Originally Posted by
TexAvery
Or even ROTJ (assuming I got the correct "ep5", and it still works if I didn't) - Luke hands over his lightsaber (!) and surrenders, to be taken to Palpatine's throne room in manacles. It was, of course, not true submission/ surrender, but a serious gambit to get himself face to face with the BBEG. It, of course, worked in a movie with a script, but is not the way most D&D players would expect to play (not leastwise because it split the party and created a three-way fork for the final act which would have been a nightmare to run).
So yeah, I literally read all thirty-two pages of this over the last several days, during my "kick around on the internet" time. Wow. And so many specific things I wanted to respond to from months ago, but will keep my comments to the more recent items.
Talakeal, one thing I haven't seen anyone note is how much you enjoy the WW system. In my experience, people who like WW will rub me the wrong way, quite badly, in D&D. Even when describing your setting doc (which I haven't looked at yet but hope to soon), you talk about putting the setting before the rules, in the spirit of WW. If Bob is like me in this respect (and if he's a crunchy game tester, I almost guarantee he is), he wants a world with a consistent set of rules he can interact with. You seem to want to story to be told, and want the players to share your vision for that story, and have no issues with the rules being shaped to fit that story.
To bounce from the Star Wars example above, I absolutely loathe Star Trek. It pretends (and claims) to be "serious SF instead of that Star Wars space opera nonsense", but the holodeck behaves differently from week to week based on how the writer wants it to. As does the transporter. As does... literally everything else. Every time it changes, I lose my suspension of disbelief. Clearly a lot of other people disagree, but I'd be curious how Bob feels.
For all that the rogue encounter was discussed, no one has commented on this: you had a framework for how you expected it to play out, which would have made an outstanding scene in a movie. At least one of your players did not see your vision for that scene, and it seems people here (including me) don't either, at a very high rate. For what it's worth, the rogue's comment as you wrote them sounded like the prelude to a fight (explaining his reasons for anger) rather than the prelude to a parlay. It only works with information they couldn't have had.
That sort of thing is how I felt every time I tried to play WW games, and it was worse the more enthusiastic other people were. Every action felt like it was "wrong", and that everyone else was reading from a script I didn't have, and it ended poorly (though nothing like what you describe). It was frustrating, and I went through the motions for the sake of my friends and having literally any form of social life, but it was miserable.
I used to live in Boulder; if I still did I would love to be able to sit in on a session. Not that I believe you're lying or deliberately misrepresenting the situation, but it would be interesting to see the whole situation from another perspective.
Since this thread has become quite large in scope, I also want to address "gotcha" monsters. Off the top, they're terrible. They're terrible in a technical, game-design perspective, in that they force the player to take the hit up front and only learn for the next encounter (possibly as a new character). To GG, that was the intent, and players were expected to churn through huge numbers of low-level characters before "earning" the right to survive more than a few sessions (which is terrible and abusive on its own). It also caused a disconnect with future versions, in which players are encouraged to become invested in their characters and put effort into developing and expressing their personalities. In a system in which that character might die for no good reason other than the DM "teaching the player not to reach into a log", why bother? Just stab things in the face until you need to roll up a new one. If I ever write out the system in my head, characters will be very durable against death for exactly that reason.
This affects video games as well. Back in Doom, the monster closets pissed me off to no end, until I started walking backwards over every major powerup or key. That worked, but it was still terrible design for playing through the first time; it was from an arcade perspective where the player was expected to replay and restart levels and episodes until they learned all the gotchas. I hated it (but there were fewer options, and especially fewer options that had anything like the rest of the experience Doom brought). In Halo, more aliens are certainly placed onto the level in various circumstances, but to my memory it was never "pick up powerup, get shot in the back with no warning". That was a game expected to be played through more-or-less linearly.
D&D would be much better off with the "gotcha" monsters eliminated or reworked. The rust monster is cool if there's a warning, ditto for the slimes and oozes that eat weapons or split when hit with a blade (as long as it's not a tool to take away the fighter's favorite or best weapon, and the party has a way to deal with it). The mimic... maybe as a once-a-year surprise, if the party can deal with it fairly easily. The "ogre" with the "big nose" that lets it sneeze a Gust of Wind? I would have never made that connection, especially as lots of monsters are described as having large noses. On the other hand, your sick/ infected dragon sounds awesome, and from the description you've given I'd actually be surprised if it did breathe fire as normal. I certainly wouldn't describe that one as a "gotcha".
I don't know if that was even everything I wanted to say, but that seems like plenty enough for now.