How do I isolate a group of my friends from a group of theirs

Question

My friends and I play Dungeons and Dragons (don't judge). They all are friends with a few other people who also play D&D. I find their friends very obnoxious and they are not people who I would want to play a game with.

This comes from experiences I have had previously playing with them and I didn't find myself having any fun. I don't want to straight up tell my friends that I find their friends to be a pain, because I don't want to wreck my friendship with them.

I have tried to simply not invite them (the annoying people) to game nights, but after a few nights they end up invited anyway.

How do I separate my friends from theirs?

Answer 1

I've been in this situation myself.

Try something like this.

I would like to run a game with a small group. You five (or however many) and that's it. I don't think I can handle the distractions of any more people.

This skirts the issue, but does hint at the others being distracting without calling them rude, obnoxious, or otherwise disruptive. Tact is a hard thing to master, but this approach is slightly stronger than not inviting them, while not directly saying that you don't like them or causing any friction.

Answer 2

This probably won't be the answer that you want to hear, but as a lifelong gamer, I've found that in this kind of situation, nothing works as well as being direct. You've already tried the subtle approach - but they've been invited along anyways. So if the problem is simple personality conflicts, directly telling the group that you like playing with what the situation is is probably your best approach.

The thing is, though, if you're the only person who isn't jiving well with all of the other players, there may not be anything you can do. You may just need to either suck it up, or find a different group to play with.

If you're going to try to move forward and continue playing with the group, knowing that it includes the people that you're not keen on playing with, then I'd recommend addressing the problem interactions, not the people, and for that we'd probably need a different question with much different details.