In tabletop games, sometimes the players need to go to jail.
Sometimes it’s part of the story or a quest hook. Sometimes the players have gone a little too far and you need to yank them back into line and remind them that this is a world with consequences. Sometimes you need the guards to pull them over just to preserve the verisimilitude of the setting.
But doing so is tricky, because there will be the temptation on the part of the players to just get in a fight. Being arrested is not generally a fun thing and the players are naturally going to want to avoid it. As a GM, I am not above a little manipulation when I think the story would be better served by a particular set of actions. Simulationist GMs will let things happen as they do. Clumsy GMs will steer events through force. Storytelling GMs like me will let the players do what they want, but provide narrative cues to make some paths seem more obvious than others. (I do this in the interests of steering players towards the most interesting events, not in an attempt to “win” over them.) Without these cues the game would be meandering or freeform, which isn’t what our group wants.
How you handle this depends largely on the mindset of your particular group of players. If they see you as an adversary, then they are going to assume that the arresting guards are part of some ruse to take away their magic items or kill them off. This isn’t going to work if your players don’t trust you. They aren’t going to be keen to give up their hard-earned weapons and tools if they think you won’t give them back. (Not the guards, you.) This also isn’t going to work if this is a kick-in-the-door group of players. They’ll just start a fight, because, duh! That’s what this game is all about! Those players aren’t going to notice the lack of verisimilitude on the part of the guards anyway, so I wouldn’t bother trying to arrest them. Same goes for morality-challenged parties. (The chaotic neutrals and evils.)
But if you find the story calls for intervention on the part of law enforcement, then here are a few of my own tricks for encouraging the players to surrender or talk their way out of it, instead of resorting to blood:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “GM Advice:
Arresting Player Characters”
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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