Unfortunately DocSER, your experiences are reasonably typical of organized play. I stopped playing in Pathfinder Society for very similar reasons. Sorry it's a bit long, but I just wanted to share how typical these sorts of things are...
My very first session of Pathfinder Society, Cassomir's Locker, I made a dwarven cleric of Shelyn and signed up for the regular Thursday night session. The game itself was okay, but there were certainly some off-putting folk at the table.
We had one guy who turned everything into a pissing contest--whenever someone did something cool (got a crit, dropped an enemy, found a major clue) he had to tell people how he has a character in another game that could've done it better, and he has an 18th-level ranger in a home game somewhere, but Pathfinder Society is "ripping him off" by not allowing him to bring in a character from a home game. The GM also brought his strange bug-eyed teenage daughter who sat in the corner and drew anime-style comics (she wasn't playing, she was just there) and gave people creepy, intense stares with her weirdly bulging eyes. There was also a guy there with a different creepy vibe. The way he looked at people made me wonder what was going on in his head, I later found out that he was allegedly some sort of sex offender and played Pathfinder Society because people just didn't want him in their home games.
Despite the weirdness, I shrugged it off, figuring that I didn't have to play with the same people again--maybe I got the weirdo table because I was the new guy or something. The game itself was reasonably fun, so I signed up for the next session.
Unfortunately, I discovered that I did not get experience for my first session, because I didn't have a Pathfinder Society number when I started playing and the GM was therefore unable to report my session. I didn't know that I needed a number until the coordinator asked for it for the second session. So I got a number, was told that my first session didn't count, and was informed that I'd be expected to GM if I wanted to keep playing.
I figured that I'd make a new character since the first one didn't count, So I made an illusionist and showed up for Among the Living. Good stuff. The adventure was well-written, the GM good, and most of the players reasonably normal. I had a blast and figured that the first session must have been the bad eggs.
I signed up for a third session, and was placed in a group for Master of the Fallen Fortress. That game was absolutely horrible. The GM was snotty and condescending, making it very clear that he was GMing only because the coordinator was coercing him to do so. He repeatedly skipped players on their turn, apparently because he thought that the group was too large and he figured it'd be easier to just have people skip turns rather than scale the encounters.
After the game ended, I discovered that I couldn't get experience for it--apparently, Master of the Fallen Fortress can only be used for brand-new characters, but my character that I played in Among the Living was scheduled for it anyway. I never got a straight answer as to why that happened, other than the coordinator telling me that I shouldn't complain since I was "getting to play for free." I would've liked for someone to just tell me that it was an honest mistake if that's what it was... But there was no sense that anyone was going to admit to making a mistake. I was basically told that I have no basis for complaining about Pathfinder Society since I wasn't paying anyone to play it. No accountability without paychecks, so it seems.
So then I got to play Voice in the Void, which was sort of awesome. Good GM, good group, good time again. By this point, I was on the fence about Pathfinder Society, but I was willing to overlook the bad sessions. The impression was that the new blood had to go through the crappy groups to get to play with the good ones, sort of like a hazing.
I signed up for another session (I don't remember what it was, because I didn't end up playing). The game was scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M., only one group started as 6:00. Four other groups were sitting around without GMs. Text messages were sent, phone calls were made, and voice mails left. Around 6:45, someone finally got in touch with the GMs. Apparently, they were in a game at someone's house and they lost track of the time. Accounts conflict as to whether this was someone's home game or a Pathfinder Society thing that wasn't announced to the general public... Anyway, the GMs told the players to sit tight and that they'd be there as soon as they could possibly get there. Reasonable estimates placed the ETA as 7:30-ish.
Needless to say, a few tempers flared among the players. I stayed calm myself, and opined that I didn't care if they were late as long as I got my experience. At that point, some of the experienced players informed me that there was a minimum time requirement for the session to qualify for experience, and that some GMs didn't complete sessions--meaning that the players in those sessions didn't get experience, yet were considered to have played through it (meaning that they couldn't re-play the same scenario). After consulting with a few different players, the impression I got was that we would get our experience, if we could start by 8:00 P.M. and wanted to play until after midnight. I decided to wait to hear it straight from the GM's mouth. I waited until 7:30, and when GMs weren't answering their phones, I went home.
In the emails that followed, me and the coordinator didn't see eye-to-eye on the value of time. Apparently, his opinion was that Pathfinder Society officials had carte blanche to do as they pleased because they weren't getting paid, they were doing players a favor by running a game. No paycheck equals no accountability. My stance is that my time is inherently valuable, and asking me to disregard an investment of several hours of my time was unacceptable (either in sessions where I didn't get experience because of administrative oversights or in sheer waiting around for people to show up, which accounted to approximately fourteen hours--an entire day of work). We didn't see eye-to-eye on that and I haven't played Pathfinder Society since.
So, DocSER... Crappy organized play isn't limited to Dungeons & Dragons Encounters by any stretch of the imagination.
I think that organized play tends to attract people with crappy attitudes because those folks can't convince anyone to play in a home game with them.
My very first session of Pathfinder Society, Cassomir's Locker, I made a dwarven cleric of Shelyn and signed up for the regular Thursday night session. The game itself was okay, but there were certainly some off-putting folk at the table.
We had one guy who turned everything into a pissing contest--whenever someone did something cool (got a crit, dropped an enemy, found a major clue) he had to tell people how he has a character in another game that could've done it better, and he has an 18th-level ranger in a home game somewhere, but Pathfinder Society is "ripping him off" by not allowing him to bring in a character from a home game. The GM also brought his strange bug-eyed teenage daughter who sat in the corner and drew anime-style comics (she wasn't playing, she was just there) and gave people creepy, intense stares with her weirdly bulging eyes. There was also a guy there with a different creepy vibe. The way he looked at people made me wonder what was going on in his head, I later found out that he was allegedly some sort of sex offender and played Pathfinder Society because people just didn't want him in their home games.
Despite the weirdness, I shrugged it off, figuring that I didn't have to play with the same people again--maybe I got the weirdo table because I was the new guy or something. The game itself was reasonably fun, so I signed up for the next session.
Unfortunately, I discovered that I did not get experience for my first session, because I didn't have a Pathfinder Society number when I started playing and the GM was therefore unable to report my session. I didn't know that I needed a number until the coordinator asked for it for the second session. So I got a number, was told that my first session didn't count, and was informed that I'd be expected to GM if I wanted to keep playing.
I figured that I'd make a new character since the first one didn't count, So I made an illusionist and showed up for Among the Living. Good stuff. The adventure was well-written, the GM good, and most of the players reasonably normal. I had a blast and figured that the first session must have been the bad eggs.
I signed up for a third session, and was placed in a group for Master of the Fallen Fortress. That game was absolutely horrible. The GM was snotty and condescending, making it very clear that he was GMing only because the coordinator was coercing him to do so. He repeatedly skipped players on their turn, apparently because he thought that the group was too large and he figured it'd be easier to just have people skip turns rather than scale the encounters.
After the game ended, I discovered that I couldn't get experience for it--apparently, Master of the Fallen Fortress can only be used for brand-new characters, but my character that I played in Among the Living was scheduled for it anyway. I never got a straight answer as to why that happened, other than the coordinator telling me that I shouldn't complain since I was "getting to play for free." I would've liked for someone to just tell me that it was an honest mistake if that's what it was... But there was no sense that anyone was going to admit to making a mistake. I was basically told that I have no basis for complaining about Pathfinder Society since I wasn't paying anyone to play it. No accountability without paychecks, so it seems.
So then I got to play Voice in the Void, which was sort of awesome. Good GM, good group, good time again. By this point, I was on the fence about Pathfinder Society, but I was willing to overlook the bad sessions. The impression was that the new blood had to go through the crappy groups to get to play with the good ones, sort of like a hazing.
I signed up for another session (I don't remember what it was, because I didn't end up playing). The game was scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M., only one group started as 6:00. Four other groups were sitting around without GMs. Text messages were sent, phone calls were made, and voice mails left. Around 6:45, someone finally got in touch with the GMs. Apparently, they were in a game at someone's house and they lost track of the time. Accounts conflict as to whether this was someone's home game or a Pathfinder Society thing that wasn't announced to the general public... Anyway, the GMs told the players to sit tight and that they'd be there as soon as they could possibly get there. Reasonable estimates placed the ETA as 7:30-ish.
Needless to say, a few tempers flared among the players. I stayed calm myself, and opined that I didn't care if they were late as long as I got my experience. At that point, some of the experienced players informed me that there was a minimum time requirement for the session to qualify for experience, and that some GMs didn't complete sessions--meaning that the players in those sessions didn't get experience, yet were considered to have played through it (meaning that they couldn't re-play the same scenario). After consulting with a few different players, the impression I got was that we would get our experience, if we could start by 8:00 P.M. and wanted to play until after midnight. I decided to wait to hear it straight from the GM's mouth. I waited until 7:30, and when GMs weren't answering their phones, I went home.
In the emails that followed, me and the coordinator didn't see eye-to-eye on the value of time. Apparently, his opinion was that Pathfinder Society officials had carte blanche to do as they pleased because they weren't getting paid, they were doing players a favor by running a game. No paycheck equals no accountability. My stance is that my time is inherently valuable, and asking me to disregard an investment of several hours of my time was unacceptable (either in sessions where I didn't get experience because of administrative oversights or in sheer waiting around for people to show up, which accounted to approximately fourteen hours--an entire day of work). We didn't see eye-to-eye on that and I haven't played Pathfinder Society since.
So, DocSER... Crappy organized play isn't limited to Dungeons & Dragons Encounters by any stretch of the imagination.
I think that organized play tends to attract people with crappy attitudes because those folks can't convince anyone to play in a home game with them.
I am sorry that it wasn't.
