Why don’t players surrender... would we want them too?

[Derren]

If you look with any decent level of scrutiny, pretty much every setting is silly. This is just a silliness you like less than others. Which is fine, but is particular to you, not to the setting being particularly nonsensical.

It is fair to say that the real world is silly, if you look with any decent level of scrutiny...

Its not just real world morality, many people also assume real world institutions like a modern police (See the latest Pathfinder AP), modern courts and jails in a fantasy worls with medival to renaissance technology and societies.

I feel that there is a risk we’re talking past each other at this point. Can I ask why would you expect the equipment to be somewhere else, unless a large amount of time goes by? Why is that more plausible than being shared amongst those that captured them?

First, security. You do not store weapons close to prisoners. Second, greed. The equipment would not be piled up in one place. For example gold will be brought somewhere else or divided. Normal weapons go into the armory, magical items to the wizard, if there is one, for identification. Or in a disorganized and more selfish place everyone would grab what they wanted from it according to the pecking order. To recover all of it the PC would have to kill everyone. And sadly they expect to be able to. It might be a legacy of 3E but escaping without equipment is mostly unthinkable for the players.

And to answer your previous post, a set of level appropriate challenges is easy because the PCs are meant to win them.
If you only give the PCs level appropriate challenges then being captured is basically just a shortcut into the enemies base.

 

[Derren]

double post

 

[TheSword]

Its not just real world morality, many people also assume real world institutions like a modern police (See the latest Pathfinder AP), modern courts and jails in a fantasy worls with medival to renaissance technology and societies.



First, security. You do not store weapons close to prisoners. Second, greed. The equipment would not ve piled up in one place. For example gold will be brought somewhere else or divided. Normal weapons go into the armory, magical items to the wizard, if there is one, for identification. Or in a disorganized and more selfish place everyone would grab what they wanted from it according to the pecking order. To recover all of it the PC would have to kill everyone. And sadly they expect to be able to. It might be a legacy of 3E but escaping without equipment is mostly unthinkable for the players.

I think you’re definitely over complicating things. As said already, mundane kit is cheap and easily obtainable. Who cares about it. Magic items and precious treasures would go to those able to command them. If the PCs want to defeat these people rather than just escape it’s not unreasonable for them to want to seek out the commander, and their lieutenants anyway.

 

[Umbran]

Its not just real world morality, many people also assume real world institutions like a modern police (See the latest Pathfinder AP), modern courts and jails in a fantasy worls with medival to renaissance technology and societies.

Yes, well, GMs are often not nearly as good at communicating their world-building as they think. If people are assuming things, that is likely because they are filling in gaps in communicating what the game world is actually like.

First, security. You do not store weapons close to prisoners.

That's assuming a level of organization, formality, and competence that may not exist in the given situation. You may well store weapons close to prisoners if you don't have trained professional personnel that are well-motivated to follow protocol, purpose-built facilities, and so on.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ironically as GM I would see this as an absolute gift for RP or a creative break out scene. It seems most dungeons have a set of cells or a secure area for keeping prisoners. Fiction is full of situation where this happens and the disadvantage is reversed so why does it never happen? It isnt as if resourceful PCs would’t have a good chance of breaking out of most cells.

• Do DMs give the impression that surrender would result in death anyway?
• Do players resent the loss of agency?
• Do DMs make cells too strong to the point that escape would seem impossible?
• Do players despise the idea of not having their stuff, even for a short time?

Can anything be done about this and would we want to?

Only a little of some of the above. As a GM I can easily capture characters in Fate and have occasionally had my characters captured. In D&D I've had a character start a campaign in a prison cell but that's about it. It's all a matter of what behaviour is incentivised by the game.

• In Fate if someone is defeated the winner gets narrative control. If someone surrenders, as long as the surrender is valid and consequences are real the person who surrenders chooses the consequences.
• In Fate you're actually rewarded with Fate Points for surrendering even if your situation then becomes worse. In D&D you get bupkiss.
• In D&D most of your character's power for most classes is tied up with their equipment (especially including a wizard's spellbook). Losing your equipment is crippling and is avoided even more than level drain. In Fate your power is tied up with your character's aspects, skills, and stunts - with equipment being almost incidental. One sword is almost as good as another - you keep your character's power intact.
• In D&D the consequences of combat are effectively either nothing or death. And death is just an excuse to roll up a new character. Meanwhile in a more realistic game the consequences of wounds can stay with you for a long time and make you weaker. Two nights in the cells is two nights in the cells - but a broken arm may be 6 weeks of recovery and may twinge long after. And also potentially a few nights in the cells...
• As others have mentioned, in D&D my PC has probably cut down dozens of NPCs. Most of the blood my last Fate PC had on their hands was syrup and food colouring - and the rest was from first aid.

Fate therefore gets characters to surrender more than most other RPGs I know and D&D gets fewer surrenders than any other RPG I know.

 

[dragoner]

You night be killed eventually but are awaiting a lawful trial and execution. The example @dragoner gave

Not that one couldn't do it this way, except in my example, the one player had been killed by an automatic cannon before the trial, in a battle. The worst that would have happened in the setting is a mind-wipe and transportation - pretty bad. Though, execution or capital punishment was ended long ago. I run a hard SF campaign, capital crimes will draw the attention of the authorities. People who constantly talk of murder, rape, and slavery; that's them saying something about their own mindset, not society at large, that's not realistic.

 

[Scott Christian]

I have seen prison escapes done very well in modules. The start of Way of the Wicked is based on the premise an in my current Baldurs Gate: Descent game the players were captured instead of killed and locked in the Vampanthur dungeons.

In some ways 5e is far more suitable for this than other editions.

• Irreplaceable magic items are relatively rare.
• Most kit is fairly generic and not expensive to replace. The stuff that is expensive would take time to sell.
• Abilities aren’t dependent on specific weapons - like 3e weapon focus and weapon specialization. A fighter can pick up any weapon and pretty much be as good as any other. Or at least a broad category of weapons, two handed, polearm etc.
• Lock picking skill is trivially easy to get and be good at if you have respectable Dex without needing to be a rogue.
• Spells don’t need to memorized everything day. You keep all the spells you know in memory and get slots back when you sleep... this is very handy for balanced parties.

I agree . And those are great observations. I was speaking more from a general sense, that many players, without trust in their DM, may see themselves as too weak to escape.

 

[Scott Christian]

"Surrender their weapons and help build the kingdom" sounds like slavery...
Which is of course a sensible option.

One problem and source of disconnect, is that many people apply modern morality to a setting which, at least on the outside, is based on medieval/renaissance times.

I do wonder if the DM had set expectations that things like "help build the kingdom" and toiling in the gravel pits for several years could take but twenty minutes of playtime with a heavy use of montage, would the players be so opposed. Hard to have expectations like that, but setting them might be helpful. And a neat way to give a character a new motive.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OK, he would have died. That happens.

This is why PCs never go anywhere alone, and why scouts maintain a travelling overwatch.

(Side note: As a GM, I wouldn't have suggested anything akin to what your GM said, unless they literally had a gun to your head)

Crossbow pointed at base of skull while I’m prone.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not what I'm saying at all, as my posts clearly show. I'm just losing interest in explaining colors to the blind.

You literally claimed “nerfing” because of the actions of a DM playing slavery a different way than the cultures you cited, despite there being cultures that actually did as the DM designed the culture in his campaign.