Reglas y Principios – Principios Ambientales

“The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender.” – William Booth

How to Include Surrender and Escape

Options

Ever wish your combats included dramatic yet practical surrender and escape options? It’s easy to get caught in fights to the death, but that’s not always sensible or satisfying.

Some opponents and missions lend themselves to more sophisticated tactics that avoid or minimize the fatalities of combat.

Today you’ll learn how to weave these options into your missions and combats, making them real and dramatic options in your adventures.

Why Surrender or Escape?

When used wisely, a timely surrender or withdrawal furthers a mission or

adventure in exciting ways. Toe-to-toe combat will still come at some point, so be sure to mix things up. Enrich your games by emphasizing the following story-rich options that go beyond total annihilation.

Top 4 Surrender and Escape Options

Here are four engaging ways to include surrender and escape options in your games. Note that each option includes both PC and NPC or monster perspectives and story branches.

Option #1 – Surrender

PCs: To get as close to the real enemy as fast as possible, the party gives

themselves up to the real enemy’s weaker minions. The party recognizes the minions as little threat themselves, making this option appealing. These flunkies act as a time-saving escort for the party to confront the true threat.

NPCs & Monsters: The patrol, guards or mercenaries don’t want to die for

their cause. Perhaps they’re underpaid, malnourished or treated poorly by their masters.

They might even be swayed to go beyond surrender and even help a savvy party that puts their social skills to good use, providing the party with information, supplies, a bribe or more.

Option #2 – Capture

PCs: The party wants to avoid killing out of honor, law or practicality. The party

may be taking prisoners for information or acting as agents of the law and bringing in criminals. Or perhaps the wet work is time consuming compared to taking them prisoner by force, traps, trickery or through parlay.

NPCs & Monsters: The party’s adversaries have been instructed by their

masters to take the party alive.

Or the party finds itself in a rare situation: they are outmatched by their foes, who decide to capture them and use them as food, slaves or hostages.

Option #3 – Escape / Withdraw / Retreat / Flee

PCs: The party either learns the fight isn’t worth the time and risk or they’re

overmatched. They decide it’s more important to move on or survive rather than engage or continue an already-grim battle.

Perhaps the combat environment itself is deadly or growing more dangerous with each sword swing or spell strike – a collapsing prison (with the PCs as prisoners, of course!) or erupting volcano quickly shifts priorities.

NPCs & Monsters: Like the party, the monsters know or learn the battle will be

costly, or that the greater threat is the combat location itself. Also a superior option to surrender, as the NPCs and monsters still have a chance at freedom.

Option #4 – Chase

PCs: The party decides to give chase to fleeing enemies. They alert more guards

or more powerful enemies and monsters.

Or they come back to haunt the party, something every group I’ve GMed seems to be sure of – and terrified of – happening!

Maybe instead of killing the fleeing enemy, the party wants to capture the enemy for information or to use as an escort or guide.

NPCs & Monsters: The monsters decide to hunt down the party, either to

finish them off or to capture them for information, food, prisoners or slaves. Home field advantage is something NPCs and monsters usually enjoy from invading adventuring parties, increasing the odds of the chase’s success.

What Do They Want?

Keep the goals of enemy monsters and NPCs in mind at all times. This is especially true with intelligent and civilized enemies who tend to want

more complex things.

Be consistent with this approach throughout your adventures and campaigns and you will create a rich, believable and immersive story and world.

The Unwritten Rules of War

Similar to roleplaying for tactical advantage in the last lesson, be sure your monsters and enemy NPCs follow a consistent code of honor or rules of engagement in battle.

A rare deviant is fine and expected, but it’s especially important that intelligent, civilized enemies fight fair. If they usually don’t, then your playgroup will not see any value in non-violent options, especially high risk ones like surrender.

For example, “The Boiling Nine are known to keep their word and follow through on the grisly jobs they are hired for. Their honor is not to be mistaken for

weakness, for it is widely known they boil in acid any who cross them and then prop up and display what’s left of their burned, bloated corpses in the middle of the town square.”

When you do include vile or dishonorable NPCs, make sure that information is clear to the party. Describe what they know and see in clear, black-and-white context. Be sure they understand their foe can’t be trusted.

For example, “Kareena, the exiled princess now known on the streets as The Kiss of Death, is famous for her high-stakes deals with adventurers. If you hire her, she will slaughter whatever you like with an ease and cockiness you’ve never seen – but don’t let this vixen open her mouth at camp or during a meal, never mind a negotiation. Everyone knows how much she loves the cheap thrills of wild rumors and lies. More than once, her expertly wicked tongue has made adventurers turn on one another.”

Knowledge is Power – and Choices

Weave surrender and retreat options into your story and combat narratives. Be sure passive knowledge checks or senses glean the clues to their possibilities in the current mission or adventure.

If the party doesn’t know their enemy is willing to surrender or that they’re honorable, what are the chances the party doesn’t just start tearing them apart? Or if the numbers of a “large” army aren’t clear, give them teeth through

numbers.

For example, “A thousand orcs swarm from the five tunnels towards the flickering purple portal in the shallow pond where you now lie, just below the oval hole in the cavern ceiling from where moonlight streams in.” This gets everybody’s attention – and lets the party know there’s seven ways out of the place.

Share these important aspects of the opposition and environment with the party, especially if the party asks follow-up questions or makes successful active checks to learn more about potential surrender, capture, escape, chase and similar alternatives to all-out combat.

Let’s Get Out of Here

Congratulations! You’ve learned how to include surrender and retreat

alternatives in your combats and missions, and all the rich story branches they add to your game.

You’ve learned to consider the opposition’s goals, their code of honor or reputation, and how to share this critical information about the behavior and goals of NPCs and monsters with the party.

What’s Next?

Learn how to use other effective and popular Combat Closers, expanding upon those here.

Want to quickly end the grind in a combat that’s already decided? That’s exactly what you’ll learn in the next lesson.

Resources

You’ll find more at Roleplaying Tips: Villainous Escapes: How to Help the Bad Guy Live to Fight Another Day, Jail Break series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV,

Take Ten: Bluff, Lessons from the LARP and Manage NPC Guides Carefully. And even more at Leonine Roar: Great Escapes: 8 Ways to Help Villains Get Away, Fight the Power… Groups!, Fight or Flight? Run Away!, Attack With Your Social Skills!, and Trained Skills Need Stage Time.

4.03 Always a Way Out: More