{"id":1633,"date":"2008-10-01T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2008-10-01T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1633"},"modified":"2008-10-21T22:48:08","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T03:48:08","slug":"gm-advicearresting-player-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1633","title":{"rendered":"GM Advice:Arresting Player Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In tabletop games, sometimes the players need to go to jail. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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<\/em>.) 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!<\/em> 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.)<\/p>\n

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:
\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Have the guards afraid of the player.<\/strong> If they’re acting as if they’ve just been sent to arrest the Dark Lord himself, this will clue the player in that they have the upper hand. They will feel more like they are “humoring” the guards by choosing to go with them.\n<\/li>\n
  2. Make the event law enforcement, not military.<\/strong> Yes, the distinction is vague in most fantasy settings, but fairly clear in the modern-day world we’re familiar with. Describe the man as a “constable taking the player to the courthouse”, not as a “soldier taking them to the brig”. The former is a lot less threatening to modern ears, and hints to the player that they’re not going to be dragged off and killed without getting a chance to speak for themselves. <\/li>\n
  3. Send as many guards as makes sense, not as many as you’ll need for a good encounter.<\/strong> If your players engage in metagame thinking – and we all do from time to time, sometimes without realizing it – then sending a force for a well-matched encounter is going to short out the thinking of at least one player at the table, who is going to assume they’re “supposed” to fight these guys. Just the right number makes them start priming their dice for rolling initiative. (And of course sending more<\/em> guards than the situation calls for will make them feel railroaded, and the players might resist just to spite you.)\n<\/li>\n
  4. Make it fun.<\/strong> Again, computer games do guards a terrible disservice. They’re an army of generic clones, strapping young men at the peak of fitness, even though all they do is walk and stand. But I imagine in anything less than a huge city the town watch is going to be a mix of guys of all ages. (And, in some settings, women.) Some will be out of shape. Some will be young and fit but either too brash or too unsure of themselves. Some will be befuddled by all this unnatural commotion. There will be a drunk somewhere in the mix. Most are guys who, at the end of the day, just want to collect their 1d4 of local currency and go home to their families.\n

    If you can make the conversation fun, the players will be much more willing to play along, as opposed to having a bunch of faceless enforcers run in, swords in hand, demanding to know what’s going on.\n<\/li>\n

  5. Don’t escalate.<\/strong> As with real modern-day law enforcement, you shouldn’t go in heavy if you don’t need to. Don’t have the guards draw swords unless they have a good reason. Coming at a person (in real life or in a game) with a weapon in hand carries the implied threat, “Do what I say or I’ll use this on you.” Police don’t draw their guns when asking you about a busted taillight. Yes, this deprives your guards of a combat edge, but the real goal is to avoid a fight altogether.<\/li>\n
  6. Enforce long-term consequences.<\/strong> Resisting arrest should be a bad thing. This isn’t Grand Theft Auto, where loosing the cops makes them forget the whole thing. If players resist arrest, refuse to answer questions, and flee law enforcement, then word should spread. The players should quickly realize that life as a fugitive kind of sucks. Needing to disguise yourselves every time you go into town for supplies is going to get tedious. If wanted posters start showing up they may suddenly think about how they, a group of nominally decent characters, became outlaws.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    A fun example of me using #1 and #4 can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[126],"class_list":["post-1633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games","tag-gm-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}