Hostage Situations Part 3 - Capture
December 28th, 2010
Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting Grave Plots, where we bring you new and exciting plot ideas, adventure hooks, and the like. This week, as promised, we will be finishing off our three-part series on hostage situation adventures. As our loyal readers will know, we have already covered two of the three major types of hostage situations, the rescue and the negotiation (which can be found here), and today we will be covering the final topic, the capture. The capture is one of the most difficult and rewarding forms of hostage-related adventures, and so today we’ll be going over a few tips and tricks to make running you adventure go a little bit smoother as well as providing you with some ideas to get you started. So without any further delay, let’s get started.
The Capture
The capture is the third and final type of hostage situation, and is perhaps the strangest as well. Popularized by television shows such as Burn Notice, the capture puts your PCs right in the thick of things, casting them as the hostages themselves. This sort of adventure needs careful handling in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating quickly. It’s important to remember both that PCs aren’t used to being hostages and may respond poorly to the situation as a whole (we’ll deal with that in just a sec – see Setting up the Situation below), and that even though the PCs are in a hostage situation, they are still heroes and heroes need something to do other than listen to the bad guy monologue and talk with the negotiator (again, we’ll discuss this more in just a little bit – see What to do Now below). Keeping that in mind, the capture can be one of the most fun adventures you will ever run, bringing the PCs face to face with a situation that might actually be unfamiliar, even to veteran players, but even those for whom the situation is old hat will enjoy repeating the process time and time again as each situation varies strongly depending on the circumstances of your own personal adventure. Finally, it’s important to remember what kind of feel you want for your capture adventure: tense, or desperate, or relaxed, or whatever else you have in mind, and design accordingly.
Setting up the Situation
Starting a capture scenario is a lot more involved than just picking out some bad guys to be hostage takers and some innocents to be the hostages; since the PCs will be taking up positions as hostages, things get a little more complicated. There are a couple of good ways to introduce the PCs as potential hostages; firstly, they could be captured by a relatively powerful foe, with some complicated goals ultimately ending in their impending execution. This kind of set-up works well for groups that want a “dark doom” kind of feel to the adventure, where they await execution while desperately searching for some kind of answer with which to save themselves. It is also ideal for groups who want to deal with a more direct approach to the adventure or who are looking for an “us vs. them” kind of feel, with the PCs’ own lives being the only thing on the line. This style of set-up has the advantage of being the most familiar to your average PC, and if you’re looking to gently ease into adventures of this style I would recommend this kind of set-up. This set-up does, however, have several disadvantages that I feel it would be worth pointing out specifically: the very specific goal limits the actions the PCs can take, and the lack of other hostages also limits the number of NPCs the PCs can interact with.
Secondly, the PCs might be held hostage with a group of NPCs and must deal with the fact that the hostage takers might kill other hostages if they act right away. This set-up lets the PCs work with the other hostages towards getting everyone out in one piece. Since NPC interaction is absolutely key to the success of this set-up, it’s important to have a lot of well made NPCs for your PCs to interact with; whether this means people who are very ordinary, but realistic in a gritty sort of way, or extra distinct, unrealistically flavorful characters is purely a stylistic choice and both configurations work equally well. This style also has the advantage of setting up a high stress situation where the PCs have more to worry about then their own skins for a change, which can make for a really great evening, especially if that’s not something your group does often. This style has no other special advantages, and the only real disadvantage of choosing this kind of set-up is that it tends to be more conducive to a lot of social gaming and the action can suffer a little bit under these conditions; as a result, those of you looking for a fairly balanced adventure should consider this kind of set-up.
Finally the PCs might choose to be taken captive so that they might gain control of the setting. Very similar to the preceding hook, it shares many of the same qualities with one important difference: the PCs’ choice puts them in control of the situation; they dictate the actions rather than the hostage takers, which makes the adventure notably harder to plan, but, done right, this can be the strongest capture adventure (in my less-than-humble opinion).
What to Do Now
Now that you’ve got the adventure set up you’re probably wondering exactly what the actual adventure should look like (or else you probably stopped reading some time ago). Well, have no fear, as a natural extension of the previous section we’re going to give you a basic rundown of what you should do for your adventure.
For the first set-up listed (see above), I would recommend setting up a sort of subtle puzzle to help them accomplish the escape itself, for instance leaving all the ingredients necessary for the PCs escape scattered between their various holding areas and providing a cleverly disguised way for the PCs to make contact with each other. If you prefer a more social approach to the problem, perhaps you could set up a conspiracy involving one or more fellow hostages, guards, or even the hostage takers themselves. After the PCs are free to act, the natural conclusion to this kind of adventure is that either the PCs run and escape their former captors, or burst in on them in a rage to kick their teeth in. Either way, make sure that it isn’t too simple, but provide them with various obstacles, traps, and guardians along the way just like you would for any other adventure; remember that this is the most straightforward and familiar of all the capture scenarios presented here.
If you choose either of the other methods the actual adventure will likely look fairly similar, with only the tone of the PCs’ actions changing significantly. The adventure will focus primarily on the PCs’ interactions with the other hostages and the hostage takers, keeping one group calm and safe while keeping the other from doing something stupid, and all the while looking for some kind of alternate way out. As for that alternate way out, the PCs should slowly achieve various smaller goals like convincing the hostage takers to let one hostage go free, or slipping one of the guards a dose of knock out poison, and after accomplishing a significant number of goals the PCs should reach a single climactic defining encounter. This will probably take the form of either a confrontation with the hostage takers, or allowing the other good guys busy conducting the negotiation to breach the hideout without letting the hostage takers kill any hostages. However your adventure goes, the PCs should then immediately get a chance to enjoy their success, either being lauded as heroes for their actions or by slipping quietly into night with the satisfaction of having done a good deed.
Thus concludes our three-part series on hostage situations. I hope you enjoyed these past weeks, and I hope to see you again in the future; until then I wish you all the best in your gaming endeavors.