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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8006285" data-attributes="member: 42582">Besides my own experience, there is the experience of others. Who has had the sort of thing described in the OP happen in Prince Valiant, or Burning Wheel, or Dungeon World? That is - to be clear about the sort of thing described - who has had a session result in a player apologising for "ruining the campaign" because a confrontation between PCs and a ruler led to PCs being escorted out by guards to be executed with the GM seeing no way out but either "reward[ing] murder-hoboism and let[ting] them escape with a deus ex machina?I'm spelling this out to make it clear that - as I read it - the problem in the OP is not the fiction. RPGing can support an incredibly varied range of fictions, including imprisonment and escape. (It happens quite often in my games, including the last session I ran - a Wuthering Heights one-off.) The problem - as best I can tell - was the process whereby the fiction was produced., this process including both framing and resolution.In my BW campaign two PCs ended up imprisoned after a confrontation with city guards while leaving the scene of a murder carrying a severed head and some vessels filled with the victim's blood. But this did not ruin the campaign. And the game was ble to continue without rewarding "murder-hoboism" and without "deus ex machina". This is because BW has robust systems and frameworks, on both GM and player side, for resolving a whole host of action declarations - not only the ones which were attempted (and failed) to placate the guards, but such ones as "I wait to see if anyone visits me in prison" (Circles check) - and for establishing the framing of scenes (eg the design and play of BW pracically guarantees that there will be some sort of nemesis who wants to come and gloat over the imprisoned PC, or some sort of ally who will want to come and help him/her escape).In the OP we are told that "they were given several opportunities to escape the stocks, but the would-be assassin failed and the instigator said he would rather die than let this corrupt man stay in power." [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER], having knowledge of the module, may be able to conjecture what those opportunities were likely to have been. I infer - from the players' responses, and treating those as sincere - that these opportunities involved some sort of compromise with or concession to the tyrant. More generally, and in line with the reference to deus ex machina, it seems like the only way out of the failed attempt to defy and/or kill the mad tyrant was to follow the GM's lead.This problem is not going to arise in systems which encourage the GM to follow the players' lead.The language of "arrangement" to me resonates strongly with "giving opportunities" and "deus ex machina".Prince Valiant has a different mechanical framework from BW, but one option for a player in possession of a Storyteller Certificate is to Find and Escape Route or Escape Bonds. From p 45 of my imprint:[spoiler]FIND ESCAPE ROUTEWhether locked in the dank donjon prison, upstairs in a chamber inside a burning castle, or in the hold of a sinking ship with the hatches battened, this Special Effect will allow one character to find a way out. In the donjon he might discover that the wretch who brings slop owes him a favor; in the castle a hidden passage behind curtains might be found; among the dunes a deep wadi might conceal a rapid escape; a section of rotten planking might provide escape from a ship.ESCAPE BONDSWhenever immobilized with rope, chains, manacles, or other devices, a character can escape with this Special Effect. Maybe a rat comes and chews the bloody thongs, as happens to Val in one dramatic sequence, or a jagged edge of stone lies nearby, or a tool is smuggled in, or the lock proves to be broken.If the escaping character has companions in adversity, he may be able to free them once free himself. But Escape Bonds does not permit a whole group of characters to miraculously free themselves at the same instant.[/spoiler]There are also options based around action resolution: even without a special effect a player might have his/her PC make a Fellowship check to befriend the slop-delivering wretch. Or with a Presence check have Prince Edward turn up and reveal the PC's "noble heritage" which warrrants him/her being freed. (I'm thinking of the resolution of the stocks scene in the film A Knight's Tale.)The orientation of the system is towards player proactivity rather than dependence on following the GM's lead.An alternative thought is that a weak despot might yield to those who are obviously stronger than him.This goes back to my thought that sometimes "realistic" = what the GM has in mind.In my experience a more flexible appoach to establishing consequences and NPC behavious not only helps avoid the problems in the OP,  it also produces more interesting, fleshed out and hence "realistic" NPCs. This came out in a discussion a couple of years ago about my Classic Traveller game, when [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] posted some thoughts about how a group of PCs might try and capture a military ship, including some respones to the suggestion that it was "unrealistic" for his plan to work:The remarks about the NPC captain were part of an explanation as to why a distress signal broadcast by the PCs might be picked up even though doing so would not be "rational" or "realistic" for the NPCs.</blockquote>

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