ICRPG How to Play - Prisoners & Hostages (Comments Welcome!)

[@elpegaso]

I like your videos, I'm new to ICRPG and have found them useful. Thanks! To answer your question as best I know how: I would leave that all to your players. Like the GM would set up a battle, and the players leave one guy alive to question, It's up to them as to how they treat them, and it's up to the GM to decide how helpful the bad guy is. The most holiest of Clerics might be feeling some light torture to get info if they were pushed into a battle that they barely escaped. (The GM could be keeping track of that for when the next time they try to ask their god for help.) The sneakiest of Rogues might convince the party to let the guy go free (and track him back to his hideout). All things a party might decide to do, all up to the party to decide, all up to the GM to set up. In the game I'm running, in the Vigilante City world, my players are all playing superheroes. A superhero probably isn't going to take a hostage, and rarely a prisoner. I started their adventure with them all being prisoners themselves, and have them slowly discover their powers as their prison is mysteriously burning down around them. I kept track of their actions. Two of my 'heroes' were not doing very 'heroic' things (stealing, not helping the npc's escape) and one of my heroes was going above and beyond to help everyone. In essence, I suppose, I'm running a game full of Paladins, always checking their karma level. In their next adventure, my players could have the chance of stealing a boat to help themselves escape. I wouldn't necessarily count that against them, esp if they are creative with it. Now, if they kill the guards and take the boat, then something bad might happen later.

[@Alloyed-RPG]

Thanks! Sounds like a fun campaign. So in a way, you are keeping a finger on the alignment pulse (even if subconsciously). In the system we’re about to launch, we have a corruption mechanic that dings your Spirit when you act against your moral compass. But back to prisoners, I’m wondering if there is anything to roll at any time for them. Something that addresses the burden they put on the Party.

[@Joshuazx]

There's a risk that the party can't decide on what to do with their hostages, and there will be a 50/50 split and things might get really intense and it can lead to PCs fighting or players leaving their group. If the party can't decide on what to do with the hostages, I have to proposals: 1. you have a back-up event / encounter that makes the decision for them. 2. You call for a time-out and mediate. Consider potentially hand-wave any problems away and agree to suspend disbelief regarding the lack of a proper in-game solution.

[@Alloyed-RPG]

I like your first proposal best :)

[@DigitalinDaniel]

I think the whole point of taking hostages or prisoners is just to have leverage... so even an evil character should need to keep them alive to reach a greater goal. How useful is the hostage, what does keeping them offer? Is there a reward for live capture? You could maybe give the player advantage on "Intimidation" rolls again good guys when using the hostages... or maybe +1 Intimidation per captive? For becoming friends with the party, how understanding is the hostage? How cooperative is the hostage? Do they throw a wrench into the plans every time the party turns around? Maybe they could show a sign of cooperation, the party could be ambushed and in the heat of things the prisoner could just slip out of their shackles and start throwing magic with no intention of hurting the players... maybe they heal or save a player. Maybe they can be trusted to fight, or hunt or gather food for everyone? (I don't really bother tracking food-drink personally, unless there's barren nothing landscape like endless sand or ice sheets, I will use hunger/thirst to trigger events though) If a player does torture or kill the hostage, now you have a villain... somebody could come along and revive them. Raise them as a lich or zombie... a skeleton assassin in endless pursuit. Or maybe their spirit starts corrupting a church/cult into hating the players. It could even be a good church that sees the spirit like a saint of some sort. There could be all kinds of consequences to killing anybody in your game that your players don't know about. Replace them with an identical sibling if you still need the character alive in your DM arsenal?

[@Alloyed-RPG]

Nice. I’m trying to think how you’d quantify some of those elements. One comment on FB gave a cool idea of rolling 1d4 as a timer - they will escape in so many rounds.

[@DigitalinDaniel]

@@Alloyed-RPG I guess I'm not quite sure what questions you're asking then. I wouldn't add any mechanics to anything I said aside from the possible Intimidation boosts, I would just make anything happen to keep the game churning. I was under the impression that you need/want your players to keep the NPC alive, and for some reason that also required the NPC to be a hostage?

[@Alloyed-RPG]

@@DigitalinDaniel yes - they would be keeping the NPC alive. Consequently, there would be a significant drain on the Party (resources, morale, speed, etc). Just wondering if any of those could be quantified a little.

[@DigitalinDaniel]

@@Alloyed-RPG Hmm, I guess that's mostly just up to how severe the DM wants the penalties to be, and how cooperative the NPC is. Personally if I needed the NPC alive I wouldn't want to give my players many reasons to discard them. (If you do penalize them for keeping people alive too much you might turn them into murder-hobos) Somebody would have to stay up at night to make sure they don't escape. Could just steal whatever bits you like from the Exhaustion mechanic in 5E... If the NPC breaks a leg or something then somebody has to carry them, could take a player out of combat... maybe add more Exhaustion points. A bloody/stinky hostage might attract predators, adding extra encounters.

[@theos428]

Kill All haha… 😂 Personally I’d avoid “hostage” taking and keep that kind of bogged down game play and decision making only when it is a scenario where your party is rescuing someone or arresting someone for bounty, things like that. That’s where I would agree with a previous comment that hostages really should only be taken for value and exchanged. As a PC I’m not dragging a hostage around the entire campaign and feeding them and the like unless I’m returning them somewhere or there’s a certain value in it. Plus when it comes to alignment, who decides what’s worse - taking a hostage that might starve or be abused and die anyway, or taking the things life and moving on? What’s the more good? What’s the more evil? I don’t feel like making decisions like that. Hostage situations are a huge sticky mess and as a DM/GM I would do my best just simply to keep them out of the equation. At the end of the day, the list of monsters or undead or whatever, that you would keep hostage is very very small. Monsters should simply want to kill and eat you, or attempt running away. Keeps it simple. I guess some will say they like the puzzle that’s created when considering hostage taking and the scenarios could be endless, but for my two cents, there’s other more fun things to engage in.

[@Alloyed-RPG]

I tend to agree (but Gollum comes to mind :))

[@joshuabecklake4950]

I'd run bartering with hostages as a skill challenge

[@Alloyed-RPG]

That could work. Thanks

[@TheTYMONGER]

I feel the need for alinement is out dated. I like to flip on how I play my Pc on how the game feels for me. Some time I feel generous & other I want to break there knees. And to be limited by alinement is a game I will not play.

[@Alloyed-RPG]

That’s certainly your choice. I would go light on calling it roleplaying though. Or you could just be “neutral.” That’s why I only play characters that have my own natural tendencies. But, if I purposefully were to play someone more or less virtuous, I’d expect to be held to it.

[@risusrules]

Not an alignment fan. Personally it just leads to more arguments/delaying discussion than it fixes IMHO. Especially if 'the rules' that they are following or breaking aren't written out, understood, and mutually agreed upon. For example, a 'letter of the law' player, playing a [ 1 ] Good / Follows the Rules character will never kill a hostage. Another [ 1 ] Good / Follows the Rules character's player may say it is 'Good' to kill a [ 4 ] Bad Rules Breaker. Another [ 1 ] might say a 'Bad' person who is Following the Rules is bound to eventually Break the Rules and kill them, are they no longer a [ 1 ]? These are 'the rules' I initially spoke of, not game rules, but setting rules, or 'laws'. Then add in all the morality issues and questions, for example, are the Goblins raiding farmers fields "Bad" if they're doing it to feed their families? They are not members of society, so are they "Breaking the Rules" per se? I say, let the players portray their characters from scene to scene as they want. (I guess I am True Neutral) If you want to steer play, introduce ramifications for actions you want to address. Players take no prisoners? Enemies hear about them and fight to the death, possibly getting a bonus, for the added knowledge that if they don't they will surely die. Play a Cleric NPC that won't help them, so they'll have to see if the young scribe might have picked up some skill and might be incentivized to assist instead. As for feeding and Supplies, there is already Supply rules sprinkled throughout the book. If you have the PDF, do a search and you can bounce through them. One of my biggest gripes of ME is they were never consolidated and refined.

[@Alloyed-RPG]

Alloyed RPG 2.0 removes alignment (but I still personally like it for certain situations). Not sure if you read through the Core Rules (first version), but it dealt with ramifications in a very tangible way. Thanks for the comments and happy rolling!