Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
So your saying it has to do with not meeting expectations rather than a matter of railroading? Hmm, had not thought about that, good point.
Yeah, with a side order of "the DM's awesome magic macguffin beats the DM's invincible foe"

While the seven samurai is a good idea for a game, that wasnt what I had intended to run. The players werent seven samurai, they were three local teenagers. I even told them when they were making their characters that the game would be more like "The Goonies" than the "A-team".
No, they'd mostly be in the role Katsuhiro was in the film, the eager inexperienced one who wants to learn. You could have adapted it into eg. the local lord does nothing about the bandits because secretly he's being paid off by them, which he doesn't have to pay scutage out of to his liege so it fattens his pocket directly and so he's double dipping on taxing the villages, but there are a few good men left among his knights and they come to help in secret, giving the players a bit more punch (make them a resource the players can use themselves, not DMPCs, again you aren't trying to outshine the players)

Really though, what they wanted was a win of their own, which is not unreasonable for a new group of adventurers, and I think that's the big source of Player C's complaints, because he wanted one of their plans to be able to win.