I started playing with a new face-to-face group recently.  I've only participated three sessions thus far, and I am kind on the fence on whether or not I will fit into the group.  So, I would like some feedback from fellow members.  There are four other players and the GM.  The game is the GM's interpretation of D&D using the 5e HERO System as the rules.  I came in on session #8 of the game.  The setting is a video game of which I am not familiar.  

I meet with the GM to talk and create a character.  It turns out to be HERO System, which is point-buy.  I played Champions and Hero briefly in the early 90's, and I played GURPS extensively so I'm familiar with the concepts of creating point-buy characters.  He tells me that one player has an elf magic-user type, another player is a martial artist with magical healing powers, another player is a fighter with red glowing eyes, healing powers, causing fires, and is a pyromaniac, and the last player is a pig farmer who has a magical pitchfork on which he can fly and that he can summon several magical pigs as pets.  

POSSIBLE RED FLAG: The GM told me that he offered to play vanilla 3.5 D&D (Core only) and that his player flat out refused and wanted something else where they can be special snowflakes (okay, the snowflake part was paraphrased by me).

I decide that I want to create a tough-as-nails survivalist, outdoorsman, and tracker dwarf.  I create my character and am confident that I built an adequate and effective character given the point total for the character.  I created a background tailored to the setting- he was a tracker in the military for twenty years and rose to the rank of Sergeant.  He fueled his hatred for fighting dark elves and make enemies of the dark elves before he was discharged from service.  He's been wandering for the last ten years.

FIRST GAME SESSION:
The group have been escorted a group of about 150 refugees from a goblin attack.  They are on a major road heading for a fort down the road.  I was hired by the Sergeant at the fort to scout the road as merchant traffic has dwindled.  Before I met the group, I noticed a group of about 20-30 goblins back at the ruins of a chapel.  

So, standard introductions ensue and I agree to help escort them back to the fort and a warn them about the goblins I spotted a ways back.  The elf and I decide to go scout it out and find the goblins.  There is no activity outside the ruins, and we sneak into chapel ruins.  We discover that under the pulpit there is an entrance to something under the ruins.  We report back and bring up the refugees to the ruins.  The group goes down under the ruins and we discover a large natural cave with strange glowing crystals that are humming.  Skill checks ensue like Arcana, Religion, Dungeoneering, etc., and no one has any idea about the strange crystals.  So, we ignore the novelty crystals and move forward into the cave.  

We come to the end of the cave and find 24 goblins lying down on the ground, looking like they were asleep.  Thinking that they were sleeping only, I inform the GM that I immediately starting attacking the goblins so we can get surprise before they wake up and rush us in mass.  

POSSIBLE RED FLAG: My dwarf's alignment is chaotic good.  The GM informs me to be to careful otherwise I might incur alignment change.  Hmm, okay.  I just ignore the comment.

It turns out that the goblins are not asleep, not dead, but nothing we do can wake them.  Healing checks and other skill checks ensue, and again, we have no idea what's going on.  A couple of spiders drop down on us and we kill them.  We leave the cave and return to the ruins to discover that several of the refugees have disappeared.  We do a head count, and more are missing.  We head count again, and even more are missing.  No one sees anything- they just are gone.  We decide to get out of the ruins, and once outside we do another head count to find even more refugees are missing.  They're dropping like flies now.  We decide to get the hell out of dodge altogether and leave the whole area, only to have more disappear on the road.  Again, no one sees a thing.  

At this point, we decided to tie people together with rope.  Please disappear from the rope with it perfectly knotted still.  The person next to a missing person doesn't see or hear a thing.  By this time, maybe half an hour in game time, we've lost like fifty people already.  I'm like WTF?  Finally, it turns out to be a ghost.  Undead are a new thing to this setting, and we're sufficiently scared crapless by the people snatching trick- especially since it's only one ghost.  We fight the ghost and it proceeds to kill off one character every round or two.  Mechanically, its speed is so high that no one could possible escape, so I had my dwarf happily kill himself swinging at the ghost.

Hmmm, okay a TPK for my first session.  I'm still cool, since these things happen.  It seemed to me that the GM is still wet behind the ears because there was really nothing else we could've done to change this outcome.  

It turns out that it's a Dallas moment- we awake in cots at the fort.  The refugee leader tells us that we never returned from the cave and he sent people down, and they didn't come back.  It turns out that the humming crystals put us to sleep like the goblins.  Apparently, the refugees rescued us and killed all the sleeping goblins (no mention of alignment change for the refugees by doing so).  They carried us to the fort.  Apparently, everything that happened since we entered the caves was a product of our dreams and fears.  

Okay, from being an experienced gamer, I knew meta-game-wise that something was up with the crystals, and the group tried to use all their characters' abilities to glean some information about the crystals, but apparently we all failed at that and the dream/fear encounter ensued.  I'm still undecided if this should be a red flag or not, so I chalk it up to new game, new GM, new players, and new dynamic.

SECOND GAME SESSION:
So, we're now at the fort and all the refugees are safe.  During the first session, the group told my character that they were all militia but no one was assigned as in charge, no one with rank.  They were all the same rank.  My character asked them if there was a leader, and they said no that they made joint decisions.  It appears there is a war on currently with orcs and goblins to the south, and all able-bodied men were pulled to that front.  According to the group, they had absolutely no training before given a badge and authority.

The Sergeant at the fort asks my character if he wants to re-enlist, as a buck private.  My character explains that he's been in the service previously and was honorably discharged at the rank of sergeant and that if he does re-enlist it would not be as private.  We negotiate and come to the agreement that he will check out my story and if it pans out that he will award me the rank between private and sergeant (I forgot what he called it) upon my return.  Satisfied, my character agreed to these terms.  I ask the sergeant who will be in charge of the escort mission and he says that the prince's messenger will be in charge.  Cool, at least there is a leader whether it's an NPC or PC.  It feels right since this is a military type game it seems.

It appears that another mission was on the docket.  The prince's best messenger is here and needs escort to the castle to the south where the prince is fighting his war to deliver a message of great importance.  We start to travel and come upon a farm where the barn is on fire and there are some goblins about.  We move in and engage.  It turns out that the GM doesn't want goblins to be fodder in his world, and so they are bad ass mother fuckers.  Let me try to put some perspective on it.  My character's DCV (like AC) is 11 and my OCV (like attack bonus) bonus is +3, rolling 4d6 for damage, and hit points of 28.  At zero HPs,  you're unconscious and dying.  Now, these goblins were rolling 20+ on almost every attack roll, and doing about 20-30 damage per hit.  My dwarf went down after two hits by a goblin, and was bleeding to death.  

It turns out that there are two real special snowflake players, the martial artist and the pyromaniac character.  The marital artist missed the session and was being played by another player.  The pyromaniac character had a DCV of 18, an OCV of +8, and rolled like 6d6+4 damage per attack.  His character took over 200 points of damage (I didn't keep a pin-point accurate mental tally) and never went unconscious!  He just healing himself, and he healed my character eventually and prevented him from dying.  

It nearly came close to another TPK, but the tide changed towards the end of the fight and it swung back our way and we prevailed.  It turned out goblins in his world kick ass!  Okay, fine, I've got no problem with that.

POSSIBLE RED FLAG:  After the fight the GM proudly announces that he built the goblins on the same point total as the players (and the goblins were just optimized for combat).  Okay, I see the disconnect- the GM tailored the fight for the two snowflake kick ass characters, which was overpowered for my character and the elf wizard character.  We both were pretty ineffectual in that fight altogether.  I chalk this up to a learning experience for the GM and let it go.

THIRD GAME SESSION:
Session starts out with us on the road traveling south towards the castle after the farm-goblin fight.  On the road we encounter a horse and wagon with one person.  We talk with him and he says that he's a trader taking medical and food supplies to the castle.  I thought it strange that he was carrying vital supplies alone since there were goblin and orc raiding parties between us and the castle.  I question him and he says that he had two soldiers with him but that they were killed by a goblin attack several days back, and that they bought him time to escape with the wagon.  

Now, from a meta-game persecutive, I knew something was up with this dude but I didn't act upon it.  Our characters agree to escort this trader and vital supplies the rest of the way to the castle.  On that last watch of the first night with the trader, the elf wizard is on watch with the prince's messenger.  Suddenly, the messenger and trader on gone while the elf was awake- but he didn't see or hear anything.  

It turns out that a note was left near the pig farmer character.  Apparently, the pig farmer got his special powers (magic rope, flying pitchfork, summoning pig minions, etc.) were given or won by him from this demon, who is his personal enemy.  In the note, the demon hints that he knows that the messenger has an important note for the prince and that maybe he'll give the messenger and message to orcs.  WTF?  How did know about all of this.  Also, it turns out that this demon is a shape changer.

We wake up immediately after the elf alerts us that they just went missing.  My dwarf is the only tracker of the group, and I find some tracks.  So, I start tracking, but the GM is making the Survival skill checks for me behind his screen.  Sure, no problem, I'm cool with that action.  However, he's rolling a check like every hour or so.  Consequently, I keep losing the tracks and we have to back track several hours to find them again, and so on.  We see-saw back and forth over the same ground looking for tracks and re-acquiring the lost tracks.  

Honestly, I got tired all the tracking checks I wasn't making and the lose-reacquire track cycle.  We were only like two days away from the castle, and the tracks were heading south on the road towards the castle.  My character decides that the best course of action at this point is to immediately beeline to the castle and report this to the prince- you know, the fact that a shape changing demon may be impersonating as his messenger.  My character is thinking that this might be an assignation attempt.  

However, now that the messenger is gone, we're a bunch of privates with no one in command.  The pyro snowflake and the martial artist snowflake want me to keep searching for the lost tracks.  My dwarf refuses and says he's going south to report to, and warn, the prince.  The elf and pig farmer agree with my dwarf.  The martial artist and pyro players are literally pissed off at me/my character.  A power struggle, both for the group of character and player ensues.

POSSIBLE RED FLAG 1:  The pyro and martial artist player start whispering to each other heatedly, and then start passing notes around the table.  Frankly, this irritated the shit out of me.  I haven't played like that since high school.  Notes about me when I'm right there at the table, WTF?  It seems pretty childish to me.

POSSIBLE RED FLAG 2:  The martial artist player says in frustration that he should just 'make' my dwarf character track for him.  I challenge him at that point and ask him exactly how he is going to make my character do what he wants.  He backs down for the moment.  A few moments later, he makes the comment that he should just pick my dwarf character up and put him over his shoulder.  WTF?   I let that one go since he's visibly upset by the situation.  You see, his snowflake martial artist character has an uber strength and he could in-game realistically 'force' my dwarf character to do anything he wanted (which is lame, btw).  

Now, we have no idea where there are any orc bands in the area since we've just arrived.  We kept losing the tracks and backtracking.  The demon is shape changer who has the prince's personal messenger.  My character is thinking that the trail will get older and more obscure the more time we spent backtracking, when the prince's life is in possible danger.  I hold firm to going to the castle.  The two snowflakes grudgingly agree to go finally.  

So, we arrive at the castle and meet the prince.  We report everything truthfully.  He thanks us and then sends us back out to the point where we lost the tracks, with two NPC trackers, to find the trail.  On my dwarf's first skill check (which the GM rolled behind his screen), I find the lost tracks which are now several days old.  We follow them for a while and find the dead messenger's body.  We return to the castle with the body.  The next morning we are summoned to the prince and find the messenger alive again.  Apparently, he was brought back to life by the prince's Magus.  Luckily, the messenger has a great memory and remembered the original message since the demon made him translate it for the orcs, or something like that.  Apparently, a massive orc strike on the castle was going to happen soon.  The prince has to get word to another Lord to bring his forces to the prince's aid.  Who does he send on this important mission again, the recently dead messenger.  Guess what, he needs another escort.  Guess who the prince assigns to guard him on this message, yup, us, the guys who got him killed on the last mission.  

At this point in the session, tensions are running high because the snowflake dudes are pissed at me for role-playing my character and not doing what they wanted.  We ask the prince to assign someone as the leader of our group.  What's the prince's response?  Decide among yourselves to elect a leader, or he'll assign us a leader, or one of us as the leader.  Hmm... okay.

So, we have an in-character group vote.  The elf votes for my dwarf, the pyro votes for the martial artist.  The martial artist and I each vote for ourselves.  The pig farmer decides not to decide, so now it's thrown back at the prince/GM.  At this point, and as a player, I am thinking that this is still good.  Since it's a military game, we need an in-character leader and now we're going to get one.  

POSSIBLE RED FLAG:  At this point, the GM says that he's going to have us make a d20 roll modified by CHA or Diplomacy skill.  He was still trying to create a die roll on the fly to decide which character would be granted the higher rank to lead the group of soldiers in game based upon a d20 which would modified by some social attribute.  

At this point, I'm thinking that the GM has no balls.  WTF?  A d20 roll?  And, of course, my dwarf  has a low CHA and really sucks at Diplomacy.  You see, in this system you can gimp certain skills to give you more build points.  Naturally, based upon my concept of a gruff mountain man type character, I gimped his CHA and any social skills to get more build points.  Naturally, the martial artist snowflake character had a good CHA and good social skills.  

You see, the flaming greatsword wielding, uber healing, pyromaniac character and the uber bitching, uber healing, martial artist character were the only two surviving and original campaign starting characters.  So, as it turns out, they are the two highest point total characters.  It seems that the pig farmer player's original character died after one or two sessions, so his pig farmer was below them in points.  Also, the elf magic user character only started a session or two before me, so he wasn't so much better than me.  

At this point, I spoke up to the group as a whole and said that I thought that reducing this to a die roll was lame- and that I would take no part in it.  I said that the martial artist character could be given the rank and be in charge of the unit, even though it didn't make sense in-game.  I didn't know this was a military style game when I wrote the background, I just wrote a background based upon the setting history- my dwarf  hates dark elves, fought them in the army and on frontier, and was discharged and now a lone tracker/wilderness man that re-enlisted for the war.

This is the end of the third game session for me.  Tensions were raised, tempers flared, and in the end a leader for the characters was decided.  Although, I'm sure it was for the power of the group as well from the actions and reaction of the martial artist's player.  

Now, for my part,  I intend to go back and play some more.  I'm inclined to see the glass half full and try to make the best of it.  I'm going to let it all go and play nice in character and out of character with the martial artist being the leader of the characters.  Although, as I pointed out above, there are some things that I would consider red flags for me.  

Do you see any of these as red flag issues?
Am I am making too much out of it and these are non-issues?
Would you go back for a fourth session?
Do you think that I am a dick and it's all my fault?

WARNING: Danger! Wil Robinson! DANGER!

Yea, it seems like the group's style of play and your's differ quite a bit. I personally, wouldn't play in a game like this, but that's just me...

It depends entirely upon where you fall in the "bad gaming is better than no gaming" question...and, before anyone snaps, I'm not judging their gaming, I AM saying that it's a very ill fit for Drohem, which makes it "bad" for him.

It seems like the group dynamic relies on some kind of cut throat potential but it hasn't been stirred past the explosive point yet. I personally wouldn't want to play in a game where secret notes exchange are the way to deal with inter-PC conflict*. Did you try to have a conversation about secrecy, PC vs PC issues and general cooperative stance? I mean the leadership issue can be the best opportunity for role playing and the overall story, but if it continues being dealt with IC and never ironed out OOC, it's just going to continue being unstable and source of tension between players. That would be the perfect moment for players to settle this, even if the settlement is something like "character X is the leader for now but character Y might act on it if he considers leadership sub par". But at least it's openly on the table and can be dealt with with the players group best interests in mind.

Edit: *except Amber, of course

Sounds like you've got 2 players on your side and two snow flakes.  It's possible if you win the GM to your side of things the snowflakes will get over themselves and a proper game experience will break out.

The flaw in that of course sounds like the GM hasn't got a clue of how to run the game he's trying to run.  It does sound like he's put some thought into the setting and situations but has no concept of how to match them to a game mechanically.  It also sounds like he's got no balls to stand up to the players and rein them in.  I mean a pig summoning magical pitch fork all shades of lame.

FOURTH GAME SESSION:
Alright, so I returned for another game session trying to embrace the glass is half full side of life.  I decided to bring up last session and talk about it see where I stand with the group.  A few days before this session the magical pig farmer player sends an email saying that he is leaving the group.  He cited burnout as the reason.  Also, the pyromaniac player is out sick so it's just the GM, the elf wizard guy, and the martial artist guy.  

I could tell there was still some tension because the GM made a small comment about how heated the last session was, and also that the martial artist player wouldn't make eye contact with me when he entered the room.  I thought to myself that this is lame so I spoke up and said I would like to discuss the last session.  I am glad that I initiated the conversation because everyone else, especially the martial artist player seemed relieved to talk about it.  I ask them flat out if they still want me in the group or not, and they all agreed that I should stay in the group.  The martial artist player opens up and makes up contact and is laughing and having fun now that we got the ball rolling on discussion of *ugh* feelings. LOL.

The session starts out with our group entering the abandoned caverns below the castle.  We are given some general instructions and told that these caverns should lead to a series of abandoned dwarven mines and we can exit in a forest and avoid orc patrols.  Great!  We entered the caverns and the GM asks for a tracking/Survival check, and we have another.....

POSSIBLE RED FLAG:
Apparently, the pyromaniac, the martial artist, and the elf wizard all had saved enough points that they all purchased Tracking, Direction Sense, and boosted their Survival skill score to be better than my character- the tracker and scout- in between game sessions.  So now everyone in the party is a tracker and scout, and they are all better at it than my character.  At hearing this news, I was thinking WTF? in my head, but I silently decided that my character will never make another Survival/tracking check in this game again.  Screw them, let them track now.

The rest of the session went by well.  We travel for a while and come to a natural cavern with trees and small pool of heated water.  We camp there and are attacked at night by some kind of plant creature that was hiding among the trees.  It was a tough fight, but nothing too crazy for us to handle.  We continue onward and come to a huge underground lake.  We go back to the cavern with the trees and destroy that ancient ecosystem to make a raft.  

We start rafting across the dark lake.  Our raft is bumped by something in the water, and the pyromaniac character falls into the water.  We fish him out quickly with no harm.  After couple of passes, we see it's some kind of shark-like creature.  Another bump and my character falls into the water, but I am fished out with no harm.  The pyromaniac and elf wizard try fire magic on it but discover that fire magic is going to be useless against this creature, so we switch to shooting at it.  However, we have to make Perception checks on every pass to see it, so shooting it isn't going well and the few arrows that did hit it didn't do much damage to it.  So, we pretty much have no way to damage or hurt this creature.

Now, the bumping is damaging our raft so we can make Survival checks to repair the raft.  Since we had nothing else to do, we repair the raft.  However, the GM rules that we cannot fully repair the damage from above the raft and that in order to fully repair the raft it needs to be done from underneath the raft.  No one wanted to go in the water, with good reason.  

Finally, my dwarf decides he's going to do it.  He strips off his armor and enters the water after the creature makes another pass.  I am able to make a repair roll before the creature comes back.  Luckily, my dwarf has Darkvision and so was able to make a Spot check to see the coming attack and take a full defense action, which saved his life because the creature narrowly missed him.  That was enough for my character, he did his service for the group, and he got back on the raft.

Basically, we ride out the attacks on our raft and the creature eventually leaves, since I think that the GM realized that we were unable to harm the creature in any measurable way.  We finally make it across the lake to a rocky ledge.  That's where we ended the session.

So the glass is still half full ?

Quote from: boulet;326569So the glass is still half full ?

Sure.    

Although, I'm a little miffed that now every character can track/scout *and* do it better than my character.  I believe that they thought I was joking when I said that I refuse to track or make Survival skill checks going foward, but I meant it.

You are definitely more tolerant then most players Drohem.  So what is your skill now, party bait?   Doesn't the GM see an issue with this?