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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8664336" data-attributes="member: 6785785">The WotC published adventure “Out of the Abyss” begins with the PCs as prisoners of the drow. That’s it, that’s how the adventure is intended to start. You’re prisoners and forced to work alongside several other captive NPCs.I think it’s likely the easiest way for this scenario to work. Just boom, okay you’re captured, what are you gonna do? I do think it can work as a result of play, let’s say in place of a TPK you just have the PCs captured by the bad guys. It just likely needs to be handled with more care.I think if you do this, though, it’s best of you give the players a lot of leeway about how to escape. Like offer then opportunities or be very cooperative with ideas they come up with on how to escape. Set aside concerns about what’s “realistic” or “verisimilitude” and go with what they come up with.The more collaborative a given game tends to be (whether by rules design or by the way the group approaches the game) the less of an issue this tends to be.As for player agency, I don’t think it’s generally helpful to consider any restriction at all on choice to be the removal of agency. If the natural consequence of the PCs’ actions and players’ decisions is that the PCs get captured, then following through on that is honoring their choice. That their actions are restricted by the fictional situation of being captured is not really any different from the other fictional constraints present in other situations.I think it also helps if the players have other avenues of agency beyond just their character’s spatial freedom. When agency is limited to that, then yes, taking that away may be problematic.</blockquote>

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