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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 5207472" data-attributes="member: 29398">Ah, now I finally see what you're on about...to wit, something that to me mostly doesn't exist.Sure, you don't put a beholder in the first room of a low-level dungeon...or maybe you do; and woe betide the fools who attack rather than talk.I don't give a flying rat's whatever about what 3e or 4e do, though from my 3e experience I think you're giving it more credit/blame than it deserves; you could stick anything you liked up against the party in 3e as well, and as long as they weren't necessarily expected to kill it you could manufacture a perfectly decent encounter out of it.  That said, however...If you are looking for a game where there's no nasty surprises then more power to ya, but you'll not find it here.  "Gotcha", as you call it, can work just fine in any system; though the system may force changes in how it can be done.  The bigger challenge is one of player system knowledge creating goals and expectations that are at odds with those that a given DM may be quite rightfully trying to set.Yep, we're pretty different in our outlooks here.  To me, the metagame discussion would only come after I'd already decided to abandon whatever it was that would cause said discussion.  Otherwise, it's like telling someone what they're getting for their birthday and then asking them to act surprised anyway - it pointlessly rips the fun out of it for both sides.About the nearest I ever get to such things is when there's a split in the possible story arc; I might say something like "OK, I've got a series of desert adventures lined up, and a series of northern viking adventures; I'll run either, which do you want to play?"  But I will *never* say "You're supposed to get captured into slavery here for story reasons, please roll with it" as that just ruins the surprise.Lan-"happy birthday!"-efan</blockquote>

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