Taking prisoners

Hey, sometimes characters and their players want to take an NPC prisoner. Maybe they want to question someone or just to spare their lives. Either way, it can be absolute hell on both the Storyteller and the players.

For player characters, now they have to deal with a prisoner: disarming and restraining them, transporting and feeding them. If the table’s lucky, there’s somewhere nearby to drop off their extra NPC — a guard station or town constable, that sort of thing. But just as often, an adventuring party is out in the middle of nowhere and will be stuck with a prisoner for days, weeks or even months.

This isn’t always a bad thing! In a recent game, we took a crashed ornithopter pilot prisoner because we thought he had plot information that we might need later. He wasn’t a plot hook, but rather than us now being shackled to a problem NPC, Aron made this pilot so fun and charismatic that by the end of the game, we adopted him into the team.

But NPCs are Aron’s specialty. He makes them easily, plays them well, and generally has the mental bandwidth to manage a few of them. Not everyone has that skill, and adding another character to the Storyteller’s plate might not benefit the game.

And then, of course, there’s deciding the prisoner’s ultimate fate. Unless the player characters either drop them in some kind of confinement, release them or keep them on the team as we did, it generally leaves only one option — execution. Understandably, most players aren’t eager to make that decision! Even in fiction, killing an unarmed and pacified foe is pretty universally awful. That’s some BBEG shit, not the actions of a party of heroes!

So for players, be careful how often you take prisoners in game. I’m not saying never to do it! If you’re playing a pacifist who doesn’t kill even in battle, that’s fine — as long as you talk to your table ahead of time. Give the other players and your Storyteller the chance to let you know if that’s not going to work for the group or the story, or for them to be ready for prisoners. As long as everyone’s on the same page about what’s going to be fun, then you’re good to go.

For Storytellers, the prisoner dilemma (not to be confused with the prisoner’s dilemma game theory) is a little different. If you don’t want your player characters taking prisoners, make it easy on them.

It’s wonderfully nuanced Storytelling to show the enemies’ humanity, and it can bring true pathos and depth to a table-top game. But it can also make it hard for characters to actually kill their enemies. Great ethics, difficult mechanics! If you don’t want the party taking prisoners, then don’t put them in a position of guilt or moral quandary when battling them.

This is where truly evil BBEGs are incredibly helpful. There’s a deep and meaningful tale to be told between enemies across a border or social divide, but it’s usually a lot more fun to launch the biggest up-cast fireball into a horde of baddies. In Dungeons & Dragons and many, many other role-playing games, the greatest portion of rules are dedicated to combat. So let your players fight an army of imps and cheer for each other when they take down the biggest monster of the land. Real life is full of gray areas, difficult moral calls, and nuance, and many of us game to escape all of that and fix some nice, solvable problem.

Of course, if those gray area, moral quandary, and ethically nuanced games are your thing, great! If there’s much combat, just consider that you might also end up with a lot of prisoners.