I Gamed! 5e Session 1

For the first time in almost two years I gamed last night. It was D&D 5e (meh) but it was gaming.

The group is a married couple (husband is GM), their teenage son, and their friend/neighbor. All the adults are in the same basic age range so that's helpful. I'll get to the son in a bit.

Disclaimer - I'm not fond of 5e. I'm very much a 3.5 person when it comes to D&D. I'm not saying it's better or worse than any other edition. It's the one I prefer. So no edition wars, please.

Their game is still early so we're all second level. That fit very well with the character I had already made and enjoyed in the previous 5e game I was in. She's a half-orc war cleric of Gruumsh. I stepped her alignment to the side so she's a chaotic neutral with a chaotic evil deity. The backstory I worked up has her free of the tropes that tend to go with half-orcs. I like her. The character was third level so I had to step her down one. No big deal.

As with most sessions when introducing a new player it was uneven. He had to get me set up to meet the group and continue with their story so it would all blend together. I expected it and waited politely when I wasn't involved. It happens. I was prepared. It let me read over the player's handbook to make sure I was clear on some of the rules.

Overall it was a decent game. The next one is coming up this weekend (two in a row then two weeks off while they play other games) and I'm hoping I don't get the call/text/email that they talked and decided I'm not going to fit into the group. I don't think it's going to happen but I can't help but worry.

On to my impressions of the game and how it's being run.

He showed me the charts he uses during combat for how damage is done, critical hits, critical fails, etc. I dislike those. I dislike those intently. I mentioned that I didn't but that I won't make a fuss if that's how the group plays. That caused the friend to say he didn't like the charts either. The son liked the charts (his vote really doesn't matter - more later). The wife waffled and eventually said she liked the flavor text but not the charts themselves. So the GM said he wouldn't use them. I felt awkward about making a change like that as a stranger but with a table vote it showed that no one else spoke up earlier.

He's using a couple of variants from the dungeon master's guide that are fine. They give the players a bit more flexibility and don't unbalance anything more than 5e already does. I still need to find out his change to initiative since he said he uses a d10 instead of a d20 but didn't say if we still add our initiative bonus. He said it makes things tighter. Um. Sure. I don't see what it matters if someone is 17 or 7 if the end result is the same but it's not worth bothering about.

The GM started out by telling me about a dream that I had and it was obviously a railroad into some kind of quest for a magic item for me. Nope. I'm going to avoid that as long as I can. I dislike being told what my character's goals are. I found out after the game that he's statted out legendary weapons to use in the game and I guess he wants us each to find one of them. Mine's some kind of spear. I don't use that kind of weapon, I've never wanted to use that kind of weapon, and I'm not interested in epic weapons.

During the game I found out how he runs. I haven't been on the player side of the screen much in the last decade so I made sure to go with his style and not mentally compare it to what I would do. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I don't know if he realizes how much railroading he actually does.

That dream thing I already mentioned. He said I could do with it what I would but it's obvious that he's going to push it later if I don't bring it up. There's a group of refugees from a conquered town that the other group was helping and he had it set up so they lost all their stuff except what they were carrying because of that. I found that problematic in that they have to rebuy everything they started with except their weapons.

We were 'chosen' to be the delegates to a pirate town as a way to get help for the refugees. Personally they had their own leaders, such as they were, and I would have left them to that. As second level we shouldn't have had to try to do anything to get them resettled and as adventurers with no ties to the town there's no reason to do it. But that was part of his story (or they decided that in the previous game) so we went. And of course the NPC from the refugees bargained that we would do a service for the head pirate in exchange for them helping.

Note that the negotiations were done without us so we were told about this after. We had the choice of taking on the task and the refugees getting help or not taking it and leaving them to their fates. Like that was a real choice. Personally I would have left them but that's me. So we take on the stupid quest.

The trail of breadcrumbs was more a series of loaves of bread at this point. We're getting passed from one NPC to another as we try to 'find information' we need to complete the quest. I found out in the middle he pulled this from a module so it makes more sense why it feels so flat. But I seem to be the only one with a problem so I'm not making waves. I'm playing it as my character would do, which isn't the dodge to do stupid things.

We left the game as we were going to talk to the next NPC who had information for us. It was a good stopping point.

Now on to the son. The son has socialization issues. They did tell me about this when we met to find out if we were going to be a match for gaming. Session Zero is important. They're getting him into gaming as a way to work on those issues and that's not a bad way to do it, in my opinion.

The kid has the attention span of a concussed squirrel. He's only concerned with the cool armor he wants for his character and the title that he wants, not with playing the character itself. We tried to keep him involved in the game but he wasn't responding half of the time and never initiated anything unless it was to show us a print of what he wanted his armor to be. For a while he was playing with a Transformer action figure rather than paying attention to the game. His dad let that go for a while then told him to stop. So they're aware of his limits and setting expectations.

I can handle the kid being in the game. He's not disruptive as much as not there. He's kind of an enhanced NPC from what I can see. We'll see what he does during combat rounds but for role playing he's not much. I was aware that role play was something lacking in the game and they were pleased that I enjoy the RP aspect as much as the combat parts of the game.

At this point my impression of the game is favorable. I'm not going to rank it because that's not relevant in this situation. If they don't kick me out I'll play and do my best to enjoy it. If nothing else I get to play a character I like. I'm also paying attention to his GM style and seeing if I do anything he's doing and I don't like as a player. If so then I can work on not doing that in the future.

It's tough joining a new group and it's even more so when the group is tight. They didn't make me feel like an outsider and they seemed to genuinely want me in the game. I'm working hard to adapt to what their table is like and not try to change too much to my own preferences. That table thing was the only one that stood out and the table vote makes me feel much less awkward about it. Did I mention I really dislike those kinds of tables?