Not long ago a Friend described a tragic
AD&D® game adventure to me. In his
campaign a party of characters, afoot in the
wilderness, approached a small castle in
hostile territory. Two of its number, invisible
or hiding in shadows, entered the castle to
scout the opposition. Unfortunately, their
curiosity ? or stupidity ? got the better of
them: they unwisely and unnecessarily
stirred up the gnolls, trolls, and bugbears in
residence, then they fled back to the rest of
the party with the enemy in pursuit. Although
the adventurers fled, only two of
them escaped capture. A month of game
time passed before those two were able to
lead another party back to the spot.

?What could I do?? my friend, who was
the referee, said. ?There?s no way the
gnolls and trolls would hold prisoners for
that long, so they ate them, and all of them
were dead when the rescue party arrived.?

I was astonished, since there are many
ways ? excuses, one might say ? for a
referee to keep captured adventurers alive if
he so desires. In this case, most of the party
suffered for the foolishness of two. This is a
good example of a situation in which the
referee ought to do something to keep the
unfortunates alive.

This article is especially for referees who
have been unable to think of enough ways
to save player characters who, through no
fault of their own (no major fault, anyway),
are prisoners of the enemy or who are
trapped with little hope of immediate improvement
of the situation.

The methods of saving prisoners from an
undeserved fate are to have the monsters or
NPCs in charge of the situation 

1) hold the characters for ransom, 
2) use the characters as slaves, 
3) sell the unfortunates to slavers,
4) save the characters to use -- or perhaps,
        sacrifice -- at an appropriate future time, 
5) release the prisoners after somehow "teaching
        them a lesson," 
6) keep prisoners alive
        due to an emotional or irrational reason, or
7) perhaps the PCs themselves will solve the
        problem by devising a means of escape or
        subterfuge leading to escape. 

All of these
will be considered in turn, with some examples
from actual game campaigns.

1. Ransom
Monsters and villains, the non-player
opposition, are usually avaricious. Player
characters are often wealthy, though they
don?t carry all their wealth with them if
they?re smart. And player characters often
have wealthy friends. Therefore, rather
than simply kill them, wouldn?t some intelligent
monsters choose to ?cash in? their
prisoners for a large sum of money? Those
monsters that aren?t interested in money
may want magic items or some other compensation.
Frequently, prisoners can offer
either possessions that they left behind or
possessions belonging to their friends (who
would be paid back, of course).

Sometimes money or items may not be
enough; in such cases, captives can be
forced to offer limited or specific service as
ransom. This works best when there are
several captives, because each captive is a
guarantee against betrayal by the others ?
?If any of you break your word, you?ll all
die!? for example. Two captives might be
sent to search for something ? an item, a
person, some information ? desired by the
captor(s), while a third captive is kept behind
as a hostage.

In the simplest case, the captors may
merely want a docile servant for a time.
They?ll offer freedom a year from now, say,
in return for cooperation from the captive
during that period.

In some campaigns, a sort of ?kidnapping
capitalism? could exist. Adventurers
would arrange for their ransom before they
embark on an expedition, and hostile creatures
would become accustomed to collecting
compensation rather than wasting a
captive in some other manner.

Here?s an example of straight ransom. A
party of eight mid-level adventurers encounter
four powerful spell casters in the
wilderness, and through poor tactics and
bad luck, they lose the melee. But no one is
killed, because the PCs have the good sense
to surrender before it?s too late. The villains
turn out to be neutral rather than evil,
though they started the fight. They offer to
ransom the PCs for all they carried (which
the villains have already taken, of course),
plus additional considerations. They negotiate
separately with each of the player characters,
arrange a meeting and a drop site
for payment of the additional ransom,
extract a strong oath from the characters,
and leave. The players had a bargaining
chip on their side: they knew that if they
didn?t return from their expedition, their.
friends would assume something bad had
happened and would use a powerful (and
very rare) wish to save the whole party by
wishing that they?d never met the bad guys.
When the PCs made this fact known to the
enemy spell casters, the villains realized that
they had to strike a bargain that would cost
the PCs less than the wish was worth ?
otherwise, the captives would balk at the
villains? ransom demands and wait for the
wish to be implemented by their friends,
and the ransomers would come away from
the experience with nothing for their trouble.
Once a deal was struck, the referee did
not play out the payment procedure in
detail, because he was sure that both sides
would keep the bargain with the wish hanging
over all.

But this is an exceptional instance; few
ransom situations involve a wish. In that
case, how can the PCs and the villains trust
each other? Mutual self-interest can go a
long way, but as the history of international
diplomacy shows, there are serious limits to
the force of mutual self-interest.

The captors may be more inclined to
accept the word of lawful characters rather
than those of a non-lawful alignment, assuming
some form of coercion is not possible.
But magick items or spells -- geas or
quest, for example -- may be available to
help ensure that captives carry out their
part of the bargain. Perhaps the bad guys
will retain 1 or 2 prisoners and will let
the rest go to gather the ransom. Then,
both sides have a bargaining chip for the
payment meeting. However, a lot can go
wrong.

For example, during a horrendous outdoor
adventure, a party is forced to abandon
several incapacitated characters as the
remainder flee by air from giants and
dozens of smaller creatures. As the characters
fly away, they shout an offer to ransom
their friends in return for a relic they have
taken from the enemy; the time and location
of the exchange are also set. At the
suggested time, several members of the
party appear at the designated location; for
safety?s sake, some are flying, while others
remain invisible. They see three bodies,
stripped to the bone but still capable of
being resurrected. After some uncertainty,
the party spots the enemy, hands over the
relic, and retrieves the bodies of the ransomed
friends. Unfortunately, they learn
too late that these aren?t their friends?
bodies!

Since the whole point of the ransoming
procedure, in most cases, is to extricate
characters from an undeserved fate, a
means of enabling PCs and NPCs to trust
each other in rare cases has been devised.
This is called the ?Great Oath,? an oath to
one?s god(s) that can be broken only at risk
of the god?s great displeasure. After all,
most gods must prefer their worshipers to
be honest with them, especially in the case
of an oath that requires a half-hour ritual to
swear. The ritual ends with a spark-shower
display that indicates the acknowledgement
of the appropriate god?s minions. While the
gods themselves don?t have time to listen to
oaths, they can learn about oath-breaking
from their minions.

Captives and captors then resort to the
Great Oath to ?seal a deal.? Each group
takes its own oath, with the other group
witnessing the final part of the ceremony.
But this is used only when there seems to be
no other way to come to an agreement. No
one takes a Great Oath lightly, and it is
rarely given.

It may be possible to fake a Great Oath,
but this is a difficult task. There may be
occasions when there?s no time to take a
Great Oath, but frequently the questions of
prisoners and ransom will arise from a
standoff (some party members are cornered
but free and able to cause harm, while
others are already captured) or from a fait
accompli, and there?ll be time for negotiations
and oaths.

A more difficult problem of the Great
Oath is chaos. Do chaotic gods care whether
their worshipers break oaths? Perhaps not,
but some nominally chaotic characters may
respect oaths out of a personal sense of
honor, regardless of the attitude of their
gods. At the least, the Great Oath would be
less satisfactory when chaotic gods are involved.
Lawful evil characters are, in this
case, much more trustworthy. The more
chaotic the personalities involved, the more
one must rely on mutual self-interest ? a
deal beneficial to both sides ? and less on
trust.

2. Slavery
In certain situations, perhaps the captors
will decide to enslave the adventurers, but
such a decision depends on the circumstances.
A few orcs are less likely than a few
giants to try to enslave human adventurers.
A 1st-level fighter won?t be much trouble as
a slave compared to, say, a 10th-level
tighter. In one respect, a cleric wouldn?t
make a good slave, since he gains new spells
through prayer and therefore cannot easily
be rendered harmless. On the other hand,
clerics can be useful slaves because they can
be forced to heal and otherwise help the
captors. A spell caster who relies on books
to learn more spells is the easiest of all
character classes to turn into a slave. Strip
the spell caster of his books, keep him under
guard and threaten him with punishment or
death if he attempts to use any spells he
may have memorized, and what can he do?
A charm spell or other magic may make
spell-casting prisoners tractable for a time,
but most such spells quit working sooner or
later. However, some captors may develop,
or purchase from slavers, a form of curse
that renders a character mute for an indefinite
period of time. The ultimate form of
enslavement is magic that permanently
changes the alignment of the captive so that
he joins his former captors.

Aside from their adventuring skills, adventurers
may be useful to their captors by
virtue of their education. A magic-user
could serve as a scribe, an accountant, or a
translator, for example.

Be aware that an adventurer-turned-slave
is not the safest person to have in one?s
possession. The slavers had better be powerful,
numerous, or just plain confident.
Captors rarely enslave their prisoners for
their own use, however. More frequently
when slavery is an option, captors sell their
prisoners to slavers.

By the way, a slave cannot be forced to
take the Great Oath to serve his master
loyally. Oaths sworn under compulsion
simply don?t work ? the gods will ignore
them, if they even hear them to begin with.
A voluntary oath is a different possibility.
Who, however, would voluntarily enslave
himself indefinitely? The Great Oath is
more likely to be a part of a bargain for
l i m i t e d s e r v i c e .

3. Slavers
Most fantasy worlds include their share of
professional slavers ? middlemen who
obtain slaves and sell them to laborintensive
or specialized concerns such as
mines, large-scale agriculture, or gladiatorial
arenas. In general, most adventurers
will be unsatisfactory slaves for mines and
other mass-manpower industries because
adventurers are likely to cause dissension in
these situations. While a slaver might sell
adventurers without revealing their origins,
this could get the slaver into trouble with his
regular customers.

For some specialized functions, adventurers
would be in demand. Those buying
slaves to row the galleys may want strong,
tough-minded, healthy specimens ? a
description fitting most adventurers. Those
buying for gladiatorial schools and private
armies that compete in the arena will definitely
want skilled adventurers. In either
case, spell-casters might not be wanted,
since they are potentially so dangerous.

Slavers might be drawn into the ransom
situation. After all, since they didn?t capture
the adventurers, they have little to fear
in the way of retribution unless the adventurer
foolishly threatens them. Ransom is a
business deal only, little more than selling a
slave to a friend who will free him or selling
the slave to himself. The slaver may even
refer to this as a reward rather than a ransom.
Smart players will offer to ransom
their characters rather than take a chance
with a new owner.

Here?s an example of the slave trade at
work. A party of low-level characters is
heading for the way out of a dungeon when
the adventurers hear noises behind the
group for several minutes. But they fail to
check out the noises, and half of the party
uses an elevator to go to the surface while
the other half waits below. The latter half is
attacked and overcome by the humans who
had trailed them; two die and four are
captured. The villains are a small group,
made even smaller by the fight they?ve just
been through. They have no time to waste
because the rest of the adventuring party is
on the surface and might return soon to
investigate.

This was how the referee handled the
situation: The bad guys carried off one PC
per surviving villain, which came to a total
of three. A fourth prisoner was eliminated,
since four captives were too much for the
captors to handle. Having neither a stronghold
of their own nearby in which to hold
the prisoners nor the confidence that they
could keep so many prisoners together
during an extended journey, the villains
took the prisoners to a nearby slaver and
sold them cheaply. The slaver, in turn, sold
the characters to another slaver, and the
PCs finally found themselves in a distant
city where they became arena gladiators.
Here they had their chances in battle; one
of them survived, was freed, and became a
leader of her own gang, but she never saw
any of her former associates. Although only
one of the four captives finally escaped
death, the outcome was much more interesting
than the all-too-common result that
the villains simply killed the rest of the
defeated party.

4. Ulterior motives
The captors may very well intend to
eliminate the captured PCs, but they may
want to wait for the right occasion. Sometimes
that occasion hinges on an irrational
element, but the captors may have a perfectly
good reason for the delay. If, for
example, the captors are moon worshipers,
they might want to wait for a full moon
before sacrificing their victims. Perhaps the
captors worship the goddess of the harvest
and, when the time for harvest occurs, must
perform a certain ritual that would require
the use of the captives. If the captors intend
to sell the PCs into slavery, but the slavers
only visit three times a year, then the characters
would have to be imprisoned until the
slavers arrive. Perhaps some prophecy or
astrological research has indicated that the
captives should be retained unharmed until
a specific astronomical phenomenon occurs.
Whatever the case may be, a reprieve for
the captives is certain, providing them with
an opportunity to devise some plan or ruse
to escape the (not necessarily) inevitable
outcome.

5. Teaching a lesson
In certain instances, the captors may not
be interested in either ransom or service.
Similarly, they might not desire to kill the
prisoners, but would rather teach the captives
? and consequently, other adventurers
? a valuable lesson in leaving others
alone. This attitude would be more prevalent
in powerful, confident, and intelligent
creatures than it would be in weak, doubting,
and stupid ones.

The focus of such a lesson would be to
teach the prisoners that they should not
bother the captors in the future. After, and
as part of, the lesson, the captives are released.
The captors can then feel confident
not only that the captives won?t return but
also that they will tell the story of what
happened to them. This, in turn, will dissuade
others from disturbing the captors.

The lesson may take a number of forms.
In the most direct case, the captors simply
torture the captives before releasing them.
More subtly, the captors release their prisoners
in a way calculated to disgrace or
shame them. For example, the captors
might publicize the date of release a week
before the occurrence. On the appointed
date, the captives are turned loose, naked,
among a mob that gathers to ridicule those
who have fallen from their station.

Rather than give the adventurer physical
or psychological reminders of his captivity,
the captor could mark him magically ? a
curse, for instance. If the appropriate spell
is available, the captor could enchant the
captive in a specific way to ensure that he
does not return. For example, a spell might
cause the former captive to become ill
whenever he thinks about returning to the
sight of his captivity.

Finally, the captors may force their prisoners
to undergo an ordeal as part of the
lesson. Adventurers, for example, might be
released on an island, in a remote land, or
in another dimension. The arduous trip
home, assuming the adventurers survive the
ordeal, will act as a strong reminder of what
could happen again if they don?t stay away
from their former captors.

The danger of teaching a lesson, from a
captor?s point of view, is that such treatment
could engender desire for revenge in
the adventurer in lieu of the desire to leave
the captor alone. Consequently, the captor
must do all he can to impress the captive
with his power and sense of invulnerability.

6. Emotional or irrational actions
If people don?t always act rationally, why
should fantasy characters or monsters be
any different? Sometimes the bad guys will
keep captives alive for odd reasons. Some of
these reasons will be based on emotions,
some on sheer stupidity. Whatever these
irrational actions entail, they might enable
the captives to manipulate the captors in
such a fashion that makes escape more
likely.

e.g., a captor might become
infatuated with a prisoner. This, of course,
is most believable when the 2 are of the
same race but opposite genders. In such
cases, the PC ought ot use this infatuation
as a lever to preserve the lives of other party
members, if possible.

The captors may decide to place the
prisoners on trial due to some social or
religious infringement. The trial, however,
could take weeks or months to resolve, a
very common occurence in legal affairs.

Perhaps the captor's witch doctor claims
that the time for executing prisoners is not
right due to some religious law or an omen.
Or, maybe the captor's executioner is away
for a period of time, and the execution of
prisoners will have to wait until he returns.
Though these ideas may seem a bit odd,
they are good reasons -- in the proper
context -- to keep captives alive.

Another possibility is that the captor is
arranging some sort of test for the prisoners
-- for example, a combat with a champion,
escape from a seemingly inescapable trap,
or running the gauntlet. If the prisoners
successfully meet the challenge, they are
released. Though this may not seem entirely
rational, there are cultures where
admiration for those who can pass a certain
test carries more weight than the offense
committed against that culture.

Finally, the captor may wish to execute
the captives in an inefficient manner. For
example, prisoners may be sent into an
arena where a fearsome monster tries to
devour them. Some may meet their demise.
Others, however, might manage to defeat
the monster, or evade it, and might find a
means of escape. In most cases, the referee
will have to dream up a reason for the inefficiency
of the death trap; for example, the
death of the monster is due to old age.

Consider this mild example of irrational
behavior by captors when dealing with their
prisoner. During a vicious dungeon melee,
a scouting monk finds himself separated
from the main party by some wandering
monsters that are relatives of the eye tyrant <link>
(the beholder). One of the monsters charms
the monk as he attempts to rejoin the party,
and takes the monk along when the party
forces these monsters to flee. Since the party
meets another group of monsters with which
it must contend, there is no time to rescue
the monk. The monsters, having lower than
average INT, aren't quite sure what
they should do with the monk. Since they
aren't hungry, they decide to send him on a
mission of collecting treasure. While this
isn't the smartest thing to do with a captive,
such an order does adequately reflect the
lack of INT and irrational behavior
inherent in many such monsters.

Now the person who role-plays the monk
gets inspired. He has his monk roam the
corridors, knocking on doors and asking for
treasure. After a few scrapes, the monk
finds a door to a neutral human's lair. The
human and his minions invite the monk
into the chamber, capture him without a
fight, ask him if he has any friends, send
them a note, and ransom him back to the
friends who'd never expected to see this
monk again.

7. Helping oneself
In all of the above situations , the captured
PCs must struggle to stay alive. If they
remain passive, or if they give up hope,
then there is little onus on the referee to try
to help them. e.g., a mid-level
LN <priest>, foolishly roaming the
wilderness alone, is captured by orcs. The
orcs ask him if he has any Friends who
might be willing to prepare a ransom for
him. Instead of responding affirmatively, or
instead of suggesting a reason why the orcs
might keep him alive, the <priest> simply says,
"No." What can the referee do but have the
orcs kill the <priest>?

PCs can help themselves not
only by giving captors reasons to keep them
alive or to release them but also by seeking
a plausible means of escape. If the situation
is not hopeless, and if the players are inventive,
then the referee needs none of the
excuses outlined above because he can let
the characters engineer their own salvation.

A referee can help players out a bit here,
too. For example, perhaps the jailer can be
bribed with promises of ransom or other
kinds of favors. Perhaps rival factions
within the captors? tribe or gang can be
pitted against each other by manipulative
prisoners. Perhaps a captive can feign an
alignment change and pretend to join the
captors? side. NPCs could join PCs in their
endeavor to escape. Whatever the situation
may be, the referee can offer characters
opportunities to save themselves; however,
the awareness and creativity of the players
are often the deciding factors in whether
their PCs survive the ordeal or not.
 

Some of these methods of saving captives
are more believable or acceptable than
others are, but surely every referee can find
a few that satisfy his point of view. Keeping
characters alive who undoubtedly don?t
deserve to die is a worthy objective in itself,
especially for any referee interested in fairness.
Such an objective is also important for
the continued success of a campaign. Players
who believe that fate is too often unkind
to them tend to blame the referee, even if
the other players are at fault, and generally
quit the game as a result. Though a referee
cannot, in most campaigns, allow himself to
coddle incompetent players without ruining
the game in the long run, neither can he
ignore the long-run objective of the game:
having Fun.

MAY 1985