t to coach your players in conflict resolution or active listening or cognitive behavioral therapy. If you want to feel heard and validated, get a therapist. Or a friend. Or a partner. But be aware most of them suck at this shit, too. Everyone does until they learn and most keep sucking after they learn.

Congratulations, Superman, you now have the power to save all the idiots in Metropolis, but they’re just going to keep falling out of helicopters and crashing their cars into toxic waste dumps and sticking their heads in their microwaves to get rid of their lice. You’re not going to be able to un-realize that you’re surrounded by complete and utter fuckwits and not one of them knows how to give a single, solitary crap about you, even if they wanted to.

So, with that now understood, let’s talk about two basic techniques you’ll need to deal with your uncaring idiots.

How to Confront a Player

So, given all the above, how do you properly approach and interact with a player when you’ve got a conflict to resolve? How do you deal with the source of disruptive or disturbing behavior? Well, there’s actually just two techniques you need and neither of them actually have anything to do with solving problems. They’re more about getting the player to acknowledge a problem exists and to consent to having a solution imposed on them.

Notice how I didn’t say anything about the player taking responsibility or giving an apology or understanding or agreeing or anything like that?

What you have to understand is that players are human people and human people are defensive, selish, insecure little balls of pure emotional explosive. They’re like Bob-Ombs except you can’t stomp on them or have a dinosaur eat them. Thus, most of conflict resolution is actually about keeping the player from totally frigging blowing up before you get to the point where you agree that a conflict exists and that life would better if it didn’t.

And that comes down to do things. First, it’s about limiting yourself to discussing either objective facts or your own personal feelings and second, it’s about actually listening to whatever comes out of your idiot player’s noisehole before you try to fix anything.

Talk About Facts or Your Own Feelings

First, you have to follow a rule. This rule only applies to you. Everyone you talk to will break this rule and you have to suck it up, buttercup. The rule is that you are only allowed to talk about three things…

1. Specific, tangible, objective facts
2. Your own personal choices, which must be flagged as such
3. Your own personal feelings, which must be flagged as such and which are totally your own fault

For example, if you’re confronting a chronically late player, you can talk about their actual lateness. That’s a fact. But you do have to be specific. Don’t say, “You’re always coming late,” or even, “You’re showing up late more frequently lately.” Instead say, “You’ve been late to three out of the last four games.”

If the game started late because you were all sitting around waiting for the tardy party, say, “I held the start of the game waiting for you.” That was a personal choice you made of your own volition. You didn’t have to do that, it wasn’t a result of their lateness, it was a choice you made.

If, instead, you started without them and then had to stop the game when they arrived, that, too, was a choice you made. “When you arrived late last week, I paused the game and asked everyone to wait so I could catch you up.”

Remember, everything that happens at the table is yours. You own it. Even if you held a vote last week and the party agreed as a democratic unit to wait for Latecomer Louie, that was still your choice and yours alone.

Do you feel angry or hurt or frustrated or disrespected by Latecomer Louie’s behavior? You’re allowed to say so. As long as you own the feelings. Don’t say, “You’re disrespecting me,” or even, “You’re making me feel disrespected.” Say, “I feel disrespected.” Or hurt or angry or whatever.

Many of you will recognize the classic hallmarks of every therapeutic communication or conflict resolution course ever here. There’s a reason for that. The reason is that it’s most likely to work.

Remember that you actually don’t know what’s going on in your player’s head. You don’t know if they’re actually losing interest in your game or if a terminal illness diagnosis is making it hard to prioritize pretending to elf. Everyone is fighting battles you can’t see. If you don’t focus on the behavior and if you try to discuss the thoughts and feeling in skulls you don’t own, you risk touching off some entirely valid defensive anger.

Anger spirals are precisely what you don’t need. If you make someone mad, they’ll make you mad, then everyone’s in lizard-brain mode and people hurt each other and ruin games and destroy friendships.

Listen Actively, Reflect, and Validate

Everyone — every last human person on God’s green Earth — needs to feel seen, heard, and validated. Which sucks for you, by the way, because you ain’t gonna feel any of that shit. Sorry Superman, no one cares how hard you have it.

People do not listen if they don’t feel listened to. That’s a fact. You absolutely cannot get a player to acknowledge a conflict and consent to a resolution if they don’t feel heard. So, before you can resolve a conflict, you have to give a player their say and they have to believe you heard them. That’s what opens the lines of communication.

It also empowers you to propose solutions that have a chance of actually fucking working and it saves you a lot of anger and grief. I’ll get to that.

The problem is that human people suck at listening. Actual scientific research shows that literally every human being ever only listens to half the shit that’s said to them. Even you. They studied you. Personally. They’re watching you right now.

When someone’s yammering on, you listen for something that you can respond to. The moment you hear that something, your brain starts formulating your response and ignores everything else being said. I made that point back in True Game Mastery. When a player declares an action, this is what Game Masters hear…

We need to get into the courtyard so I think I’ll climb the wall blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

As soon as you hear ‘climb’ and ‘wall,’ you start thinking about Strength checks and Athletics and how masonry walls with plenty of handholds are moderate climbs with a Difficulty Class 15. Then, you wait for the dumbass to stop yammering so you can ask them to roll the dice. That gets awkward if the player went on to say, “… wait, actually, no, I don’t need to climb the wall. I can just cast passwall. I do that instead.”

The same is true with conflict resolution. You hear, “I’ve been getting stuck at work…” and you’re already thinking, “I get that you can’t do anything about work but you could at least respect me enough to send a text message if you’re going to be late,” and then you miss, “… and I wanted to message you but my boss is being a hard-ass about phones on the shop floor and everyone’s getting fired and I can’t lose this job. Look, I love this game. I really do. It’s the only thing I still look forward to every week because my life is going to shit. My boss is forcing everyone to stay late to meet quotas and I had to fight with him just to get him to leave my Thursday nights alone. I didn’t tell him it was for gaming, of course, but I had to give up a weekend day every week to keep game night open. I’m really sorry I’m ruining the game and I don’t want you to feel like I don’t respect you because you’re seriously the best Game Master I’ve ever played under.”

If you miss all that and say, “You could at least message me if you respect me at all and maybe you should take a break from the game until work settles down,” you have just told the dude, “I am not listening to you at all.” Considering he’s pouring his heart out and paid you a high compliment, that’s pretty shitty.

Even though listening is about opening the lines of communication, it’s also about, you know, actually listening. Hearing what people say so that, at the very least, you have all the relevant information you need to come up with a best solution for the situation. In this case, kicking the guy out is a dick move. Just start your game fifteen minutes later. Or give him a half hour. Moreover, you might want to ask yourself why he didn’t feel like he could tell you what was going on in the first place. Why didn’t he trust you enough to say, “My work situation has gotten complicated and I don’t know if I can make it consistently on time?”

The fix is called reflective listening. It’s a form of active listening which a set of simple techniques designed to force you to actually listen to people, actually understand what they’re saying, and prove to people you are actually listening and understanding. This one’s really simple to do.

Before you are allowed to respond to anything anyone says, you must first summarize everything you think they said and invite them to correct anything you misunderstood. It sounds clumsy as hell, but it’s actually very easy to do naturally.

You get bonus points if you can validate their feelings in the process.

So, after my dude’s speech above, I might say…

It sounds like there’s a lot going on. Let me make sure I got all that. They’re cracking down at work and you feel like your job is risk. You have to put in extra hours and you had to give up your weekends, but in return, they agreed that you’re unavailable on Thursday nights so you can attend the game. But you’re still having trouble getting out of work on time on Thursdays. You can’t use your phone on the shop floor so you can’t send message when that happens. I’m really sorry. That sounds really shitty. But I’m really flattered that you were willing to fight to keep coming to the game and I’m glad I can give you something fun to look forward to. It sounds like you really need it right now. But, do I understand the situation correctly?

Now, this shit’s easy to do — and it’s easy to see how useful it is — when I invent a model player with a sympathetic sob story, but what if you’ve got an utter shitstain on your hands? Well, the rules apply even if the player says something like…

Seriously, dude? Get off my back about this lateness crap. We’re just sitting around pretending to be elves. Besides, we never start on time so who cares if I’m late. You know, you’re the only one taking this shit seriously. It’s like you think your Peter Effing Jackson directing Lord of the Hobbits.

That means, before you can say anything, you have to say…

So, you think I take the game too seriously and I’m being unfair giving you a hard time about attendance. You think we waste too much table time getting started and it doesn’t matter whether you’re late. Is that right?

Then, you let your soon-to-be-ex-player confirm you’ve got it right so you can say…

Well, I feel disrespected and insulted and I don’t want you at my table anymore. Grab your stuff and get out of my house.

Remember, listening doesn’t mean agreeing, understanding, or sympathizing. Even that shitstain has a right to his feelings. You have a right not to accept abuse and you have a right not to give your time and attention to anyone you don’t think is worthy of it. But that’s only after someone shows you who they are. When someone says, “I’m the biggest, hairiest, foulest-smelling asshole you ever did meet,” you should absolutely believe them and respond accordingly, but you also have to give people the chance to tell you who they are before you decide you know what’s in their in head.

That, also, is your job.

Which also sucks.

Ending on a Personal Note

I’ve cracked a bunch of jokes about how peacemaking sucks and how it’s like healing everyone but yourself. I’ve suggested you have to let every player spew venom at you and take it with the impassive calm of the fucking Buddha. You might even think I’m telling you that you have to let players insult you for minutes or hours if that’s what they want.

Well, let me cut through the hyperbolic, sarcastic crap here and tell it like it actually is. First, I want to put this all into a very simple framework for conflict resolution. Then, second, I want to set for you some actual, non-sarcastic, realistic expectations. Third and finally, I want to share a personal anecdote about my worst conflict resolution experience ever. I mean, let’s end on a high note, right?

First, the process…

When you have to resolve a conflict, always approach the player privately and away from the table. Present the conflict as clearly and as briefly as possible. Describe the players’ specific behaviors as specifically as possible and explain how they conflict with your personal feelings and choices.

During the scene in the crypt, you made a bunch of jokes that I feel broke the mood I was trying hard to maintain. This has happened a couple of times in my recent memory and I feel like it undermines my ability to build tension in the game. As a Game Master, I prize that ability very highly.

Now, let the player respond, reflect back their response without judgment, and ask them to confirm your reflection. Once both of you know you’ve understood them, propose a solution or invite the player to help you come up with a solution. Then, negotiate a final agreement. I’ll cover negotiation solutions in another lesson.

That’s all you’ll need to do with most conflicts most of the time. Sometimes, you might have to go back and forth a bit, listening, reflecting, and responding. Just keep following your rules. Refer only to objective facts or your own personal choices and feelings and reflect back anything said to you before you respond. Discuss the matter until you think you’re at a point where you can discuss a solution. There’s no formula here. This is just conversation. It’s just human communication. The difference is you now have two rules that make you really good at it even when your partner isn’t.

Unfortunately — and here comes my second thing — unfortunately, sometimes you’re going to do this right and it’ll fail anyway. Sometimes, no matter what you do, the player will dig in, get defensive, get offended, explode, refuse to acknowledge a conflict, or refuse to accept a solution. That’s people for you.

Nothing I’ve taught you today is guaranteed to work and it sure as hell isn’t guaranteed to make you happy. It’s the path to a resolution that’s most likely to work, but it doesn’t promise anything more than a resolution and it doesn’t promise a perfect success rate. If your goal is to keep the game going past the conflict, it’s got very good odds of getting you there, and that’s all you need as a Game Master. If you need more than that, look outside the game table.

Someday, you might end up mired in the conflict resolution from hell. There’s nothing you can do about that. It’s a thing that happens. It’s an occupational risk. All you can do, when it happens, is conduct yourself well enough that you can walk away saying, “I did everything I could; I did it right. I will live with the outcome because I have no choice.”

Remember that you absolutely always have the right to walk away from anything at anytime. You always have the right to say, “This is over. Leave my game. Leave my table. Leave my life.” Or, if it’s not your table, you have the right to say, “I am leaving the table and I am not coming back.” Tragically, that is the only actual right and the only actual power you have. That is where your locus of control begins and ends.

It’s up to you to decide when it’s time to exercise that power.

Which brings me, third and finally, to my personal conflict resolution from hell…

For reasons known only to the mad octopus that pulls the levers in my brain, I decided to run six simultaneous three-part one-shots for thirty of my most loyal, long-term supporters in the span of two months. That meant I was kind of running for friends, kind of running for strangers, kind of running for paying customers, and kind of all and none of that.

In Alan’s case — I have decided to call the person in this story Alan to protect their identity — in Alan’s case, it was more than that. Alan was more than a site supporter and community member. Alan and I had developed a strong personal friendship and had even partnered professionally on some projects.

What Alan actually did at the table isn’t important. I’m just going to say he played in a way that I felt was disruptive to the teamwork dynamic I try to encourage at my table. During play, Alan took a few actions that I considered disruptive to teamwork and, at one point, I invited him to rethink an action that would obviously detrimentally impact his teammates, but when he went ahead, I let him take the action and we played out the consequences.

After the game, I asked Alan to have a private voice chat session with me and then I launched into a textbook conflict resolution spiel. I laid out the conflict almost exactly the way I described it to you. “During the game, you did these three things. I don’t feel they’re conducive to the sort of teamwork dynamic I prefer to foster in my games.” I then let Alan respond.

Alan explained his view on roleplaying games and teamwork and the sorts of games he normally played. He also told me that he expected the other players to be willing to hold him back from making bad decisions like players in his other groups had. I listened attentively, reflected, confirmed, and validated. I told him his style of play was a perfectly valid approach, but not the style I preferred at my tables, especially with strangers. I said I didn’t personally feel it was fair or reasonable to expect strangers to intervene in another players’ behavior. Blah blah blah. The details aren’t important. The important thing is that I did everything I told you to do above.

We went around like that for longer than I care to admit. Like I said, we had a personal and professional relationship that had grown beyond mere blog supporter and so I was willing to spend time salvaging the relationship. But Alan kept re-explaining his preferred style and why it was the right way to play. I never once invalidated it. I never called it bad or wrong or stupid — no matter what I was thinking — but instead just said, “I understand your preference, but at my table and for my players, I prefer my preferences.”

Alan got agitated as I refused to relent. I was patient and calm, but I was also assertive. My table, my rules. I have to run the game I think is best for my community. I’m not saying your playstyle is wrong, but I’m not willing to adopt it at my table. Eventually, after nearly an hour, I hit my limit.

“Alan,” I said — except not really because that’s not their name — “Alan, I don’t think we’re going to agree on our playstyle preference. We’ve been talking for almost an hour. The fact is, you’re playing at my table and I have to run the game the way I think is best for my players. That means that you can either conform to my playstyle or you can withdraw from the game. Those are the only options.”

Alan then made a terrible mistake. Alan told me he had a right to state his opinion and that I had to listen to him until we could reach a point of agreement. I told Alan he was mistaken, ended the chat, and we never spoke again.

Welcome to Metropolis, Kal-El. Population: Suck.