Query: “My PCs were drugged, captured, tortured, and put on a slow boat to their execution. The villain comes in to interrogate them and they just toss one-liners and empty threats at him. How do you get your players to take your villains seriously?”
Kill them.
I’m not saying you should capriciously seek to slaughter them, but if the logical outcome of the PCs’ actions is lethal then let the dice fall where they may and don’t protect them from the consequences.
A lot of GMs shield their players from the negative consequences of the actions they take… and then wonder why the players keep engaging in bad behavior. (One common reason for this is that the GM is protecting the railroaded plot they’ve predesigned. But it just demonstrates how the railroader’s desire for rigid conformity actually just creates a compounding fragility which makes it ever more difficult to achieve the conformity.)
Conversely, I’ve played in games where PCs had explicit script immunity and had great experiences. But it requires the players to erect a rigid wall between their metagame knowledge and the actions of their characters. If the characters start acting as if they knew they had script immunity things go bad very, very quickly.
Yeah. Kill a PC or two. It’s for their own good and they will thank you later.
They may freak out and complain that moment, but from then on they probably are going to enjoy the game a lot more, knowing that they have to pay attention and think things through to make progress. Things start to matter.
In that example, why would they do anything else than be defiant? The PCs are headed to their execution. They are going to die. So why give the villain what he wants? Heroes go down kicking, right?
In my experience, this kind of player behavior can be the effect of a strong impression of railroad (I’m not saying it’s the case in this instance; and an impression can of course be wrong). As a player, I know I did it. It can be a way to cope with the fact that whatever your PC do, they have no meaningful impact on the game. If everything is a railroad, the only freedom a player has is what their PCs say; so by being defiant in the face of certain doom, they at least keep their dignity (and as a player, I feel like playing a hero or at least a protagonist, not a pawn.) And if everything is railroaded, the players feel the DM won’t kill them, because there is probably a daring escaped planned (or, if it’s an especially bad railroad, a daring rescue.) So “kill a PC” is a fine advice if the whole “drugged, captured, tortured, and put on a slow boat to their execution” was the result of bad choices (where good ones were possible) and bad rolls (that had a reasonable chance to succeed) from the players.
Let’s suppose the PCs were invited to a supper by an important local. They did some basic reasearch about the host, but found nothing (the host is loved by everyone, but has a very well-kept secret villainous identity). Being PCs, they took some precautions anyway (they watched carefully the place, tokk antivenom, whatever), but it proved inefficient (the poison is incredibly potent, there were hidden magical darts in the chairs, etc.) PCs wake up, naked, in super durable chains or magical wards (virtually impossible to break) in room with a very high number of super-well equiped and trained guards or monsters that refuse or can’t have a discussion (meaning there is no way they’ll help escape; and that even if it was possible to escape the physical bonds, fleeing the premisses is highly improbable). Then they are put on a boat in similar bonds with similar security, where the villain comes and start to interrogate them. As a player, I would definitely feel railroaded (I did a lot to be a “good player”, getting info and being cautious, trying different things to escape, etc.) and “forced” to this very place. So that big bad villain is so clever that he anticipated every one of my moves? He wants to kill us? Ok, then, he wins, but fuck him. Kill me, but I’ll go down fighting, not helping you. That’s very much taking the villain seriously : he beat us at every turn, so the only thing left to do is to die with honor.
Again, I’m not saying that always why this happens : there are bad players that just don’t take the fiction seriously, and there are time when even ususally good player’s do stupid things.
I think a lot depends on just how the PCs ended up the situation. If the railroad tracks of the plot dictated that the would be captured and put on the boat to their doom, because the GM decided that was going to be the story, then that’s one thing. But if things were wide open, and through poor planning, or execution, or just plain bad luck or misunderstanding some/all of the PCs get captured, then it’s not unreasonable for the Big Bad to send them to their doom. A smart villain would have someone stick a knife into their ears, but the trope is to give the PCs an opportunity to escape.
So now you’ve got them on the Slow Boat, and presumably (unless you as GM have some rescue planned) it’s up to the PCs to devise and execute some desperate plan to try to escape Certain Doom (which you’ll probably judge with a bit of leniency, because the alternative may be ending the campaign), but before that it’s natural that they would be interrogated or whatever. In that situation, if the PCs are being flip, I think it’s totally reasonable (and in-character) for the villain to, say, pick one of them randomly to execute. The player’s choices are still affecting events. Then maybe the villain goes below to let that sink in, and now (presumably somewhat chastened) the surviving PCs realize that This Is Uncomfortably Serious and start trying to come up with some scheme to make a break for it.
If the players have been conditioned to think that their choices can’t affect things, though, then there’s no good answer.
What Leland said. 😉
>railroader’s desire for rigid conformity actually just creates a compounding fragility which makes it ever more difficult to achieve the conformity
is that you perceptor?
I have always maintained your players must believe they can die. You lose that and you lose any real tension or excitement in the game.
You don’t have to kill players regularly to maintain the belief. There are ways…..
I also find taking away their stuff, and messing with reputation works. It is not punishment, but cause and effect. Let things go to their logical conclusion based on their actions.