How do you deal with captured PCs?

[Doug McCrae]

Losing your stuff while staying alive in captivity is, for the player, pretty much the worst thing that can happen because now the game will slow down and options will be reduced. Players know this which is why PCs never surrender. There's probably also a concern that the DM won't take the reduced stuff into consideration with his CRs.

From a plausibility PoV, it's hard to justify the NPCs doing anything other than killing the PCs and taking their stuff. Having them sold into slavery is reasonable provided they are not high enough level to be an obvious danger. The death trap is very pulp/comic book. Normally I'm a huge fan of anything in that vein but in this case it stretches credulity a bit much.

One thing I hate as a player is being forced to do a job for the capturers through magical mind control, exploding slave collars and the like. I mean I know we don't have much freedom as players, but at least retain the illusion, 'kay?

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Hill Giant.

Sodomy.

(Actually it was a Body Cavity Search, the Halfling shouldn'y have mentioned his "Hidden Ring").

I played in one game where the every player walked out. Here's how the modules went.

1. Make the Palyers fight all these bad guys with Magical Gear out the Wazoo to make it really, really hard.

2. After they've killed the Bad Guys & taken all their cool stuff, capture them & let them start back over naked with a Loin cloth/

3. Repeat 1 & 3 Ad Nauseum.


After the 5th Time, we all walked out; cause we knew what was coming next.


I tend to rarely capture PC's as Dungeon Torture scenes are not exactly fun to Role-play out.

With your average gamer that is...

 

[Glyfair]

From a plausibility PoV, it's hard to justify the NPCs doing anything other than killing the PCs and taking their stuff.

Again, this is a bit of "gamer logic," although it happened more often than "strip opponents naked." Prisoners tended to be valuable and were rarely wasted by killing, though there were circumstances where taking prisoners wasn't practical.

Having them sold into slavery is reasonable provided they are not high enough level to be an obvious danger.

Actually, the better fighters were more likely to be kept alive. They were much more valuable often with high weregild. If they were politically important they were kept alive to be tried and punished (often with death) for maximum propaganda.

I'm not saying killing the survivors didn't happen. However, it's far from "hard to justify doing anything else." Otherwise the various accords for "prisoners of war" would be pointless.

 

[Marshal Lucky]

And this, IME, is a recipe for a disasterous game. Whenever a GM says the players/characters should do anything, it's an almost certain sign that everybody is going to end up annoyed. After all, players never do what they SHOULD, but rather what they WANT to do.

For instance, when the GM says "Well, the players should enjoy getting captured, having all their stuff taken away, and then sitting around for three months being abused until my GMPC rescues them...", the players are likely to say "You know, a TPK and starting over with new characters will be faster and more fun than watching the GM put his hand down his pants for three months."

Sometimes second guessing players can work, just like capturing, stripping and torturing characters can work. But IME, nine times out of ten it doesen't so its better to be sure of what the players would like beforehand.

Eric Tolle

Amen!

If a DM is going to make the decisions for the PCs, he should play by himself since he doesn't need players.

 

[Marshal Lucky]

I tell my players all the time that they 'should do whatever they want in the game'. They never seem annoyed by that

If a player wants to be a numbskull and tell the 20+ burly men in front of him that he'd rather die then hand over his magic sword, they are free to do that in my game. But after they are dead and the NPCs walk away with the dead players magic sword, I will always tell them that they should learn to pick their fights

I never understood that type of player logic. When I'm a player and I think I'm screwed, I will give my captors the fillings in my teeth if it means I have a chance to survive. If I'm alive, I can figure out how to get my stuff back...if I'm dead, well my stuff isn't going to matter anymore since I'll be rolling up a new character.

If something bad happens to a player's character, then he shouts "railroading". So if he's captured and fails to retrieve his stuff, then he says it's wrong for DMs to capture PCs. But I'm sure that same player doesn't call it railroading when the DM creates a scenario for the PC to find magic items. After all, that's also railroading.

There's nothing wrong with capturing PCs as long as the intention is to make the game more interesting...whether or not it was railroading. If the DM has an agenda behind the capture other than for it to be story related, then I agree that it's a bad thing.

I think you're confusing the issue. If the characters are caught through actual play of the game (and not by the DM cheating), then it's not railroading. If the DM cheats, it's railroading.

 

[Nyeshet]

It is just another part of the adventure. What exactly happens depends on the situation.

If they are captured by authorities in a region known for gladatorial combat, they may find themselves conscripted for entertainment of the masses. They do well and they may gain friends - or at least contacts - that might help them escape later. Or their combats raise their level enough to allow them to escape in a manner they couldn't at first.

Perhaps they were simply placed in the local prison. A jailbreak could be planned, and until the local lords, magistrates, sheriffs, etc decide what to do with their gear it is likely nearby - although the chance of a piece going missing becomes more likely as the days pass, giving insentive to break out as soon as possible.

Note that the PCs are not stripped when they are imprisoned. They are searched, and any gear found is taken. If it is not found, however, it is still on them for later use. The Hide skill, for use in concealing small items on one's person, can be invaluable.

 

[bowbe]

For whatever reason PCs getting captured seldom happens (in my 25+ years) of gaming.

The 3ed route lends itself (IMHO) to a certain player mindset that they are more or less invincible, and if some challenge spirals out of the grasp of their billion feats and feat books or billion spells and spell books then the GM is obviously cheating. Hence, tons of TPKs and tons of boo-hooing about cheating GMs or "Killer DMs" like myself.

Sad summary I know but thats been the experience of the last 8 years.

That said... I actually had a character of my own who was captured several years ago. Held hostage, crucified, lashed, beaten and the whole nine along with an adventuring buddy.

Characters who escaped capture went back, gathered re-inforcements and staged a heroic rescue. The BBG escaped the wrath of the larger force and became a re-curring nemisis.

I couldn't complain because it knit the group more tightly together and made the final defeat of the BBG that much sweeter as my barbarian and his buddy got their final victory through careful planning, spending loose cash on resources to help beat their tormenter, and basically trapping him like a rat.

The team of GMs who ran that campaign were great and did a great job handling the scenario and ongoming campaign that follows.

Thus I say, should a PC or even a PC group get captured in game, a great GM can turn it into a fantastic ongoing campaign with ongoing antagonists, revenge, and all that sweet stuff.

Great GMs realize that the PCs are supposed to be heroes and do heroic things. They are supposed to break Princess Leah out of the cell block before anything TOO horrible happens.

They are supposed to use their skills and knowledge to see the flaw in the prison cell, the terrible trap, or make allies with the fellow prisoner who knows of secret escape hole. Planning, and attempting the escape makes for great adventure and requires the PCs to use their IMAGINATION instead of their books and sundries.

That kinda stuff is Conan wrapped in chains so heavy he cannot lift himself being unlocked by the foreign princess held in the harem of the evil dark lord who took the Cimmerian prisoner, so long as he promises to come back and rescue her!

I think sometimes people try to be too "realistic" in their approach to a game that is of essence about make believe and heroic fantasy adventure. Such things can get uncomfortable and over the top and become a great turn off to gaming or show a decided amount of immaturity on the part of the GM who is striving for the more heavy handed and "realistic" or sadistic angle.

That said, players who whine over-much about being captured (especially while thumbing through their copy of Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium, or Adventurers Guide to Adventuring) should have their character executed out of hand. You really dont want them in your group anyhow and neither does anyone else in your group.

Case

 

[bowbe]

Bouncing off the above ideas, there is nothing wrong with having someone or something more powerful come along and rescue the PCs so that the PCs have a debt of honor or what not to repay. (Maybe even treasure).

Nothing wrong with attempting to bribe the guards with information, or a promise of future treasures to be had.

In the case of a rescue, it may be even cooler to have a MONSTER rescue the PCs vs. a lamely powerful NPC that the PCs grow to detest.

There are tons of cool seldom used monsters that a clever GM could use to rescue the PCs from their current predicament. A xorn coming along ... a rust monster. Who knows?

As for the PCs losing their equipment well... that gripe has never flown at my table. If PCs become too dependent on their gear (as the general 3e mindset seems to dictate) they become less of a unique character and more like a "pimped" ride. Sure it was a toyota once, but now look at it!

Losing ones gear is an opportunity to test out new gear and different magic items. Its an opportunity to actually look at their raw stats, skills, and feats and see what those have to offer. The character SHOULD be more than a chassi to hang cool crap from afterall.

Thus If some gamers can't enjoy the game without having their complete suite of "ring of evasion, ring of free action, belt of giant strength, flying +5 tower shield and +5 adamantine bastard sword" then perhaps they would have more fun playing an online game like WOW instead of sitting with chums, beer, pizza, and pretzles and the usual camraderie and BS'ing that goes with role playing a CHARACTER in a make believe GAME!

It can be pointed out in literature and films of the genre that the good guys almost always lose their gear at some point and eventually replace it with COOLER gear, because thats supposed to be part of the cycle! All those Feats with the word "Focus" attached to them sorta drummed that out of the equation sometime over the last few years. Pretty sad eh?

Peace
Case

 

[Dog Moon]

First off, I hope they were captured legitimately. If you railroaded them into capture, it won't end well.

It was a very much spur of the moment thing I decided on to keep the party alive. When the tank rushed into a group they should have known would give them problems alone and proceeded to get attacked by virtually everyone inside the room, the battle quickly fell apart. When two of the three were unconscious and the third ran, the fourth attempted to flee, but was knocked out. I did it to prevent a 3-member kill.

As others have mentioned, capturing the PC's is never good, basically because it leads to something like what happened in your game. The PC's had to choose which one of them would die? Even if the rat people would deal with captives that way (which I find odd), there's no fun to be gained by having that happen. I'm not saying you shouldn't kill PC's but killing a player's character die without giving the player a chance to survive isn't something I would do. Again, it's not fun if the player feels helpless to prevent their character from dying.

Well, had I not been sure that one of the players wanted to switch and I believe would have accepted any reason to do so, I would have done this a little different.

The ratpeople are Chaotic and Evil and while they might have simply killed the rest due to their Chaotic nature, I actually had them be a little Lawful in their actions and follow through with their words. The boss, the ratperson cleric, had an Int of 15, IIRC. And had the PCs encountered them first instead of slaughtering most of the rest, perhaps they would have been taken prisoner, but with most of the ratpeople dead or fled, they didn't have the strength to attempt to control such dangerous prisoners.

As for letting them go, I have some time to think of some good reasons, which I have been doing. bwahaha.

 

[Quartz]

Getting back to helping Dog Moon, how about having the torture session interrupted by an attack? Not by people specifically coming to rescue the PCs, of course. Perhaps another adventuring party is after the McGuffin? Perhaps a group of drow invade from the depths? Anyway, the rat-people have to leave the chamber urgently, and the PCs hear sounds of battle. The PCs can then attempt to escape in the confusion.