I can't game in this group anymore

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This post is to just vent so it doesn't bother me if no one replies.

I almost had a meltdown while gaming with friends last night. I managed to keep it together, but I still feel upset by it.

The background:
We're playing the Kingmaker campaign in Pathfinder. I came in at the second session which was four sessions ago. This isn't the only game we're playing, but it a game we normally play Friday nights. The game last night was because we were all going to be at a con next weekend and wouldn't be gaming.


Contributing factors:
I have gotten subpar sleep over the last week. I need to use a cpap but even when using one, I get low quality sleep. I tend to wake up and stay awake and it's really hard to fall back asleep. I don't see my neurologist for another month and fixing this is going to wait.

They didn't remember my birthday on Saturday until they saw a fb post after the fact from other family members and then made excuses, fairly lame ones about why they forgot.

The group didn't inform me till about an hour after the session started yesterday that it was going on. I incidentally checked facebook and saw that they were having it. A call or text would have been quicker.

The choice of having a session last night was made after I left the friday night at midnight. That is our normal end time. I had committed myself to activities on Saturday so I couldn't stay up to late. They continued gaming till five in the morning on Saturday getting through most of the 1st module of Kingmaker. Only once can I remember pulling an all-nighter in our gaming group in the last two years. I really had no idea what was going on in the game. It's like reading the first book in a series and skipping half the chapters full of important details.

I've had issues with others in the group already. My character is a bard and the build I decided on is to be a diplomancer. This in and of itself is something that I struggle with because of my ASD. Trying to do this is hard, but I use it as an exercise to get better. I'm not good at being the face of the party, but I try anyway. The player who is the sorcerer just would not give me a chance to say or do anything. There is another rogue in the party and between the sorcerer and rogue, my char is useless except I can cast six cantrips an unlimited amount of times and give them a slight buff.

I'm repeatedly interrupted by the other players. The DM has even stopped listening to me in the middle of me saying what I'm saying. He focuses on someone else who interrupted. This doesn't just happen in this game but all of the games I play with them. In this game, I've basically stopped the roll playing and all I do is dice rolling. It sucks.

When I started in this game there were four other players besides me. Now there are six others. One of them is new to the gaming group. We had a rule where we couldn't just bring anyone into the group without consulting everyone. That rule is apparently out the window or I completely misunderstood it.

I have speech problems where I may slur words or just not say words in a sentence because I can't speak as fast as what I'm thinking. Some days are worse than others and yesterday was bad. I was having a hard time speaking as it was.

Last night the group and I discovered I had misread the rules according to them and I quickly backed down even though I double checked and the rules don't say what they say it says. They said it's always been the way they're interpreting the rules. It didn't end well the last time I challenged them on a point like this so I didn't make a challenge.

End Result:
At this point, I was about to have a meltdown but I just sucked it up. My anxiety was through the roof and I was doing all I could not to break down crying.

I couldn't stay. Luckily I had work today and I used that as an excuse to leave saying I couldn't stay up late.

I'm done with this gaming group. I'll still be friends with them, but I don't believe I can game in this group anymore. I love role play gaming with pencil & paper. This is my only outlet for it currently but the stress is just too much. And sleep last night sucked again. I woke up at 4:30 am this morning from a nightmare.

If bad sessions like that are uncommon I'd recommend you stick with them... if you're still friends with them no reason why you're unable to share in activities with them, if they're good enough to go to places with they should be good enough for this.

Hoenstly it sounds like you got off on the wrong foot in that campaign and they had a little trouble slowing down for you, and considering their characters know a lot more of what's going on than yours it just makes sense that you're not going to be able to respond to things as well, you're in the dark with a lot of whats going on.

And aren't bards always like super-squishy/near useless early on? I haven't played pen and paper D&D but in the games, starting out asa bard was always rough, no offensive or defensive power whatsoever.

It used to be uncommon but it is now common. This is happening every gaming session as far as getting interrupted or ignored.

In the kingmaker game we're level 3. My bard has a matching charisma of the Sorcerer, but through feats and traits, I have much higher charisma based skills such as diplomacy and intimidate than the sorcerer does. The sorcerer has lower than max in diplomacy because he's allocated skill points to other skills in its place. When he attempted to call me out for not being the face, I was confused because the whole time up till then and after till now, I couldn't get a word in for my character to do the diplomacy. Every encounter where my bard should have been the face of the party, he ran his mouth off or others spoke up which committed the party to a course of action.

I'm giving up on the group for gaming. They're nice people, I just can't game with them.

Sorry for the late reply. I've been in groups on and off over the years, and you get a lot of flakes and difficult types when you get into table top gaming. I don't know how things are for you since you posted this, but I hope you either were able to resolve the negativity, or bowed out altogether. My hope for you is that you find a group that's a better fit. If you run into crap again, try to take it with a grain of salt; this is common with role players, unfortunately, so try and enjoy it for what it's worth as long as it doesn't get TOO bad.

Sorry for the late reply. I've been in groups on and off over the years, and you get a lot of flakes and difficult types when you get into table top gaming. I don't know how things are for you since you posted this, but I hope you either were able to resolve the negativity, or bowed out altogether. My hope for you is that you find a group that's a better fit. If you run into crap again, try to take it with a grain of salt; this is common with role players, unfortunately, so try and enjoy it for what it's worth as long as it doesn't get TOO bad.

My mother visited the whole of last week and the weekend before that was taken up by a convention most of our group attended so I wasn't able to make it to any of the normal meetups.

I did talk with a friend who used to be in the gaming group. She's the sister of the guy whose house we game at. She used to game with us, and ended up quitting for similar reasons to some of mine. She didn't give me much advice, except to say I wasn't alone in this and there have been others in the past that have experienced the same thing.

I will go and hang out this weekend, probably with the sister, and not the group as a whole.

Maybe after a while, I'll return. Or a few of use might start a new gaming group. I have all the books to run Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Ed, Palladium Books(Rifts, Fantasy, System Failure, HU, BTS, etc...), Battletech, and have the core books for Pathfinder. Between me and the sister, we could probably pull a few more friends in and get a new group going.