Why not surrender?
James
of the insane plot of your favorite arch-criminal? Or escape from
the fiendish death trap? And let's be honest, surrendering must be
the easiest way into the Dark Fortress of Doom. So why are players so
reluctant to wave the white flag?
In a recent posting in the one of the World/Plot threads David
Berkman describes just how things can go terribly wrong in a game,
and I sure it struck a cord in many of us. The scenario was a setup
in which the PCs were meant to be captured. Players, being players,
would have nothing of it and the campaign met a premature end (the
PCs survived -the game didn't). This example raises a lot of
interesting questions but the issue of PC's reluctance to surrender at
any cost deserves a thread of its own. Don't you think?
There will be times when surrendering is not really an option and
there isn't much point discussing these. But many other times
surrender would at least be worth considering, but it isn't. I
remember when I was running Pendragon, yeilding was an integral part
of the combat system. I think I made this abundantly clear. Do think it
did any good? Any ideas why this is?
Its been suggested that this is question of old-habits; a gaming
culture problem. It may not occur to the players that the GM is
prepared for such an eventuality. Or maybe they are so used to
snatching victory from the jaws of defeat that they can't recognize
defeat anymore. Are most players really so jaded or is this a GMing
problem? How far are our games restricted by unspoken gaming
conventions? Is this really a Bavarian Illuminati conspiracy?
--
-- James --
kurk...@stat.fi
>Its been suggested that this is question of old-habits; a gaming
>culture problem. It may not occur to the players that the GM is
>prepared for such an eventuality. Or maybe they are so used to
>snatching victory from the jaws of defeat that they can't recognize
>defeat anymore. Are most players really so jaded or is this a GMing
>problem? How far are our games restricted by unspoken gaming
>conventions? Is this really a Bavarian Illuminati conspiracy?
Do a little test. Recall your past games. When was the last time someone
stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
after interrogation?
When was the last time the party wizard cast sleep on some orcs and the PCs
didn't just slit their throats?
When was the last time the PCs didn't kill an enemy when they had a
good chance to do so?
Given this typical behaviour, why should they assume their "evil" foes are
any more noble? Because NPCs are tied by genre cliches?
//Maxxon
Jonas Karlsson
watched the news... I mean, look at most any recent conflict, especially
the ones in the old east bloc, and what happens to surrendered soldiers.
They get shot. Either on site, or in a death camp. Or civilians that try
to evacuate a city that's about to be conquered? They get bombed off the
roads. That sort of thing sort of encourages fighting till the last drop
of blood. After all, you're going to get killed anyway, so you might at
least take a few of the so-and-so's with you...
Also, it could be due to genre confusion. For instance, in a 'dark &
realistic' street-level game it most likely *is* suicide to surrender.
Which is the way it should be, a main theme in those stories is betrayal.
Whereas, in, say, a Pendragon game, it's part of the genre for knights to
be captured and held for ransom. There, you can feel pretty certain that
your captor's immediate response won't be to kill you out of hand. Now,
if the GM and players have differing opinions as to what genre they're
playing in, well... Especially since if the players don't know for sure
if the world is 'realistic' or not, refusing to surrender is probably the
safest way to make sure one survives...
--
|Jonas Karlsson - Jonas.K...@baldakinen.bostaden.umea.se| I am a
number, |
| 10034...@compuserve.com - jon...@io.com | not a man!
- 42|
ErolB1
> Surrendering is fun! How else can you learn the fine details
> of the insane plot of your favorite arch-criminal? Or escape from
> the fiendish death trap? And let's be honest, surrendering must be
> the easiest way into the Dark Fortress of Doom. So why are players so
> reluctant to wave the white flag?
Yes it is. But taking prisoners, keeping them alive, and not killing them
except in elaborate deathtraps isn't pragmatic in most settings. Players
tend to be *very* pragmatic and expect their opponents to be so as well.
They don't *expect* to survive & succeed when taken prisoner - they expect
to be killed out-of-hand, since that's what *they'd* do if the positions
were reversed. In fact, in some settings the players will be nonplused if
the bad guys surrender - it may introduce unwanted and unamusing moral
complications into a game that was attractive for its black-and-white
moral simplicity.
For surrendering/getting captured to work, it has to be established as a
genre and campaign convention. It's an unrealistic, "cinematic"
convention, and while I happen to *like* the cinematic style, most games
tend to be more "realistic" (or rather, more "dark & gritty") at least in
this area. If the GM wants a game where important people are frequently
taken prisoner rather than killed, he or she has to work to make that
convention very clear to the players up front. It needs to be established
that killing important prisoners out of hand is Just Not Done, and there
needs to be at least a handwaving rationalization as to why. In game
systems using disads, not slaughtering prisoners or helpless enemies
should be encouraged as a disad. Finally, the GM may want to introduce a
skill or IQ check or some other system that lets characters perceive when
fighting on or making a break for it will give them a real chance to get
away, and when fighting on or attempting escape is just suicidal.
My US$0.02
Erol K. Bayburt
Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow
David W Llewellyn
>there isn't much point discussing these. But many other times
>surrender would at least be worth considering, but it isn't. I
>remember when I was running Pendragon, yeilding was an integral part
>of the combat system. I think I made this abundantly clear. Do think it
>did any good? Any ideas why this is?
Unfortunately, it's a problem with the current world society. No one
knows how to lose gracefully. That's the main reason people have feared
war in the last couple of generations: there's the threat that side X
will see that it's losing and unleash some unholy terror or other onto the
rest of the world.
Once upon a time (so rumor has it), proper knights/generals/kings were
willing to accept that they had lost a battle/war/duel/whatever and
behave accordingly. Not so, anymore, and American culture is especially
bad about it. Sports, politics, and popular entertainment reinforce this
at an almost disgraceful rate. Person from the other political party has
an idea you didn't think of? Get rid of it. Humiliate the person who
suggested it, no matter how good it was. It wasn't mine.
Pity.
David Llewellyn
Peter Hentges
>>Given this typical behaviour, why should they assume their "evil" foes are
>>any more noble? Because NPCs are tied by genre cliches?
>
> If you are vastly outgunned and the bad guys *still* seem intent
>on capturing, not killing, it isn't all that big a stretch to thinking
>they might want you alive for some reason.
Ah, but is it a reason that you want to remain alive for?
-Peter Hentges [O]
-peter_...@ccmgate.adc.com [O]
-JBRU [O]
James
> Do a little test. Recall your past games. When was the last time someone
> stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
> after interrogation?
>
> When was the last time the party wizard cast sleep on some orcs and the
PCs
> didn't just slit their throats?
>
> When was the last time the PCs didn't kill an enemy when they had a
> good chance to do so?
>
--
-- James --
James
> Unfortunately, it's a problem with the current world society. No one
> knows how to lose gracefully. That's the main reason people have feared
>
--
-- James --
James
writes:
> Yes it is. But taking prisoners, keeping them alive, and not killing them
> except in elaborate deathtraps isn't pragmatic in most settings. Players
> tend to be *very* pragmatic and expect their opponents to be so as well.
> They don't *expect* to survive & succeed when taken prisoner - they expect
> to be killed out-of-hand, since that's what *they'd* do if the positions
> were reversed. In fact, in some settings the players will be nonplused if
> the bad guys surrender - it may introduce unwanted and unamusing moral
> complications into a game that was attractive for its black-and-white
> moral simplicity.
Scary isn't it.
>
> For surrendering/getting captured to work, it has to be established as a
> genre and campaign convention. It's an unrealistic, "cinematic"
> convention, and while I happen to *like* the cinematic style, most games
> tend to be more "realistic" (or rather, more "dark & gritty") at least in
Not necessarily. Look at it in the other way around. In a more "cinematic"
game, the villain wants the PCs dead because thats what he does. In a more
"realistic" game you expect the bad guys to have very good reasons to attack
the party. More often than not, the villain will want something more from
the PCs than their death. He may wish to rob, question or scare them
off; all options which allow the PCs to survive being captured quite
happily.
Deathraps I agree belong to the romantic strands of the hobby. But I reject
the theory that, as a rule, PCs should 'rationally' expect to be killed off
hand by most opponents should they surrender. It may be common practice in
games for this to occur. But that means we have PCs making decisions based
on players experience of RPGs and that can't be healthy.
--
-- James --
David W Llewellyn
>Maxxon, I think you've been embittered by bad players. I don't see
>this as normal behavior in any of the several groups I've played with in
>the last few years. (In the last campaign I ran, 2.5 years of play, the
>PCs killed exactly three people, and only after agonizing about each
>one.)
Geez! My players are more like Maxxon's. I recently set up a group of
NPCs who were blatantly similar to Robin Hood, etc. They were a set of
good guys forced to live the life of outlaws because a public official
had sold their wives and children into slavery. The party didn't know
that part yet, but instead of trying to find out what was going on, they
started a wholesale slaughter! I had trouble getting a word in edgewise
for the Married Men (whose leader was Jay Cowl) to explain their
situation, as they tried to save the lives of their comrades who had been
(sort of) unjustly arrested. Eventually, they became allies, but a plot
was nearly trashed before it started.
If they had killed the Married Men, that would have been the end of the
plot, though. I wouldn't have fudged it. I might, though, if I had been
in a particularly evil mood, sent the leader's ghost back into the world
to explain what they had just done. That might have cured the next set.
They did learn not to kill quite so indiscriminately, though. When
border guards demanded a tax for entering the new country, they
deliberated and paid it.
David Llewellyn
Isaacs, Ross
>I think at least part of the answer - at least for me - lies in having
>watched the news... I mean, look at most any recent conflict, especially
>the ones in the old east bloc, and what happens to surrendered soldiers.
>They get shot. Either on site, or in a death camp. Or civilians that try
>to evacuate a city that's about to be conquered? They get bombed off the
>roads. That sort of thing sort of encourages fighting till the last drop
>of blood. After all, you're going to get killed anyway, so you might at
>least take a few of the so-and-so's with you...
Both Bosian and the Bosnian Serbs have taken and exchanged prisoners.
Iraq took prisoners; while we were afraid the female personnel would be
raped, it never materialized. We took Iraqi prisoners and made certain they
were well cared for.
Israeli jails are filled with Palestinian prisoners.
There are plenty of examples of what happens to surrendered soldiers - they
go to prison camp. That's not to say it's a pleasant experience. But
while you're alive there's always the chance for escape or rescue.
>Also, it could be due to genre confusion. For instance, in a 'dark &
>realistic' street-level game it most likely *is* suicide to surrender.
I find this particularly confusing. We're playing a game. To pretend that
we are all playing in this realistic setting, and constraining yourself is
confusing. You don't play out catching a cold. You don't stand on line at
the DMV. There are a lot of *realistic* things that do not happen in a so-
called realistic game. Why is it unrealistic to surrender?
You and I know we're playing a game. If the characters are captured, the GM
must have something in mind, or will come up with something. True, my
*character* wouldn't know that, but we're supposed to be having fun right?
How fun would it be if every group you played in was magically put to sleep
and had their throat's cut? Would you keep coming back to a *realistic*
cyberpunk game, where your character kept getting blown up by hidden bombs?
Of course not. After awhile, you'd get really sick of all this *realism*.
It's all genre. If you're surrounded and out-gunned, it's in the GM's best
interests to keep you alive, or at least give you a chance to escape.
Surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative.
Ross A. Isaacs
Kevin R. Hardwick
On 2 Aug 1995, Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
> If you want to point out to players that surrender is an acceptable
> option, show NPCs on both sides engaging in it. Dave Berkman's scenario
> might have worked better if it had been preceeded by one in which the
> PCs were involved in rendezvousing with survivors of a brilliant escape
> from captivity. This would have demonstrated (more clearly than
> pre-game discussion can be counted on to do) that it is possible to
> surrender, survive, and escape.
This is a terrific suggestion, and strikes me as a very workable
approach. This is part of the introduction--setting the genre. In new
games I find that there is a certain amount of negotiation of the genre
that takes place in the early parts of a campaign, in which people's
expectations get set--if you want to change those expectations, or set
the genre--some sort of foreshadowing like this has worked really well,
at least for me.
My best,
Kevin
Andrew Finch
: Yes it is. But taking prisoners, keeping them alive, and not killing them
: except in elaborate deathtraps isn't pragmatic in most settings.
No one was talking elaborate death traps. In the game in question, there
was little question that the crew of the ship would be released. The
Romulans would do it to show their good will. They might have held the
Captain on charges, but only to negotiate more concesions from the Feds
for her release (and maybe a little torture and drugs for information
while she's a prisoner), but death was not what the players feared. They
feared the humiliation of losing their ship.
: Players
: tend to be *very* pragmatic and expect their opponents to be so as well.
: They don't *expect* to survive & succeed when taken prisoner - they expect
: to be killed out-of-hand, since that's what *they'd* do if the positions
: were reversed.
Not in most of my games. Not unless they're playing cold blooded killers,
which would be unusual. Killers maybe, but hardly ever cold blooded.
: For surrendering/getting captured to work, it has to be established as a
: genre and campaign convention. It's an unrealistic, "cinematic"
: convention...
We can then disregard the surrenders which happen during real wars, in
real life.
As far as conventions go, this was Star Trek. They surrender or get
captured all the time (momentarily).
David
Doug Dawson
: Mary Kuhner wrote:
: >Maxxon, I think you've been embittered by bad players. I don't see
: >this as normal behavior in any of the several groups I've played with in
: >the last few years. (In the last campaign I ran, 2.5 years of play, the
: >PCs killed exactly three people, and only after agonizing about each
: >one.)
Heh. Sometimes I think the players in our group wouldn't mind being
this way, but we're often not given the chance. In one campaign
(Warhammer), I was playing a very lawful character. While exploring a
cave filled with Chaos-cretures, we bump into the local sheriff and
constables, who order us to surrender.
I immediately do so, dropping my weapon. The GM stares at me in shock.
It made perfect sense to me that the Sheriff might be investigating the
cave as well (it was underneath the town), but the GM had apparently
thought otherwise.
Similarly, I had developed the religion my character followed (with the
GM's encouragement) as a rather peaceful, craftsman's religion with
a certain protective aspect. As the adventure progressed, the GM
changed it into a pro-Law (note the capital), rabidly anti-Chaos
religion. If I thought someone was aligned with Chaos, I couldn't
even _consider_ letting them live.
Then, in a Star Wars campaign where I was playing a droid, the GM told
me that I had had hidden assassin-droid programming kick in, and had
_no_ regard for human life. Admittedly, after the dust had settled on
the carnage, he was suitably horrified and I retired the character
fairly quickly.
In the Torg campaign I run, the players never go around cutting the
throats on fallen opponents, and only once that I recall has anyone
killed a prisoner...the rest of the party took action against the
offending character.
David Veal
>Do a little test. Recall your past games. When was the last time someone
>stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
>after interrogation?
With one exception where a PC got an opponent to put up his hands
to lower the guy's defensive value, my players usually aren't that lethal
with prisoners unless they have a good reason. It's been a long time
since I had a group where at least one character wouldn't object to that
sort of treatment,
>When was the last time the PCs didn't kill an enemy when they had a
>good chance to do so?
If they miss enough valuable information by blowing people away
even the most thick-headed player will eventually learn. Not to mention
that killing people gratuitously can get you a reputation that isn't all
that convenient.
>Given this typical behaviour, why should they assume their "evil" foes are
>any more noble? Because NPCs are tied by genre cliches?
If you are vastly outgunned and the bad guys *still* seem intent
on capturing, not killing, it isn't all that big a stretch to thinking
they might want you alive for some reason.
--
David Veal ve...@web.ce.utk.edu / ve...@gateway.ce.utk.edu
NEW AND IMPROVED: UTK Division of Continuing Studies and
Distance Education
Mary K. Kuhner
option, show NPCs on both sides engaging in it. Dave Berkman's scenario
might have worked better if it had been preceeded by one in which the
PCs were involved in rendezvousing with survivors of a brilliant escape
from captivity. This would have demonstrated (more clearly than
pre-game discussion can be counted on to do) that it is possible to
surrender, survive, and escape.
You must also avoid situations in which surrender is seen as
worse than death. Military folk will often choose death over surrender to
avoid giving up valuable intelligence (that's why the Enterprise has a
self-destruct option) or to preserve their honor.
In a fantasy setting, showing a ransom of an NPC knight might help make
the point that surrender happens, ransom happens, and life can go on.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
>stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
>after interrogation?
>didn't just slit their throats?
>good chance to do so?
>//Maxxon
Maxxon, I think you've been embittered by bad players. I don't see
this as normal behavior in any of the several groups I've played with in
the last few years. (In the last campaign I ran, 2.5 years of play, the
PCs killed exactly three people, and only after agonizing about each
one.)
Scene from Shadowrun:
Party has decided that the street gang is a pawn of a really evil
conspiracy, and has to be broken up. They fight their way into the
headquarters, take the gang leader prisoner. They offer him a deal:
they will set him free, provide magical healing for his injured people,
and leave him alone, if he will reconsider working for his current boss.
After some discussion that makes it clear the gang leader is critically
concerned about the safety of his people, it seems that the deal might
go through.
At that point the evil boss, monitoring the situation remotely, sets off
cortex bombs and kills the gang leader and his followers.
After trying magical healing, and failing, the party made the entire
headquarters into a big pyre. That night the party's shaman returned to
the ashes. "Your deaths were our fault--we didn't know what we were
doing, and we got you killed. Here I am. You can take revenge on me if
you choose. But our common enemy is really your ex-boss. Will you help
me against him?"
The price of the ghosts' help turned out to be terribly high. But I
really liked the way this worked out. I've never seen so much distress
at the death of the people the party was fighting--but damn it, they
*admired* that gang leader.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
David Dunham
> There will be times when surrendering is not really an option and
> there isn't much point discussing these. But many other times
> surrender would at least be worth considering, but it isn't. I
> remember when I was running Pendragon, yeilding was an integral part
> of the combat system. I think I made this abundantly clear. Do think it
> did any good? Any ideas why this is?
I think it needs to be obviously a part of the social milieu that you can
surrender and will be treated honorably.
Mary's suggestion that you show this by NPCs surrendering and offering
ransom is a good way to illustrate this.
I know some of my players were a bit surprised when I mentioned that
surrender and ransom were pretty common; that hadn't been the case in
other games they'd played in.
David Dunham Pensee Corporation dun...@nw.pensee.com
Voice/Fax 206 783 7404 http://www.pensee.com/dunham/
"I say we should listen to the customers and give them what they want."
"What they want is better products for free." --Scott Adams
Scott Olson
> Surrendering is fun! How else can you learn the fine details
> of the insane plot of your favorite arch-criminal? Or escape from
> the fiendish death trap? And let's be honest, surrendering must be
> the easiest way into the Dark Fortress of Doom. So why are players so
> reluctant to wave the white flag?
>
> Berkman describes just how things can go terribly wrong in a game,
> and I sure it struck a cord in many of us. The scenario was a setup
> in which the PCs were meant to be captured. Players, being players,
> would have nothing of it and the campaign met a premature end (the
> PCs survived -the game didn't). This example raises a lot of
> interesting questions but the issue of PC's reluctance to surrender at
> any cost deserves a thread of its own. Don't you think?
>
> there isn't much point discussing these. But many other times
> surrender would at least be worth considering, but it isn't. I
> remember when I was running Pendragon, yeilding was an integral part
> of the combat system. I think I made this abundantly clear. Do think it
> did any good? Any ideas why this is?
>
> culture problem. It may not occur to the players that the GM is
> prepared for such an eventuality. Or maybe they are so used to
> snatching victory from the jaws of defeat that they can't recognize
> defeat anymore. Are most players really so jaded or is this a GMing
> problem? How far are our games restricted by unspoken gaming
> conventions? Is this really a Bavarian Illuminati conspiracy?
I think it's got a lot to do with the conventions of a game: if the
world is such that surrendering is an option, and it's presented as such,
then the players may consider it. Lots of worlds, though, either don't
show it to be an option, or it really _isn't_. So players get in the
mind-set of 'never surrender' and live (and occassionally die) by it. In
a Pendragon game, I'd think it wouldn't take long for most players to
figure out that surrender is an acceptable way out of a situation, because
the genre supports it. Other genres may not be nearly as supportive,
because the background is different (being captured by Trolls in Middle
Earth, for example, is likely to be a quick ticket to the buffet table,
with you as the main coarse).
For it to be a reasonable option for most players, it has to be
something that they're reasonably certain is a) survivable, b) of limited
duration, c) acceptable in the genre. Playing a prisoner in the dungeon
for 30 years is not something most players are going to go along with, and
with some reason. If that's the result they foresee from surrendering,
they may likely figure it's better to fight to the end, they might get
lucky.
In the example David gave, I think the person who said 'Computer, arm
self-destruct' got it exactly right, by the way. Whether or not you
launch the shuttles with the crew before the explosion is a matter of
personal taste.
Scott
James
> Mary's suggestion that you show this by NPCs surrendering and offering
> ransom is a good way to illustrate this.
>
> I know some of my players were a bit surprised when I mentioned that
> surrender and ransom were pretty common; that hadn't been the case in
> other games they'd played in.
>
idea that yielding would have been a problem for my players.
But that all in the past. The question is why such a basic device in fiction
, the capture of the heroes, features so little in RPGs and when it does
players react negatively towards it?
--
-- James --
Michael J. Montesa
in, I've only rarely seen characters surrender. Mostly, I think the
players expect that they will be killed if they do. In my Shadowrun
campaign, which I play very dark and very grim, this is a valid
consideration. However, I played in a Pendragon campaign where surrender
was a perfectly viable option.
If the genre of the game you're playing allows surrender without the
immediate fear of being executed then the players may be more willing to
give up. BUT, it also depends on whether or not the GM is playing
hardball. If the players know that their enemies will kill them they will
likely fight to the death. A lot also depends on whether or not the
players understand the nature of their enemies.
In the SR campaign I run, I never try to force the characters to
surrender. I know they'd rather die first. But when I do manage to get
them backed into a corner I'm prepared to have their enemies accept their
surrender if they should choose to do so. Of course, some enemies are
more ruthless than others so again, it depends.
In the Pendragon game, when our British knights fought against each
other, we often had characters surrendering. Against our bitter enemies,
the Saxons, we expected no quarter, but there were some occasions where
we might have been able to surrender without immediate execution.
But when it is *necessary* to force the characters to surrender, it
usually doesn't work without a lot of railroading. In a Werewolf game I
was in, the GM was trying to get us to surrender. Given what we
understood of the game world we all thought surrender meant instant
death. Everyone pulled out all the stops and fought tooth and nail. The
battle dragged on until all of us, including the GM were really
frustrated. Finally the GM said, "Come on guys, give it up already." We
all insisted that we knew we were going to die so we said, "Why, they're
gonna kill us." The GM told us no, that wasn't what was supposed to
happen, so we gave in and went along. It was a big letdown and everyone
felt railroaded. We stopped shortly thereafter, and we haven't picked up
that Werewolf game since.
So again, I think surrender becomes an option when the players are
aware that it is an option. Otherwise, it's backs against the wall and go
down fighting.
Mike Montesa
Mary K. Kuhner
>But that all in the past. The question is why such a basic device in fiction
>, the capture of the heroes, features so little in RPGs and when it does
>players react negatively towards it?
> -- James --
A couple of reasons, I think:
(a) In many RPGs, even fairly cinematic ones, the characters don't have
as much script immunity as the hero of a movie; the players don't feel
certain that they will be able to escape, and don't care to roleplay
prolonged captivity.
(b) The boring parts of captivity can easily be abstrated to a
paragraph in a book or a scene in a movie; but in order to set up a
semi-realistic-feeling escape, the GM will have to provide substantial
detail (and take substantial gametime) about captivity, and the lack of
choices available during this period can be frustrating.
(c) PC capture is a very common feature of railroaded scenarios (it is
commonly done in modules, for example) and players can easily come to
feel that it *always* represents railroading. This breeds resentment
and a desire not to go along with the GM's plan. (This is why I've
pledged never to *try* to capture my PCs. If it happens, it happens.)
Consider the final sequence in _Nine Princes in Amber_. The reader is
willing to follow Corwin even though he is blinded (and thereby deprived
of all his powers) and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. However,
there is *nothing* for a player to do with this situation. Corwin
eventually escapes, but before that he simply waits, and the opportunity
is finally handed to him on a platter. This is not the kind of thing
that good roleplaying scenarios are made of, though it works fine in the
book. Knowing this, a character who was about to be thrown into
Corwin's situation might well prefer fighting to the death, for the slim
chance of victory.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Jonas Karlsson
>In article <3vne6s$9...@baldakinen.bostaden.umea.se> Jonas Karlsson
True. But what is also true - and better publicized - is that on at least two occasions I can think of the males
of 'fighting age' of conquered towns have simply 'been disappeared'...
>There are plenty of examples of what happens to surrendered soldiers - they
>go to prison camp. That's not to say it's a pleasant experience. But
>while you're alive there's always the chance for escape or rescue.
Exactly. And if you fight on, there's always the chance you might win.
>
>>Also, it could be due to genre confusion. For instance, in a 'dark &
>>realistic' street-level game it most likely *is* suicide to surrender.
>
>I find this particularly confusing. We're playing a game. To pretend that
Hmm, perhaps realistic was a bad choice of words, it was used in reference to the tendency for combat to be
*lethal* in 'dark' games. Whereas in 'heroic' games, combat is often quite survivable.
>You and I know we're playing a game. If the characters are captured, the GM
>must have something in mind, or will come up with something. True, my
>*character* wouldn't know that, but we're supposed to be having fun right?
Hmm, I see our playing groups differ. Both when I gm, and with most of the gms I know, unless it's *explicitly*
stated that this is a *scripted* and *cinematic* game, sometimes, 'shit happens'. I tend to run player-driven,
very loosely scripted campaigns, letting the players do what they want, and move the world around them, sometimes
they get themselves into more trouble than they can handle. There are places in my - and many others' - worlds
where it simply *isn't* a good idea to intrude. Even if you're the 'hero' of the story...
Besides, the element of risk, of knowing that the world *doesn't* really revolve around a small band of misfits
adds a bit too...
>How fun would it be if every group you played in was magically put to sleep
>and had their throat's cut? Would you keep coming back to a *realistic*
>cyberpunk game, where your character kept getting blown up by hidden bombs?
No, if it kept happening despite all the increased security that was likely to follow on the part of the
survivors, the gm is probably cheating. Or maybe it can be taken as a hint that the group has acquired such
powerful enemies that it's simply time to get the hell out of Dodge...
>
>Of course not. After awhile, you'd get really sick of all this *realism*.
>It's all genre. If you're surrounded and out-gunned, it's in the GM's best
>interests to keep you alive, or at least give you a chance to escape.
True. To a point. But it's *also* in the gm's interest to maintain suspension of disbelief. For instance, if the
pcs have *really* upset the Generic Assassin Clan, well, killing is what assassins *do*. Not capture and hold them
for interminable periods till they finally figure out how to escape. It can be pulled off occasionally, but to me
at least, overuse of Deus Ex Machina rescues gets kind of jarring. Both as a player and a gm...
>Surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative.
True. Provided the world you're playing in isn't one where 'take no prisoners' is an accepted way of fighting.
Like in most any religious warzone, most any 'special forces' style campaign, etc.
James
David Llewellyn's remark about not knowing how to lose gracefully.
It was a real eye opener. A simple point that went striaght to the
heart of the matter. Sure there may be practical problems enacting a
surrender scenario but, as old saying goes, if there is a will, there
is a way. After all high-tech combat by rights should be too quick and
lethal to be playable. When has that stopped anyone? Its because the
intrinsic reluctance to surrender of players that few systems have
developed rules and attitudes to deal with it and not the
other way round.
Mary Kuhner makes a point very close to my heart regarding GM railroading.
I know that as a player if I suspected the capture scene was a heavy handed
GM device, I would resist it on principle; no arguement there. Her pledge
never to plan a PC capture scene seems exceedingly wise.
The main gist of the arguement however has been the expectation, voiced in
most postings, that the PCs would be killed if they surrendered. This seems
to particularly relevant to 'grim and gritty' campaigns which in turn are
described as realistic and pragmatic. And this is for me where the problems
start. I find the link between 'grim/gritty' and 'realistic' suspect
to say the least; probably worth a thread of its own (any takers?). In a
realistic campaign I'd imagine the villains would have realistic objectives.
I find it difficult to beleive that somehow this always turns out to be
wanting the PCs dead. I somehow imagine that in most societies, murder
would be the last measure a villain would try to further his goals;
the kind of thing he'd attempt after trying to bribe and bully his victim.
I'll risk a dangerous generalisation here. Perhaps the players' fear of
surrender stems from a long tradition of fuzzy NPC objectives. If PCs
could count on rational approach from ther opponents, perhaps their
reactions might also be more rational?
Finally, I just to point out that imprisonment or death are not the
only alternatives to capture (despite what my original posting
suggested). Once the PCs have been robbed, warned ,roughed up a bit or
pumped for information they can often be released. It may not be fun,
but hey, it beats dying. --
-- James --
Epawtows
>stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
>after interrogation?
Hmm. I mostly play four-color supers games. Don't think a PC has ever killed
anyone in one of those. They still don't like the idea of surrendering.
Eric
--
epaw...@vt.edu----------------------------------------------------
James
(Scott Olson) writes:
> I think it's got a lot to do with the conventions of a game: if the
> world is such that surrendering is an option, and it's presented as such,
> then the players may consider it. Lots of worlds, though, either don't
> show it to be an option, or it really _isn't_. So players get in the
> mind-set of 'never surrender' and live (and occassionally die) by it. In
> a Pendragon game, I'd think it wouldn't take long for most players to
> figure out that surrender is an acceptable way out of a situation, because
> the genre supports it. Other genres may not be nearly as supportive,
> because the background is different (being captured by Trolls in Middle
> Earth, for example, is likely to be a quick ticket to the buffet table,
> with you as the main coarse).
Ok, so let's rephrase the question: doesn't it seem odd that surrender as a
viable option is relegated to a handful to genre games when it so well
represented both in fiction and reality?
-- James --
kurk...@stat.fi
>Please tell me you are joking.
Sadly, I'm not.
Some game systems best left unnamed quite helpfully state exactly how long
it takes to dispatch a helpless opponent. Players tend to think that
information was put there to be used.
One of the most typical gripes against GURPS I hear is that you can't kill
a helpless opponent automatically in one second.
On a more realistic vein, killing someone is a very final solution. PCs tend
to like final solutions. When they finally subdue the arch-villain, will they
just tie him up and send him to prison for his crimes?
No way, that's just setting him up for a prison escape. Better kill him, that
way you don't have to worry about him anymore -- on to next adventure.
I've had players in SUPERS games who never understood why they should let
the opponents live and invariably wanted to play Punisher(tm)/Wolverine(tm)
type "Kill 'em all" characters. In a genre I regard as the most pacifistic and
anti-killing of all widespread RPG genres! Needless to say, I don't GM much
supers these days...
I know several players who prefer fantasy because they feel the typical
FRP society doesn't limit their choices (i.e. killing) like modern ones
should. And ditto for cyberpunk settings.
I've heard several stories in the vein: "I used my xyzzy power to render them
helpless and then it was really exciting to see if I could kill them all before
they regained their senses."
I know, the game world society *should* limit this kind of behaviour.
All realistic societies do. It's just that most rule sets don't pay all too
much attention to this, and that's where most starting players get their
role models.
The black&white morality of many popular settings doesn't help any.
Especially since the "good" side is often seen as "they're evil, it's ok to
kill them." Which, IMHO, doesn't make these sides opposites but two sides
of the same coin.
//Maxxon
David A Bonar
: I find this particularly confusing. We're playing a game. To pretend that
: we are all playing in this realistic setting, and constraining yourself is
: confusing. You don't play out catching a cold. You don't stand on line at
: the DMV. There are a lot of *realistic* things that do not happen in a so-
: called realistic game. Why is it unrealistic to surrender?
: You and I know we're playing a game. If the characters are captured, the GM
: must have something in mind, or will come up with something.
I tend to struggle with this point. In general I'd prefer that
the game world had at least as much importance as the characters. Thus
if you are captured by a drug crazed gang of killers in a cyberpunk setting
I'd expect to be killed (or at least to have an attempt made to kill)
whether I was playing the character or GMing the situation. The world
acts on its internal logic.
: True, my
: *character* wouldn't know that, but we're supposed to be having fun right?
: How fun would it be if every group you played in was magically put to sleep
: and had their throat's cut? Would you keep coming back to a *realistic*
: cyberpunk game, where your character kept getting blown up by hidden bombs?
I think you are confusing things here. If your low level party
pissed off a mage in one of my AD&D games you might well find yourself
magically slept. You probably wouldn't be killed outright but with the
proper temperment for the mage and the proper provocation from your party
you might be. Your actions have consequences. However, random occurences
such as just happening to be hit by a car are silly.
Dave
Brian L. Biswell
> Surrendering is fun! How else can you learn the fine details
> of the insane plot of your favorite arch-criminal? Or escape from
> the fiendish death trap? And let's be honest, surrendering must be
> the easiest way into the Dark Fortress of Doom. So why are players so
> reluctant to wave the white flag?
>
There are other reasons for surrender as well. In a military
science-fiction campaign I was running, the PC's were doing a search for
some missing equipment in enemy territory, and were quite far from their
own base and medical help. I advised them that according to the Imperial
Articles of War, POW's were to be treated reasonable care and that if one
of them got seriously wounded, it might be better to be left on the field
and captured where they could receive help rather than die in the
wilderness of a serious wound with no help.
The attitude of the GM can be a major influence. In a D&D game I
played in, we managed to capture a band of orcs which we took to the
nearest lord for interrogation. He instead executed them right there. We
kinda figured that surrender would be a bad thing in his campaign. In
another game, we had a GM who regularly accepted surrender. The price was
usually a ransom (it can really suck to lose that magical item you spent a
game-year searching for, but it sure beats creating a new character).
There are also the rescue and escape scenarios for captured
characters. It also gives you a reason to go take on some bad guy because
he has your best armor!
--
Brian L. Biswell : Tether Research Group
bis...@asu.edu : Arizona State University
:
"If I knew what I was doing, : (602) 965-2449 (voice)
it wouldn't be research." :
John Novak
post. It will touch on what I consider to the be the
four basic resolutions of hostitlities; the interaction
between these resolutions and the attitude of the
PCs/characters, the NPCs and the environment; the
concept of "fair play", "good losers" and reasons for
fighting.
(I am now officially a geek. I have just written an abstract for
an article in r.g.f.advocacy... I need help.)
Resolution of Hostilities
As I see, it, there are four basic outcomes of any situation
involving real, honest to God, armed conflict. They are, in no
particular order, the Pitched Battle, the Surrender, Flight, and
Negotiation.
The Pitched Battle is the obvious outcome. Everyone is familiar
with this one, and it seems as though the older game systems were
written with nothing else in mind. The pitched battle is an
all-out attempt by each side to kill or incapacitate enough
members of the opposing side to have their way with them. (This
could, of course, mean forcing a surrender or a flight, as well.)
The Surrender is the diametric opposite to the Pitched Battle.
In surrendering, the terms usually imply making yourself helpless
and throwing yourself on the mercy of your opponent. You're
generally going to have your weapons and ability to fight or
resist taken from you.
Flight, an option mentioned little here, is a middle ground.
When Surrender isn't an option, and you're convinced you can't
win... you run like a scared child.
Negotiation, included for the sake of completeness, pretty much
any other resolution of the conflict. If you're not fighting,
running away, or surrendering, you must be talking.
Interactions
So how do these possible resolutions interact with the players,
NPCs and genre? Answer-- any way they want to.
Let's look at the PCs/players, first. It's impossibly important
to keep in mind the attitudes, expectations, and mindsets of both
the characters _and_ the PCs.
At times, I play characters who, when things break down to
violence, don't believe in the "no win" situation, much like
Captain Kirk. (Which is while I found it so funny that capture
was considered integral to Star Trek in the original hypothesis.
Kirk never surrendered and _meant_ it! He LIED!) I play
characters like this from time to time, and tend to play in
games like this, because in my recreation, I like to feel like I
have _some_ control over my destiny and some effect on the game
world.
If you have players like this, surrender is going to tend not to
be a solution. Flight may be, or negotiation, but not surrender.
What about the NPCs? Well, to a certain extent, it will depend
on the genre, but I usually know when I can surrender to a group,
and when I can't. Namely, if I stand a chance of surviving, I
can surrender. If there's a chance they'll just kill me, I'd
rather take my chances in battle.
If surrendering is fairly certain not to get me killed, I'll
often consider it. God knows, I've lost count of the number of
times I've needed to be party to a surrender in a current
Traveller game. It's rather pointless to try and fight a vessel
that outguns you ten to one, and has three big brothers just ten
minutes away.
On the other hand, if surrendering means being inspected and
having your cache of illegal weapons found, which essentially
ends the characters' lives with nothing less than a long prison
term, you might fight. Or, if you can get away with it, run
away.
It's a matter of risk assessment, really. If you believe you're
at greater risk by surrendering than by fighting, you fight.
Barring driving character reasons for not doing so, of course.
And of course, the genre is an all important consideration. The
grittier the genre (or more precisely, the grittier the
particular setting) and the cheaper human life is therein, the
less likely one is to surrender. Being beaten on a field of arms
in a chivalric world might be an acceptable situation for
surrender. Being beaten on a field of arms by the infmaous
murdering Black Knight may not. And surrendering to a pack of
Orcs in a typical Thud and Blunder genre game is right out.
Reasons for Fighting
Someone, whose name is lost in the mists of my memory claimed
that the "no surrender" mode is a result of our sudden loss of
the concept of fair play, in the West. I think this is a gross,
almost a tragic, oversimplification of the reality.
Following this discussion will probably get us inextricably
bogged down into concepts of public and private honor, but I
think you're overlooking the fact that some things might be more
important than any standard form of honor and ethics.
On the small scale, if someone is attacking or threatening to
attack, someone I love, I will fight, damn it. I will fight, I
may surrender for a moment if beaten, but only a fool would turn
his back on me, because I'll be there fighting again. This goes
beyond any possible arguments of, "But you struck him from
behind!" That's too bad, would be my response, he was attacking
that which I love.
The argument could be made that in attacking that which I love,
the aggressor has already forsaken his honor; we'll get back to
that.
On a larger scale, how many of us _wouldn't_ fight for our homes,
against a real demonstrated aggressor who wanted to come in and
change our way of life? Probably many if not most of us. That's
why many wars are fought-- the rights of self-determination.
And self-deterministic wars are often the bloodiest and most
brutal.
The idea is so pervasive in the West, now, that anyone
interfering with the rights of self-determination is more or less
automatically judged to have forsaken all honor and rights to
expect much in the way of a "fair" fight.
It's a cultural thing-- unless you have a right that _I
recognize_ to tell me what to do, I'm not going to have a
sscuffle with you to determine who's the boss. We're going to
have a real fight, with real bloodshed, and the very real
possibility that one of us will have a grievous injury afterward,
because that's how I value my freedom.
In a sense, any time anyone suggests that fighting should have
rules, I immediately wonder if that person has ever fought
(physically) for anything. About the only time I really fight is
when I've been pushed to these limits-- to fighting for something
I believe in.
This attitude, I posit, is _going_ to affect any bunch of players
to one extent or another. Expunging this from a player's
portrayal of his character, I further posit, is not going to be a
trivial task.
And any genre where these values are present (which includes most
present-day and future set campaigns, most especially including
Star Trek, and includes a number of fantasy campaigns simply
because the designing GM believes strongly in these values and
puts them into settings where they might not otherwise belong)
will be affected right down to their cores because the player
characters will buy into it.
Conclusion
Don't expect players to surrender, unless you really know the
players, and further, not unless the campaign situation and genre
really warrant it.
As a GM, take a moment, step back and look at the situation in
the eys of your players and their characters. Based on their
knowledge (on that odd, semi-conscious superposition of player
knowledge and character knowledge), perform that risk assessment,
and ask ask if you'd surrender.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
http://cegt201.bradley.edu/~jsn/index.html
The Humblest Man on the Net
Rodney Payne
>From: James <ja...@jpb-s.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: Why not surrender?
>Date: Wed, 02 Aug 1995 23:02:58 GMT
>But that all in the past. The question is why such a basic device in fiction
>, the capture of the heroes, features so little in RPGs and when it does
>players react negatively towards it?
Because, for the most part, players react negatively to defeat in any form.
A totally insufficient but nonetheless diverting anecdote to show what I
mean. I was running Stormbringer 1st Ed. not long back (full of weird little
rules quirks, really unbalanced (and thus great fun)). Anyone who's prepared
characters for it knows that the PCs can/will be of vastly different ability
levels. Anyway, I made the clear point that I wouldn't be fudging any combats
(which should be really rare), so don't act like you might in another game.
Particulary if you end up playing a small fern from Org.
Anyway, by the middle of the first play session I'm already fudging. Why?
Because:
* The default mentality is still one of solutions through superior firepower
* The players really couldn't cope with defeat. They get too much of a thrill
out of winning combats and the like that they will fight to the death
(usually assuming they're protected anyway) rather than retreat or,
perhaps, surrender.
Rodney Payne
David A Bonar
: In article <3vqj3m$p...@tiger1.ocs.lsu.edu> dbo...@tiger.lsu.edu (David A Bonar) writes:
: > I tend to struggle with this point. In general I'd prefer that
: >the game world had at least as much importance as the characters. Thus
: >if you are captured by a drug crazed gang of killers in a cyberpunk setting
: >I'd expect to be killed (or at least to have an attempt made to kill)
: >whether I was playing the character or GMing the situation. The world
: >acts on its internal logic.
: While this is true, can't you balance the two?
You are reading too much into my post. My contention is not that
characters should be killed every time. I'm arguing that there needs
to be a balance. The players should not assume that just because they
are players that their characters lead some sort of charmed existence.
Instead normal logic will prevail. Surrenduring to a drug crazy gang
of killers is a bad idea in a cyberpunk setting. On the other hand
surrenduring to corp. guards is probably a fine idea except for rare
circumstances. The post I was responding to implied that being captured
in either case would be basically the same (being PCs the characters
would always manage to come out ok).
Dave
David A Bonar
: Because most GMs characterize their worlds this way - witness the *realism*
: argument. As though no one ever surrended to their enemy. This is weird -
: fr'example Merri and Pippen end up captured by Orcs and they don't get their
: throats cut. So why do most GMs, who I think are likely to be avid
: readers, fail to employ one of the most tried and true fiction conventions?
Because its been overused? Because in many cases its strains
credability? I don't want to speak for anyone but myself. My argument
is not that surrendering is wrong, bad or whatever. In fact I agree
that PCs do not surrender as much as they should. However I think that
the surrendering idea can be carried too far.
Actually I think one of the big reasons for the problem is that
there is a fine line between some of the situations. Is this a situation
where the good guys win against the odds because they are heros or is
this one where their heroism is shown by the fact that they accept the
inevitable, surrender and then still win in the end?
Dave
Andrew Finch
: Because, for the most part, players react negatively to defeat in any form.
I agree. The question is why? I don't believe the point of the game is
victory in all situations, at all costs. I don't think the point is
succeeding at every action or endeavor. And I don't think the point is
ever increasing fame and power. Setbacks are part of life, and part of
most plots.
So why do players react this way?
I think the players need to be empowered even when their characters are
not. This needs to be made very clear. I didn't make it clear enough
during the Star Trek game that spawned these threads. The characters will
accept defeat. Players who feel threatened will not.
David
Nonie Rider
Most players I know find it very difficult to surrender. I try not to
set up scenarios that require it, but in the few cases where I think
the players are missing something, I've spoken GM to player, just to
make sure the PLAYER sees what the CHARACTER would.
For example: "From what they did to the others, you don't think you
have any chance of defeating them. Would you fight to the end,
surrender, run, or try to negotiate something?"
I've also had to do the same in cases where it seemed to me that
the players were just hanging around waiting for me to solve their
problems for them. For example: "Um, guys, if you sit there doing
nothing, she really is going to kill him at sunrise. There's no
further information to wait for. Do you want to go along with it,
let him die, or scan for the pair of them even knowing that she'll
probably sense it?~
--Nonie
Scott Olson
> In article <kurkisuo.4...@stat.fi>, <kurk...@stat.fi> wrote:
> >Do a little test. Recall your past games. When was the last time someone
> >stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
> >after interrogation?
>
> to lower the guy's defensive value, my players usually aren't that lethal
> with prisoners unless they have a good reason. It's been a long time
> since I had a group where at least one character wouldn't object to that
> sort of treatment,
>
> >good chance to do so?
>
> even the most thick-headed player will eventually learn. Not to mention
> that killing people gratuitously can get you a reputation that isn't all
> that convenient.
It's hard to know what information you've missed when those that knew
it are dead. After all, they can't tell it to you.... The reputation can
DEFINITELY be a problem, though, if you're playing in a genre where this
is frowned on.
> >Given this typical behaviour, why should they assume their "evil" foes are
> >any more noble? Because NPCs are tied by genre cliches?
>
> If you are vastly outgunned and the bad guys *still* seem intent
> on capturing, not killing, it isn't all that big a stretch to thinking
> they might want you alive for some reason.
Of course, this may not be a good thing....... What the PCs do in
that case is probably dependent on what they 'know' (or think they know)
about whoever it is that has the drop on them.
Scott
Scott Olson
I think one reason that it's NOT more common in games is that we've
all read books (or seen movies, whatever) where the opposition is done in
BECAUSE they took the protagonists prisoner. It's counter-productive: the
protagonists either learn something, free someone, or steal something that
ends up being the doom/defeat of their opponent. Since we've all
read/seen this, we think of ways around having it happen. I KNOW the GM's
seen the same thing, and thought of similar things in response. The
easiest way to prevent this sort of thing is to kill the prisoners (before
or after they're wrung dry of information is a matter of personal taste
and foresight). Another method is to make SURE they can't escape, by
whatever means.
Given these thoughts, unless the genre _explicitly_ supports it, I
think lots of players are reluctant to surrender. They give the opponent
credit for being reasonably smart and pragmatic, and think that
surrendering either means that they won't be coming back at all, or only
on the opponent's terms.
Scott
Scott Olson
> In article <717417...@jpb-s.demon.co.uk> James <ja...@jpb-s.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
> >Please tell me you are joking.
>
> Sadly, I'm not.
>
> Some game systems best left unnamed quite helpfully state exactly how long
> it takes to dispatch a helpless opponent. Players tend to think that
> information was put there to be used.
>
> One of the most typical gripes against GURPS I hear is that you can't kill
> a helpless opponent automatically in one second.
>
> On a more realistic vein, killing someone is a very final solution. PCs tend
> to like final solutions. When they finally subdue the arch-villain, will they
> just tie him up and send him to prison for his crimes?
>
> No way, that's just setting him up for a prison escape. Better kill him, that
> way you don't have to worry about him anymore -- on to next adventure.
>
> I've had players in SUPERS games who never understood why they should let
> the opponents live and invariably wanted to play Punisher(tm)/Wolverine(tm)
> type "Kill 'em all" characters. In a genre I regard as the most pacifistic and
> anti-killing of all widespread RPG genres! Needless to say, I don't GM much
> supers these days...
Heh, I was playing a supers game for a while, and my character was
getting so frustrated by the pointlessness of capturing the bad guys just
to watch them break out (or be broken out) again that he was starting to
lean this way also. Maybe I don't have the right mindset for supers, I
don't know, but about the 4th or 5th time I had to go catch the same bad
guy, I was ready to pull a trigger on his skull and to H@!! with a bad
rep.
> I know several players who prefer fantasy because they feel the typical
> FRP society doesn't limit their choices (i.e. killing) like modern ones
> should. And ditto for cyberpunk settings.
>
> I've heard several stories in the vein: "I used my xyzzy power to render them
> helpless and then it was really exciting to see if I could kill them all before
> they regained their senses."
>
> I know, the game world society *should* limit this kind of behaviour.
> All realistic societies do. It's just that most rule sets don't pay all too
> much attention to this, and that's where most starting players get their
> role models.
>
> The black&white morality of many popular settings doesn't help any.
> Especially since the "good" side is often seen as "they're evil, it's ok to
> kill them." Which, IMHO, doesn't make these sides opposites but two sides
> of the same coin.
This is true: when the 'other' side is seen as unredeemable and
always the same, the common response is 'off them'. Since there's nothing
else you can do, really, with them, this isn't completely beyond the
pale...
Scott
Scott Olson
But this wouldn't lead to a 'surrender' situation in the first place.
A surrender situation, to be credible, requires the threat of serious
bodily injury or death. If a bribery attempt would be made, it's already
in the past and was turned down (you don't surrender to someone who comes
up and offers a bribe, it's silly).
> I'll risk a dangerous generalisation here. Perhaps the players' fear of
> surrender stems from a long tradition of fuzzy NPC objectives. If PCs
> could count on rational approach from ther opponents, perhaps their
> reactions might also be more rational?
Possible. If they know that the NPC in command on the other side has
a reputation for being 'reasonable', they're more likely to risk a
surrender. Or if they know that, in general, the XX Army isn't prone to
shooting prisoners out of hand, etc.
Scott
Bruce Baugh
:Do a little test. Recall your past games. When was the last time someone
:stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
:after interrogation?
<pause to count on finger> Last time that happened to a party I was GMing for
was about 1987. It sounds to me like you've got players who need remedial
instruction in the conventions of heroism, and I've addressed ways of doing
that in other threads just recently. (I can recapitulate, if anyone is
interested.)
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Bruce Baugh
:I think the players need to be empowered even when their characters are
:not. This needs to be made very clear.
Agreed. It's important to get everyone's expectations running in parallel.
Part of it, I think, depends on the particular game, but even with something
like CALL OF CTHULHU (where _I_ treat death and/or madness as occupational
hazards) I'd spell it out for players, and consider something else if they
didn't feel like that.
This is, I guess, one o' them there meta-game issues, ain't it?
On a few occasions I've been willing to stop things and say something to the
effect of, "Look, I had this in mind, and I see that it's not occurring to any
of you. Keep it mind as a reasonable/worthy/whatever alternative." I much
prefer not to do that...but then I prefer doing so to having an otherwise
entertaining session fall apart through failure of communication.
Isaacs, Ross
> I tend to struggle with this point. In general I'd prefer that
>the game world had at least as much importance as the characters. Thus
>if you are captured by a drug crazed gang of killers in a cyberpunk setting
>I'd expect to be killed (or at least to have an attempt made to kill)
>whether I was playing the character or GMing the situation. The world
>acts on its internal logic.
While this is true, can't you balance the two?
Sure, if the group is captured by drug crazed gun toting killers, you'd
expect to be killed as soon as you surrendered and sold for body parts. But
what if you run afoul of a big corporation and you surrender to the
corporate thugs? The CEO has no idea what you know. Do you know
their plan to take over the world? Perhaps you've had help on the inside.
Maybe you have some other information that he might find of use. So instead
of putting a bullet in your head, the corporate thugs throw you in a hole
someplace and begin the interrogation. Eventually, one of the guards screws
up and turns his back at the wrong time, and now you're making a break for
it.
I can honestly say that in every game I've ever GM'd, the players have
trussed up the villains and interrogated them before killing them. Even the
orcs. After all, they'd want to know if the whole tribe is in the area.
While it's true that they eventually killed the orcs, if the orcs follow the
same logic (perhaps they want to know the strength of the militia, or where
the good treasure is) then there is the chance for escape.
Why must you automatically kill your players? Not everybody they run
into can be gun-toting psychos. Can't be much fun for them and your only
encouraging them to be reckless. ("Gee, they'll kill me if I surrender and
I'm outnumbered, so I better jump out and take as many with me as I can.")
I think about the only time that characters should be killed is when they do
something stupid. Not to preserve some notion of *realism*.
> I think you are confusing things here. If your low level party
>pissed off a mage in one of my AD&D games you might well find yourself
>magically slept. You probably wouldn't be killed outright but with the
>proper temperment for the mage and the proper provocation from your party
>you might be. Your actions have consequences.
Certainly. I never said they didn't. But that doesn't *automatically* mean
that I'm going to die when I surrender. Would your mage kill me with a
lightning strike while I was sitting in a tavern a mile away? Would I know
it was coming? Would I be sitting there one minute, and the next be a
little spot on the floor? Or would you have him send henchmen and monsters
to plague me? Would I suddenly find myself in the middle of a frame-up?
In the former, there isn't much of a story. I piss off the mage, I'm dead -
those are the consequences. It also isn't much of a game. I died a
meaningless death. In the latter, there is a story. I have a fighting
chance to get out of the situation. Both are consequences of my actions,
but the GM selects what those consequences will be. I don't buy the idea
that the mage killed me outright because that was 'in character.' I was
killed because the GM chose to take that course of action.
Ross A. Isaacs
Isaacs, Ross
>I agree. The question is why? I don't believe the point of the game is
>victory in all situations, at all costs. I don't think the point is
>succeeding at every action or endeavor. And I don't think the point is
>ever increasing fame and power. Setbacks are part of life, and part of
>most plots.
Because of AD&D. Honestly. We all started out with a game that encouraged
succeeding at every action and endeavor, ever increasing fame and power. If
you are set back, you don't go on to the rest of the dungeon.
Because most GMs characterize their worlds this way - witness the *realism*
argument. As though no one ever surrended to their enemy. This is weird -
fr'example Merri and Pippen end up captured by Orcs and they don't get their
throats cut. So why do most GMs, who I think are likely to be avid
readers, fail to employ one of the most tried and true fiction conventions?
>So why do players react this way?
>I think the players need to be empowered even when their characters are
>not. This needs to be made very clear.
Again, this is a game. I make it clear to my players that they are the
heroes. That they won't be killed outright by my whim. If they stick their
fingers in light-sockets, however, they're gonna get electrocuted. If they
step off a cliff, they'll die. They don't lead charmed lives, but neither
do they lead cheap ones.
Ross A. Isaacs
ErolB1
>In article: <3vnqse$9...@newsbf02.news.aol.com> ero...@aol.com (ErolB1)
writes:
>> Yes it is. But taking prisoners, keeping them alive, and not killing
them
>> except in elaborate deathtraps isn't pragmatic in most settings.
Players
>> tend to be *very* pragmatic and expect their opponents to be so as
well.
>> They don't *expect* to survive & succeed when taken prisoner - they
expect
>> to be killed out-of-hand, since that's what *they'd* do if the
positions
>> were reversed. In fact, in some settings the players will be nonplused
if
>> the bad guys surrender - it may introduce unwanted and unamusing moral
>> complications into a game that was attractive for its black-and-white
>> moral simplicity.
>Scary isn't it.
Scary? No. Just logical. Barring special circumstances, if you've got a
good reason to fight in the first place, you've generally got a good
reason to fight to the death. Conversely, good reasons for *not* killing
your prisoners are generally good reasons for not fighting at all.
>> For surrendering/getting captured to work, it has to be established as
a
>> genre and campaign convention. It's an unrealistic, "cinematic"
>> convention, and while I happen to *like* the cinematic style, most
games
>> tend to be more "realistic" (or rather, more "dark & gritty") at least
in
>Not necessarily. Look at it in the other way around. In a more
"cinematic"
>game, the villain wants the PCs dead because thats what he does. In a
more
>"realistic" game you expect the bad guys to have very good reasons to
>attack
>the party. More often than not, the villain will want something more from
>the PCs than their death. He may wish to rob, question or scare them
>off; all options which allow the PCs to survive being captured quite
>happily.
I disagree. In many cinematic settings, the villian *doesn't* simply want
the heroes to die - the villian wants the heroes to *suffer* to be
*humiliated* and to understand what a brilliant & superior fiend the
villian is. Lesser characters aren't worth this, so the villian just
snuffs them. But the heroes, ah! They're the only ones who can truely
understand and appriciate the villian's genius.
In more "realistic" games, otoh, the simplest solution for the villian is
simple death: Rob & kill, interrogate & kill, or just kill and be rid of
them. (I admit - for the villian to attempt to scare the heroes off at
first encounter is a good idea. It lets the villian proceed without
tipping his hand too much. But this generally won't involve *capturing*
the characters.)
>Deathraps I agree belong to the romantic strands of the hobby. But I
reject
>the theory that, as a rule, PCs should 'rationally' expect to be killed
off
>hand by most opponents should they surrender. It may be common practice
in
>games for this to occur.
What isn't rational about expecting common practice to occur?
>But that means we have PCs making decisions based
>on players experience of RPGs and that can't be healthy.
I do not understand this sentence. Can you clarify?
Erol K. Bayburt
Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow
ErolB1
>Because most GMs characterize their worlds this way - witness the
*realism*
>argument. As though no one ever surrended to their enemy. This is weird
-
>fr'example Merri and Pippen end up captured by Orcs and they don't get
>their
>throats cut. So why do most GMs, who I think are likely to be avid
>readers, fail to employ one of the most tried and true fiction
conventions?
Ah, but Merry and Pippen *didn't* surrender - they fought to bitter end,
got knocked out, and were captured by orcs who had very special & unusual
orders to capture hobbits alive and unhurt. Look what those orcs did to
Boromir.
IIRC, the only character to *surrender* in LOTR was Gollum.
I think a distinction needs to be made between characters *surrendering*
and characters *being captured* Even (especially?) in fiction, the former
is a lot rarer than the latter.
Scott Olson
: Because most GMs characterize their worlds this way - witness the *realism*
: argument. As though no one ever surrended to their enemy. This is weird -
: fr'example Merri and Pippen end up captured by Orcs and they don't get their
: throats cut. So why do most GMs, who I think are likely to be avid
: readers, fail to employ one of the most tried and true fiction conventions?
There's a _very_ good reason (in the story) why Merri and Pippin
didn't get their throats cut: the Orcs in question had SPECIFIC orders
about what to do with any hobbits they caught. If it had been Legolas or
Gimli who'd been in that position, they're dead, period. There's also the
question of what was _going_ to happen to Merri and Pippin when they get
to Orthanc (if Eomer and company hadn't gotten to Ugluk's unit before they
got home) to consider: once it was found that they weren't the hobbits
that were wanted and didn't have the Ring, they'd have been almost
certainly drained of any useful information and disposed of.
Scott
WizarDru
quite a few historical examples of generals taking advantage of a truce
or surrender to kill a foe, or not accept a surrender as valid. We have
not changed so much as we might like to imagine.
In my campaigns, it is dependent on genre, but my players never have had
problems accepting prisoners. It becomes just another problem to be
solved...can we feed him? Can he last the march back to Harufen? Can
we convince him to tell us what he knows about Mad Durgim? In the
Supers game, most combats end in surrender or villains being taken
prisoner. In Fantasy, they regularly try to take at least two prisoners
for questioning, if they can help it.
They also know when they are outgunned, and will surrender, knowing it
to be a wise option (not just because they're playing...the characters
will want to try and talk their way out).
--
|--------------------------------------------------------------------|
|--http://www.netaxs.com/people/wizardru/----------------------------|
|------------"Well,that's the last time I ever use a revolving ------|
|--------------door in Hell", Tim, Books of Magic 17 ----------------|
James
writes:
> But that means we have PCs making decisions based
> >on players experience of RPGs and that can't be healthy.
>
> I do not understand this sentence. Can you clarify?
Clarification on its way. I was suggesting that perhaps the choice of not
surrendering was based on players experience of what happens in games rather
then the PC's experience of what happens in his world. Just another twist on
the old player/character knowledge argument.
-- James --
Rodney Payne
>Rodney Payne (rgp...@CFS01.cc.monash.edu.au) wrote:
>: Because, for the most part, players react negatively to defeat in any form.
>I agree.
I am curently in recovery. ;)
>So why do players react this way?
>I think the players need to be empowered even when their characters are
>not. This needs to be made very clear. I didn't make it clear enough
>during the Star Trek game that spawned these threads. The characters will
>accept defeat. Players who feel threatened will not.
I think there's another reason. Expectation. Roleplaying scenarios are
traditionally built on a succession of successes (less than perfect
phrase), not a a succession of success and failures. Players tend to
believe that all games are a series of steps: to get to the next bit, you
must overcome the part before. So they are generally unaware that they
will be able to continue after a defeat.
Unfortunately, the best way to change this is just to do it. make them
fail, show them it's not the end of the scenario.
What baffles me most about this mentality is that, even when clear
alternatives to success/failure (such as escape) are present, most
players still wont take them.
--
Rodney Payne | What is the meaning of life? Life has no
| meaning. It's just a fortunate coincidence
spur...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au | of carbon chemistry. Forget about it.
rgp...@cfs01.cc.monash.edu.au | Anonymous
ekb
> Ok, so let's rephrase the question: doesn't it seem odd that surrender as a
> viable option is relegated to a handful to genre games when it so well
> represented both in fiction and reality?
But is *surrender* really that well represented in fiction? Or is it just
*getting captured* that's so well represented?
As for surrender in reality: If you care about your cause, you don't
surrender unless fighting on is clearly futile (and maybe not even then -
consider the classic response "Nuts!" to the surrender demand in the
Battle of the Buldge.) In real life, the people who commonly surrender
are common criminals and demoralized conscripts - and PC's are usually
neither.
Furthermore, real-world surrender generally saves the prisoner's life at
the cost of destroying any plans for the near to mid-term future. If the
setting is reasonably realistic and the opponents are minimally
competent, then escape is very unlikely. In game terms, surrender means
retiring the character as a PC. From the player's point of view, there's
little to choose between that and the character's death: In both cases,
the player loses the character.
Frank Pitt
Resolution of Hostilities
>
>As I see, it, there are four basic outcomes of any situation
>involving real, honest to God, armed conflict. They are, in no
>particular order, the Pitched Battle, the Surrender, Flight, and
>Negotiation.
You've missed the Guerilla War, the Fighting Retreat,
the Mutual Assured Destruction, the Forced Negotiation,
the Avoidance of Conflict, the Mutiny of the Troops,
The Unexpected Outbreak of Peace, Bad Weather Delay's Attack,
Treason & Treachery, the Trojan Horse, etc, etc.
:-)
>At times, I play characters who, when things break down to
>violence, don't believe in the "no win" situation, much like
>Captain Kirk. (Which is while I found it so funny that capture
>was considered integral to Star Trek in the original hypothesis.
>Kirk never surrendered and _meant_ it! He LIED!) I play
>characters like this from time to time, and tend to play in
>games like this, because in my recreation, I like to feel like I
>have _some_ control over my destiny and some effect on the game
>world.
>
>If you have players like this, surrender is going to tend not to
>be a solution. Flight may be, or negotiation, but not surrender.
Then they die, like Kirk _should_ have.
>What about the NPCs? Well, to a certain extent, it will depend
>on the genre, but I usually know when I can surrender to a group,
>and when I can't. Namely, if I stand a chance of surviving, I
>can surrender. If there's a chance they'll just kill me, I'd
>rather take my chances in battle.
I play realistic NPC's. In other words they surrender when there's
nothing to be gained by continuing fighting. (Unless the PC's already
have a reputation for killing prisoners). Then, if the players kill
anyone, they get hit with the full weight of the law unless they can
succesfuly hide the killing or come up with a good justification
>If surrendering is fairly certain not to get me killed, I'll
>often consider it. God knows, I've lost count of the number of
>times I've needed to be party to a surrender in a current
>Traveller game. It's rather pointless to try and fight a vessel
>that outguns you ten to one, and has three big brothers just ten
>minutes away.
Every time you are boarded by a customs ship or Naval patrol you
are metaphorically surrendering to the might of the Imperium.
Every time you refrain from owning and using nukes you are doing
the same.
>On the other hand, if surrendering means being inspected and
>having your cache of illegal weapons found, which essentially
>ends the characters' lives with nothing less than a long prison
>term, you might fight. Or, if you can get away with it, run
>away.
But in any Traveler universe that is stupid, unless you're facing
an inferior ship (which is uncommon) you will not be able to escape.
It is better to risk the prison term than to risk being exposed
to vacuum. Heck, try bribes, you're more likely to find a bribable
lieutenant than escape from a Naval patrol.
(Well that's the propaganda I spread about the Navy anyway)
> Reasons for Fighting
>
>Someone, whose name is lost in the mists of my memory claimed
>that the "no surrender" mode is a result of our sudden loss of
>the concept of fair play, in the West. I think this is a gross,
>almost a tragic, oversimplification of the reality.
I also think it's looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses.
We have never had "fair play" in warfare or other forms of conflict
other than in stylised and basicaly non-visceral forms of combat
such as sport and duels.
There were once concepts of were-geld and such which meant that
it was in the winner's interest both to accept a person's surrender,
and to not mistreat the prisoner. And in those circumstances it
was in the captives interest not to fight, as he knew he would
survive if he didn't anger the captors
But other than that, "no surrender mode" is just S.O.P
>The idea is so pervasive in the West, now, that anyone
>interfering with the rights of self-determination is more or less
>automatically judged to have forsaken all honor and rights to
>expect much in the way of a "fair" fight.
>It's a cultural thing-- unless you have a right that _I
>recognize_ to tell me what to do, I'm not going to have a
>sscuffle with you to determine who's the boss. We're going to
>have a real fight, with real bloodshed, and the very real
>possibility that one of us will have a grievous injury afterward,
>because that's how I value my freedom.
Or not. Some people will be beaten & broken, or convinced they are wrong.
Look at all those people who give up their rights to religious cults.
Look at all those women and men who acccept physical violence from
their partners, and live with them for years even with your "free"
cultures
>In a sense, any time anyone suggests that fighting should have
>rules, I immediately wonder if that person has ever fought
>(physically) for anything. About the only time I really fight is
>when I've been pushed to these limits-- to fighting for something
>I believe in.
There is a place for conflict with rules. It's called a courtroom.
(Or a sports field)
>Don't expect players to surrender, unless you really know the
>players, and further, not unless the campaign situation and genre
>really warrant it.
I would say in reponse, don't expect to survive if you fight
when you should surrender. There is wisdom in fighting
only on ground of your own choosing.
>As a GM, take a moment, step back and look at the situation in
>the eys of your players and their characters. Based on their
>knowledge (on that odd, semi-conscious superposition of player
>knowledge and character knowledge), perform that risk assessment,
>and ask ask if you'd surrender.
Frankly, I have no qualms in killing players who insist on fighting
when faced with overwhelming force.
Or even those who refuse to "surrender" to the traffic police
I have had at least one player shot by SWAT teams after stupidly
waving a gun at someone who annoyed them, and then continually
refusing to surrender to the escalating response of the law.
It was annoyng, it distracted us from the real game, it meant the
rest of the team was one man down, but as one of the team members
said, it was better for the team that the player's/character's
instability was revealed before they got into a situation where
he could have taken the whole team down with him.
Frankie
Frank Pitt
>
>Do a little test. Recall your past games. When was the last time someone
>stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
>after interrogation?
Er, last week ?
>When was the last time the party wizard cast sleep on some orcs and the PCs
>didn't just slit their throats?
Ten years ago at least, haven't played _that_ game in as long
>When was the last time the PCs didn't kill an enemy when they had a
>good chance to do so?
Er, last week ?
Not becasue we didn't want to though, but because it's not meet to
break the masquerade in public
>Given this typical behaviour, why should they assume their "evil" foes are
>any more noble? Because NPCs are tied by genre cliches?
Actually this is only typical behaviour if the facilitator does a poor job
of enforcing the rules of the genre. I know of no genre (other than offbeat
ones such as Toon & Paranoia) where it is generally acceptable to casually
kill people. If the PC's kill their prisoners have them censured for it.
If they're military, have 'em court martialled.
If they have no authority arrest them for murder.
Unless it's a war of genocide, of course.
Frankie
James
> What baffles me most about this mentality is that, even when clear
> alternatives to success/failure (such as escape) are present, most
> players still wont take them.
Join the club--
-- James --
Reimer Behrends
[...]
: Scary? No. Just logical. Barring special circumstances, if you've got a
: good reason to fight in the first place, you've generally got a good
: reason to fight to the death. Conversely, good reasons for *not* killing
: your prisoners are generally good reasons for not fighting at all.
Eh, don't you see that this paragraph is _riddled_ with logical
fallacies? Starting with faulty premises ...
[...]
Reimer Behrends
ErolB1
> I was suggesting that perhaps the choice of not
>surrendering was based on players experience of what happens in games
>rather
>then the PC's experience of what happens in his world. Just another twist
on
>the old player/character knowledge argument.
In a way, I'd think that acting only on the character's knowledge of what
happens in the game-world would make the character *less* likely to
surrender - the idea of surrendering in the hope of things coming out
right in the end would be based more on player-knowledge of the sort of
genre they're in.
Of course, the choice of not surrendering may be based on player *desires*
rather than character desires: From the player's point of view, there is
little to choose between the character surrendering and the character
dying. OTOH the *character* would much prefer staying alive, even if it
means being imprisoned for the next five or ten or 20 years.
James
writes:
> Of course, the choice of not surrendering may be based on player *desires*
> rather than character desires: From the player's point of view, there is
> little to choose between the character surrendering and the character
> dying. OTOH the *character* would much prefer staying alive, even if it
> means being imprisoned for the next five or ten or 20 years.
You could be right there. Of course if you are going to generate a new
character anyway, why not let the old be captured. That way both player and
character are 'happy' ;-). Not to mention that the old character may be
rescued/pardoned/what ever at a later date.
-- James --
ErolB1
But as long as you continue fighting, there's a slim chance you'll win (or
at least win free). Surrender, and that chance is gone. From the player's
pov surrender is like comitting suicide - but without the benefit of
getting to spit one last time in the enemy's eye.
If the game-world is realistic in that escape from captivity is unlikely,
then from the player's pov surrender is undesirable (although the
*character* might not agree). If the game-world is unrealistic in that
escape is likely, then the enemy is foolish to *accept* surrender - and it
is foolish for the PC's to trust in the foolishness of their enemies
except in extreme genre cases. The only out is if there is some sort of
ransom arrangment set up with the enemy - but if the enemy is honorable
and decent enough to deal with wrt ransoms, what the heck are you doing
fighting him in the first place?
Anyway, I don't think *surrender* is really as common in stories as you
make it out to be - IMHO it's getting physically overpowered and
*captured* that's common. And if you want that as a GM, it's (relatively)
easy. Just have the Big Bad Cheese order the weapon-fodder types to "bring
'em back *alive*"
Isaacs, Ross
> I think one reason that it's NOT more common in games is that we've
>all read books (or seen movies, whatever) where the opposition is done in
>BECAUSE they took the protagonists prisoner. It's counter-productive: the
>protagonists either learn something, free someone, or steal something that
>ends up being the doom/defeat of their opponent. Since we've all
>read/seen this, we think of ways around having it happen. I KNOW the GM's
>seen the same thing, and thought of similar things in response. The
>easiest way to prevent this sort of thing is to kill the prisoners (before
>or after they're wrung dry of information is a matter of personal taste
>and foresight). Another method is to make SURE they can't escape, by
>whatever means.
I, as the GM, PLAN for this to happen. RPGs aren't about winning. I'm not
out to win the game (e.g., beating my players by killing them). I want the
protagonists - the players - to be captured by the stormtroopers, escape
from the cell block, find the secret plans in the computer and return to the
rebel base. Otherwise, how can I expect them to blow up the Death Star? We
may have seen this 1000 times, but why would I, as GM, purposely try to get
around it? In short, what you are saying is that because the GM knows the
protagonists will find the weak-spot by being captured, it's in her interest
to prevent this from happening. I think this involves the GM taking the
*side* of the antagonists. And by your logic, then it is in the best
interests of the American Army to kill everyone who surrenders, because
they've seen Rambo and know that someone might try to escape with the secret
invasion plans. . . . .
No, I think players refuse to surrender because they believe that if they
do, they've *lost* the game.
When players don't give in to the conventions of literature/film, they make
it much harder on themselves. They end up going the long way around.
> Given these thoughts, unless the genre _explicitly_ supports it, I
>think lots of players are reluctant to surrender. They give the opponent
>credit for being reasonably smart and pragmatic, and think that
>surrendering either means that they won't be coming back at all, or only
>on the opponent's terms.
I still don't by this *explicit* argument. Why must I tell them that
surrender is okay? Must I sit my players down and tell them:
* The game is realistic.
* It's set in contemporary America
* surrender is okay
* they may not shoot anyone they want because they'll be arrested
* they must call their mothers every sunday or else mom will be upset and
won't send birthday money?
I would like to think that either a) they are reasonably intelligent and b)
they'll get this through play.
Try surrender. It's in my best interests as GM to keep my players alive.
Otherwise, a ninja assassin could just walk into their rooms and put a
bullet in their head. We'd all consider that unfair, unless there were a
lot of skill checks and a chance for survival. Why not the same assumption
for surrender?
Ross
> Scott
Margaret Marie Lasater
>Rodney Payne (rgp...@CFS01.cc.monash.edu.au) wrote:
>
>: Because, for the most part, players react negatively to defeat in any form.
>
>victory in all situations, at all costs. I don't think the point is
>succeeding at every action or endeavor. And I don't think the point is
>ever increasing fame and power. Setbacks are part of life, and part of
>most plots.
>
I don't think it is defeat, I think it is failure that the players
are reacting to. It is a tendency I have noticed among the group
I've gamed with, they universally hate to fail. This really isn't
the same as defeat. I've seen characters be defeated, fail to succeed,
run away, etc but as long as the players don't think they have _failed_
somehow, there isn't a problem. The problem is no plan is really
perfect and after the problems start, hindsight is very good to figure
out what they should have done. I have generally noticed that long
drawn out fights (or anything else) rarely lead to surrender and have
a tendency to go until either the PC's win, die, or are completely
incapacitaed. If things go badly the players tend to be unhappy. If
the situation is quick and seems like there really wasn't any better
choices, then the players accept it.
An example. In a recent AD&D game I was playing in the entire party
got captured by a group of fire giants. We were rushed and overcome
with some kind of really nasty sleep powder. Well, we could've noticed
them coming, but nobody did, and they were much more alert than expected.
We (the players and the characeters) figured they enslave us (they did)
and since this was the group of giants we needed to recover an item
from (we hoped). We managed to make it work out eventually. And
yes, we played out that captivity until we found an opportunity to
suceed at our goal, then we got the heck out of there. We didn't
kill a single giant (or anything else). I can't say for the pissed
off efreet the giants had ahd imprisoned though. I ask the GM
later if he intended to capture the party, the answer was no, they
just happened to be very alert at that time (someone else was messing
with them) and they noticed us and we didn't notice them (bad luck
in other words).
Margaret
--
When Marx described religion as the opiate of the masses, he'd
never conceived of televison.
Isaacs, Ross
> There's a _very_ good reason (in the story) why Merri and Pippin
>didn't get their throats cut: the Orcs in question had SPECIFIC orders
>about what to do with any hobbits they caught. If it had been Legolas or
>Gimli who'd been in that position, they're dead, period. There's also the
>question of what was _going_ to happen to Merri and Pippin when they get
>to Orthanc (if Eomer and company hadn't gotten to Ugluk's unit before they
>got home) to consider: once it was found that they weren't the hobbits
>that were wanted and didn't have the Ring, they'd have been almost
>certainly drained of any useful information and disposed of.
While this is certainly true, it does not negate my point. If I were a
villain, and a bunch of people suddenly became interested in my activities,
I'd want to know:
Who are they working for?
How did they find out so much information?
Can I use them against my enemy (presumably the person who got the PC's
involved?
How much do they know?
Who have they told?
So I send out my goons and tell them to bring 'em back alive.
Let's take the Merry and Pippen example a little further. They get to
Orthanic and they find out the hobbits don't have the ring. Now it's time
to drain them of all useful information. Which means putting them in a
cell. Which means they aren't killed outright at the gates of Orthanic.
Which means the GM has any number of options - from rescue by Gandalf to
breaking out on their own.
Ross
> Scott
Isaacs, Ross
> Because its been overused? Because in many cases its strains
>credability? I don't want to speak for anyone but myself. My argument
>is not that surrendering is wrong, bad or whatever. In fact I agree
>that PCs do not surrender as much as they should. However I think that
>the surrendering idea can be carried too far.
> Actually I think one of the big reasons for the problem is that
>there is a fine line between some of the situations. Is this a situation
>where the good guys win against the odds because they are heros or is
>this one where their heroism is shown by the fact that they accept the
>inevitable, surrender and then still win in the end?
Through this and your previoud post, I can see we're pretty much in
agreement. Surrender is not *always* a good idea, but neither is it
necessary to fight to the death in all situations. There is a balance.
Like anything else in role playing, the GM has a finite bag of tricks. It
is important not to overuse any one trick in the bag. Surrender shouldn't
be overused, but neither should being betrayed by the NPC patron. It's all
a matter of balance and judgment.
Ross
>Dave
Isaacs, Ross
>But is *surrender* really that well represented in fiction? Or is it just
>*getting captured* that's so well represented?
I think you're correct, many of us seem to be talking about players getting
captured. But players will fight like wildcats to keep from getting
captured. I've seen instances where the bad guys have the group surrounded,
many good guys are wounded to incapacity, and the few remaining players go
down fighting. . . . . They just won't put up their hands and come out.
>Furthermore, real-world surrender generally saves the prisoner's life at
>the cost of destroying any plans for the near to mid-term future. If the
>setting is reasonably realistic and the opponents are minimally
>competent, then escape is very unlikely. In game terms, surrender means
>retiring the character as a PC. From the player's point of view, there's
>little to choose between that and the character's death: In both cases,
>the player loses the character.
I happen to think this reasoning is wrong on their part.
Ross
David W Llewellyn
>
>ransom arrangment set up with the enemy - but if the enemy is honorable
>and decent enough to deal with wrt ransoms, what the heck are you doing
>fighting him in the first place?
It was the norm in earlier eras. Hence the term, "a King's ransom," to
refer to a large sum of money.
As to why we would be fighting, well, there are zillions of reassons why
negotiations break down, but both sides can, for example, follow the
agreements of the Geneva Convention while still being at war. It's just
a matter of both sides sticking to the rules.
David Llewellyn
Scott A. H. Ruggels
edit
>
>There will be times when surrendering is not really an option and
>there isn't much point discussing these. But many other times
>surrender would at least be worth considering, but it isn't. I
>remember when I was running Pendragon, yeilding was an integral part
>of the combat system. I think I made this abundantly clear. Do think it
>did any good? Any ideas why this is?
>
>Its been suggested that this is question of old-habits; a gaming
>culture problem. It may not occur to the players that the GM is
>prepared for such an eventuality. Or maybe they are so used to
>snatching victory from the jaws of defeat that they can't recognize
>defeat anymore. Are most players really so jaded or is this a GMing
>problem? How far are our games restricted by unspoken gaming
>conventions? Is this really a Bavarian Illuminati conspiracy?
>--
>
> -- James --
>
GAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!! Blasphemer!!
The reason why you don't surrender is a character death is more fun than
sitting around in the lock up. We don't game powerlessnesss for a reason. IT
IS NOT FUN!! Capturing your PC and taking away all his stuff was BAD! It
was even worse if it was the night's "cliff hanger". This is where gaming
diverges the most from other forms of literature.
Look at Star Wars. The Millenium Falcon was dragged into the Death Star, but
all the points of capture were under the hero's terms. They faked Chewbacca's
incarceration, but even then he didn't enjoy it. They even picked their own
time for escape. The trash compacter was a good tension builder, but its
resolution was because another PC was able to excercise a skill to save them,
bolstering party unity and unit cohesion.
I my favorite Champions game. Often we became overmatched, and only through
good training, and the willingness to breakoff the engagement and run like
candy-assed baboons did we avoid capture. We did not stay and fight to the
last man, we booked outta there so we could lick our wounds learn from our
failure, and plan around the oppositions strengths. The one time there was a
team member taken hostage, the team abandoned their rules of engagement and
ELIMINATED those individuals responsible. Sure, they could beat the hell out
of us, maim us if they could, but taking hostages resulted in exactly the
same result as the Sherriffs department expects if any of their members are
taken hostage at the county lock up -- dead hostage takers.
Again it is precisely, because gaming is not a book, film, play, or song,
that captures hated.
Capture I have seen work, only do so when the opposition has obvious nigh
unto nuclear superiority over the PC's, and there are "NO" other options
poissible, but a situation like that looks like the basest , and foulest sort
of railroading.
Gaming is a consensual sharing of powere among the players and GM, and a soup
of mutual trust. A capture plot is seen by the others as an abuse of trust
and powere by the GM, and a subtraction of options and fun by events. This is
why the threat of carture becomes a peculiar force multiplier to what is
usually a low powered group. Even cornered animals become vicious and
unpredictable. And see Sun Tzu's comment about putting one's back to a river
and breaking your own eating bowl.
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>In article <740914...@jpb-s.demon.co.uk> ja...@jpb-s.demon.co.uk writes:
>
>>But that all in the past. The question is why such a basic device in fiction
>>, the capture of the heroes, features so little in RPGs and when it does
>>players react negatively towards it?
>
>> -- James --
>
>A couple of reasons, I think:
>
>(a) In many RPGs, even fairly cinematic ones, the characters don't have
>as much script immunity as the hero of a movie; the players don't feel
>certain that they will be able to escape, and don't care to roleplay
>prolonged captivity.
If the players felt that they had the same amount of "script immunity" as an
action movie hero, then the players would have little involvement or tension.
The threat of death is what keeps them going, albeit cautiously.
>
>(b) The boring parts of captivity can easily be abstrated to a
>paragraph in a book or a scene in a movie; but in order to set up a
>semi-realistic-feeling escape, the GM will have to provide substantial
>detail (and take substantial gametime) about captivity, and the lack of
>choices available during this period can be frustrating.
Irritated players l;ooking for every loophole and possible route out, spending a
couple of hours at least hashing and bickering over every detail in their prison
is not my idea of a fun evening.
>
>(c) PC capture is a very common feature of railroaded scenarios (it is
>commonly done in modules, for example) and players can easily come to
>feel that it *always* represents railroading. This breeds resentment
>and a desire not to go along with the GM's plan. (This is why I've
>pledged never to *try* to capture my PCs. If it happens, it happens.)
My sentiments exactly
>
>Consider the final sequence in _Nine Princes in Amber_. The reader is
>willing to follow Corwin even though he is blinded (and thereby deprived
>of all his powers) and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. However,
>there is *nothing* for a player to do with this situation. Corwin
>eventually escapes, but before that he simply waits, and the opportunity
>is finally handed to him on a platter. This is not the kind of thing
>that good roleplaying scenarios are made of, though it works fine in the
>book. Knowing this, a character who was about to be thrown into
>Corwin's situation might well prefer fighting to the death, for the slim
>chance of victory.
>
>Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
>
Bravo Mary, for stating my point in a better and much more reasonable way than I
could have. It is precisely why the plot based methods will not work for me,
because at some point the GM might think it is col to capture the PCZ and take
away their stuff.
Scott
>
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>In article: <3vp364$o...@blackice.winternet.com> sco...@winternet.com
>(Scott Olson) writes:
>
>> I think it's got a lot to do with the conventions of a game: if the
>> world is such that surrendering is an option, and it's presented as such,
>> then the players may consider it. Lots of worlds, though, either don't
>> show it to be an option, or it really _isn't_. So players get in the
>> mind-set of 'never surrender' and live (and occassionally die) by it. In
>> a Pendragon game, I'd think it wouldn't take long for most players to
>> figure out that surrender is an acceptable way out of a situation, because
>> the genre supports it. Other genres may not be nearly as supportive,
>> because the background is different (being captured by Trolls in Middle
>> Earth, for example, is likely to be a quick ticket to the buffet table,
>> with you as the main coarse).
>
>Ok, so let's rephrase the question: doesn't it seem odd that surrender as a
>viable option is relegated to a handful to genre games when it so well
>represented both in fiction and reality?
>
>
Well I don't think it is all that wel represented in Reality. The Japanese were
bewildered with the American prisoners they recieved at the beginning of the
Pacific War. Their culture had no concept of surrender, and the mistreatment, and
neglect of thousands of ANZAC's Tommies, and G.I.'s, includijng their transport
in unmarked freighters resulted in a high percentage of their deaths. The
Japanese themselves tended to prefer suicide to surrender, even their civillians
in Okinawa and Iwo Jima took a fatal leap from the lava cliff than to fal into
the hands of the allies. The war in europe was different, as it was a battle
between similar cultures, but in a truly passionat3e conflict such as any peasant
revolt, popular uprising, servile rebellion, or Religious war, prisoners become
festive and grisly human sacrifices. Just look at the current brew-up in Bosnia,
where the rhetoric include the the word "Turk" refering to Bosinian Muslims by
Serbs, and endless references to the Battle of Kossovo, which took place in the
1500's!
Most players want that passionate cause to belive in, vicariously. It adds spice,
and adrenaline to their play, and brings out some color to the campaign. A fight
where there is no cause results in a sort of aimlessness to the proceedings.
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>Rodney Payne (rgp...@CFS01.cc.monash.edu.au) wrote:
>
>: Because, for the most part, players react negatively to defeat in any form.
>
>I agree. The question is why? I don't believe the point of the game is
>victory in all situations, at all costs. I don't think the point is
>succeeding at every action or endeavor. And I don't think the point is
>ever increasing fame and power. Setbacks are part of life, and part of
>most plots.
>
>So why do players react this way?
>
>not. This needs to be made very clear. I didn't make it clear enough
>during the Star Trek game that spawned these threads. The characters will
>accept defeat. Players who feel threatened will not.
>
>
I agree with David here (My god! I said that?!). It really is a power issue. Defeat is one thig. Being defeated but running away unc=
aptured was still a defeat, but it allowed the characters to plan their next move. Capture is too much like public humiliation. Hell=
with the 3 strikes law in effect now. the crime rate has dropped a little, but the incidents of perpetrators getting into suicidal =
firefights with the Municipal SWAT have increased noticeably. These guys will not get out of prison in their lifetime, so why put ha=
nds up? BLAM! BLAM!
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>Again, this is a game. I make it clear to my players that they are the
>heroes. That they won't be killed outright by my whim. If they stick their
>fingers in light-sockets, however, they're gonna get electrocuted. If they
>step off a cliff, they'll die. They don't lead charmed lives, but neither
>do they lead cheap ones.
>
>Ross A. Isaacs
Yes, but here is the difference between your style and mine. I do make my player
assume they are leading cheap lives. They get wounded by little things. They may
die on a succession of bad die rolls. But if they felt that their lives were
"looked after" by a benevolent GM, then their victories would seem unimportant, and
their struggles were just melodrama, and a useless waste of time.
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>
>On a few occasions I've been willing to stop things and say something to the
>effect of, "Look, I had this in mind, and I see that it's not occurring to any
>of you. Keep it mind as a reasonable/worthy/whatever alternative." I much
>prefer not to do that...but then I prefer doing so to having an otherwise
>entertaining session fall apart through failure of communication.
>
Well what happens at this point is the players pipe up, saying something to the
effect, that they do not find capture entertaining? Or think they have a better
solution than you have forseen?
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>...So why are players so
>reluctant to wave the white flag?
>
>...This example raises a lot of
>interesting questions but the issue of PC's reluctance to surrender at
>any cost....
>...Any ideas why this is?
>
>Its been suggested that this is question of old-habits; a gaming
>culture problem. It may not occur to the players that the GM is
>prepared for such an eventuality. Or maybe they are so used to
>snatching victory from the jaws of defeat that they can't recognize
>defeat anymore. Are most players really so jaded or is this a GMing
>problem? How far are our games restricted by unspoken gaming
>conventions? Is this really a Bavarian Illuminati conspiracy?
Surrendering indicates powerlessness and helplessness. Many players
come from a background where they initially gamed to make themselves
feel empowered, in a time (adolescence) where they felt unable to
affect their lives. Why would they want to feel the emotion they're
trying to escape -- in the venue they've chosen to *avoid* that
feeling? And after a while... old habits die hard. ;-)
--Collie
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To: "Scott A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com>
Cc: sim...@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Why not surrender?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 07 Aug 1995 10:55:01."
<950807175...@badger.3do.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 1995 11:58:50 -0700
From: Laughing Collie <col...@netcom.com>
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>In article <40289t$j...@anarchy.io.com> e...@io.com (ekb) writes
>
>>the cost of destroying any plans for the near to mid-term future. If the
>>setting is reasonably realistic and the opponents are minimally
>>competent, then escape is very unlikely. In game terms, surrender means
>>retiring the character as a PC. From the player's point of view, there's
>>little to choose between that and the character's death: In both cases,
>>the player loses the character.
>
>I happen to think this reasoning is wrong on their part.
>
>Ross
But it is not your place to question their reasoning, or impinge on what they
consider "fun" the PC's "characterization is the exclusive property of that
particular player and no other. His situation , and "body" are joint custody
with the GM, but the personality is definately the players. If they player is
convinced that surrendering would lead to him being incarcerated in a P.O.W;.
camp for month or years, that is months or years where he isn't doing anything
"interesting", and above all, a game in entertainment! Equally unsatisfying
would be a loss of ability due to age, and a skill atrophy do to lack of
practice when the character returns to his old lands, at a reduced level of
means and social standing. Not fun, and games should have as few "un fun"
elements in them as possible.
>
>>Erol K. Bayburt
>>Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow
Scott
Bruce Baugh
"Scott A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
In the last decade I have twice decided to stop a session when it became clear
that what the players were interested in just wasn't going to fit what I had
in mind. I game for pleasure: if the players aren't enjoying it, then we're
_all_ wasting our time.
In both cases I followed it up by some sessions of talk to better understand
their interests (and to help them better understand what I had in mind).
I will _always_ sacrifice the game for the sake of real-world concerns. It's a
game. My friends are real people.
bru...@teleport.com _____________ http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab/
List Manager, Christlib, for Christian and libertarian concerns
Preview S.M. Stirling's forthcoming novel DRAKON at my home page
"Encrypt! Encrypt! OK! All-One-Key-Steganography-Privacy!
God's law prevents decryption above 1042 bytes - Exceptions? None!"
Daniel Delaney
On Sun, 6 Aug 1995, Frank Pitt wrote:
> In article <3vsa8u$5...@cegt201.bradley.edu> j...@cegt201.bradley.edu writes:
> Resolution of Hostilities
>
> > Reasons for Fighting
> >
> >Someone, whose name is lost in the mists of my memory claimed
> >that the "no surrender" mode is a result of our sudden loss of
> >the concept of fair play, in the West. I think this is a gross,
> >almost a tragic, oversimplification of the reality.
>
> I also think it's looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses.
> We have never had "fair play" in warfare or other forms of conflict
> other than in stylised and basicaly non-visceral forms of combat
> such as sport and duels.
>
> There were once concepts of were-geld and such which meant that
> it was in the winner's interest both to accept a person's surrender,
> and to not mistreat the prisoner. And in those circumstances it
> was in the captives interest not to fight, as he knew he would
> survive if he didn't anger the captors
>
> But other than that, "no surrender mode" is just S.O.P
>
Excuse me, but what planet did you grow up on? Most of the wars
that I have read of thru history have had POW's. Even in WW2, where
some really raw things happened, most captured prisoners eventually
made their way home at the end of the war. This was for two reasons.
The first was retribution, killing prisoners would mean the same for
you if captured, this was why many Nazi's fled to the Allies instead
of trusting to the tender mercies of the Red Army. Secondly is the
mindset of the soldiers. It is one thing to "kill or be killed", but
quite another to shoot a person with his hands up, especially if all
your training and tradition say that you just don't do that.
> >The idea is so pervasive in the West, now, that anyone
> >interfering with the rights of self-determination is more or less
> >automatically judged to have forsaken all honor and rights to
> >expect much in the way of a "fair" fight.
>
> >It's a cultural thing-- unless you have a right that _I
> >recognize_ to tell me what to do, I'm not going to have a
> >sscuffle with you to determine who's the boss. We're going to
> >have a real fight, with real bloodshed, and the very real
> >possibility that one of us will have a grievous injury afterward,
> >because that's how I value my freedom.
Counselor Troi, please report to rgfa...
> >In a sense, any time anyone suggests that fighting should have
> >rules, I immediately wonder if that person has ever fought
> >(physically) for anything. About the only time I really fight is
> >when I've been pushed to these limits-- to fighting for something
> >I believe in.
>
> There is a place for conflict with rules. It's called a courtroom.
> (Or a sports field)
Or a battlefield. I know it seems odd, but there are rules to warfare.
Some, like the Geneva Convention, are treaties, but others are just
common sense. Nuclear or chemical weapons have not been used since
WWII & WWI, respectively, mainly because of a combination of political
pressure and the knowledge the cost of victory is too high. You make
it sound as if a PC President of the US would say, "We can't win in
Vietnam, glass-plain it so we can deny them their victory."
> >Don't expect players to surrender, unless you really know the
> >players, and further, not unless the campaign situation and genre
> >really warrant it.
>
The way I see it, the problems with capture and surrender is loss of
control. Most people who play rpg's have lots of things that limit
their freedom in the real world; jobs, families, responsibilities
that do not allow total control.
Games are supposed to be different. Here you are supposed to be as
free as your imagination can make you. Travel the world, right wrongs
and don't worry anout the slings and parking tickets of outrageous
fortune.
But that all changes when you are captured. You no longer get to make
the decisions about your character, the GM does and you have to go
along with it. Its like justifiable railroading, for you to have no
control until your escape, but most people still don't like it.
(Of course, this dosn't include certain types of "bedroom role-play"
between concenting adults, that is best left for other news groups...)
Unfortunatly, this answer is probably too simple for those who rather
blame it on the decline of Western Civilization.
James
> I don't think it is defeat, I think it is failure that the players
> are reacting to. It is a tendency I have noticed among the group
> I've gamed with, they universally hate to fail. This really isn't
> the same as defeat. I've seen characters be defeated, fail to succeed,
...and...
> out what they should have done. I have generally noticed that long
> drawn out fights (or anything else) rarely lead to surrender and have
> a tendency to go until either the PC's win, die, or are completely
> incapacitaed. If things go badly the players tend to be unhappy. If
> the situation is quick and seems like there really wasn't any better
> choices, then the players accept it.
I think you've made a really important distinction here between 'defeat'
which only affects the PC and 'failure' which reflects on the player as
well. And the more drawn out the combat, the more 'effort' put into not
being captured, the more the incident becomes a personal failure rather than
just a bad break. This would particularly true when the system's combat
rules quite detailed. In these cases the player is drawn away from the
dramatic tension generated within the game world as his attention is turned
to the meta-game practicalities of a combat sequence. By the time its over,
he may have lost the sense of how the incident started and the logic that
the PC's current predicament.
Unfortunately reverse scenario is just as risky. If the players feel they
have been put in a situation which offers them no alternative but surrender,
they can protest about heavy-handed railroading (I know I would). Which
leaves the GM preciously little room to manoeuvre. Kind of makes you wonder
why bother running games :-).
Thanks for the insight,
-- James --
James
<scott....@3do.com> writes:
> GAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!! Blasphemer!!
Do I take it that you don't agree?--
-- James --
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>In article <3vu6ja$p...@blackice.winternet.com> sco...@winternet.com (Scott Olson) writes:
>
>> I think one reason that it's NOT more common in games is that we've
>>all read books (or seen movies, whatever) where the opposition is done in
>>BECAUSE they took the protagonists prisoner. It's counter-productive: the
>>protagonists either learn something, free someone, or steal something that
>>ends up being the doom/defeat of their opponent. Since we've all
>>read/seen this, we think of ways around having it happen. I KNOW the GM's
>>seen the same thing, and thought of similar things in response. The
>>easiest way to prevent this sort of thing is to kill the prisoners (before
>>or after they're wrung dry of information is a matter of personal taste
>>and foresight). Another method is to make SURE they can't escape, by
>>whatever means.
>
>I, as the GM, PLAN for this to happen. RPGs aren't about winning.
No RPG are not about winng. RPG are about SUCCEEDING. I may lose a battle here and there, but by god I am going to win the war, by =
living successfully and integrating my fat successfull ass into the background so well, that my heirs will be NPC mover's and shaker=
s for years to come. RPG's are about life! and vicarously suceeding in more colorful lives than we can get in this lifetime. Those =
with allready colorful and successful live don't bother with RPG's.
>I'm not
>out to win the game (e.g., beating my players by killing them). I want the
>protagonists - the players - to be captured by the stormtroopers, escape
>from the cell block, find the secret plans in the computer and return to the
>rebel base. Otherwise, how can I expect them to blow up the Death Star?
Well the way you phrased it, you made it sound like some very specifically plotted adventure. Remember Star Wars closely, and if you=
do, you will recall the fact, that they had the power to destroy the Death Star all along. Ther information was allready in the R2 =
unit before the opening credits rolled! Luke & Ben had to get to someplace to give this info to the Rebel Alliance. It was only by b=
ad luck and timing that they got there after Gov. Tarkin made a showy spectacle of Alderan. If they had arrived a few minutes later.=
the Death Star would have been gone, and Though it would have been a slightly grimmer movie, and a few more P{lanets would have bee=
n made into showy spectacles, eventually Ben and a more trained Luke could have gotten the information to someplace useful eventuall=
y, and the Death Star would finally itself become a showy spectacle. The princess probably would have died, but the end goal, "Erasi=
ng the Death Star" would still have occurred, possible in the same exciting manner. This is the difference between plotting and lett=
ing it evolve.
The Millenium Falcon arriving at that precise instant could have been a die roll. And the "capture scenario" was faked by the Protag=
onists. At no point was the Party deprived of all choices and made to sit and cool their heels. They were the active force. They wer=
e not prisoners, they were commandoes behind enemy lines! (And I am assuming the Princess to be an NPC) See my previous posting on t=
his thread.
>We
>may have seen this 1000 times, but why would I, as GM, purposely try to get
>around it? In short, what you are saying is that because the GM knows the
>protagonists will find the weak-spot by being captured, it's in her interest
>to prevent this from happening. I think this involves the GM taking the
>*side* of the antagonists. And by your logic, then it is in the best
>interests of the American Army to kill everyone who surrenders, because
>they've seen Rambo and know that someone might try to escape with the secret
>invasion plans. . . . .
>
>No, I think players refuse to surrender because they believe that if they
>do, they've *lost* the game.
They refuse to surrender, because surrender isn't fun.
>
>When players don't give in to the conventions of literature/film, they make
>it much harder on themselves. They end up going the long way around.
Why should they? A game is not a film, a play, or a book. It is its own organic form, and cleves to its own traditions and forms. fo=
rcing it to behave in another mode does not make for satisfying experiences.
>
>> Given these thoughts, unless the genre _explicitly_ supports it, I
>>think lots of players are reluctant to surrender. They give the opponent
>>credit for being reasonably smart and pragmatic, and think that
>>surrendering either means that they won't be coming back at all, or only
>>on the opponent's terms.
>
>I still don't by this *explicit* argument. Why must I tell them that
>surrender is okay? Must I sit my players down and tell them:
>
>* The game is realistic.
>* It's set in contemporary America
>* surrender is okay
>* they may not shoot anyone they want because they'll be arrested
>* they must call their mothers every sunday or else mom will be upset and
>won't send birthday money?
Yes in some cases you do, have to be this explicit. You need not phrase the questions in such a boring and pendantic manner, but mak=
ing them aware that surrender and ransome is an option (at least among civilized cultures), then they may do it. Or that surrenderin=
g to the police could on a really good roll allow one to walk like Randy Weaver did, after facing a jury of his peers.
>
>I would like to think that either a) they are reasonably intelligent and b)
>they'll get this through play.
>
We ARE intelligent, mostly, but why should we wallow in powerlessness? I isn't Fun!
>Try surrender. It's in my best interests as GM to keep my players alive.
>Otherwise, a ninja assassin could just walk into their rooms and put a
>bullet in their head. We'd all consider that unfair, unless there were a
>lot of skill checks and a chance for survival. Why not the same assumption
>for surrender?
This is a different arguement about inherent fairness, assasins ansd snipers, and probably needs a different thread. But these are t=
wo different concepts.
>
>
>Ross
>> Scott
Scott
David A Bonar
: In article <3vu6ja$p...@blackice.winternet.com> sco...@winternet.com (Scott Olson) writes:
: > I think one reason that it's NOT more common in games is that we've
: >all read books (or seen movies, whatever) where the opposition is done in
: >BECAUSE they took the protagonists prisoner. It's counter-productive: the
: >protagonists either learn something, free someone, or steal something that
: >ends up being the doom/defeat of their opponent. Since we've all
: >read/seen this, we think of ways around having it happen.
: I, as the GM, PLAN for this to happen. RPGs aren't about winning. I'm not
: out to win the game (e.g., beating my players by killing them). I want the
: protagonists - the players - to be captured by the stormtroopers, escape
: from the cell block, find the secret plans in the computer and return to the
: rebel base. Otherwise, how can I expect them to blow up the Death Star? We
: may have seen this 1000 times, but why would I, as GM, purposely try to get
: around it? In short, what you are saying is that because the GM knows the
: protagonists will find the weak-spot by being captured, it's in her interest
: to prevent this from happening. I think this involves the GM taking the
: *side* of the antagonists.
: When players don't give in to the conventions of literature/film, they make
: it much harder on themselves. They end up going the long way around.
Not all roleplayers want to follow genre conventions all the
time. One thing I like about roleplaying is the ability to identify
with (or live as) a character (normally a heroic character in some sense)
in a fictional world without having the script immunity and foreknowledge
of eventual success that exists in genre literature. This method leads
to some low points (the character suffers defeat early on, a seemingly
trivial problem diverts everyone's attention from the origional main
goal or whatever) but I find that it enhances the high points also.
Tieing this into surrendering, I agree with Mary's point of
view. If I feel the GM set a situation up as you-will-surrender
just because its genre or its how he wants his plot to work out I'm
going to be pissed off. On the other hand, if the surrender occurs
logically and realistically (I don't like the word but I can't think
of a better one to describe the idea of having PCs and NPCs acting
as real people do subject to the known motivations in the game world)
I'm all for it.
: > Given these thoughts, unless the genre _explicitly_ supports it, I
: >think lots of players are reluctant to surrender. They give the opponent
: >credit for being reasonably smart and pragmatic, and think that
: >surrendering either means that they won't be coming back at all, or only
: >on the opponent's terms.
: I still don't by this *explicit* argument. Why must I tell them that
: surrender is okay? Must I sit my players down and tell them:
: * The game is realistic.
: * It's set in contemporary America
: * surrender is okay
: * they may not shoot anyone they want because they'll be arrested
: * they must call their mothers every sunday or else mom will be upset and
: won't send birthday money?
Other then the bit about Mom (help! I must not be realitic!) I
do thing you need to talk over these issues at the start of a game. I'd
like to think that if you tell your players that the game is realistic
and set in modern America that you don't need to go much further. But
if your game is set in a slightly future America where you have
introduced some darker or cyberpunkish elements it starts getting
important to spell things out. How would the characters view various
authority figures (police, military, goverment agents)? What are
various forms of criminals like (organized crime, drug dealer types,
random petty criminals)? Most games I've seen don't provide enough
information (especially games being run with rules that do not provide
a set background).
Dave
Rodney Payne
>I don't think it is defeat, I think it is failure that the players
>are reacting to.
Just to be needlessly picky, `defeat in any form' = failure.
(In know I shouldn't have written that.... ;))
Otherwise I pretty much agree.
--
Rodney Payne | What is the meaning of life? Life has no
| meaning. It's just a fortunate coincidence
spur...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au | of carbon chemistry. Forget about it.
rgp...@cfs01.cc.monash.edu.au | Anonymous
Scott A. H. Ruggels
fra...@mundens.equinox.gen.nz (Frank Pitt) wrote:
>In article <3vsa8u$5...@cegt201.bradley.edu> j...@cegt201.bradley.edu writes:
> Resolution of Hostilities
>>
>>As I see, it, there are four basic outcomes of any situation
>>involving real, honest to God, armed conflict. They are, in no
>>particular order, the Pitched Battle, the Surrender, Flight, and
>>Negotiation.
>
>You've missed the Guerilla War, the Fighting Retreat,
>the Mutual Assured Destruction, the Forced Negotiation,
>the Avoidance of Conflict, the Mutiny of the Troops,
>The Unexpected Outbreak of Peace, Bad Weather Delay's Attack,
>Treason & Treachery, the Trojan Horse, etc, etc.
>
>:-)
>
>>At times, I play characters who, when things break down to
>>violence, don't believe in the "no win" situation, much like
>>Captain Kirk. (Which is while I found it so funny that capture
>>was considered integral to Star Trek in the original hypothesis.
>>Kirk never surrendered and _meant_ it! He LIED!) I play
>>characters like this from time to time, and tend to play in
>>games like this, because in my recreation, I like to feel like I
>>have _some_ control over my destiny and some effect on the game
>>world.
>>
>>If you have players like this, surrender is going to tend not to
>>be a solution. Flight may be, or negotiation, but not surrender.
>
>Then they die, like Kirk _should_ have.
Well, I can accept that as a result of poor die rolls, but I will not aquiesce to a "plotted" situation where capture is planned bef=
ore the start of the evenings events.
>
>>What about the NPCs? Well, to a certain extent, it will depend
>>on the genre, but I usually know when I can surrender to a group,
>>and when I can't. Namely, if I stand a chance of surviving, I
>>can surrender. If there's a chance they'll just kill me, I'd
>>rather take my chances in battle.
>
>I play realistic NPC's. In other words they surrender when there's
>nothing to be gained by continuing fighting. (Unless the PC's already
>have a reputation for killing prisoners). Then, if the players kill
>anyone, they get hit with the full weight of the law unless they can
>succesfuly hide the killing or come up with a good justification
Depends on the type of game. Sure, in a contemporary game set in the U.S. Canada, or Europe, then this is expected. But not in other=
places.
>
>>If surrendering is fairly certain not to get me killed, I'll
>>often consider it. God knows, I've lost count of the number of
>>times I've needed to be party to a surrender in a current
>>Traveller game. It's rather pointless to try and fight a vessel
>>that outguns you ten to one, and has three big brothers just ten
>>minutes away.
>
>Every time you are boarded by a customs ship or Naval patrol you
>are metaphorically surrendering to the might of the Imperium.
Yes but there is also the expectation that they will walk around, pose for a bit, drink your coffee, read your manifest, ask a few q=
uestions, and get th' hell of you ship in 30 minutes if there is nothinbg to raise their suspicions
>
>Every time you refrain from owning and using nukes you are doing
>the same.
I may not own nukes, but I maintain a nice closet full of things that go bang. And I have looked over the laws, and have trained wit=
h them, and am willing to use them. I have not relinquished my power to defend my own life and property to anyone other than myself.=
I tend to think that most PC embody this attitude, only moreso.
>
>>On the other hand, if surrendering means being inspected and
>>having your cache of illegal weapons found, which essentially
>>ends the characters' lives with nothing less than a long prison
>>term, you might fight. Or, if you can get away with it, run
>>away.
>
>But in any Traveler universe that is stupid, unless you're facing
>an inferior ship (which is uncommon) you will not be able to escape.
Of course it's stupid! But it is also the last choice that the P.C.'s can make on their own, based on their perception of the opposi=
tion. It is exactly the attitude of "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees". These characters had invested a good=
chunk of their lives and fortunes into this ship which will be impounded, and they will be "cooling their heels, and basically piss=
ing away a large chunk of time of these P.C.'s Better to go out in a blaze of glory, and write up a new collection of characters, t=
hen have to go through the Un fun unpleasantness of a long prison stay. The will get these laser cannons when they pry the control y=
oke from these vacuum fried, dead fingers...
>
>It is better to risk the prison term than to risk being exposed
>to vacuum. Heck, try bribes, you're more likely to find a bribable
>lieutenant than escape from a Naval patrol.
Okay we bribe this Oberleutnant, what will prevent him from spilling the beans later? or upping the price, or resorting to blackmail=
? Or what if this piece of Urban Myth is false, and you find the Imperial equivalent of Inspector Javert? (Common in my campaigns) =
Then you are screwed.
>
>(Well that's the propaganda I spread about the Navy anyway)
>
>> Reasons for Fighting
>>
>>Someone, whose name is lost in the mists of my memory claimed
>>that the "no surrender" mode is a result of our sudden loss of
>>the concept of fair play, in the West. I think this is a gross,
>>almost a tragic, oversimplification of the reality.
>
>I also think it's looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses.
>We have never had "fair play" in warfare or other forms of conflict
>other than in stylised and basicaly non-visceral forms of combat
>such as sport and duels.
>
>There were once concepts of were-geld and such which meant that
>it was in the winner's interest both to accept a person's surrender,
>and to not mistreat the prisoner. And in those circumstances it
>was in the captives interest not to fight, as he knew he would
>survive if he didn't anger the captors
>
>But other than that, "no surrender mode" is just S.O.P
>
>>The idea is so pervasive in the West, now, that anyone
>>interfering with the rights of self-determination is more or less
>>automatically judged to have forsaken all honor and rights to
>>expect much in the way of a "fair" fight.
The rise of the militia movement has been sparked by rumours about something like this happening here. Long Guerilla war? Hey, Ameri=
can civillians would act just like North Viet Namese.
>
>>It's a cultural thing-- unless you have a right that _I
>>recognize_ to tell me what to do, I'm not going to have a
>>sscuffle with you to determine who's the boss. We're going to
>>have a real fight, with real bloodshed, and the very real
>>possibility that one of us will have a grievous injury afterward,
>>because that's how I value my freedom.
>
>Or not. Some people will be beaten & broken, or convinced they are wrong.
>Look at all those people who give up their rights to religious cults.
>Look at all those women and men who acccept physical violence from
>their partners, and live with them for years even with your "free"
>cultures
Minority of the total population. Anecdotal, but not statistically significant.
>
>>In a sense, any time anyone suggests that fighting should have
>>rules, I immediately wonder if that person has ever fought
>>(physically) for anything. About the only time I really fight is
>>when I've been pushed to these limits-- to fighting for something
>>I believe in.
>
>There is a place for conflict with rules. It's called a courtroom.
>(Or a sports field)
Exactly. Our society has embraced the bloodthirstiness of trail law, like no other before or since. In a courtroom, one can reap the=
benefits of total war, without the bloodshed. You could destroy another's freedom, ability to earn money, retain property, keep the=
ir families. It seems no different to Bosnia, except it is done in an expensive and ritualized manner.A Court Order to have one's fi=
elds sown with salt doesn't seem that far fetched to me.
>
>>Don't expect players to surrender, unless you really know the
>>players, and further, not unless the campaign situation and genre
>>really warrant it.
>
>I would say in reponse, don't expect to survive if you fight
>when you should surrender. There is wisdom in fighting
>only on ground of your own choosing.
But one should flee to find that ground of your choosing, not to have your options eliminated, go ahead and fight, maybe the odds wi=
ll allow you to survive to fight another day, or possibly even win! (Unless the GM is a railroading plotter-- see Milwaukee By Night=
__cuz then yer screwed).
>
>>As a GM, take a moment, step back and look at the situation in
>>the eys of your players and their characters. Based on their
>>knowledge (on that odd, semi-conscious superposition of player
>>knowledge and character knowledge), perform that risk assessment,
>>and ask ask if you'd surrender.
>
>Frankly, I have no qualms in killing players who insist on fighting
>when faced with overwhelming force.
>
>Or even those who refuse to "surrender" to the traffic police
>
>I have had at least one player shot by SWAT teams after stupidly
>waving a gun at someone who annoyed them, and then continually
>refusing to surrender to the escalating response of the law.
>
>It was annoyng, it distracted us from the real game, it meant the
>rest of the team was one man down, but as one of the team members
>said, it was better for the team that the player's/character's
>instability was revealed before they got into a situation where
>he could have taken the whole team down with him.
>
>Frankie
>
This last paragraph I have no arguement with. I think of it as evolution in action. It is best that this dangerous loose cannon gets=
iced by SWAT before the "real" stress situation started.
But I am a little disturbed by the general Paternalistic tone of this post, such as:
>Then they die, like Kirk _should_ have.
>
>Every time you are boarded by a customs ship or Naval patrol you
>are metaphorically surrendering to the might of the Imperium.
>
>Every time you refrain from owning and using nukes you are doing
>the same.
>But in any Traveler universe that is stupid, unless you're facing
>an inferior ship (which is uncommon) you will not be able to escape.
>It is better to risk the prison term than to risk being exposed
>to vacuum.
Paternalistic! and controlling. I do not need this sort of thing from the GM. Surrender is not an option for most players. It is too=
much of a loss of control of the players.
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>
>In the last decade I have twice decided to stop a session when it became clear
>that what the players were interested in just wasn't going to fit what I had
>in mind. I game for pleasure: if the players aren't enjoying it, then we're
>_all_ wasting our time.
>
>In both cases I followed it up by some sessions of talk to better understand
>their interests (and to help them better understand what I had in mind).
>
>I will _always_ sacrifice the game for the sake of real-world concerns. It's a
>game. My friends are real people.
>
>bru...@teleport.com
This has happened to me once as well. Our interest head diverged due to a clash
of assumptions. I was not happy it happened, and I haven't run much more than
one shots since, but they are still all good friends of mine.
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>Excuse me, but what planet did you grow up on? Most of the wars
>that I have read of thru history have had POW's. Even in WW2, where
>some really raw things happened, most captured prisoners eventually
>made their way home at the end of the war. This was for two reasons.
>The first was retribution, killing prisoners would mean the same for
>you if captured, this was why many Nazi's fled to the Allies instead
>of trusting to the tender mercies of the Red Army. Secondly is the
>mindset of the soldiers. It is one thing to "kill or be killed", but
>quite another to shoot a person with his hands up, especially if all
>your training and tradition say that you just don't do that.
Yeah but see the same war, but look at the south pacific. It was brutal,
and the Japanese were quite abusive, and Surrender never entered most of
those minds.
>
Edit
>
>Or a battlefield. I know it seems odd, but there are rules to warfare.
>Some, like the Geneva Convention, are treaties, but others are just
>common sense. Nuclear or chemical weapons have not been used since
>WWII & WWI, respectively, mainly because of a combination of political
>pressure and the knowledge the cost of victory is too high. You make
>it sound as if a PC President of the US would say, "We can't win in
>Vietnam, glass-plain it so we can deny them their victory."
Well Pres Nixon came really close to doing just that. (A rather loud
protest outside his window made him decide otherwise, this was in 1972)
But there is an old method of war being practiced in Bosnia, where you
destroy the houses and move in armed settlers to maintain the conquered
lands. And you rape the females of the oppositions population so as to
make these women "worthless" to their own people, and reduce the enemy
breeding opportunities. Aquire their lands and properties, and build the
right kind of churches. There is some pretty bitter fighting going on,
and not a whole lot of mercy.
>
>> >Don't expect players to surrender, unless you really know the
>> >players, and further, not unless the campaign situation and genre
>> >really warrant it.
>>
>
>The way I see it, the problems with capture and surrender is loss of
>control. Most people who play rpg's have lots of things that limit
>their freedom in the real world; jobs, families, responsibilities
>that do not allow total control.
>
>Games are supposed to be different. Here you are supposed to be as
>free as your imagination can make you. Travel the world, right wrongs
>and don't worry anout the slings and parking tickets of outrageous
>fortune.
>
>But that all changes when you are captured. You no longer get to make
>the decisions about your character, the GM does and you have to go
>along with it. Its like justifiable railroading, for you to have no
>control until your escape, but most people still don't like it.
>
>(Of course, this dosn't include certain types of "bedroom role-play"
>between concenting adults, that is best left for other news groups...)
>
>Unfortunatly, this answer is probably too simple for those who rather
>blame it on the decline of Western Civilization.
Well this is exactly the point, so I guess I will shut up now.
Scott
Isaacs, Ross
>onists. At no point was the Party deprived of all choices and made to sit and
>cool their heels. They were the active force.
Scott, I've read through something like ten posts where you keep asserting
that the players must sit and cool their heels for some indefinite time.
I've never advocated that. Who in the hell wants to play a game where the
characters break rocks and eat greul for ten years. No one has said that
surrender must be that way.
I played in a game where the drow captured us and put us in a concentration
camp. I think we played one session interred - and we used our time to
learn as much as we could about the camp, the drow, and the commandant.
Then we escaped.
It was no less exciting because we knew the DM had something in mind for
us. For us, the thrill is escaping from our mundane lives for a few hours.
If the GM has us captured, we don't start bellyaching about how we've been
railroaded or whatever. We start to look for a way to solve this problem.
That was SOLVE the PROBLEM.
I still don't get why some people whine about surrendering or being
captured, as though it were the end of the game. It doesn't have to be.
Certainly, there will be instances where it will. But is there this massive
distrust of GMs out there?
I'm simply stunned.
Ross
Vox Ludator!
>Consider the final sequence in _Nine Princes in Amber_. The reader is
>willing to follow Corwin even though he is blinded (and thereby deprived
>of all his powers) and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. However,
>there is *nothing* for a player to do with this situation. Corwin
>eventually escapes, but before that he simply waits, and the opportunity
>is finally handed to him on a platter. This is not the kind of thing
>that good roleplaying scenarios are made of, though it works fine in the
>book. Knowing this, a character who was about to be thrown into
>Corwin's situation might well prefer fighting to the death, for the slim
>chance of victory.
Good point. Another example of a completely ROTTEN sequence of events
that you'd be hard pressed to duplicate in an RPG is the book "Aristoi"
by Walter Jon Williams, where the hero faces off against an opponent he
absolutely can do NOTHING to. In the book, he lets himself get
brainwashed and serves the enemy until he can think of something better
("Aristoi" deals heavily in split-personalities, so the first half of
this plan isn't quite as ludicrous as it might sound). But your average
player will just get up and walk away from the table when confronted with
a truly undefeatable villain.
___________ ____________________________________________________
| | | Bryant Berggren == ber0566.rs6000.ivcc.edu |
| @ T @ | | Vox Ludator == lud...@io.com |
| @ D @ | ====================================================
| @ H @ | | Make the world safe for Supers -- Join TDH! |
|___________| | Check out The Disposable Heroes WWW Page at: |
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\__________________________________________________/
Vox Ludator!
>ErolB1 (ero...@aol.com) wrote:
>[...]
>: Scary? No. Just logical. Barring special circumstances, if you've got a
>: good reason to fight in the first place, you've generally got a good
>: reason to fight to the death. Conversely, good reasons for *not* killing
>: your prisoners are generally good reasons for not fighting at all.
>Eh, don't you see that this paragraph is _riddled_ with logical
>fallacies? Starting with faulty premises ...
No, his premise IS logical, except that Erol left out one element: he's
obviously assuming "fight" includes "lethal force".
If he's referring solely to fights where one COULD die, than any fight is
risking one's life, and thus merely entering the fight shows either a) a
colossal lack of perception or b) a willigness to lose one's life for the
cause.
However, I can think of good reasons for NOT killing that don't detract
from the motivation to fight. Slavery, ransom, interrogation...
Louis Doench
--
From Louis"Wee Gee"Doench, the Village Idiot of Censornati
"I'm so insecure, I've put child safety seats on all of my mood
swings." wee...@iglou.com
Isaacs, Ross
are generally well thought out and well presented. You've done a lot of
thinking about gaming.
In article <40890v$g...@nntp4.u.washington.edu> mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>It depends on the style conventions of the gaming group. In some
>styles, the GM is not allowed to provide a readily apparent
>way out--it would interfere with suspension of disbelief. "These drow
>are highly competant folk. They are not going to make a mistake
>and let us escape. For the escape to feel plausible, it will *have* to
>involve a long period of planning and waiting for an opportunity." If
>the players expect this, they will not be happy about being captured.
>The GM may be willing to provide an easy out, but the *players* are not
>willing to accept one.
>When Jayhawk was captured by Paradisio, the GM sounded me out on this
>topic. "Honestly," he said, "I don't think she can possibly
>escape. And you do realize that the Paradisians operate by breaking
>their enemies and converting them to agents. Are you really interested
>in following that line? Or should I try to contrive an escape or
>rescue--or would that be too hard for you to believe?"
1) I think it is possible to use surrender/capture in a game.
2) I don't think this should be overused, like any other trick in a GM's bag.
3) I think players should trust their GM to give them a good story.
4) Realism does not have to be compromised.
5) Not all surrender/captures need end in automatic death.
Your example of Jayhawk is a wonderful example of what I am trying to get
across. Your GM consulted you. You trusted your GM to do right by you.
You wanted to play out the situation; you could say you were presented with
a problem that you wanted to try to work out. All I've been advocating is
what you just wrote about Jayhawk.
Unfortunately, most players never take the option of surrender/capture.
Most others playing Jayhawk would have fought to the death rather than be
captured by Paradisio. The character would have died and that would be the
end of it.
I'm not saying you have to have every battle end in surrender/capture. But
neither must all fights be to the death.
As for my example, I don't think it was automatically assumed that we'd get
out of the Drow camp so quickly. I think you are right that an easy out is
a 'gimmie' that cheapens the whole experience. It's been my experience that
players are pretty resourceful, and can figure ways of escape. I've had
them ask me about feeding schedules and guard rotations. I've had them test
out air vents. I've seen them fake an illness to get out of their cells.
You don't have to *give* them a way out; a good GM will prepare the
situation and players will figure it out. Just like pretty much every other
situation in a game.
Ross A. Isaacs
P.S. Do a lot of GMs make their prisons inpenetrable fortresses? Do they
automatically make them escape proof?
Mary K. Kuhner
>It was no less exciting because we knew the DM had something in mind for
>us. For us, the thrill is escaping from our mundane lives for a few hours.
>If the GM has us captured, we don't start bellyaching about how we've been
>railroaded or whatever. We start to look for a way to solve this problem.
>That was SOLVE the PROBLEM.
>I still don't get why some people whine about surrendering or being
>captured, as though it were the end of the game. It doesn't have to be.
>Certainly, there will be instances where it will. But is there this massive
>distrust of GMs out there?
>Ross
It depends on the style conventions of the gaming group. In some
styles, the GM is not allowed to provide a readily apparent
way out--it would interfere with suspension of disbelief. "These drow
are highly competant folk. They are not going to make a mistake
and let us escape. For the escape to feel plausible, it will *have* to
involve a long period of planning and waiting for an opportunity." If
the players expect this, they will not be happy about being captured.
The GM may be willing to provide an easy out, but the *players* are not
willing to accept one.
When Jayhawk was captured by Paradisio, the GM sounded me out on this
topic. "Honestly," he said, "I don't think she can possibly
escape. And you do realize that the Paradisians operate by breaking
their enemies and converting them to agents. Are you really interested
in following that line? Or should I try to contrive an escape or
rescue--or would that be too hard for you to believe?"
As it happens, I was interested in playing the situation out, but I can
easily see circumstances in which I wouldn't be.
It really depends on your group's style. If internal consistency
demands that capture is a disaster, the group will, sensibly, treat it
as a disaster. Trusting the GM doesn't necessarily enter into it--
sometimes the group *does* trust the GM to run in the style they have
established, and knows she has no way to contrive a quick escape without
breaking the implicit contract. For other groups, the GM has contracted
to provide an escape, at which point it makes perfect sense to allow
capture, secure in the knowledge that the GM will come through.
There are also characters for whom capture is just not acceptable. Had
Jayhawk been a slightly stronger, more ethical person, she would have
taken the opportunity she was eventually given to kill herself. A group
which includes several such characters will be understandably touchy
about capture. (And a group whose implicit contract includes
capture/escape as a main plot type had better strictly avoid such
characters, for obvious reasons.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
A Lapalme
>
> P.S. Do a lot of GMs make their prisons inpenetrable fortresses? Do they
> automatically make them escape proof?
Well, not usually. Very few prisons are escape proof. However, that
doesn't mean it's easy to get out of them. And, in any case, what would
be the point (of having an escape proof prison)? (I guess I can think of
a couple of scnearios but that would require some really good maneuvreing
on the part of the GM)
This reminds me of a game years ago in which my character and others got
caputred and stuck in a impenetrable and inescapable prison (by the looks
and its reputations, anyways). Well, we escaped and, to tell you the
truth, I did not feel very good about it. It just felt like the GM made
it easier for us (two characters died but mostly due to really stupid
moves - any decent moves we made meant some kind of marginal success) and
I felt cheated. I guess it comes down to: if the GM puts you in an
impossible situation, it should remain so. Anything else upsets my SOD.
Alain
Scott Olson
> In article <3vu6ja$p...@blackice.winternet.com> sco...@winternet.com (Scott Olson) writes:
>
> > I think one reason that it's NOT more common in games is that we've
> >all read books (or seen movies, whatever) where the opposition is done in
> >BECAUSE they took the protagonists prisoner. It's counter-productive: the
> >protagonists either learn something, free someone, or steal something that
> >ends up being the doom/defeat of their opponent. Since we've all
> >seen the same thing, and thought of similar things in response. The
> >easiest way to prevent this sort of thing is to kill the prisoners (before
> >or after they're wrung dry of information is a matter of personal taste
> >and foresight). Another method is to make SURE they can't escape, by
> >whatever means.
>
> out to win the game (e.g., beating my players by killing them). I want the
> protagonists - the players - to be captured by the stormtroopers, escape
> from the cell block, find the secret plans in the computer and return to the
> rebel base. Otherwise, how can I expect them to blow up the Death Star? We
> may have seen this 1000 times, but why would I, as GM, purposely try to get
> around it? In short, what you are saying is that because the GM knows the
> protagonists will find the weak-spot by being captured, it's in her interest
> to prevent this from happening. I think this involves the GM taking the
> interests of the American Army to kill everyone who surrenders, because
> they've seen Rambo and know that someone might try to escape with the secret
> invasion plans. . . . .
Because you're playing the character's opposition straight? Assuming
the opposition is stupid, when they're supposed to be smart, always struck
me as a cop-out. If they were presented as smart, why should the PCs
expect that a prison break is even feasible?
If the US Army ever kept important documents in prison camps, they
might think about that. They don't. Reality, unlike Rambo or Hogan's
Heroes, is that while there were a few prison camp escapes, the objective
was just to get out, and they had no effect on the conflict in question.
> No, I think players refuse to surrender because they believe that if they
> do, they've *lost* the game.
>
> When players don't give in to the conventions of literature/film, they make
> it much harder on themselves. They end up going the long way around.
But RPGs aren't literature and they aren't film. They're their own
medium. Authors/scriptwriters have much more control over what the
characters do than GMs have over PCs (except in cases of blatant
railroads), if the story starts taking an undesired twist they can stop,
throw out the offending pages, and start the scene over.
> > Given these thoughts, unless the genre _explicitly_ supports it, I
> >think lots of players are reluctant to surrender. They give the opponent
> >credit for being reasonably smart and pragmatic, and think that
> >surrendering either means that they won't be coming back at all, or only
> >on the opponent's terms.
>
> I still don't by this *explicit* argument. Why must I tell them that
> surrender is okay? Must I sit my players down and tell them:
>
> * The game is realistic.
> * It's set in contemporary America
> * surrender is okay
> * they may not shoot anyone they want because they'll be arrested
> * they must call their mothers every sunday or else mom will be upset and
> won't send birthday money?
>
> I would like to think that either a) they are reasonably intelligent and b)
> they'll get this through play.
If you're setting up a game, I think you're obligated to tell the
players AT LEAST the first 2 of those. Whether surrender in contemporary
America is OK or not depends on who you're surrendering to (if it's the
police, it's probably OK, gangs rather less so), and the bit about being
arrested should depend a lot on the situation (whether anyone saw it,
whether they'd tell the police, etc).
> Try surrender. It's in my best interests as GM to keep my players alive.
> Otherwise, a ninja assassin could just walk into their rooms and put a
> bullet in their head. We'd all consider that unfair, unless there were a
> lot of skill checks and a chance for survival. Why not the same assumption
> for surrender?
If you're in a world that has ninjas, and your characters have done
something that might bring you to their hostile notice, being prepared for
them would be a good idea.... I think what we have here is a clash of
GMing philosophies: you're saying that part of the GMs responsibility is
to keep the PCs alive, because if you don't the game dies. My side of the
coin is that it's the players job to keep the PCs alive, because the lack
of tension if the PCs are protected by the GM will kill the game just as
fast as killing the PCs would. IMHO. of course.
Scott
Scott Olson
> In article <4002fk$1...@blackice.winternet.com> sco...@winternet.com (Scott Olson) writes:
>
> > There's a _very_ good reason (in the story) why Merri and Pippin
> >didn't get their throats cut: the Orcs in question had SPECIFIC orders
> >about what to do with any hobbits they caught. If it had been Legolas or
> >Gimli who'd been in that position, they're dead, period. There's also the
> >question of what was _going_ to happen to Merri and Pippin when they get
> >to Orthanc (if Eomer and company hadn't gotten to Ugluk's unit before they
> >got home) to consider: once it was found that they weren't the hobbits
> >that were wanted and didn't have the Ring, they'd have been almost
> >certainly drained of any useful information and disposed of.
>
> While this is certainly true, it does not negate my point. If I were a
> villain, and a bunch of people suddenly became interested in my activities,
> I'd want to know:
In the case in question, from Sauron's/Saruman's POV:
> Who are they working for?
Already known. They're working with Gandalf and Elrond, we tracked
them to Elrond's house, after all.
> How did they find out so much information?
Gandalf and Elrond, already known.
> Can I use them against my enemy (presumably the person who got the PC's
> involved?
No need, they're not useful. If we get the Ring, we won't have any
need for these clowns.
> How much do they know?
Not enough, they don't know where the Ring is. What else they know
_isn't important_, because it doesn't matter if we get the Ring.
> Who have they told?
See above, it doesn't matter. Galadriel knows everything they do,
but that's to be expected, Elrond and Gandalf would have told her.
> So I send out my goons and tell them to bring 'em back alive.
>
> Let's take the Merry and Pippen example a little further. They get to
> Orthanic and they find out the hobbits don't have the ring. Now it's time
> to drain them of all useful information. Which means putting them in a
> cell. Which means they aren't killed outright at the gates of Orthanic.
> Which means the GM has any number of options - from rescue by Gandalf to
> breaking out on their own.
Huh, uh. They get to Orthanc, Saruman strips them of everything they
know and tosses them into a cell IN Orthanc. Since they don't know where
the Ring is, and one of the Mordor Orcs might have reported back to
Mordor, he calls Sauron on the Palantir, reporting I've captured 2 of the
Halflings, do you want them? Sauron says yes, and sends a Nazgul that
evening. By the next morning, Merry and Pippin are in the Barad-Dur.
Remember, Gandalf wasn't interested in going into Orthanc after Saruman,
and he couldn't break out of it when Saruman had him. So a break-in to
rescue them isn't likely (even if time permits, which it probably doesn't,
since Gandalf was still somewhat behind them).
Scott
Scott Olson
> In article <403rf3$b...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, ErolB1 <ero...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >ransom arrangment set up with the enemy - but if the enemy is honorable
> >and decent enough to deal with wrt ransoms, what the heck are you doing
> >fighting him in the first place?
>
> It was the norm in earlier eras. Hence the term, "a King's ransom," to
> refer to a large sum of money.
Well, it was the norm in medieval times, among the aristocracy. They
didn't ransom the common soldiers, they were either killed or allowed to
run away (if your horse was tired). In pre-medieval times, surrender
could lead to ransom, enslavement, or death, depending on who was
capturing who (remember what happened to Carthage?).
> As to why we would be fighting, well, there are zillions of reassons why
> negotiations break down, but both sides can, for example, follow the
> agreements of the Geneva Convention while still being at war. It's just
> a matter of both sides sticking to the rules.
Right. As long as both sides know the rules, that works. For both
sides to understand the rules the same way, they often need to be of a
similar background (the European nations, for instance, mostly understood
them the same way in WWI).
Scott
dave_martin
>As for surrender in reality: If you care about your cause, you don't
>surrender unless fighting on is clearly futile (and maybe not even then -
>consider the classic response "Nuts!" to the surrender demand in the
>Battle of the Buldge.) In real life, the people who commonly surrender
>are common criminals and demoralized conscripts - and PC's are usually
>neither.
>
>Furthermore, real-world surrender generally saves the prisoner's life at
>the cost of destroying any plans for the near to mid-term future. If the
>setting is reasonably realistic and the opponents are minimally
>competent, then escape is very unlikely. In game terms, surrender means
>retiring the character as a PC. From the player's point of view, there's
>little to choose between that and the character's death: In both cases,
>the player loses the character.
Hmmmmmm, I feel the key point in people surrendering is who they are
surrendering to. What someone thinks of their enemy is likely to influence
their feelings about surrender. If the PC's belong to the Bobian race who
have legendary animosity for the evil, sadistic Teddy Bear torturing
Billians. Then the PC's are likely to pretty wary about the idea of
surrender. If they are playing mercenaries who are facing the prospect of
surrender to an enemy who doesn't hold grudges and is known for hiring
mercenaries, the PC's views on surrender will be much more relaxed.
Also it's interesting to look at (I think it is anyway :-) ) Genghis Khan
who offered cities a simple choice when he came invading, Surrender or I'll
kill every last man, woman or child. After he'd carried out his threat once
or twice suddenly cities started surrendering to him.
Of course surrender isn't an ideal alternative but it's better than death.
I'd take issue with surrender with your statement that surrender means
retiring the PC. That depends on the nature of the conflict/surrender and
the enemy. Intelligent beings and occasionally that includes PC's do not
always fight to the death, surrender can be the only realistic option.
A PC who throws their life away in a glorious, futile struggle is a great
dramatic vignette, but quite a lot of the time "....Live to fight another
day" is a preferable ending
Adios
DM "OTOH Paladins surrendering, Yeurch"
Nancy M. Sauer
: And see Sun Tzu's comment about putting one's back to a river
: and breaking your own eating bowl.
It's funny that you should bring up Sun Tzu here. When I read
David's description on how his players had reacted to his
Romulan-capture scenario, the first thing that popped into my mind was
Sun Tzu's comment about not pressing a desperate enemy too hard, and
allowing them an opportuinity to run away.
Nancy M. Sauer <*> "Then you will come to think of things in
Disciple of Bread Do: a wide sense and, taking the dough as the
The Way of the Way, you will see the Way is dough.
Flour Warrior In the dough there is virtue, and no evil."
David Dunham
up for 10 years, so what? This is a genre where we don't have to wait 10
years to see what happens next. You just start the next session 10 years
later, getting out of jail. It's not like surrender is the major
inconvenience for the player that it is for the character.
David Dunham Pensee Corporation dun...@nw.pensee.com
Voice/Fax 206 783 7404 http://www.pensee.com/dunham/
"I say we should listen to the customers and give them what they want."
"What they want is better products for free." --Scott Adams
Paul Jackson
Isaacs, Ross <ris...@main.nlc.gwu.edu> wrote:
>As for my example, I don't think it was automatically assumed that we'd get
>out of the Drow camp so quickly. I think you are right that an easy out is
>a 'gimmie' that cheapens the whole experience. It's been my experience that
>players are pretty resourceful, and can figure ways of escape. I've had
>them ask me about feeding schedules and guard rotations. I've had them test
>out air vents. I've seen them fake an illness to get out of their cells.
>You don't have to *give* them a way out; a good GM will prepare the
>situation and players will figure it out. Just like pretty much every other
>situation in a game.
What people are willing to accept without losing their willing suspension of
disbelief varys greatly. ALL of the examples that you give above, if they
led to the reasonably obvious escape attempts which were, in turn, successful
would definitely violate MY acceptance. Only incompetents fail to lock the
air vents in a cell, only incomptents fail to guard ill prisoners, etc.
Virtually every escape that occurs in an Action Adventure movie is
horrendously unrealistic and requires the jailers to be complete
incompetents. Only if the genre is specifically set up for this kind of
thing (eg, Cliffhangers) will I be willing to accept escapes that are that
esy. Others milleage most definitely varies on this.
>Ross A. Isaacs
>
>P.S. Do a lot of GMs make their prisons inpenetrable fortresses? Do they
>automatically make them escape proof?
Building escape proof prisons is not really that hard in most circumstances,
it only becomes difficult if the characters have access to weird funky
abiliities with no counters or if there are circumstances (Geneva
conventions, a desire to get labour out of the prisoners, etc) that make it
impossible to build a prison purely from the point of view of stopping
escape.
Unless I'm GMing some very unrealistic genre, the prisons are set up to be
as realistic an implementation of a prison that the jailers would use that I
can come up with. This may or may not translate into escape proof. The PCs
frequently have access to abilites far beyond what the prison was designed
to contain and escape becomes possible (or even trivial). Sometimes the
prison is designed to hold characters at least as powerful as the PCs and
escape becomes difficult to impossible.
In the latter case, capture obviously means that some Deus Ex Machina event
occurs, generally damaging campaign reality/plausibility, some accomodation
with the captors is made, some third party intervenes, or the campaign ends.
I've had all of the above occur in campaigns that I've run, often as in
Mary's case the decision is made at the meta or player level. At least one
campaign was definitely ended when the players decided that it would just
damage their suspension of disbelief too much if they were allowed to escape,
they'd rather start a new campaign than continue.
--
Paul Jackson
Scott Olson
> In article: <4054lu$o...@news.tamu.edu> mml...@tam2000.tamu.edu (Margaret
> > I don't think it is defeat, I think it is failure that the players
Heh.... I think, if you want to avoid the charge of running a
railroad, that you have to give the players enough information about what
they're up against BEFORE they run smack up against the heavily armed
army, so that they can choose to go some other way. The army that appears
from nowhere, when you thought the enemy had maybe 10 enforcers, looks
like railroading, while an army of soldiers that you knew about beforehand
doesn't, at least as long as you didn't try to run and find them in front
of you at every turn.
Scott
Mary K. Kuhner
>Something I haven't seen mentioned: even if surrender means you get locked
>up for 10 years, so what? This is a genre where we don't have to wait 10
>years to see what happens next. You just start the next session 10 years
>later, getting out of jail. It's not like surrender is the major
>inconvenience for the player that it is for the character.
>David Dunham Pensee Corporation dun...@nw.pensee.com
From Zelazny's _Nine Princes in Amber_, in a scene where Corwin has been
imprisoned, blind, alone, for three years:
"I crossed the boundary between sanity and madness so many times that I
nearly rubbed it out."
For some characters, accurately representing the effects of being in
jail for ten years would be a nasty business. Furthermore, after ten
years every issue that the PCs were involved in is likely to be dead
stale. Causes they were concerned with will have resolved without them.
People they were involved with may well be dead or so changed as to be
unrecognizable. Anything belonging to them is likely to be in shambles.
If Kevin's PCs were thrown into jail for ten years, Pergolian would run
amuck for that period and in all likelihood there would be nothing for
them to come home to. Too nasty for most players, I think.
If I am involved in an ongoing storyline which I am excited by and
concerned with, ten years in jail can sound pretty much like character
death. I'll essentially be starting a new campaign with significantly
different characters and very few of the same ongoing issues. It might
well be more fun to start a new set of characters immediately, and keep
the involvement with what's going on.
As always, it depends on the kind of game.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
David R. Henry
>stopped fighting the PCs, surrendered to them and they did NOT kill him
>after interrogation?
Last week. My players usually don't kill if they have prisoners (except
in cases of role-playing religious or social hatred), since they
appreciate the favor when the tables are turned on them.
--
David R. Henry-Rogue Fan Club //// The power to make you feel real stupid.
"All you of Earth are IDIOTS!"-P9fOS / What was the question? -- Kate Bush
dhe...@plains.nodak.edu * Evolution: Give it some time, it'll grow on ya.
Wayne J. Rasmussen
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
Distribution: world
Isaacs, Ross (ris...@main.nlc.gwu.edu) wrote:
(stuff removed)
: I still don't get why some people whine about surrendering or being
: captured, as though it were the end of the game. It doesn't have to be.
: Certainly, there will be instances where it will. But is there this massive
: distrust of GMs out there?
Okay Mr. God's Answer to All Role-Players,
Your character has just surrendered to the enemy and they in turn kill
your character outright. What do YOU do?