Rambling about appropriate challenges, verisimilitude, lone wolf games, and new GMs.

[Talakeal]

So, I got tired of the lack of gaming in my life and convinced my room mate to try running a solo campaign. He has experience as a player, but no real experience as a GM.

We start the first session, and it begins with my character receiving a summons from a local mob boss.

Now, every instinct is screaming "IT'S A TRAP!" but I don't want to be that guy who ignores adventure hooks, especially on the GM's first session.

The mob boss wants to hire me to guard a shipment of contraband from a rival gang.

Now, being a LG sort, I tell him that I am not interested in his job.

He tells me that he doesn't handle rejection well, and that if I refuse I will be sorry. A clear threat.

I tell him "I am not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, if you want to threaten my life be up front about it and draw steel!"

So, here I am, a level 1 fighter, who has just challenged the mob boss, a level 3 rogue, to a duel.

Then, his bodyguards, both level 4 warriors, bum rush me.

Three turns later and we discover that the first session of the new game is also the last.

At this point I just kind of stare at the table thinking "What the hell?"

The GM tells me that he made them as weak as he could, but if they were any lower level they would never have risen to the position of leadership over the gang. And he isn't wrong.

Further he tells me that just because I am running a solo game without a party he can't justify nerfing the entire world down to my level. And again, he isn't wrong.

Then I ask what I was supposed to do? My character has absolutely no interest in working for a known criminal. He tells me that if that was the case I should have gone to the city guard and asked for their protection.

Its logical, but, I don't know, going to the city guard and begging them to save you? That just seems so ignoble and, well, humiliating.

Aren't PCs supposed to be heroes?


Again, I don't really know what I expect from this thread; just, feel free to post whatever advice / thoughts you have on the matter. Thanks for reading.

[Fri]

If I'm the GM, I'm the one saying "What the hell."

Or more specifically, how the heck you two are gaming without confirming what the premise of the game, which is already important in normal game, and even more so in solo game.

Seriously, let me underline it. What. The. Hell.

It's like you're accepting vague invitation for a movie night without confirming anything. Then leave when you find out you're watching action movie but you dislike action movie. Of course there's no movie night, since you didn't confirm what movie you want to watch.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I think making sure you're both on the same page as to the game's tone would have been an important step. I don't see anything inherently wrong with the way he played any of this, though, so long as he would have been willing to go along with anything you tried.

I think being a LG 1st level fighter doesn't mean you have to be suicidally brave and principled. You have to be willing to admit to the fact that you're a small fish right now. You have to be willing to approach problems cleverly. You have to be willing to take hits to your pride. Note, all of this is moot if the GM was just planning on railroading you, in which case all you can do is stop playing.

I'd suggest giving this another shot. This may well be the sort of game where you're remaking characters on a semi-regular basis until you find one that sticks. Consider even alternating DMs when a PC dies.

[Vitruviansquid]

Really? You're meant to ask the GM whether the game he's about to run is going to be playable before you agree to participate?

[Tengu_temp]

Really? You're meant to ask the GM whether the game he's about to run is going to be playable before you agree to participate?

You're meant to make sure you're both on the same page about what the game will be about. If the player expects a game about grand heroism, and the DM runs an opportunistic murderhobo campaign, then you have a problem. A problem that could be avoided if there was better communication before the whole thing started.

[Vitruviansquid]

You're meant to make sure you're both on the same page about what the game will be about. If the player expects a game about grand heroism, and the DM runs an opportunistic murderhobo campaign, then you have a problem. A problem that could be avoided if there was better communication before the whole thing started.

I'm pretty sure it should go without saying that the player wants a game where he/she can do things like make decisions.

[Fri]

I'm pretty sure it should go without saying that the player wants a game where he/she can do things like make decisions.

Let me point out just some part of differing premise the gm and player had in their mind here. Mind that, none of them are wrong, both can make good game, if both gm and player have the same idea.

1.GM thought a campaign where the player character would be fine with doing job for mob boss. Player made a character where it's unthinkable for him to doing job with mob boss.
2. GM thought a campaign where the player character is relatively weak in the world and it's normal for the player character to ask for help from the town guard. Player thought the town guard would be below him and asking for help from town guards is unheroic.

[Lacco]

He has experience as a player, but no real experience as a GM.

Let's not miss this part.

I once persuaded 3 of my best players to GM one session. The best player came up with a story about dopplegangers, which would require huge amount of railroading ("then they go there and find this..."), centered on his DMPC (which was changed for a doppleganger, but we did not know it until we jumped through all hoops), had 0 decision points and he was very surprised when we unintentionally crashed by actually catching the doppleganger DMPC (which we were not supposed to do...).

The other players fared better, because I reviewed their prep material (they kept some spoilers to themselves, but presented the basic story), asked them questions, gave some advice and told them especially what not to do (second player originally had very similar plan - a underground boss gives the party a quest they would never accept - and they would attempt to kill the boss also; so we changed it and nice old man gave them the quest... and they found out he was secretly working for an underground boss...).

So, a good player does not necessarily make a good GM. I considered myself a good player, but when I started GMing, I was rather terrible. I had to work to become at least semi-competent.

My advice? Try again. Help him - show him where it went wrong. As Fri stated, he is most probably in the same state as you are - so try again, but this time work with the guy. Or switch the roles for one game, show him what to do (e.g. the pre-game talk about expectations, the character building where GM takes active part and asks about the possible story hooks...). And maybe ask him what game he wants to run, so you can make a character for that game.

[kamikasei]

Your character was suicidally reckless. Your GM should probably have had the guards subdue rather than kill you, and contrived some way for the mob boss to compel your compliance (a geas, a threat to a loved one, etc.). Of course, you should both have been clearer on what kind of game you wanted to begin with.

Why did your character think it was better to say "you'll just have to kill me" rather than, say, taking the job and sabotaging the shipment? Working with the authorities to catch both gangs in a sting?

Why did the mob boss approach you if you were the type to completely reject a legitimate offer of work? Why would he try to force you into the job if you didn't want it? Why would he kill you for refusing rather than take measures to ensure you couldn't refuse? In short, how did your character end up in this situation to begin with?

[NichG]

At the GM level (what he could have done):

Well, this was a sequence of mistakes. Your friend didn't adapt his ideas to an understanding of your character, much less spend any time feeling your character out or understanding what kinds of motives or behaviors you were going to exhibit. The result was a terribly mismatched plotline that he tried to brute force, and it broke.

He could have solved this by giving you a clue of what kind of scenario he was thinking of ahead of time, so you could have avoided making an LG character for this game. Since he didn't do that, it was on him to adapt the circumstances to you, which he also failed to do (though perhaps he didn't get the hint that you were reluctant so he thought it was going fine).

At a certain point, probably when you went to the mob lair, the game entered a dead end sequence. From there on, there was probably no way for both you and the GM to leave the situation without feeling that some kind of immersion-breaking thing had happened (or, here, a TPK). Basically, at that point he as a GM needed to be looking for outs, alternatives, or ways to minimize the compromise - but with the expectation that no matter what happened there would be some dissatisfaction with the session. Instead, he escalated under the mistaken impression that increasing pressure would increase compliance and force through the awkward scene (often new GMs think this works because it matches fiction, but it almost never works with players).

At that point, he was basically down to deus ex machinas to salvage the situation. The guards do nonlethal, you wake up in jail framed for a crime that was really committed by the mob, the game continues. You'd still likely be pissed off about the railroaded intro (but that was inevitable in some form at that point anyhow) but it'd be a clean slate and you'd have a couple good motives to pursue going forward. If your friend is a first time GM, having the flexibility to swing the intended plot 180 degrees and run something totally different on the fly may not be something he was capable of coming up with, but that kind of skill is what hopefully he'd eventually develop.

At the character level (what you could have done):

Ultimately, you pick your character, and not all character archetypes are equal. If you want to be able to salvage this kind of situation, you need to be ahead of the GM in terms of understanding what aspects of your chosen character might cause irreconcilable problems and take actions ahead of time to avoid going down dead-ends like this one. With a very strictly-defined character, this can become impossible. Sometimes the paladin has to nobly sacrifice themselves. Of course, here it happened 15 minutes in...

I tend towards playing very flexible characters because in part of the inevitability of situations like these. A rigid character has the problem that, going into a situation, their actions are already to a great degree decided, and everything that follows is an inevitability. Your character dying there was being very true to themself - their ideals were more valuable than their life and they stuck with that - but their personal truth wasn't one that could survive in that world.

A more flexible character could have played along then betrayed the mob boss, using the vulnerability created by the mob's reliance on them to make a move to wipe out the mob. But that means subsuming their expression of their ideals so as to better serve them in the long run (and of course this also runs the edge of ends vs means, etc). So, I tend towards flexible characters because that lets me pick up the slack if the GM writes himself into a corner or glitches out like this, and do what I need to do to make it work.

[Satinavian]

Well, it was not a good hook for the character. That is a serious mistake and something DMs have to learn by adventures not played by their players.

Trying to use force to get someone into the adventure also is not a very good idea as characters and players will be not very motivated to actually fullfill the quest and will be motivated to somehow make the qustgiver pay for the pressure. It can be done and it can be good, butt most often it isn't.


Other than that i don't think the DM did anything wrong. In fact i would probably done the same. A mob boss does not do fair fights, dangerous criminals are often dangerous and starting a fight when the (more resourcefull and ruthless) opponent has a superior position is nothing but suicide. If a player things his character would sooner die than working for a criminal or even pretend to work for a criminal to sabotage him later, then so be it. It is his decision to make.
If i as DM know that i have such a character in a group, i would try to avoid situations where he will die if played consistantly with his ideals. But if i don't know it, well, too bad. I try to know the characters but if something like this happened at a convention or a spontanious game, i wouldn't save the character from his own death wish or stupidity.

Decisions are meaningful in games. Which means desastrous decisions must be allowed.

[Darth Ultron]

The GM tells me that he made them as weak as he could, but if they were any lower level they would never have risen to the position of leadership over the gang. And he isn't wrong.

Further he tells me that just because I am running a solo game without a party he can't justify nerfing the entire world down to my level. And again, he isn't wrong.

Sounds wrong to me. You can have a weak leader ''chunky game mechanics wise'' and even more so ''combat wise''. For example Boss Hog could have been a 3rd level expert and the thugs 2nd level commoners.

But more to the point the DM was wrong having the Kingpin meet the 1st level character. See...The Kingpin does not meet nobodies, that is why he has a mob of underlings. So the PC should have been meeting with ''mob guy #7'', not the Kingpin (more like The Penguin in season one of Gotham).

So yes, a DM must ''nerf'' the world down to a PC's level. At most the PC should be meeting ''assistant under sub wanna be boss someday #7'', not the Kingpin of Crime at first level for any potential combat encounter.

Also ''high level mob guys'' can ''make mistakes'' to give a poor 1st level PC the advantage. The most common here is simple over confidence...where the mob guys attack one at a time...with their fists or such. They might also turn their backs or leave a weapon out and so on and so on.

And if the DM was stuck on ''the world must be high level and powerful'', that is when the DM also has the player have more then one character or starts at a higher level or gives the PC a powerful item and such.

And in general the ''forced game play'' where an NPC (aka DM) is a bad idea for a lot of groups and games. It can be fun....sometimes...but way too often it's just a bad way for one person to control another person for their own fun. And that is no fun for the person being controlled. And it's only worse when the character is weak and can't ''do'' anything about it. So, in a general sense, this type of game play should be avoided. After all for Boss Hog to bribe the character would be a much better way to go.......(in fact, to use Gotham, again, that storyline works great: have the bad guy and good guy team up for ''good'').

[Grod_The_Giant]

It perhaps wasn't the best hook for your character, but... you DID draw on a crime boss, on his home turf, as a level 1 character. The consequences of that seem... fairly predictable. He said "I'll have revenge if you turn me down!" and you tried to skip straight to that climax. There were ample ways out without escalating the situation. I like to think that I'd have set things up in a different way, but I don't think I'd have had that be a winnable fight either.

[ImNotTrevor]

This problem was, as most Talakeal problems are, a communication problem. (And, by extension, most problems at most tables are communication problems.)

I'm not gonna put blame on anyone in particular, either. Here are my suggestions for avoiding this breed of problem in the future (bearing in mind that some of these may or may not have happened, but I have no way of knowing):
1. Before building a character, talk to the GM about what kind of campaign they plan on having.

2. Players should build characters together, with the GM present. As a group, as much as possible. If you make Raznel the Barbarian who absolutely hates wizards and discover that the party also has Malcador The Inscrutable who is very proud of his wizardness then you have an immediate and glaring problem caused by lack of communication. Don't let that happen. Session 0 can be a great session.

3. There is no rule that says a player or GM can't pump the brakes on the action and say "woah, hold on, this doesn't seem to be the tone we agreed on/I planned for..." And there is also no rule that says after a mistake is made that isn't just a bad roll that the GM and player(s) can't agree on giving it a do-over now that we're clearer on some things and the person-to-person layer has been sorted out. (Especially a mistake like this. I would probably give my player a chance to reconfigure their thinking and then try it again)

[GungHo]

What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

[Talakeal]

The DM and I actually did talk about the campaign, a lot.

We just weren't quite on the same page; he was thinking The Godfather and I was thinking Yojimbo (Or For a Fistful of Dollars for you Americans, or Last Man Standing for you fans of 90s Bruce Willis).

In my mind part of the social contract is that the DM gives the PCs plot hooks. The PCs agree to find a justification for following the plot hooks, and the DM makes sure that the plot hooks lead to level appropriate challenges.

I was honestly expecting a choice as to whether or not I sided with or against the mob boss, and I expected that if I went against him he would be a bog standard "bandit captain" out of the monster manuals with common "bandits" for guards, a very tough but still winnable fight. That they would actually have PC levels, AND be several levels higher than me, caught me completely and utterly off guard.

Why did your character think it was better to say "you'll just have to kill me" rather than, say, taking the job and sabotaging the shipment? Working with the authorities to catch both gangs in a sting?

Honestly, that never occurred to me.

That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.

[kyoryu]

If I'm the GM, I'm the one saying "What the hell."

Or more specifically, how the heck you two are gaming without confirming what the premise of the game, which is already important in normal game, and even more so in solo game.

This. So much this. It's so much this, it's turned into a plural and is now "these".

Saying "Let's play D&D!" IS NOT ENOUGH. Ever. You need to figure out the basic concepts of what you're doing. Saying "let's play D&D!" is like saying "let's go see a movie!" without any further understanding, and then people don't understand why campaigns fall apart when one person is expecting Sleepless in Seattle and the other is expecting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

[ComaVision]

Honestly, that never occurred to me.

That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.

If dying is "heroic" then I guess you succeeded in being a hero.

I don't think the DM did great here but you certainly could've not tried to get yourself immediately killed a little better. It actually sounds like you blatantly got your character killed. I'm pretty sure you'd die pretty quickly in one of my games too because threatening powerful people without any backup is just really, REALLY bad practice.

[Talakeal]

If dying is "heroic" then I guess you succeeded in being a hero.

I don't think the DM did great here but you certainly could've not tried to get yourself immediately killed a little better. It actually sounds like you blatantly got your character killed. I'm pretty sure you'd die pretty quickly in one of my games too because threatening powerful people without any backup is just really, REALLY bad practice.

To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.

But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".

Would you say the same thing if I had agreed to go on his job, and then the guys who were hijacking his shipment were also all fourth level?


If I had been playing intelligently or true to the character I would have simply left town as soon as I got the letter, I knew that no good could come of it, but I didn't want to give the DM too much of a headache on his first try and decided to go along with the plot instead.

[ImNotTrevor]

Yeah, in a game like Apocalypse World or Dungeon World this whole thing would have ended very badly.

In the former, stuff WORSE than death would have happened. Granted, PCs are by default stronger than NPCs in that system, but really bad things would have come knocking even if you'd killed them all.
(The entire rest of the gang now hates you and wants you dead, for instance.)

It's also worth noting that talking about a campaign premise for a long time does not mean you've communicated well.
This is evidence of that.

[BRC]

If your character balked at guarding contraband from a rival gang, then I'd say there was a pretty big miscommunication here. Like, as far as Shady Criminal Behavior goes, that's about as light as it gets, short of robin-hood style "Steal from the Rich to give to the Poor" type arrangements.

Unless the Contraband in question was something especially dangerous, and your character would rather see it destroyed?

Okay, breaking things down.

Failure Point #1: The Pre-Session Conversation. You wanted more of a "Fistful-of-Dollars" mercenary character, your GM assumed that meant you were down for being a criminal.
I can't place the blame on either side without getting more details, but either you didn't properly communicate that your character would not agree to helping criminals, or your GM didn't successfully communicate that his idea of "Mercenary Work" included working for Criminals. That said, I could see this mistake happening pretty easily.


Failure Point #2: The Plot Hook.
A GM should always be willing to throw away their plans, even if it means ending a session early. Considering this situation, once your character turned down the job, that should probably have been the end of it. While a Mob Boss making "An offer you can't refuse" is a classic, it only really makes sense where the service requested is one that the target is uniquely situated to provide. If he was just looking for some extra muscle, I don't think it makes sense for him to try to threaten you, unless you're the only swordsman in the city that he could hire.

Fault: GM. The correct move there is to say "Well, I have nothing else planned", end the session, and try again later. Threat makes no sense in this situation unless there is some context I am missing.

Failure Point #3: The Fight.
Just because it's POSSIBLE, doesn't mean the GM is required to make it a good idea. Had the GM done their job better, you wouldn't be in this situation, but you did directly challenge a mob boss and his goons to a fight under the assumption that, because they were there, you could take them.

Fault: Player. I'm going to side with the GM on this one, if a Mob Boss and his goons can get taken out by a lone 1st level character, they don't deserve their position in the underworld.


As I see it, the GM approached you with only one option: Take the Deal. You made a legitimate in-character decision, and rejected the deal. He then offered you a choice: Take the deal now, or suffer the Don's Wrath. You insisted on fighting the Don then and there.

Yes, the GM is obligated to give you appropriate encounters, but you passed up two options that could have led to appropriate encounters: Fighting the other gang, or dealing with whatever goons the don sends after you. The fight with the mob boss happened on your initiative, not the GM's.

[ComaVision]

To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.

Yeah, I got that he threatened you first, but I don't think, "Come at me bro" was a nonthreatening response.

But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".

I suppose I was unfair. It depends a lot on your group's culture and the game. In my groups, level 1s know they will not be able to challenge any faction leaders.

Would you say the same thing if I had agreed to go on his job, and then the guys who were hijacking his shipment were also all fourth level?

Probably not. I would expect an encounter he basically railroaded you to could be survived (whether by winning, escaping, or whatever).

If I had been playing intelligently or true to the character I would have simply left town as soon as I got the letter, I knew that no good could come of it, but I didn't want to give the DM too much of a headache on his first try and decided to go along with the plot instead.

That's a good intention but it makes me wonder why you didn't continue to adapt by not challenging the "quest giver".

[kamikasei]

Honestly, that never occurred to me.

That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.

...What problems doesn't it solve? You get to live, and you get to either screw over the criminal who strong-armed you, or actually bring him to justice, depending on what you and the authorities can come up with together. When someone you don't like threatens you to get you to do something you don't want to, one reaction is to tell them to get stuffed and deal with the consequences, but saying "yeah, sure" and making good use of the leverage they've now given you over them is perfectly heroic, and much more interesting.

To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.

Calling a bluff only makes sense if you have reason to think the person's bluffing. And when dealing with someone like a crime boss, implying in front of their subordinates (or even just to them directly) that their threats are empty is a bad idea. At that point it becomes bad business and an affront to their pride to let you walk away.

But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".

Would you say the same thing if I had agreed to go on his job, and then the guys who were hijacking his shipment were also all fourth level?

Consider: the mob boss is hiring you to guard the shipment, so he expects you to be able to successfully defend it. He's allowing you in to a personal meeting with him, so he doesn't expect you to be able to defeat him and his guards.

It sounds like the core problem here is with this assumption that the DM will avoid throwing encounters at you above your level, which on one level is a reasonable assumption, but here is twisted into "I'm immune to getting myself into water too hot for me to handle" - you were level one, and these guys were only levels 3-4, quite low level in my book for an NPC of any importance or influence. The first suggestion I'd make is to be more cautious and more flexible in when you resort to violence, or urge potential enemies to do so, but the second would be to work with the DM to assess the threat posed by an NPC before deciding how to handle them - in character you should probably have had a good idea of how dangerous a fight you were getting yourself in to, which you as a player didn't seem to know.

Of course, since PCs are traditionally heedless of dangers to their own well-being, the proper thing for an NPC in this situation to do is to apply external leverage. A missed opportunity on the GM's part, there.

added:

I was honestly expecting a choice as to whether or not I sided with or against the mob boss, and I expected that if I went against him he would be a bog standard "bandit captain" out of the monster manuals with common "bandits" for guards, a very tough but still winnable fight. That they would actually have PC levels, AND be several levels higher than me, caught me completely and utterly off guard.

But it sounds like you got a choice; he said you'd "regret it", but that just means you have the plot complication of someone powerful being pissed with you, and possibly sending xp piñatas assassins after you down the line, or otherwise making your life complicated. You took "if you reject my offer, you'll regret it" and turned it into "fine, let's have it out right here and now", apparently expecting a duel? On top of the other problems with that, it's way out of line with what seems like a clearly set-up genre trope.

[Tengu_temp]

Its logical, but, I don't know, going to the city guard and begging them to save you? That just seems so ignoble and, well, humiliating.

Aren't PCs supposed to be heroes?

That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.

You're suicidally overconfident in the power of a single level 1 adventurer. If you want to play a powerful hero, ask the DM to let you start with a higher level character.

Also, frankly, this whole "looking for help is ignoble and everything but direct confrontation is unheroic" approach you have is a problem; an in-game one, and possibly a personal one.

[Grod_The_Giant]

To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.

But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".

I repeat, you were in a crime lord's place of power. Short of an explicit agreement with the DM, why on earth would you expect that?

[Talakeal]

You're suicidally overconfident in the power of a single level 1 adventurer. If you want to play a powerful hero, ask the DM to let you start with a higher level character.

Also, frankly, this whole "looking for help is ignoble and everything but direct confrontation is unheroic" approach you have is a problem; an in-game one, and possibly a personal one.

When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him? Sometimes they will go to the cops, find that the cops are corrupt / incompetent, and THEN handle the problem themselves (usually after their family was killed for a bit of cheap drama), but I can't think of any of the top of my head where going to the cops actually solves the problem.

I repeat, you were in a crime lord's place of power. Short of an explicit agreement with the DM, why on earth would you expect that?

Having bodyguards who are higher level than the boss is just weird, from both a gamist and a narrativist perspective. I can see having them be of a more martial class than the boss (even going so far as to make the boss an expert / aristocrat), but having the mooks be higher level than their master is just plain weird.

It sounds like the core problem here is with this assumption that the DM will avoid throwing encounters at you above your level, which on one level is a reasonable assumption, but here is twisted into "I'm immune to getting myself into water too hot for me to handle" - you were level one, and these guys were only levels 3-4, quite low level in my book for an NPC of any importance or influence. The first suggestion I'd make is to be more cautious and more flexible in when you resort to violence, or urge potential enemies to do so, but the second would be to work with the DM to assess the threat posed by an NPC before deciding how to handle them - in character you should probably have had a good idea of how dangerous a fight you were getting yourself in to, which you as a player didn't seem to know.

We are playing an e6 game, and when I DM I typically follow the Alexandrian guidelines:

Spoiler: Calibrating Your Expectations

Show

So what have we learned so far? Almost everyone you have ever met is a 1st level character. The few exceptional people you’ve met are probably 2nd or 3rd level – they’re canny and experienced and can accomplish things that others find difficult or impossible.

If you know someone who’s 4th level, then you’re privileged to know one of the most talented people around: They’re a professional sports player. Or a brain surgeon. Or a rocket scientist.

If you know someone who’s 5th level, then you have the honor of knowing someone that will probably be written about in history books. Walter Payton. Michael Jordan. Albert Einstein. Isaac Newton. Miyamoto Musashi. William Shakespeare.

So when your D&D character hits 6th level, it means they’re literally superhuman: They are capable of achieving things that no human being has ever been capable of achieving. They have transcended the mortal plane and become a mythic hero.

So a level 4 fighter is someone who could, in my mind, be a member of a highly elite special forces unit in the payroll of a mighty emperor, earning fame and fortune in gladiatorial tournaments, or even becoming a minor warlord in their own right. IMO they aren't the kind of guys who hang around in a bar all day listening to some two-bit crime boss waiting for someone to start trouble.

[Cluedrew]

Having bodyguards who are higher level than the boss is just weird, from both a gamist and a narrativist perspective. I can see having them be of a more martial class than the boss (even going so far as to make the boss an expert / aristocrat), but having the mooks be higher level than their master is just plain weird.

Well in D&D level is very closely tied to combat strength and only very loosely tied to other types of power. The NPC classes go against this trend a bit but at the same time... I don't care what the boss's to-hit bonus is if he is not supposed to see combat. National leaders are probably level 1 as they have never seen combat.

[kyoryu]

We are playing an e6 game, and when I DM I typically follow the Alexandrian guidelines:

I don't think those guidelines are anywhere near universal.

A lot of them were based on the idea "of course 3.x is realistic! Now let's back-calibrate everything appropriately to match expectations!"

[kamikasei]

We are playing an e6 game

That's information that should be in the OP, as it changes the context a fair bit. I'd say running an E6 game with that interpretation of what levels mean is a bad idea for a first time GM, and my earlier advice about taking the measure of the people you're dealing with is doubly important here.

When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him? Sometimes they will go to the cops, find that the cops are corrupt / incompetent, and THEN handle the problem themselves (usually after their family was killed for a bit of cheap drama), but I can't think of any of the top of my head where going to the cops actually solves the problem.

No, that's... okay, firstly, an RPG is not an action movie. Secondly, your character's behaviour should not be genre-savvy like that. Sure, there's a place for focusing on the approaches that fit the genre of the game you're playing, but assuming that there's no point dealing with the authorities - that's just making trouble for yourself. For one thing, if simply going to them would solve the problem completely, then how would this mob boss operate? It'd be reasonable to assume that any help they could offer would still involve heroic actions from your character - they demand a favour from you to help, or they want to use you to draw out the mob, etc. For another, if your LG character who wouldn't even think of getting mixed up with a criminal also won't even consider dealing with the guard, then the disconnect between you and your GM was larger than you realize.

edit: Also, hang on, no. This level thing is a red herring. If they had been the same level as you, and you're a lone character not in a party, then fighting 3-on-1 would still have been suicidally reckless (you describe it as "a very tough but still winnable fight", but IC it's a huge risk); chances are good you'd have died anyway. The problem is not that these enemies were tougher than you expected; the problem is that you escalated to immediate violence against the GM's expectations when it didn't make any sense to do so except on the assumption that any fight, including one you provoke for yourself, will be winnable.

[Koo Rehtorb]

When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him? Sometimes they will go to the cops, find that the cops are corrupt / incompetent, and THEN handle the problem themselves (usually after their family was killed for a bit of cheap drama), but I can't think of any of the top of my head where going to the cops actually solves the problem.

If you signed up for an action movie and the GM didn't then that's a source of your problems right there.