I don't understand where that notion of "GM god" comes from. GM is an impartial referee.
There is no impartial referee, this is how the dicators try to call themselves.
solo RPGs rely on oracles and GM emulators, if there isn't anything doing a GM role that's a cyoa and not a TTRPG.
If a game has a complete and closed ruleset, i.e. it describes any possible transition from any possible game state to another, and thus doesn't require a GM in any form, it's not a TTRPG. It's a boardgame with superficial TTRPG elements.
Well there is no clear line between boardgames and RPGs and boardgames have in general better gamedesign. I really don't think that the GM is what makes an RPG, its just a necessary evil in most cases.
Now I'm almost certain there is a story to this whole GM is God thing.
Sounds like you had a bad experience with a bad GM and now you are extrapolating it to all sort of GMs
No, not really. I am quite picky when it comes to people to play with. I dont have too much bad experience, but many people, especially in online forums like here, give me this really bad vibe of GMs wanting to play god.
Correct, not unforeseen. This is obviously intently designed so that the players are forced to think creatively. Once again that being a boss encounter after many other [as I suspect] encounters that would have made clear how long does it take to dispose of an X hp enemy.
If this is intended, then make the boss not take damage from attacks. Here simple and easy. This tells you that you should not attack the boss. The players can't know the boss is ridiculously overstated.
I don't know where are you getting that. You should fight in OSR games but you should do it on your own terms. Mathematically speaking simply doing "I roll to attack" is going to get you killed reliably again and again. This is by design.
You have friction with this playstyle, we get it. That doesn't make the playstyle bad. It's just not to your taste.
Well the problem is not the playstyle, its the bad communication and the non finished products.
If fights should not be foughts directly, tell that to the players and the GM directly. Have this as part of the rules. Dont rely on obscure knowledge on outdated similar games.
Since you've started pointing fingers, I'm going to assume you are following the golden rule of treating others as you would like to be treated, so and I'm going to go ahead, be frank and say that it's quite obviously bad GMing.
This is just lazy. A good adventure, especially starting adventure, tells the GM what to do. If a GM needs to make their own decision and fix an adventure thats 100% bad gamedesign.
Why didn't the GM telegraph that ordinary attacks would take forever to kill the boss? "Your cutlass barely scratches him, basically like poking an elephant with a tablefork, it would take forever to cut him down like that."
Why wasn't there an I would assume intended TPK that should have taught players the boss can't be approached by simply rolling him to death for 40 minutes?
Why didn't the GM try to hint players with possible alies/solutions/weaknesses?
Again: This is the job of the adventure. If this is not written in the adventure, then its badly designed. If this is the job of the GM then the rules of the system at least need to tell it. "Hey we are lazy game designers, we did not balance stuff, and fights are normally not winable, so you need to fix this by making the players come up with "clever solutions" is the minimum.
Or rather this should be told in the beginning of the rules also to the player:
"This is a serious game, but our main mechanic is the party game mechanic of player judge. The GM is the judge, and you should try to guess what they think / what they allow. So this is not about tactics, this is about guessing what the GM wants to hear. Think about cards against humanity, but without humor. Everything is serious here and wrong guess means often death. So be ready to flatter and sweettalk your GM, maybe he even allows you to fart an enemy to death."
