Surrender or Die!

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Being captured plays a role in many movies and books. The hero spends a little time in a cage or even being tortured, then finds a way to escape or is freed by friends or whatever, often gaining important information or new avenues of attack in the process. Strange that, in the heat of the moment, this is all lost on most players.

Maybe because "capture scenarios" are badly done. I'm a bookworm, and read lots of thrillers. In a recent book, the protagonists split into two groups, and each group got captured twice. So that's four captures in total! I was only satisfied with one of the four escapes; the rest relied on villain stupidity. And this from one of my favorite authors too!

It's just so hard to do this kind of thing right, and it's worse when you're dealing with players and not just people on screen who have to follow a script. It's even worse when a character gets horribly depowered, depending on the rules and/or setting.

It's been my experience that most of my players are willing to run first, then surrender if they have to in a Modern campaign, if they're facing cops (but not in a country like Colombia). However, not in a DnD campaign, not even to obviously reasonably good-aligned militia, probably due to the vastly different power-up/power-down magic item rules.

Another thing, player creativity. I'm a lot more creative on a battlefield than in something like "breaking out of prison", regardless of the rules system used. It takes me out of my comfort zone. It's fine to do that to players a bit, but "breaking out of prison" will probably last a long time. It'd be like working on a "you must succeed at this puzzle"... it's part of the game, but not really part of the rules.

And also, surrendering to a dracolich or some similar creature... even if they'll keep their word somehow, you're dealing with something intelligent and presumably cautious. It'll probably have you watched by competent guards and not fall for the kinds of lame tricks people use to get out of jail in movies. (See point about player creativity above.)

 

[The Shaman]

You wish to surrender to me? Very well, I accept.

Could someone please drop an XP on b2 for me?

 

[Hussar]

Good point. It depends on who you are surrendering to.

If it's Al-Qaeda or Nazis, fight til you die, since it all the ends the same way, but goes down better if you died with your boots on.

If it's the NYPD, fine, I'm coming out with my hands up -- somebody call my lawyer!

Funnily enough, surrendering to the Nazi's most likely got you treated fairly most of the time. Certainly as well as you could expect from pretty much any army in the conflict.

But, I think this does show a great deal of how the players would view things - unless the "overwhelming force" was clearly law abiding and trustworthy, even if they are on the "other" side, the players will go down fighting.

I think even if the bad guys are fairly middle of the road, not baby eating puppy kickers, just run of the mill enemies, the players are going to assume they are just going to kill them anyway, and might as well go down swinging.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

As much as some people may dislike the notion of metagaming, only a very small minority of players are going to be able to look past the fact that they are all sitting around a table engaged in a totally artificial situation from which all concerned are meant to derive enjoyment.

To that end, I think it is important to bear in mind that your players expctations of the game and how they arrived in that situation are of great importance. Exactly how they choose to handle the predicament will have less to do with the tactical correlation of force that they are presente with, and more to do with how the situation came about and what they as players expect to happen next.

The first thing to keep in mind is to figure out if the players will even realize they are meant to be over matched. Low level characters will generally run if you sell the apparent power level of their foes hard enough. But in Paragon tier, it gets very difficult for the players to be forced off in any ambiguous situation. A human warrior with a sword? Not going to scare anyone. A human warrior with glowing eyes and a sword that cuts arc's of light into the air? Still wont do it (the players will be thinking of how sweet that sword will be when they are holding it). 50 Orcs? Probably not going to run the players off without a fight. But 50 Giants? Or a sufficiently large dragon? That will usually run the players off.

Then there is the group dynamic. A DM who has never seriously threatened the survival of his players is not going to be able to run them off without a fight. A DM who has a high PC mortality rate is probably going to have much more cautious players.

Finally, there is the player expectation of fair play for lack of a better word.

The DM may make the rules and dictate the situation. But the PC's are going to have certain expectations. The phrase "Are you sure you really want to do that?" is probably the single most effective way to get the PC's to back off. If the players have no warning at all that they are about to walk into a TPK, then the chances of them running off are low. If the players are given some indication that they may be making a mistake, then the odds of their survival improves.

If the players are surrounded by a recognizably and blatently obvious overwhelming force and told to surrender or die, I would have to say that yes, the players will surrender. but I am talking about something on the order of say, an army of 10 000 foot soldiers, or a few hundred Giants. Or an Army of the legions of hell led by a Baatezu general. However, the players will complain of being railroaded.

But if you have a group of 10th level PC's surrounded by say, 200 Orcs (assorted types), the players may very well try to fight their way out. 200 Orcs could be 150 minions after all.

In my experience as a DM, you can get the players to surrender before the fight starts. But once the fight starts the players will neither surrender nor flee until it is probably a bit too late.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Neonchameleon]

(e) Reprogram the simulation.

(f) Shoot the Maru. (Response of my PC to the test in one game).

(g) You want our weapons? Come and get them.