I am sorry you feel that way. I did try to drag the ending out, giving you the chance to, and information enough to, alter your headlong charge into something else, as the odds were simply too overwhelming to survive, but you decided to press on.
What information was that, then? "You see a dozen mooks you've handily dispatched before, and a couple of what are clearly bosses"? I don't recall anything along the lines of a warning from you.
As for not naming your characters by name it was just math trying to illustrate the odds, not sum up your achievements or individuality. Indeed, that is part of the problem; by thinking of your characters are something more than a guardsman or space marine, you risk devaluing the threats and inflating your own sense of power and chances.
Gosh, yes, why would we think of ourselves as heroes in a roleplaying game? Forget Battle Brother Zhar Kalgron, the Traveller, veteran of a hundred battles against xeno and traitor alike, with his tribally scrimshawed armour and mighty, ancient weapons. I should, of course, have been thinking of Tactical Marine #4, with average stats and nothing out of the ordinary.
Clearly, you didn't think you could lose. I could have been clearer on telling you that you most definitely could, and for that I apologize, but the consequences were dictated by your actions, your choices.
By 'could have been clearer' do you mean 'could actually have told us anything'? None of us had any idea what we were up against, how dangerous they were, or what they were armed with. Which I find particularly irritating, since the epithet
you gave me was 'been everywhere, seen everything'. Of course we attacked, we didn't know what we were fighting! Given that we took out the first three without any real fuss, I'm not sure how you expected us to feel in danger, or that these were insurmountable odds.
But the thing that hacks me off the most is that you just killed us. Flat out. Game over. Fade to black.
I'm not averse to characters dying. Some of my favourite moments in games have been when a character fell; maybe selling their life dearly to buy their comrades time; sacrificing themselves to strike a killing blow; or even just succumbing after a hard-fought, epic battle against a superior foe. So I hope you understand when I say that I would have at least appreciated more than 'you get stabbed in the back and die'. Which is practically a novel compared to what you gave the poor bloody Guardsmen (which was nothing). This was just 'Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies'.
In fact, I think this is your most telling comment:
If this had been a movie then one or two of you might have lived to struggle on, but this format does not lend itself to something like that.
It
is a movie, or it might as well be. I don't know why I need to tell you this, but people play roleplaying games because they want to be heroes. We
want to struggle on against overwhelming odds, and triumph over them. Yes, we should be in danger. Yes, we should stumble. And, yes, we might even fail. But you should at least give us the chance to do those things. Just a flat 'nope, you die' is not good enough. Not by a long shot. It's not something I'd pull on the players in the tabletop games I GM, and it's not something I expect to be pulled on me.
So, yeah, not at all impressed. Particularly from someone who published their own gaming system, I would have expected better.