Situation 1:
See, that's WHY people keep b_tching about alignments. =w=
It actually misrepresented the idea of character ideologies itself. It's based on the Heroes' Journey characterization of old style fantasy troupes, but Instead of "characterization" players treated them like a sort of "Law", which the pre-3E descriptions of them really didn't help.
So it either made players thought "they had to be this and this", or gave excuses for players to be @-holes "because I am this and this" blahblahblah...
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Situation 2:
I'm wondering though: Is this an official scenario? Or is it self-made?
Cause depending on presentation, sometimes it could seem like things suddenly jumped from 1>11 out of nowhere. Of course that could happen in official ones too, but its more often in self-made ones.
(I once jumped a Dragon into a lizardman-level enemies game. I mean I expected them to be able to handle it...
Well, one guy just up and disappeared right then and there. v=3=v)
"It's a game". "It's one-off". "It's no big deal". "You won 't actually lose anything". "Dying is just your character".
But it did matter.
Even if it's "just a character in a one-off", players still don't wanna die.
(Or sometimes you have some people who just expected to be a hero and grind through everything... They just didn't want all the step in between. And yeah you could say its not what they expected I guess? Well, same idea.)
If the scenario gave the idea that they're in over their heads... Some would just give up.
Seemed like less time and face lost if you just dropped it right now instead of following through.
Even when the GM wanted them to win, its a player side perspective.
Of course the player should work with the GM to get to the goal together... But it's a tough thing to balance.