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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9324959" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I can answer these!</p><p></p><p>1. I genuinely don't think their intent was to murder. I just think they were so poor at encounter design, they did not believe that this could result in a TPK (or, rather, a near-TPK.) Their intent wasn't bad, or at least I never had any indication that it was bad. They were just horrible at executing on it.</p><p>2. I'm afraid I don't know the actual stats, but I <em>believe</em> we were evenly matched, 5 on 5 IIRC. The spider fight before that might've been Deadly though, again I never got actual numbers for those. (The Mummy <em>certainly</em> would've been deadly.) No bandit captains or other powerful enemies, no meaningful environment effects except (as noted) that the bandits were between us and the doors. The Rogue happened to be near one of the doors and squeezed past them when everyone else was dying.</p><p>3. No. The bandits attacked us, never offered to accept a surrender, and specifically spoke of killing us so they could sell off whatever value we might have. There was never any effort at anything except murder, so we responded in kind. (I strongly suspect the possibility of accepting a surrender or having us wake up imprisoned by the bandits, rather than just bleeding out on the floor, never even occurred to the DM.)</p><p>4. The DM did not communicate that it would be the "nasty, brutish, and short" experience, never even made the more ambiguous types of statements like being "tough but fair" or the like. I had asked questions about tone during the (relatively perfunctory) session 0, but the DM gave kind of boilerplate answers, nothing that seemed to communicate much of anything. Given their relatively new DM status, at the time I had assumed that just meant they were keeping their options open and trying to avoid pigeonholing the campaign before it got started. Now, I suspect they simply never considered the concept at all; I don't think they <em>wanted</em> to be a meat grinder DM, I just think they had not given it meaningful thought. Again, merely mediocre skill or incompetence, not bad faith.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9324959, member: 6790260"] I can answer these! 1. I genuinely don't think their intent was to murder. I just think they were so poor at encounter design, they did not believe that this could result in a TPK (or, rather, a near-TPK.) Their intent wasn't bad, or at least I never had any indication that it was bad. They were just horrible at executing on it. 2. I'm afraid I don't know the actual stats, but I [I]believe[/I] we were evenly matched, 5 on 5 IIRC. The spider fight before that might've been Deadly though, again I never got actual numbers for those. (The Mummy [I]certainly[/I] would've been deadly.) No bandit captains or other powerful enemies, no meaningful environment effects except (as noted) that the bandits were between us and the doors. The Rogue happened to be near one of the doors and squeezed past them when everyone else was dying. 3. No. The bandits attacked us, never offered to accept a surrender, and specifically spoke of killing us so they could sell off whatever value we might have. There was never any effort at anything except murder, so we responded in kind. (I strongly suspect the possibility of accepting a surrender or having us wake up imprisoned by the bandits, rather than just bleeding out on the floor, never even occurred to the DM.) 4. The DM did not communicate that it would be the "nasty, brutish, and short" experience, never even made the more ambiguous types of statements like being "tough but fair" or the like. I had asked questions about tone during the (relatively perfunctory) session 0, but the DM gave kind of boilerplate answers, nothing that seemed to communicate much of anything. Given their relatively new DM status, at the time I had assumed that just meant they were keeping their options open and trying to avoid pigeonholing the campaign before it got started. Now, I suspect they simply never considered the concept at all; I don't think they [I]wanted[/I] to be a meat grinder DM, I just think they had not given it meaningful thought. Again, merely mediocre skill or incompetence, not bad faith. [/QUOTE]
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