Hoping to get some advice regarding the start to my new campaign and the issue of player agency. So I am going to be running an AP where the game starts with the players as prisoners following a raid on their home village. So I was originally planning to run it as written with them starting off having to orchestrate their escape. I recently listened to a podcast of a group running the same AP where the GM elected to role-play the prologue. So the players got to play through their inevitable capture. The players seemed ok with it (I suspect they knew this was going to happen).
So my inclination is to start as planned with them already captured. However, I can see some upsides to role-playing the prologue. It could be dramatic. They could gain intel on their enemy that they may not have otherwise. They can potentially do things that may help them later. They can also decide how they lost/got caught. However, players don’t like loosing agency and being in a situation where their choices don’t effect the overall outcome. Having them start already captured bypasses that feeling and starts them off with more agency.
So my question is this: Would you want to role-play the prologue or just start at the actual beginning of the adventure? If I made it clear that we are role playing the prologue and that this isn’t the actual start of the adventure and that the final outcome of being captured is a fixed and unchangeable event, is there still value for the player in this? I feel like some players would like to decide how they failed/got captured or may want the chance to do other things. Or should I just start them in jail and narrate how they ended up there?
So my inclination is to start as planned with them already captured. However, I can see some upsides to role-playing the prologue. It could be dramatic. They could gain intel on their enemy that they may not have otherwise. They can potentially do things that may help them later. They can also decide how they lost/got caught. However, players don’t like loosing agency and being in a situation where their choices don’t effect the overall outcome. Having them start already captured bypasses that feeling and starts them off with more agency.
So my question is this: Would you want to role-play the prologue or just start at the actual beginning of the adventure? If I made it clear that we are role playing the prologue and that this isn’t the actual start of the adventure and that the final outcome of being captured is a fixed and unchangeable event, is there still value for the player in this? I feel like some players would like to decide how they failed/got captured or may want the chance to do other things. Or should I just start them in jail and narrate how they ended up there?