D&D 4e/5e Encounters Take Ten Damage - oh yes, we're playing already, btw!

I went to the D&D encounters program the other night. It had this section where you essentially get held and these monsters say a strange rhyme in your head, then...well, they ask you questions, but the start of my problem is that I thought they were still just saying some rhyme. And if you don't answer the question in ten seconds, you take ten damage automatically.

That's part of the problem of these heavily scripted yet not acknowledging it modules for this series - the scripted game just wont let you do certain things. So how about a cue for when were supposed to do something, rather than just go along with the script?

Most of us went down after a few unanswered or incorrectly answered questions. Wait no, we got to the end, we rolled initiative, then actually no, initiative doesn't matter (even a nat twenty +12), they go first. Drops me and some others. I'm not sure if there was a safety net built into that or if it could just TPK everyone.

The other thing is, this is thick with GM fiat. This isn't the game. It's not like it's part of the regular rules that you decided to play. How can you like this as being the game? I mean, if someone wrote an RPG which had this question and damage stuff in the rules, then for that RPG that'd be the game you set out to play. That'd be fine.

Here, it's obviously the author of the module sticking this thing in and...I don't know, I guess I have some scope to accept 'Oh yes, that's what I signed up for' when I didn't explicitly accept something. And this isn't within the scope of what I signed up for. It's clearly this interjection on the authors part. But I get the feeling I'm supposed to evaluate it as being part of D&D (as in the game - as in rules and such. Not the fluff). Well no, not the D&D I signed up for, anyway.

It's almost like they try and train you what D&D IS is various things that you didn't sign up for when you decided to join D&D. Yes, get your head around that! If this is 5e's direction - it's just back to the head hurting murky non game play of yesteryear. Gameplay who's tension was more about nobody knowing what the hell to do next at a basic procedural level.