Worst Inattentive Players

I wanna hear about the worst inattentive players people have had in their games, what did they do? what ended up happening to them?

I had a player in our campaign who would just have their character autopilot whatever the party does and only chime in when loot was mentioned, low and behold I find out after the campaign ended that they had just been playing games on their laptop the whole time, they tried to argue they had ADHD but were kicked from the core group before the next campaign began.

Especially annoys me when they don’t actively engage or care about the game while you’ve got other people lined up who would love to play the game.

My group is drinking and gets high and still pays from attention than that guy

I have a player who scrolls on twitter the whole time. We haven't dealt with him yet

I DM for 6 people of which 2 are very active, 2 are getting better at it and tries to RP, 1 is saying he feels unconfortable in every RP situation where he needs to talk (but he is getting better at it) and 1 who is blank as a paper but does not play video games while we play.

The worst is those last two who prefer playing like "my characters aants to do this and says this" while all the others address their characters the rp way and speak directly to their characters.

we had one player who was straight up playing a roguelike during combat. the group kind of dissolved but it would have anyway if the DM kicked anyone lol

A few of my players smoke weed when we play. They aren't by any means high functioning and spend a lot of time on their phones when it's "not their turn" even outside combat, and for a long time I would make efforts to get them to pay attention and keep them involved.
Now, I'll repeat myself once, and then we move on. There has been a few instances where they've missed out on big pay days, or popular npc deaths, and they try get pissy at me for not making more of an effort to keep them involved. Fortunately the other players are quick to back me up and tell the others they can either focus up or shut up when they miss things.

End of combat, we hear many enemies outside, we escape out a window in the back one by one.

Last player tabs back in, asks what's going on, told were running away, walks out the front door...

I don't know why these people insist they want to play.

I had a player looking up porn on his laptop while we were playing D&D. I had no idea at first, but he kept checking out early and not paying attention at points that were just odd to check out at. When the player's personal arc came up and everyone else was having a blast stopping an auction house robbery in full formal atire, the guy told me "this is boring, I'm quitting early" and left the game. Turned out he would just claim "boring" and bounce to go crank one out cause he'd gotten too worked up with his side distractions during D&D...

Whee. I quit DMing for years after that, it was so upsetting.

My players are so riddled with ADHD that I need a lot of effort (and humour) to keep them focused.

Friend of mine was so offended when I said she has very likely ADHD but a few months later she got diagnosed.

I am the forever DM of my circle of games and there is a stand out example:

A friend of some 20 years, we have been playing this game for a year and suddenly he must watch football.
Genuinely pull his hood up and put a football match on his phone from start to end and occasionally would get up from the table to sit elsewhere to watch it.

Unsure why I accepted it for so long but recently banned phones from my tables and its been a great change!

Player : "Can I go to the warchief's tent and ask him if he has any war hammer to spare ?"

Me : "What ?.... You guys left his camp and traveled for 2 day...I made two of you roll for encounters... Bob and Rob had a heartfelt RP moment about their shared trauma..."

Player : "Oh shit, right, sorry, how long 'til we get to the capital ?"

Me : "What capital, there's no capital, you're in an otherworldly world sized city of nightmare, you switched dimension..."

I called a break after that, the other player filled the blank. It was in person, he was not on his phone, he just black out for more than 30 minutes. No medical issue, physical or psy, he's just the aloofiest guy ever.

The worst is those last two who prefer playing like "my character wants to do this and says this" while all the others address their characters the rp way

I really only game in person these days, and run for a group of early teens, 11-14. Nearly every one of them has an acronym; ADD, ASD, ADHD. One time I repeated an event; just a sentence, 4 times while one of them laser-focused on telling another player some trivial shit.

Same guy had the audacity to ask if he could bring a seventh player to table and I told him I have a hard enough time managing you six idiots as it is.

How did you...find out he was beating his meat? Did he just admit to it?

I had a guy who would fall asleep whenever his character wasn't in a scene. If he wasn't falling asleep, he was just not showing up to the game at all.