I ran a session 1 for a brand new campaign in a homebrew world earlier tonight, digitally, and as with all first sessions of a game as the DM I obviously need to set up the sort of opening scene for the game as a whole. I had previously discussed this with all the players, and that the campaign would be starting with all the characters in a certain place and set up all their back stories and the like and no one had a problem. I likened this opening scene to that of any RPG video game; yes, the players may not get much say but it's needed to set the stage for exploring the world. I used Skyrim as a comparison, where you have to go through the bit with Alduin and going through the underground and all that before you can just take off into the vast world they've set before you.

Anyway, as I'm telling the players "Your characters are here and there's a huge event going on, so you can decide if your character is here because of this event or for another reason." this one person decides to say kind of under their breath "Well my character doesn't want to be here but I guess she has to be." which is a comment I chose to ignore. We cut to some other parts of the plot going forward, but at every turn this player is taking the opportunity to say that their character had walked away/does not want to be present/basically does not want to do the plot thing. We go to a battle map I had prepared (bunch of level 0 monsters, just to get some action going and see how well the group's combat abilities were both as individual characters and as a team) and as I had pre-prepared the map their token was already on it. They had stated at that point their character had walked away, so I was going to delete their token from the map but they rolled initiative like everyone else so I just assumed they were finally over themselves and would do the plot thing I had laid out. I was very wrong, as once again every turn of combat they were basically "Well my character doesn't want to be here but because the DM says so she has to be."

Combat ends, and the party goes to check on a NPC who had been calling for help which was the reason they'd gone that way and gotten into the combat to begin with. Everything is fine, and once again this person said that their character just walked away. By this point I'm over it, so I just let it happen and figure we're ~30 minutes from done with the session so they can deal with it and afterwards I'll privately ask them to drop down to avoid making a scene about it because I really don't want someone like that at my virtual table. So instead of focusing on whatever their character is doing after walking away I go back to the other 4 people in the party who followed the plot and were checking in on the NPC and such.

I get about halfway through them talking to the NPC and all, and then the problem player just goes "You know what? I'm not having fun, I'm out. And tip to the DM - games go a lot more smoothly if you let players do what they want instead of railroading them into a plot." and they promptly left the virtual game and discord server we were using for communication and getting into voice chat to play the game. One of the other players is an irl friend of this person and uttered a very soft "Sorry" before leaving too, and I proceeded to talk to the friend through discord private messages only to find out that apparently this person is full of attitude and has either left or been kicked out of over 20 games in the past 4 months through this site. 'Railroading' is their biggest pet peeve, aka they don't like being told what to do or following orders/directions, and apparently always cause a scene about it before leaving if the DM doesn't kick them first for behaving in such a manner.

Now this player left, and I promptly dropped the banhammer and blocked them on the site and on discord but I didn't see any need to do so with the friend because he was pretty cool and had been behaving himself during the game. In the aftermath of the session ending with the remaining 3 players actually getting through the plot for the session I asked the friend if he intended to stay on, and he said that if he did he'd just have some drama with the problem player so he was leaving too.

The problem at this point has become that like, the other 3 people are a bit uncomfortable because of the outburst and that person leaving. I don't think it's game-ending, I've had some drama happen before and players move on from it just fine, but of course being the anxiety-ridden cucumber I am when the session was over I asked the remaining 3 if that was okay, if they wanted me to change anything, the whole 9 yards because I was worried they all felt the same and were just being polite and not saying anything. Thankfully they were all like "no it's fine, it's a session 1 so we expect that there is going to be some amount of having to do a thing to get to the fun parts" and reassuring me, but of course anxiety is not at all rational so I'm still like freaking out over it even hours later and I probably will for several weeks not just in this game, but now in the other 3 I run every week as well for some time to come :/

Yikes--I can completely empathize with that situation, as both a player and DM. :/ Like, the fact of the matter is that all games require some degree of railroading and player buy-in; there's nothing wrong with it, and it makes for a much more enjoyable game. The DM just uses smoke and mirrors to make it seem like events aren't totally planned out. I'd even argue that the only campaigns that have no railroading at all are ones that are 100% random and determined by dice rolls, which makes for ridiculous plots and BS encounters, but I digress lol. (I've got a lot of Opinions on how RPGs are designed and played, clearly.)

I'd look at it this way: The player who was going to really mess up your and the party's enjoyment dipped out early, which is a long-term gain for you and the party. That player was given sufficient warning that the world would open up to them later. They just seemed too impatient and immature to play along, when really, they should've just said that the campaign didn't mesh with their preferred playstyle and politely declined.

If anything, you could potentially open up the game to a few more folks so there are more players. I think that the players you were left with are totally chill and didn't blame you for what happened--you clarified the style of the first session to begin with, and they expected a little bit of railroading to get the game going. All the drama was instigated by the person who ended up leaving at the end, anyway, so just remember that. I know how anxiety works, though, but it might help to keep those details in mind to make the anxiety a little more manageable. I'm sorry the first session was so dramatic, and I hope it gets better in future sessions!

Thank you. It is like you've said; in a year of doing this both as a player and a DM, I have yet to run across a game where the first session played does not require some amount of railroading to ensure characters are where they need to be to do the thing. I attempt to avoid this as much as possible with statements like "You can decide why your character is here" and giving the players choice in why their characters have shown up to the appointed spot where the plot is going to begin to take place. But in the end some is required, and it's not a bad thing as long as the DM is not being overly forceful with it.

I do agree that it's better to have this person out of the way now, and as long as the game has fewer than 5-6 people it's always open to applications for new people so long as they don't mind jumping into a campaign mid way. Problem players rarely last more than 1-2 sessions anyway, but every time I encounter them it's difficult once they're gone because of the drama they cause.

Thankfully my Wednesday night group is an absolute delight and DMing for them is always a fun experience, so after having done that last night and looking forward to another brand new game starting up tonight has mostly made me feel better. I just really hate it when players decide to be drama llamas and cause problems for everyone else, because it will be remembered down the line. But at least that person is someone I won't have to deal with again because of the lovely block and ban features, I just feel bad for any DM that doesn't know who has to deal with them in the future and doesn't know what they're in for ):

Duuuude we have a player who stole an item off of another member of our party just "for something to do" BEFORE our DM could finish describing the city we made it to. The item they stole was one we needed to bargain our group from being taken as slaves and we are all traveling together.

So our DM decided to have that person's character killed off to force them to spend time making a new one. Which if they act up again our DM will off again.

As DM your rules go, more so on homebrew from what I've learned. So kill or boot them and let the other players loot.

Players like that honestly annoy me so much. It's in my code of conduct that I make sure every player reads that their characters must behave themselves or else I will ask them to step down. It actually came into play after a previous campaign's rogue learned of some information that was important to the group for plot reasons and decided to tell them by leaving a note in a language no one else in the group knew and leaving it in the mutual sort of home space they were sharing for a moment and seemed generally disinterested in hanging around the group. After talking to them about it and making it plain they needed to change their ways or be in trouble they did not during the next session so afterwards I booted them.

I'm usually quick to boot problem players, but I do try to save it for after a session is over so as not to cause drama during the session and take up session time dealing with their actions. Thankfully we had a session last week that went well, and we would have had one last night but a bunch of people had life just get in the way so it got canceled so it seems like the remaining players are over it and the new people don't give a crap so it's all good :)