DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 33B: The Interrogation of Arveth
The man laughed. “It’s a fiction. A front for the Brotherhood of Venom.”
“Which you belong to.”
“That’s right.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Being questioned by amateurs.”
Tee wasn’t amused. She signaled Agnarr, who lowered him and began swinging the top of his head through the sewer sludge.
It’s a classic scene: Our hero has been taken prisoner by the villain. An interrogation ensues, with an exchange of witty banter. But who’s learning more? The hero or the villain? And then the denoument: “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!” Almost certainly most famous from Goldfinger, the trope extends back to the first James Bond movie and beyond. (You can find it in everything from Prisoner of Zenda to Shakespeare’s Hamlet to John Wick.)
Across a multitude of groups — home games, convention games, open tables, etc. — however, I have rarely seen this dynamic emerge at the gaming table. In fact, exactly the opposite seems far more common: The PCs will have taken someone prisoner and, as in the current session, be the ones coming up with Rube Goldbergian interrogation techniques.
(And, as often as not, just like a Bond villain, the PCs end up giving away more information than they gain. They’ll also do this in another Bond-ian scene which is more common at the game table: As guests at the bad guy’s big social event.)
This might just be a me thing. Maybe PCs in your campaigns are constantly getting captured and interrogated. But I think there are a few factors that cause this to happen:
First, RPGs largely default to the PCs being masters of their domain, by which I mean that they are almost always expected to physically trounce any opposition put in their way. This is in sharp contrast to the protagonists in most action movies, for example, who are almost always completely outgunned. In fact, it’s quite common for the plot of an action movie to be entire about the hero desperately running away (until, of course, the final act when they turn it all around).
Second, unlike Bond, players will generally resist being captured unto their last bloody breath. Many players have had bad experiences with GMs stripping them of their agency, and so they’d literally rather die than endure that again. Game design also factors in here, with the typical RPG providing concrete structures in which the players can influence the outcome of events (or, at least, feel as if they can continue influencing events) as long as they keep fighting, but no such structures for sustaining their agency in a Bond-like fashion if they allow themselves to be captured.
Third, there’s the distinct difference between the group dynamics of the typical PC group in an RPG and the dynamic of the lone protagonist in other media. Most stories in other media protagonize a single character, even if that character is operating in a group. In the comparatively rare stories where there are a gaggle of main characters (e.g., Ocean’s Eleven or Stranger Things), it’s still virtually unheard of for them to always travel together in one big pack.
(Consider the group dynamics of the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship is quite large, but during the period where the whole group is together, the story remains pretty firmly fixed on Frodo as the main character. It’s only when the Fellowship splits up that other characters start acting as protagonists.)
Even more unusual (again, compared to other media) is the penchant for most RPG groups to almost never frame scenes around a PC vs. PC conflict. (Not necessarily in the sense of a physical confrontation; in the sense of conflicting agendas.) Usually when you have a large, central cast of characters in other media, most of the storytelling is about the relationships and conflicts between those characters, but not so in most RPG groups.
Better RPG groups will, in fact, rise above this. But it’s pervasive largely because it arises naturally from the expected dynamic of “the GM preps material for the players to experience.” This inclines the GM towards presenting their prep and causes the players to slide into a weird midpoint between passive audience and hive-mind protagonists.
Anyway, the point is that PCs often interrogate NPCs as if they were Bond villains.
Weird, huh?
Campaign Journal: Session 33C – Running the Campaign: Action Schticks
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
Probably another factor why PCs don’t like to be captured is that they fear, that they cannot easily escape.
In typical action movies, the hero escapes all the time. But many of these escapes are too simple. (“wow, even the most stupid jailer wouldn’t leave the prison key THERE”).
(In fact during one Bond movie I counted the instances where I as GM would have killed Bond. Result: 7 times without doubt and 13 times maybe).
If the PCs take their opponents seriously, a capture does not have to mean “certain death”. But the chance that they will be left without any agency is quite high.
I tend to leave interrogations up to die rolls, because (a) one of my personal red lines is that I will not GM a torture scene, and (b) my players are nerds (of the best kind), and really have no idea how to non-violent social manipulation. So we roll for it and then I tell them what they learn.
I like how Ken Hite managed this in Night’s Black AGents. If a PC is captured, the GM will provide an opportunity to escape or for the other players to run a jailbreak AND the player gets an opportunity to gain intel on the opposition during these scenes.
There are other reasons why PCs will fight to the death rather than surrender, some of which have been mentioned elsewhere here: the system makes retreat difficult, or it just doesn’t occur to the players.
I’m a fortunate GM, as I’ve seen PCs give up (I have NPCs give up often). As well, mine actually tend to question captives in a closer manner to Comic Book Superheroes: they demand information or growl empty threats, then let them go or turn them in to the authorities.
Rather than have those villains break out and continue to cause problems, I’ve had the PCs bump into them under assumed names, trying to distance themselves from their pasts.
> (And, as often as not, just like a Bond villain, the PCs end up giving away more information than they gain. They’ll also do this in another Bond-ian scene which is more common at the game table: As guests at the bad guy’s big social event.)
> This might just be a me thing. Maybe PCs in your campaigns are constantly getting captured and interrogated. But I think there are a few factors that cause this to happen:
So let me tell you a bit about my campaign. Its a “Strange” campaign, the PC’s are dimension hoppers, and … Well, the two things driving them, at least initially, are 1: they cannot go home, and 2: the “hub” they were placed in as a group — some sort of space station — has no food supplies. (Bathroom, yes; food, no). So they have to travel for food …
One of the worlds they visit regularly (Food given freely) is “dimensionally isolated”. While it is high magic, has locals who will teach magic (so any character can get magic flavor add-ons), etc., — the historical figure that understood dimensional theory was very worried about the militaristic tendency of the leader (who is still alive today, by the way), and so kept his deepest secrets to himself. Imagine if Einstein and Hawking did not publish most of their work after the initial basics.
And yet, every time they arrive, what sort of thing happens? The locals are always kind, willing to talk, see how they can help, etc — and wind up making sure that each PC visiting gets to the appropriate local to help them with what they want.
Every time.
Party has gotten split, completely. Completely trusting. Err. … well, they know that *something* is up.
They just don’t realize how much they have told / given away just by their comments. Yes, the locals are nice and kind, but it is a militaristic society, and they are being “handled”. (Imagine a cross between “Friendship” of my little pony, and “military” of “successful world conqueror”.)
What makes things more interesting? The party has a major NPC (the GMPC, actually), a 17 year old, who was a school child before things started. He’s now going to school here between adventures (basically, he goes “back” on weekends to play.) And while they keep someone nearby to make sure he doesn’t get into too much trouble (they think someone will kidnap him, go figure), … he’s out of supervision some 6-8 hours a day around other students his age …
[quote]Second, unlike Bond, players will generally resist being captured unto their last bloody breath. Many players have had bad experiences with GMs stripping them of their agency, and so they’d literally rather die than endure that again.[/quote]
The other problem is, there are plenty of times (really sad) where GM’s do not follow the rules of the genre. The Big Bads need to have flaws.
James Bond (the series) is so bad at this, that there is a game spoofing this: “And now, Mr Bond …”. This is the “rules of the evil overlord”. The villain does not stay around to make sure he is dead. There’s always a way out. The hero always has an escape route.
What has happened in some games? One I was in, a PC was taunted into going to an encounter with someone, solo, when it was obviously a trap.
Every player at the table knew it. But in character, there was no way for any of us to justify going with his character when he wanted to be solo.
The GM later said he expected the party to go as a group. Or, for the player to run away when he found out how dangerous it was.
As the player explained, for his character, honor would not permit him to run in that situation (he thought he could handle it — realistically he had at least a 35% chance of winning it solo), pride would not let him take someone else with him.
As the rest of us explained, we fully expected to get a ransom demand the next day.
GM just killed off the character, and complimented the player for good roleplaying, at the same time.
Said GM offered him a chance to make a new character. He and I both left that campaign.
If you are going to GM a situation where player characters can die, and you have not made it clear to your players that death is to be expected? Don’t expect the players to like it.
Although the reverse is effectively what happened in “Blood In The Water” in this same campaign; Justin went with what seems a very Bond-like (or, perhaps even more appropriate, like the 1930s cliffhanger series) solution in order to find a reason not to go with the TPK, and lost a player from the campaign in the process.
Conclusion: unstated player / genre expectations are weird, fluid and tricky and there are no right answers…?
This. *Unstated Expectations*. Communications is everything.