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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 1505729" data-attributes="member: 645">Ok, I see I made a mistake asking for helpful stories and not offering any of my own.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> So here goes.  As a DM, I had two low-level PCs surrender to a bunch of orcs when they were sneaking up too close to the orcs's lair scouting, and got caught on a narrow mountain path between the guards at the cave entrance and an orc patrol returning from a hunt.  (If the PCs had left rather than linger to eavesdrop on the orc guards' lazy gossip forever, they'd have been able to avoid the patrol or at least meet it down in the forest where they'd have had room to maneuvre and/or escape.) There were a number of newbie players in the group and I couldn't be sure that keeping OOC knowledge and IC knowledge separate would work, so I took the players of the captured PCs out of the room to run a split session.  The prisoners were casually questioned (AIR one got a nasty torch burn on her face in the process), then locked up and left in the dark. They escaped from the cell when the rogue finally got that pesky lock picked, stumbled around for a while trying to get out but not daring to lighting a light source, then their friends, who - both players and PCs - believed them dead, ran a frotal assault on the orcs' lair and the alarm was raised. The prisoners scattered and hid, one of them being recaptured before the other PCs overran the caves.  I don't remember how now, but they all survived.  I may have been too lenient on the recaptured PC, who surely should have made for a useful hostage ... The players said they enjoyed the session, including the bits where we were playing in separate rooms. (I remember I kept wracking my mind how to keep them all reasonably entertained without even being able to be audience in between stints of play - it was difficult to cut between groups at reasonable intervals because there was a lot of RP going on, which is hard to time.)  The way the capture and escape attempt went, the PCs were able to be active most of the time, except for a few tense moments when first questioned, which I think was important.  Also I did tell the players afterwards how I'd been counting time when the PC scouts dithered eavesdropping on the mountain path while the orc patrol approached home, which I think helped - they trusted me generally I guess, but were glad to see that I hadn't pulled a patrol out of my sleeve sorta arbitrarily just to 'punish' them for splitting from the main group.</blockquote>

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