So, how do you fellow DMs get players to consider surrendering to a numerically superior but certainly evil foe...

Every once in a while I do a video-game as fuck scene where I do not ask "wat do" but list around three, equally valid sounding option. Additional, appropriate roll may reveal another option that may or may not be better than the rest.
On those times I accept no player input other than A,B,C or D.
That way, I want to validate options that otherwise would be stupidly missed or deemed too stupid to try. After applying logic to the option that is surrender. otherwise stubborn player may think that It does makes sense to to give up. Just for today.

But I would never except surrendering as their first choice. EVERYONE wants to play that
>Surrender
>NEVER
scene at least once in their lives. It doesn't help that to most, surrendering is worse than just losing. It is admitting that you just lost. Overturning that is hard.
But with the limited but logically explained choice system there is a chance. Especially If you present that choice as a sign of superior thinking and planning

The first step of surrender is having your shit taken away from you, possibly irrevocably. Then you can expect to be restrained and detained.

"Surrender for now and wait for a chance" isn't likely to give you better odds than fighting while you're still equipped to do so.

...Seriously? Restricting a situation to an arbitrary set of choices seems to kinda defeat the point of RPGs, as well as neutering their greatest strength.

Sauce or I won't believe you.

Well, I can see the situation where it makes sense.
Say modern game PCs are surrounded by police. They can shoot their way out of it, or they can surrender and let the Face (or lawyer contract) talk them out of it later.

You can't, bad player logic is "my life isn't actually on the line, so of course even the cowardly evil and greedy rogue will go down fighting honourably"

Yes and no. True, the event situations may seem restricted but in turn, It makes the players feel like -they made a choice-. It makes the choices feel more important and they are varied enough to drastically change the turn of events.

It's not neutering the strengths of tabletops. It emphasizes the player agency

Let the players fight back but say they were knocked unconscious instead of killed.

If it is a truly evil foe, why would you surrender?

Imagine for a moment surrendering to someone like the Joker. At best, you will be tortured until you become evil.

Why surrender to someone like this?

Also, try changing the image when you repost shit from the archives. Makes you look like a newfag, newfag.

>The enemy took away the weapons you fight with. How are you going to fight with no weapons?
Surrender
>The enemy took away your defenses. How are you going to live through the fight with no armor?
Surrender
>The enemy took a character your party likes... no, loves, hostage. He will kill him/her if they fight.
The will lose the character if they don't surrender.
>The enemy prepares an ambush on the characters while they sleep and are not ready.
If they surrender, they live.

These come to mind...

I can't wrap my head around how restricting options emphasizes player agency. Players make choices every time they have their character take action in the game. If people are stuck or pondering something, I might list a few example choices, but that never means I won't listen to input and allow them to do something different. This isn't a damn Bioware game.

Truly Evil doesn't have to mean Chaotic Evil, they can be Lawful Evil.

Literally the worst.

Just fucking kill them or end the story there. Being captured stopped bein g interesting in game 20 years ago and is straight up tired now.

You could have a quest to get inside a prison, and either rescue a prisoner or steal evidence.

I'll emphasize my player agency by punching you in the dick.

This isn't a repost and I'm on my phone.

Sometimes circumstances force people into decisions they wouldn't otherwise make. So long as he doesn't do it too often, and actually makes the choices legitimate, coherent actions that make sense within the context of the game, there's no problem.

And what if they want to take an action that's completely logical but not one of the offered ones?

So you would submit to someone who is evil, has their shit together and use your captured ass as a resource.

Lawful Evil tortures for sin. They treat anyone outside their law as cattle. You will not do any better under them than the other side of the coin.

They would be captured if they surrender anyway. Why does it make a difference how they get captured?

Because the actions and choices in an RPG should come from the interaction between the players, the world and the narrative, not an arbitrary list of options set down by a GM.

So getting captured is a forgone conclusion in your game?

Think I will skip out on you running.

There IS a problem. If I wanted to play a game where I can pick from a limited set of options with no wriggle room, I'd play a fucking video game.

I MIGHT pick one of the suggested options, fairly regularly, even, but if you deny me the option to take my own course of action if I want to, I will seriously nutcrack you.

>Low level encounters surrender to PCs
>PCs decide to accept and rehabilitate them FE-style
>By endgame they're controlling 40 separate characters

You can take your own course, but if it fails because it was a dumb idea don't blame the GM.
Sometimes players think outside the box and come up with sonething good, others their idea is absolute shit but they convibce themselves it's the best thing since cheese was invented.

Read the post which started this whole thing again. He explicitly stated that
>On those times I accept no player input other than A,B,C or D.

Okay, I'll go over to your house and lobotomize and augment you so you'll only take the "best" option like the fucking Borg... out of a specific set of options I choose for you. Because I know better than you and you can't possibly conceive of anything better.. See how you like it, asshole. Taking away player agency like that is incredibly demoralizing. Dehumanizing, even.

If the PCs have to be forced to surrender by endgame, that means they have no vector of escape by then, which is a critical failure akin to the fighter lacking poison resistance or the wizard not possessing a counter to anti-magic.

That they have to surrender and cannot retreat means that somebody fucked up, really REALLY badly.

What?
But I didn't say I'll take your agency you dumb mutt, I said that you can do things outside the "preset choices".
Thus what I am saying disagrees with what the guy you were replying to said.
BUT, if you make dumb choices don't come crying to me

I facilitate surrender and retreat as viable options by rarely using fights where killing the opponent is the only (or even a viable) win condition for the encounter. The most boring fights are the ones where Group A wants to kill Group B who wants to kill Group A. Realistically, people are often preoccupied. The evil wizard doesn't really care about you, is more interested in finishing the ritual or chemistry experiment that you're interrupting, and will likely be too busy with damage control to kill you once you've ruined his efforts. The demon general didn't show up just to kill the party. He showed up to capture the princess. He's not going to re-task essential staff that could be princess-transporting just to look after some rabble. The dragon will take active steps to keep his collection of mint-condition action figures from being broken and will capture the party and fly away to put them somewhere more secure. The world's greatest swordsman standing guard at the gala the party's infiltrating is more interested in not making noise so as not to startle the guests than killing everyone he comes across and will only arrest them for the night.

Just make the win-con something other than "the other guy dies" and the lose-con something other than "you die." Surprisingly enough, most people don't immediately resort to killing other people if the thing they want done doesn't require that anyone dies.

The enemy doesn't need to kill everyone they fight, it would be more profitable to knock the PCs unconcious, strap a head on them, and make them do his dirty work. Plus it also keeps the story going

If missed an option like that, okay. Really. That happens and I respect that. I'm not a goddamn tyrant. If people really are uncomfortable with that, It's fine. Let's do whatever.

But most of the time I TRY to be strict. Otherwise they wave off my talk as babysitting and proceed to make the dumbest things.
And I know how does It sound but It works, honest.
Think of It like a quest thread. OP lists some choices, all sound legit. All the people can now argue about them and even those who are normally quiet can finally voice some opinion even If It's no more than "option 2, please".

Open choice, while being the staple of the whole RPG business, funnily enough, IN THEIR HEADS, limits the range of possibilities. They cross off the option they deem impropable, only voicing either the safest or the most suicidal choice.

I give them all of that and more, hoping to make them think "hey, so THAT thing was a valid thing after all!"

While surrender is always an option, no scenario should ever have a set concrete outcome. Attempting to flee or die trying against the unstoppable evil is heroic, instead of just being it's bitch.

Also there isn't really any reason to have the players encountering things that will have no trouble dominating them just to make them submissive to the DM's untouchable plot character.

Listing off options isn't a bad thing. I just don't see any reason why listing off options means you deny them the chance to do something else.

So you think your way is the best way because your players do not respect you and you demand respect from those sniveling shits.

It's a trap
Sauce: Because I said so.

It's just an option, nothing more. A lot of players seem to be okay with that. I never said It's THE option.
Rather than dealing with that kind of bullshit, I'd obviously prefer a group of rational human beings.
It's just that we can't always have that, right?

That's Kizuna from Prunus Girl. So yes, that's a trap.

bato.to/comic/_/comics/prunus-girl-r18

>bato.to/comic/_/comics/prunus-girl-r18
Now I believe you

>Obviously, this limits some exciting narrative options!
As proof of life, what sort of "exciting narrative" are you shooting for, OP?

You've never done a prison escape? Killing a hated warden, weighing the good of freeing other slaves against the pragmatics of being sneaky, striking your enemy a blow from the heart of their fastness, taking a slave or pirate ship for your own...

I can think of a lot of narrative options.

My players are used to destroying beasts that can't negotiate.
I'll just tell them directly that surrender is an option, though in good taste I'd prefer to have this happen once or twice at most.

Prison escapes are tricky with established characters and the gear is always an issue.
Mainly I was curious if OP had a specific idea in mind.

Make surrender the most exciting and fun scenario.

>But most of the time I TRY to be strict. Otherwise they wave off my talk as babysitting and proceed to make the dumbest things.
>They're all just too STUPID. I HAVE to control them. If I don't they'll do STUPID things.
Found the Lawful Evil :^)

But for a serious response, I still think this idea sucks. There are ways to clue players in on better/alternative options without limiting them to ABCD. I personally like to have players whose characters might have an idea roll a relevant stat to receive a hint to help them form a better plan. And like other Anons have said, you can just state the alternative options without restricting the players to them. I'm curious to hear why you think excluding anything other than your presented actions is a good idea.

Give them a less evil guy to surrender to.

"Look, these guys all want to kill you. You look like ok folks so if you surrender to me I can guarantee you'll get it easy. Otherwise lots of blood will be shed on both sides, which no-one wants. Please, give it up?"

This is another good idea.

You'll get a bunch of underslept, freshly broke up naked maniacs fighting an ambush with their bare fists and teeth.

Sometimes I wonder "Hey, why don't I play with people from the internet? Veeky Forums has plenty of people!", and then autistic shit like this reminds me why, goddamn.

...

Have some enemies occasionally surrender to them, first, instead of fighting to the death.

Also, make it clear that you can get some money from ransoming off prisoners that you'd miss out on by killing them.

I'll avoid setting up situations that force characters into a certain course of action. Inevitable surrender sounds like railroading, unless the scenario is clearly painted to be a hopeless cause from the start, in which case their decisions should affect the degree of oncoming badness. Small wins, like killing key figures or getting civilians away, do count for something.

My mentality with 'win or die' situations is to actually follow through on the die part and kill characters who tempt fate and lose. It sometimes takes some tough love to get across the notion that you won't rescue them every time. The trick to this is to go about it fairly so that players can only blame themselves. Deadly scenarios should be voluntarily entered into and, in my opinion, decided by the dice. Openly tell the player that the bomb is beyond their abilities to defuse and they have to succeed at a difficult dice mechanic. If they succeed they get an interesting story to tell, and if they fail, well, they went in fully aware and volunteered to gamble upon it.

In scenarios where I can't properly forewarn or delegate to the dice, I'll usually resort to a 'failing forward' sort of result and harm the character but not end them. Failing a perception check might trip an alarm or inflict some damage, but this only makes the rest of the adventure a little harder, rather than ending it.

>just have them get captured instead of killed if they lose
>just kill them lol
>why? Having them captured ends them up in the exact same situation op wanted them in
>SO GETTING CAPTURED IS JUST A FOREGONE CONCLUSION THEN, SHIT DM?

Not even that guy but seriously ?????

No, I won't.

Because that's not the kind of game I am going to run: either they play characters with believable traits and personalities or they can find a new GM.

Not that guy either, but the confusion came from the wording:
>Why does it make a difference how they get captured?
Which could be seen as implying that anything they do will result in capture. Veeky Forums reacts fast when there's a chance of railroading. Like it's a bad thing.

>Think of It like a quest thread

Wow you really are garbage.

:^) most tg cucks will never know the joy of having a 10/10 group that likes to follow your not-so-subtle breadcrumb trail to the final encounter with the big bad, reacting just as you planned and feeling all of the emotions you intended because you have all known each other for fifteen years and you know exactly what everyone enjoys

"I want them alive."
[Evil motivation to keep them alive and strong.]
"Harm them as little as possible."
"You'll have to wait in line behind them to get healed. I need them strong for the sacrifice."
or "I'll get more ransom if they are unharmed."
No orders for keeping them alive and unharmed defaults to killing them and weakening them. No orders; anything goes; they're evil.
Rumors about their prior behavior towards captives.

You clearly don't understand alignments AT ALL. Lawful Evil CAN mean that. It can also mean about a million other things.