Capturing my PCs without if feeling cheap

[NiklasWB]

Hi playground,

I have had this idea for a while that my players will find themselves being captured by a slaver’s ring and made to fight gladiatorial style in a hidden arena in the undercity the city they are currently in.

We have just gotten to the point in the story where it would fit quite nicely to have this happen (they have had 2-3 sessions of free roaming sandbox style side-questing) and I feel like they could use some railroading now to get their focus back.

My question now is this: I have no idea how to capture them without it feeling like I’m taking away the player agency. I mean I could just say “you go to sleep and when you wake up you find yourselves shackled in a dungeon-like cell”… but that just seems boring. Even worse, I’m worried the players will feel like “what, no perception check? I didn’t want to sleep last night,! I’m an elf so I don’t sleep at all!”. Also, I’d much rather have it play out where the players are conscious and feel like I’m not God-mode-ing them. Should make for a cool “Oh ****”-moment as well.

So how would you go about it? One simple idea I had was to have an ambush and use the Sleep spell. No saving throw and instant sleep if cast at a high enough level or by several mages at once. The party consists of a goliath, a human, a wood elf and a half-elf though, so only the goliath and the human would be effected (damn you Fey Ancestry!). If I combine the Sleep spell with the bad guys making a Teleportation Circle and have them drag the human and the goliath through… I might then be able to ‘force’ the two others to follow through of their own volition (“walk through or your friends are a good as dead”)… That way I give them the illusion of a choice while still pretty much railroading them. Then again, one or both of them may actually want to try to escape (one is a bard and has invisibility for example, and the other is really fast and can jump really high, so they may have a chance). Then I would have to deal with a split party and it turns into a rescue mission instead.

One problem I see with the Teleportation Circle is that it is only open for 6 seconds… Not a lot of time for an NPC enemy to try to persuade the elven PCs to follow through (not to mention that they actually have to move through it in time). I could have the bad guy cast a new circle I suppose. Then again, the party is only level 5 (going on 6), so casting Teleportation Circle would mean that the bad guys are 9th or 10th level spellcasters… Might be too big of a leap. I guess could homebrew that this is a ‘lesser teleportation circle’ with a more limited range. Or use dimension door maybe…

Do you guys have any tips? Are there any other spells/magic items that could be used? We are playing on Sunday and will probably get to this part at the very end (hopefully with a great cliffhanger ending)… Any advice would be welcome.

[Aembrosia]

Give them a quest to investigate missing people. Farmers at the edge of town keep dissapearing. Their houses and farms show signs of a struggle, arrows in walls, broken doors and windows, lots of footprints. But nothing appears to have been stolen.

Have the corrupt law show up and now you frame them party for the crime or

Continue investigating at a different farmstead nearbye, they may have witnessed the disturbance. Attack the party with drow slavers. A lot of drow slavers. We probably should have seen this coming they thought as they drifted fast asleep, riddled with arrows.

[Linker2k]

Hi playground,

I have had this idea for a while that my players will find themselves being captured by a slaver’s ring and made to fight gladiatorial style in a hidden arena in the undercity the city they are currently in.

We have just gotten to the point in the story where it would fit quite nicely to have this happen (they have had 2-3 sessions of free roaming sandbox style side-questing) and I feel like they could use some railroading now to get their focus back.

My question now is this: I have no idea how to capture them without it feeling like I’m taking away the player agency. I mean I could just say “you go to sleep and when you wake up you find yourselves shackled in a dungeon-like cell”… but that just seems boring. Even worse, I’m worried the players will feel like “what, no perception check? I didn’t want to sleep last night,! I’m an elf so I don’t sleep at all!”. Also, I’d much rather have it play out where the players are conscious and feel like I’m not God-mode-ing them. Should make for a cool “Oh ****”-moment as well.

So how would you go about it? One simple idea I had was to have an ambush and use the Sleep spell. No saving throw and instant sleep if cast at a high enough level or by several mages at once. The party consists of a goliath, a human, a wood elf and a half-elf though, so only the goliath and the human would be effected (damn you Fey Ancestry!). If I combine the Sleep spell with the bad guys making a Teleportation Circle and have them drag the human and the goliath through… I might then be able to ‘force’ the two others to follow through of their own volition (“walk through or your friends are a good as dead”)… That way I give them the illusion of a choice while still pretty much railroading them. Then again, one or both of them may actually want to try to escape (one is a bard and has invisibility for example, and the other is really fast and can jump really high, so they may have a chance). Then I would have to deal with a split party and it turns into a rescue mission instead.

One problem I see with the Teleportation Circle is that it is only open for 6 seconds… Not a lot of time for an NPC enemy to try to persuade the elves PCs to follow through (not to mention that they actually have to move through it in time). I could have the bad guy cast a new circle I suppose. Then again, the party is only level 5 (going on 6), so casting Teleportation Circle would mean that the bad guys are 9th or 10th level spellcasters… Might be too big of a leap. I guess could homebrew that this is a ‘lesser teleportation circle’ with a more limited range. Or use dimension door maybe…

Do you guys have any tips? Are there any other spells/magic items that could be used? We are playing on Sunday and will probably get to this part at the very end (hopefully with a great cliffhanger ending)… Any advice would be welcome.

Use the classic movie PLOT, have them go on a quest to recover a stolen artifact, when they get there they activate a sleeping gas trap (put a hard DC but that can be achieved, if you have an elf or demi-elf you won't be able to sleep him).

If they do not pass, they wake up in a cell, if they pass (not all will achieve the CON DC goal so half your party must be unconscious), when they exit the area, you have your bad guys waiting to take the rest to HP "0" instead of killing them, you just make them unconscious.

Give them the classic "Ok, surrender and drop your weapons" if they do, get someone to put a bag and knock on their head.

If one of them manage to escape this whole situation, he will have to find the others and now you have two good plots.

[XmonkTad]

Use the classic movie PLOT, have them go on a quest to recover a stolen artifact, when they get there they activate a sleeping gas trap (put a hard DC but that can be achieved, if you have an elf or demi-elf you won't be able to sleep him).

As long as the trap isn't magical I believe it will put the elfs to sleep just fine.

As for getting your players into a gladiator arena, you could always have them go on a quest to rescue some captured villagers/nobleman's son/young dragon and then one of them gets captured/volunteers as tribute. Greed or valor might work better than draw sleeping poison.

[DragonBaneDM]

Have them pose as being captured!

It'll feel less cheap if the players go into the arena thinking it was their idea and that they'll sneak out later. They can be trying to free the farmers turned slave gladiators that have been captured, but the only way to do that is to take out the squads of elite gladiators that have got a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome from the drow and are fanatically loyal. They do this in the ring, but can have back room scuffles and skill checks to sabatoge and dishearten their opponents in the hours (heck even days if they want to be undercover for a while) leading up to their match.

Once they've earned the elite status in the ring and the support of their fellow gladiators, they can stage a revolt or bring the drow slavers into the ring, Russell Crow style. I think that would be a much cooler story than "The DM overpowered us with a fight we had no chance to win to advance his plot." I've done that to players before. I've had that done to me before. It has to be handled carefully or resentment is a thing.

[CaptainSarathai]

Use hostages, as in, important NPCs die if the players don't come along quietly.
This makes the surrender a heroic part of the characters' story, and gives them even more of a reason to fight.
Hostages also makes it harder for them to escape. Say they get to this arena - you arm them, have them around a bunch of other gladiator NPCs - what's to stop them from "going Spartacus" on you? Sure, that may eventually be the point of the campaign, but maybe not right away, and it shouldn't be a decision made lightly. Let the PCs think, "if we rise up, they know where to find everyone we love, and they will take it out on them."


I ran a campaign that called on players being taken as slaves. They were all decent level, so making a fight of it would have been hard for me as a DM, so that's what I did: took an entire town hostage.
Gnolls demanded that the townsfolk hand the PCs over. The PCs did what PCs always do; sized up the competition (both the townfolk and the gnolls outside) and bluntly refused. This was the established home-base of the PCs, so they swore to lead the defense of the town. The gnolls settled in for a siege, and I settled in for the most emotionally brutal 3 sessions I think I've ever run.
Start of the siege was signalled by the gnolls killing a family of farmers on the outskirts of town. Surrounding farmers retreated to town, behind hastily built barricades and armed peasants. The signal for the first attack was gnolls hoisting the remains of the farmer and his family up on poles, within sight of the village.

NPCs died, PCs were wounded and recovering, the gnolls burned the fields around the town and food/water began to get scarce. A few NPCs muttered dissent, but the town was still rallied around their local heroes, and the dissenters were silenced by the community.
It actually looked like the PCs might win though. It had been long enough (real time) that we needed to move on with the story, but I had one more card to play:

After repelling what might have been the final attack, the PCs hear a familiar voice wailing from the town square. A shot from a gnoll catapult had smashed a house, and killed the juvenile son of the party's favorite, trusted, NPC. He was totally distraught, screaming at the PCs, threatening them, etc. The townsfolk grabbed him before he could do any damage, and hauled him to the jail. Overcome with grief, the NPC hanged himself in his cell.

The party couldn't agree on what to do. The Bard snuck out at night and negotiated terms with the gnoll captain. The gnolls would leave the town and it's people, if the PCs would surrender themselves quietly.

Next morning, the gnoll captain comes forward to accept the surrender, to the surprise of the party. The Bard explains what he'd done.
The Paladin (party leader) surrendered first. Stuck his sword in the dirt in the middle of town square, with his helmet and shield, and walked out to the meet the gnolls. The captain forced him to kneel, then gnolls savagely beat him down to 0hp (but not dead) with unarmed strikes. In front of the villagers, and the party. First the party wanted to help, and the Paladin told them not to. Then the villagers wanted to help, and the PCs had to hold some of them back. The party said their goodbyes - the Bard's being particularly sad as we had previously decided to reveal that he was engaged to one of the NPCs - and the gnolls dragged them away.

That was one of the only times I've made players cry. I was in school with some of these players, and one of them didn't even talk to me for a few days after. Everyone came back though, and the revenge they eventually got on those gnolls was so severe that it caused a party-wide alignment shift. They killed every gnoll in the settlement, except 1 who would live on as testament, put all the warriors on spikes, left the rest to the crows. The Paladin went Oathbreaker for that, and didn't look back.

Apparently, heartbreak is the best way to get PCs invested in your game world.
The gnoll they left alive is now the villain in our current campaign, which takes place a generation later.

[NecroDancer]

Use hostages, as in, important NPCs die if the players don't come along quietly.
This makes the surrender a heroic part of the characters' story, and gives them even more of a reason to fight.
Hostages also makes it harder for them to escape. Say they get to this arena - you arm them, have them around a bunch of other gladiator NPCs - what's to stop them from "going Spartacus" on you? Sure, that may eventually be the point of the campaign, but maybe not right away, and it shouldn't be a decision made lightly. Let the PCs think, "if we rise up, they know where to find everyone we love, and they will take it out on them."


I ran a campaign that called on players being taken as slaves. They were all decent level, so making a fight of it would have been hard for me as a DM, so that's what I did: took an entire town hostage.
Gnolls demanded that the townsfolk hand the PCs over. The PCs did what PCs always do; sized up the competition (both the townfolk and the gnolls outside) and bluntly refused. This was the established home-base of the PCs, so they swore to lead the defense of the town. The gnolls settled in for a siege, and I settled in for the most emotionally brutal 3 sessions I think I've ever run.
Start of the siege was signalled by the gnolls killing a family of farmers on the outskirts of town. Surrounding farmers retreated to town, behind hastily built barricades and armed peasants. The signal for the first attack was gnolls hoisting the remains of the farmer and his family up on poles, within sight of the village.

NPCs died, PCs were wounded and recovering, the gnolls burned the fields around the town and food/water began to get scarce. A few NPCs muttered dissent, but the town was still rallied around their local heroes, and the dissenters were silenced by the community.
It actually looked like the PCs might win though. It had been long enough (real time) that we needed to move on with the story, but I had one more card to play:

After repelling what might have been the final attack, the PCs hear a familiar voice wailing from the town square. A shot from a gnoll catapult had smashed a house, and killed the juvenile son of the party's favorite, trusted, NPC. He was totally distraught, screaming at the PCs, threatening them, etc. The townsfolk grabbed him before he could do any damage, and hauled him to the jail. Overcome with grief, the NPC hanged himself in his cell.

The party couldn't agree on what to do. The Bard snuck out at night and negotiated terms with the gnoll captain. The gnolls would leave the town and it's people, if the PCs would surrender themselves quietly.

Next morning, the gnoll captain comes forward to accept the surrender, to the surprise of the party. The Bard explains what he'd done.
The Paladin (party leader) surrendered first. Stuck his sword in the dirt in the middle of town square, with his helmet and shield, and walked out to the meet the gnolls. The captain forced him to kneel, then gnolls savagely beat him down to 0hp (but not dead) with unarmed strikes. In front of the villagers, and the party. First the party wanted to help, and the Paladin told them not to. Then the villagers wanted to help, and the PCs had to hold some of them back. The party said their goodbyes - the Bard's being particularly sad as we had previously decided to reveal that he was engaged to one of the NPCs - and the gnolls dragged them away.

That was one of the only times I've made players cry. I was in school with some of these players, and one of them didn't even talk to me for a few days after. Everyone came back though, and the revenge they eventually got on those gnolls was so severe that it caused a party-wide alignment shift. They killed every gnoll in the settlement, except 1 who would live on as testament, put all the warriors on spikes, left the rest to the crows. The Paladin went Oathbreaker for that, and didn't look back.

Apparently, heartbreak is the best way to get PCs invested in your game world.
The gnoll they left alive is now the villain in our current campaign, which takes place a generation later.

Sweet, Oathbreaker is one of the best paladin subtypes!

In all seriousness your an amazing DM for cooking up that scenario, if only I could be that good.

[NiklasWB]

Maybe I should have been more specific in my original post. I have the reason for the capture, the backstory, the arena, the slavers and everything else pretty much mapped out already (it's tied to what ahs already happened in the plot, and this should bring the plot forward), so I'm not looking for overall plot hooks or story ideas as to why they are captured. What I am looking more for is clever and interesting mechanical (and 'story', just as they are actually being captured) ways of making the capture seems natural and not "cheap". I want the players to feel like it was a cool story element and that they had some sort of hypothetical way of at least partially influence the outcome.

When I get to play and not DM I'm a big believer of going with the flow of the story, and not 'fight' where the DM is trying to take us. But some of my players act like they need to 'outsmart'/'struggle against' the story or they will be killed. Obviously I'm just trying to create a cool collaborative story with interesting plot-devices, but some of them seem to believe that it's always 'me' against 'them', instead of 'us'.

Using a hostage is actually a good idea, but the PCs are still fairly new in the city and haven't really made any specific bonds or relationships yet. Having a random helpless child or woman might work, but as it is now, there is actually no knowing if the characters would risk their own necks for a helpless person the don't know... (The party sometimes makes OOC decisions because it would benefit them in-game). More importantly, the slavers wouldn't know whether the PCs are good guys or simple murder-hobos out for themselves.

[Ennio]

I have literally done the following. I make it known when presenting house rules before start that on rare occasion I might drop plot events on them, no complaints so far in 20 years of DMing this way.


Me (DM): "Choo choo here come the quest chain !! You have been captured by _____ in the night."


Alternately the group I currently run for loves carousing and I run a custom carouse generator that consists of the one on donjon and anything else I add instead.

Honestly you are asking for something very hard to do, much easier to just hand-wave that part and get into the meat of the events.

[Trum4n1208]

Use hostages, as in, important NPCs die if the players don't come along quietly.
This makes the surrender a heroic part of the characters' story, and gives them even more of a reason to fight.
Hostages also makes it harder for them to escape. Say they get to this arena - you arm them, have them around a bunch of other gladiator NPCs - what's to stop them from "going Spartacus" on you? Sure, that may eventually be the point of the campaign, but maybe not right away, and it shouldn't be a decision made lightly. Let the PCs think, "if we rise up, they know where to find everyone we love, and they will take it out on them."


I ran a campaign that called on players being taken as slaves. They were all decent level, so making a fight of it would have been hard for me as a DM, so that's what I did: took an entire town hostage.
Gnolls demanded that the townsfolk hand the PCs over. The PCs did what PCs always do; sized up the competition (both the townfolk and the gnolls outside) and bluntly refused. This was the established home-base of the PCs, so they swore to lead the defense of the town. The gnolls settled in for a siege, and I settled in for the most emotionally brutal 3 sessions I think I've ever run.
Start of the siege was signalled by the gnolls killing a family of farmers on the outskirts of town. Surrounding farmers retreated to town, behind hastily built barricades and armed peasants. The signal for the first attack was gnolls hoisting the remains of the farmer and his family up on poles, within sight of the village.

NPCs died, PCs were wounded and recovering, the gnolls burned the fields around the town and food/water began to get scarce. A few NPCs muttered dissent, but the town was still rallied around their local heroes, and the dissenters were silenced by the community.
It actually looked like the PCs might win though. It had been long enough (real time) that we needed to move on with the story, but I had one more card to play:

After repelling what might have been the final attack, the PCs hear a familiar voice wailing from the town square. A shot from a gnoll catapult had smashed a house, and killed the juvenile son of the party's favorite, trusted, NPC. He was totally distraught, screaming at the PCs, threatening them, etc. The townsfolk grabbed him before he could do any damage, and hauled him to the jail. Overcome with grief, the NPC hanged himself in his cell.

The party couldn't agree on what to do. The Bard snuck out at night and negotiated terms with the gnoll captain. The gnolls would leave the town and it's people, if the PCs would surrender themselves quietly.

Next morning, the gnoll captain comes forward to accept the surrender, to the surprise of the party. The Bard explains what he'd done.
The Paladin (party leader) surrendered first. Stuck his sword in the dirt in the middle of town square, with his helmet and shield, and walked out to the meet the gnolls. The captain forced him to kneel, then gnolls savagely beat him down to 0hp (but not dead) with unarmed strikes. In front of the villagers, and the party. First the party wanted to help, and the Paladin told them not to. Then the villagers wanted to help, and the PCs had to hold some of them back. The party said their goodbyes - the Bard's being particularly sad as we had previously decided to reveal that he was engaged to one of the NPCs - and the gnolls dragged them away.

That was one of the only times I've made players cry. I was in school with some of these players, and one of them didn't even talk to me for a few days after. Everyone came back though, and the revenge they eventually got on those gnolls was so severe that it caused a party-wide alignment shift. They killed every gnoll in the settlement, except 1 who would live on as testament, put all the warriors on spikes, left the rest to the crows. The Paladin went Oathbreaker for that, and didn't look back.

Apparently, heartbreak is the best way to get PCs invested in your game world.
The gnoll they left alive is now the villain in our current campaign, which takes place a generation later.

Man, that is completely fantastic. Good for you. Utterly fantastic DM-ing.

[NiklasWB]

Honestly you are asking for something very hard to do, much easier to just hand-wave that part and get into the meat of the events.

I know it is hard, that is why I'm asking for suggestions on how to make it work. :smallsmile: I don't believe it is impossible however.

I have first hand experience where I have been a player in a game where it worked perfectly that we were captured... we were low on health, the enemies far outnumbered us, and we got the sense that we wouldn't be killed outright. So we surrendered, and it lead to a great adventure breaking out from the dungeon they took us to. I mean, captures/kidnappings are a classic film/book element that makes for great stories, so I have a hard time wrapping my head around why it sometimes doesn't work in an RP-games. I know, I know, players hate not feeling like they always have a choice to do whatever they want, but sometimes not having a choice is part of a story or a situation you find yourself in.

Maybe I'm just hoping for a behavior from the players that likely isn't going to happen. I dunno.

[Xetheral]

It's extremely difficult to accomplish what you're looking for without the players feeling railroaded, because railroading is exactly what you're trying to do.

My suggestion would be to have the PCs be in a situation where they can stealthily observe other npcs being taken captive by an obviously-powerful group of slavers. If the PCs decide to intervene, it's then more acceptable to have the opposition be overwhelming, because the players had a choice. But if you go this route and the players don't decide to get involved, you have to be willing to change your intended plot to not involve their capture.

In general, I advise never putting yourself in a situation where you need a specific detrimental event to occur in order to further the plot, because it leads to situations like this one where you feel the need to railroad your players.

[Thrudd]

What I am looking more for is clever and interesting mechanical (and 'story', just as they are actually being captured) ways of making the capture seems natural and not "cheap". I want the players to feel like it was a cool story element and that they had some sort of hypothetical way of at least partially influence the outcome.


The best way to do that is to actually allow them to influence the outcome. Play it by the rules and let the dice fall where they may. If you want the players to go somewhere or do something, give them a reason to want to do it and let them make the decision. Planning for them to get captured is a bad plan. You have enemies that want to capture them and have a plan to do that, but don't base your whole adventure on something that they might defeat. Players tend to find a way.

If you want a good chance of capturing them with a sleep spell, have the caster be high level so it's DC is high enough that the characters probably won't make their saves. Or have the force of enemies overwhelming enough that they probably won't win. When they are all dropped to 0, the enemies stabilize them, tie them up and take them away.
Immobilizing spells would be a good thing for the captors to use, in addition to sleep. web, tentacles, force cage, petrification, paralyzation. Lure the party into a region of difficult terrain so they can't get out of the ambush quickly, use wands and spells to immobilize them. A lone elf that doesn't get put to sleep could still be webbed up or turned to stone or simply threatened to surrender.

It will be hard to capture them in a way that doesn't require them being obviously overpowered and outclassed. If you're resolved to making sure they are captured in a way consistent with the rules, that's what you'll need to do. Otherwise, chances are they will avoid capture and you'll need to give another reason for them to go where you'd like them to go.

The best way to make the game feel natural is to actually let things happen naturally. Anything else is just an illusion that you're hoping the players don't see through.

[Biggstick]

Yeah, I'm going to agree with other posters and say that you shouldn't be railroading your players this hard. You seem pretty dead set on the idea of mechanically capturing the PC's without them feeling cheated.

Some questions that should be answered is what is the supposed power level of the Slaver organization trying to bring the party in? Why exactly do they want this group of adventurers in particular? Do the Slavers have anything of value that can be used as bait (or a tool to hire mercenaries in the capture of these PCs)? Why exactly do you (or the Slavers) want the party to be engaged in gladiatorial combat, and don't respond with "because of the plot." Give us the reason why so we can further help you in capturing these PC's. We need to know the motivations and assets of the Slavers to really know how we can help you in capturing the PCs.

This depends on if the Slavers have a bit of money to spare. Have the Slavers hire an elite crew of mercenaries (give them some solid PC levels if you have to, to the effect of being higher levels then the PCs). Give the mercenary crew a name even. These guys and gals can act as rivals to the party in that they show up later on down the line if you want to use them again.

For some reason or another, the Slavers have called on this group to capture the PC's alive. Payment will not be given if the targets come in dead. The mercenary group doesn't necessarily care why the Slavers want this group, only that they're getting paid to bring a bounty in. Seeing as how the PC's are in a town/city, have the mercenary group scout out the area the party frequents. They probably all meet up at some bar each night. Have the mercenary group have a Bard themselves, who actually reveals himself to the party in the tavern. He sets the party at ease, while getting in good with the party, learning their in's and outs. This NPC Bard is actually "learning" all their quirks and setting the party up to be betrayed.

The next night, the oft-frequented tavern is strangely empty aside from the party and the Bard from the night before. The Bard walks over nonchalantly to the bartender, whispers something to him, and they leave the building. If the party happens to be listening to noises from outside, they don't hear much of anything, which is a strange thing indeed. The Bard turns to the party and continues engaging in conversation, ensuring the party that he's just sent the bar tender off to grab some of his special reserve as a special treat for the party's hard drinker.

If the party relaxes, allow night to continue until one of them asks about the bar tender returning (or until it's late in the night, whichever comes first). If anyone tried to follow the bar tender out, the PC would find that all the doors have been locked, the windows barred, and any apparent exits sealed. Once something has been picked up on by the PC's, this is when the action starts. The NPC mercenary members can now come out of seemingly hidden places (or come from wherever the tavern has extra spaces that people could be hidden). They'd utilize magic at first to attempt to subdue the PC's (Hypnotic Pattern from the Bard would be solid, the Elf types would still have advantage on the save). Make sure you have at least another primary spell caster who can "subdue" the party, and if both those attempts fail, fall back on martial combat to non-lethally bring the party down.

This mercenary company has been tracking the party for a while. They know who to focus down first. They work efficiently. They focus fire and protect their squishies. If the party decides to fight, it should be an easy go for you. If the party decides to flee, and can make it past your secured doors and barred windows, they'd find the streets around the tavern strangely empty. There isn't a soul in sight, and if they were to make it much further then the end of the street, they would run into another contingent of this company (or traps to catch them if you really need it).

If someone manages to escape, they know the Bard's name and whatever information the Bard has decided to share about himself. They can either follow up on this information and seek the Bard out, or leave their friends and do whatever their little heart desires.

[CursedRhubarb]

Have a random encounter for either while they rest or travel. Whoever is on lookout duty gets to roll a perception check for an ambush. Make it very unlikely to succeed but possible. When failed, they don't notice a few vials thrown into the group which produce a gas that causes petrification as by Flesh to Stone. They get to make hard Con checks and if they fail, they get stoned. If any pass, they get to deal with a large group of guys with nets and clubs that beat them unconscious.

They get to wake up in a cell or separate cells as they regain hp or as they get gasses that act as a Stone to Flesh spell. Would be a great way to kidnap people, turn them to stone then pose as guild artisans moving sculptures about and no guards to worry about.

[Breaklance]

My 2 cents would be to trick your PCs into railroading themselves.

Give them a seemingly easy side quest. "I think someone is breaking into my warehouse and stealing stuff every night!" Then throw them a moderately challenging fight (maybe it's actually a monster going in there to sleep as a makeshift cave) they come back for their reward and the quest giver is over joyed to learn his warehouse is safe. "Here I've got this lovely bottle of champagne please share a toast with me!" Except the bottle is poisoned with knock out juice.

Shortly after the toast but before the quest rewards are doled out give the PCs and DC to resist the poison. Someone fails hard enough they fall asleep immediately others get drowsy. Then guys with clubs and nets come in to finish the job. The players have to make one more DC to resist falling asleep and if they win they still have to fight with exhaustion.

You could let them have insight or nature checks to suspect the trap but the idea is that they have no reason to expect the quest giver to be a bad guy.

If a fight happens and it starts going in favor of the good guys take someone who is knocked out hostage "surrender or we kill your friend" if they still win give them incentive to go back to the warehouse where it turns out is an entrance to the under ground fight club / coliseum and you still get them there even if it's not as prisoners you get a second chance at capture or of getting them in the arena anyhow.

At any rate I think it would be best to trick your PCs into a situation they wouldn't expect and give them the illusion of choice. You could of suspected the trap. You could of resisted the poison. You could of not done this side quest. But all roads still point to your main quest you want to do. At any rate this is one of those tricks you can only pull off once or twice before your PCs start expecting every npc of ulterior motives.

[Pex]

Whatever you do, let the characters get their stuff back at the end. Nothing makes a PC more angry than losing his stuff forever. It's worse than character death.

I'm being serious. Players will accept a temporary loss as part of the game story, but if they don't get their stuff back or even better stuff than they had they will be mad. Mature players aren't going to take it too seriously nor hate you in real life for it - it is just a game, but they'll still be P'd off big time.

In any case you can only get away with this once. Even capture by railroad is ok for the one instance. It's trust in the DM that they'll be a payoff to make everything worth it, especially if it's by fiat. Don't lose that trust.

[Jamesps]

Are you willing to design a multiple-outcome adventure where it has a way to play out if they get captured, or if they don't? Because that's the best way to do it hands down, but it's also the hardest.

[Wymmerdann]

Railroading is permissable now and again. Genre-savvy players are always aware of the metaplot.

My advice would be to mitigate any frustration that might arise with the situation by creating a situation that the players can enjoy.


Ace Venture 2 gives us a perfect example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZBdmv5iX7E

You could model this through an encounter with a large number of weak foes [ninja-kobolds/invisible pixies] with a kind of Unconsciousness Dart. If a character is truck by a dart, they take a simple [dc 10] save vs the sleep affect, which is taken every turn unless the dart is removed through the free item interaction or an action. However, each additional dart a character is struck with increases the next dc by 2-5, creating a situation where the players are progressively more likely to fail, unless they dedicate their entire turn to pulling small darts out of themselves.

Trying to swat down as many pixies/kobolds as they can before they get KO'd should be enjoyable for the PC's, and as a DM, you can keep throwing in reinforcements if the PC's look likely to break out, as the encounter contains a large number of hidden foes.

Encourage the PC's to enjoy the sitaution and foreshadow that it isn't likely to be a fatal fight and you should avoid frustration, even if it seems like a reordained outcome.

Edit: To model the poison, regardless of saves, each active dart should reduce the speed of the character by 5 and their perception checks by 1-2, to model the immediate effect.

[Sjappo]

Whatever you do, let the characters get their stuff back at the end. Nothing makes a PC more angry than losing his stuff forever. It's worse than character death.

I'm being serious. Players will accept a temporary loss as part of the game story, but if they don't get their stuff back or even better stuff than they had they will be mad. Mature players aren't going to take it too seriously nor hate you in real life for it - it is just a game, but they'll still be P'd off big time.

In any case you can only get away with this once. Even capture by railroad is ok for the one instance. It's trust in the DM that they'll be a payoff to make everything worth it, especially if it's by fiat. Don't lose that trust.
This. Very much. Don't touch their stuff. I remember it pissing me of no end.

To answer your (OP's) question. You say you need to railroad but want to be circumspect about it. Don't. You only give the players the illusion of agency, which is worse than no agency at all. Just capture them and make it as quick as possible. As in, in as little game time as possible. Struggling against the inevitable is not very enjoyable. And make sure that something VERY COOL happens right after the capture. No mucking about. Attack them in the night, narrate the capture and some big bad making a speech and dump them in the arena for a "let's see what you're worth" fight. That way they can vent their frustration about being captures and you can get on with the story. My 2 cp.

[Asmotherion]

Have them fight a deadly encounter with the slavers. If they all fall unconsious, use some subtle mechanic to prevent them failing their 3rd death save (only if needed). Then, once they wake up, the scene is set. If they succeed instead, reward them with a good amound of xp and loot, and set a quest hook were they find on one of the slavers evidence of what they are, and maybe that one of their friends/family members/friendly NPC they met before has been taken by the same ring. This should be enough to have them want to stop the ring. If they don't get the hint, or want to ignore the quest, either send some more slavers to finish them off (a bit cheap but it works), or have them waste time being targeted by more and more slavers and make it clear that, as long as they won't get the hint, this will keep happening.

[Zanthy1]

My thought is, you only really need to capture 1 of them. Then the party has to go on a rescue mission, which could be a super sweet stealth mission or they could "get captured" and rescue him on their own. I would even talk to the player on the side who you think would be the most likely target for capture (the goliath if its gladiatorial, he would definitely make the most money for the slavers).

[NiklasWB]

Thank you all for your input. I think a lot of valid points have been made, and as I’ve said, I’m well aware of how players often hate being railroaded, that’s why I’m asking for ideas to make it feel like they are not being railroaded, or at least, that the railroading feels fun and ‘fair’.

I also know that it may come across as if I’m dead set on railroading them into this specific scenario, and partially that is true. However, the background leading up to where we are now in the story lends it so well for a capture to happen at this point in time that I believe that the players, while certainly they might become frustrated that they are being captured, will think that what follows the capture; i.e. the arena fights, the plotting against the slavers, the inevitable Spartacus rebellion/break-out, finally meeting a missing NPC they have been tracking (who is now also a slave), will be worth it. They actually set this capture in motion through an earlier side-quest where one of them competed in a more ‘legal’ arena, won a big melee, and catching the eye of a slaver captain. None of those things were railroaded and came from the players. Also, they are currently carrying an object that has an ‘locate object enchantment’ on it that the slaver gave them (it was almost too good to be true, but they still took it without question)… so a lot of pieces are moving toward a capture and confrontation with the slavers even though they don’t even know about the slavers existing or them being followed.

I think I might go through with it, but give them a deadly encounter, have it be a fair fight, let the dice decide, but against really tough odds. If the players somehow manage to escape, through all odds, I’ll keep the slaver quest line for later (who’s to say the slavers would give up so easily). It would be a shame however, since I think the slaver questline would fit perfectly right about now without a longwinded “investigate the missing people” that the players may or may not even want to pursue. I guess I just don’t think choice should always come before interesting scenarios and story, but I guess that’s different strokes for different folks.

EDIT: Also, I'm most definitely not taking their gear, they get to keep all items, weapons etc., both in the arena and in the slave pens ("how else would the fights be realistic").

[Segev]

Your end goal is to get them to fight I the gladiatorial arena in the undercity, right?

Don't get hung up on the capture. Certainly, have that be a possibility. In fact, have their foes for a while be more inclined to capture than kill, and have that be a potential ending in any fight they get into for a while.

But don't worry about it if it doesn't happen.

As others have suggested, have some of the hooks in their sandbox romp involve disappearing people. Have the slavery ring or the gladiatorial arena crop up in ways that intersect with their plans and actions. Draw their attention, if not directly to it, then at least to the undercity and the kidnapping ring.

Maybe have at least one person willing to hire heroes to find his beloved child. (Maybe this is a human merchant of reasonable means who will bankrupt himself to get back his gifted half-elven sorcerer-son who was kidnapped for said gifts.) Heck, maybe somebody will get a bright idea to try to ransom him, which will give the PCs a reason to try to infiltrate a specific place.

The option should exist to deliberately infiltrate by "pretending" to be captured/enslaved, but of course, they'll need a reason to do that. Or, perhaps it's as easy as having the arena take non-slave gladiators who are willing to sign up for gold and glory.


Again: remember what your goal is. Don't get hung up on a specific means of dragging the party to it. Make the goal itself of interest to them - or at least in the path of something of interest - and they'll find a way to get there, themselves.

[Sigreid]

As the uncooperative player I suggest you set up a situation where they might be captured. Push one or more of their buttons. If one is chivalrous, push that one. But have an idea where you can go, or improvise if the party decides not to bite or somehow wins your encounter.

A suggestion: one of the players meets a young woman in the city and they start chatting each other up. They make plans to meet the next evening but she doesn't show. Hopefully the player will have enough interest to try to find out what happened, and discovers that she was off searching for rare plants during the day (she's an herbalist) and hasn't returned. Her family and friends are worried about her, but aren't brave or woodsie enough to look for her. They know the rough area she was searching.

When the party finds her, she's been captured by a small band of slavers. Enough to be challenging, but winnable. Since an herbalist is a good thing for an adventuring party to know they will likely try to rescue her. When they are hip deep in the fight, raiding parties start returning. The slavers see valuable stock has come to them and instead of killing with that drop to zero blow they knock the party members out, just like PCs can do to mobs if they want to.

The two problems with this are:

They might decide "screw her, we're out of here."
The party might be clever and lucky enough to win.