Hey all,
So, my players picked a fight with the wrong group (despite multiple warnings from me). I'm afraid they are going to have to fall in battle. I don't want to kill them outright, however, so I thought I'd have the killers dump their bodies in the harbor, and because they are hardy adventurers, they somehow survive, though when they wake up they are in chains in a slave ship moving towards their new position in life.
Has anyone run an adventure or series of adventures where the pcs were slaves? Do you have any suggestions for me? How do you handle magic users as slaves?
I have a feeling the players won't want to be slaves for long. The reason they got into the fight that took them down in the first place was because they wouldn't pay the proper respect to a crime boss, so having to be slaves will likely not be too much for for at least one player. I also don't want to create a situation where there is just one way for them to escape, as they probably won't come up with it without my blatantly telling them what to do. So, I want them to have several ways to get free. I'll probably just listen to what their ideas are and go with that. Any advice about escape scenarios is appreciated too.
I'm thinking that after escaping they will have a series of adventures (perhaps one will be a skill challenge where they have to avoid re-capture by the slavers) which will allow them to level up a few times so that they can go back to the city to exact their revenge...
Instead of having the party be left for dead, how about the mob simply capture them, and directly sell the party into slavery. Then the crime boss isn't just responsible, but he slapped the chains on their wrists.
And when the party wakes up/is let out of the hold (escaping on the ship should be impossible), they could be in a foreign land. Not exotic or mysterious, nothing that actually could keep them there for adventure, just some place they haven't been to that is far enough away that getting back home (to kill the crime boss) would be an adventure itself.
As for the actually slavery, you could represent it with a skill challenge. Mandatory endurance checks every round, plus a check for whatever task the PC is doing. If a check is failed, they lose a surge and may only regain a single surge a night. During this time, they could engage in a skill challenge to escape, using various methods (Streetwise to gather info from slaves and guards, Diplomacy to earn the favor of guards/get contraband, Athletics to start digging a tunnel etc...), and it would last several weeks in game time.
Write up several sets of combat encounters (e.g. one for slaves, one for main gate, one for guards at night, one for guards and hounds during the chase), so that whatever they do you will be prepared.
Getting the players to escape from slavery is a whole adventure in itself. You could give the players choices such as organising a break out. To do this the players will have to plan the escape with other prisoners - what happens if one of the prisoners threatens to tell the captors in the hope of earning their freedom? To set this up you need to be clear what kind of environment you want the players to be slaves in - are they galley slaves, slaves in a mine or a rich nobles house. I'm sure some magical collar or something could be designed to keep the magic user from casting spells, or a lack of spell components.
The players will have to roleplay to build up the trust of guards and there may be some who accept bribes for small luxuries and tools. They will also have to try and work out how much food, what kind of environment they will be escaping into and so on.
Once the players have escaped they are going to have to cross potentially hostile territory to get home - again another series of adventures.
Alternatively, a noble slave owner might notice that he owns a bunch of hardy adventures and he may offer them their freedom for a series of (dangerous) quests. Think Mission Impossible crossed with the Dirty Dozen. It might involve the asassination of the nobles rivals, the doping of a rivals racehorse to fix a race at the coliseum or the theft of some really valuable and fragile artworks. Maybe even steal items from a castle populated by a cursed noble who is now undead along with all his retinue (Ravenloft style adventure). If the players get caught, they get executed as escaped slaves and the boss keeps his hands clean.
A third option, if the players really don't go for this slave thing is to do the old Minotaur and the Labrynth trip. The players are dumped down a chute into a dark labrynth as sacrifices to some horrible nasty of your choice that lives in a Labrynth. A reverse dungeon if you like, they start in the middle and have to fight their way out with a few torches and a rusty old dagger to help.
Thanks for the ideas so far. I love the idea of the bad guy putting them in chains and selling them off. Much more personal that way. Sounds like a great way to engender some anger and hate towards that particular villian.
The idea of losing surges is nice too. I'm still conflicted about how to limit their magic. The lack of spell components won't work, as the caster in the group is a sorcerer. I thought of the collar idea already too, but it seems a little cheesy to me. Seems like such an artifact would be so valuable that to use it on a bunch of slaves would not make sense. If I don't come up with something better, though, I'll use it. Maybe I just won't let them have extended rests? Sleep deprivation and all.
I don't mind if they get their freedome quickly, but I just don't want them to be able to get free by just attacking the guards and killing them all on the first day. There has to be some kind of planning, so Reg and Grim's ideas are great.
A little more background: The campaign is set in Eberron, in Stormreach. They will be sent to work in a slave camp somewhere deep in the jungle of Xendrik, working for a mage who is excavating artifacts from a dangerous ruin. That way they can do a dungeon crawl or two, even as slaves, assuming that they agree to do so and don't get themselves killed by refusing to fight...
A good way to win freedom in an exciting Cowboys and Indians kind of way:
PCs and slavers are on some long sort of journey together and their caravan is attacked by a third party. Slavers have to free the PCs to aid in the caravan's defense. In the course of the battle, slavers are killed/run off and the players ally with/run from the third party.
I'm thinking that after escaping they will have a series of adventures (perhaps one will be a skill challenge where they have to avoid re-capture by the slavers) which will allow them to level up a few times so that they can go back to the city to exact their revenge...
How about Galley Slaves? Have them row into battle the way Christian Slaves rowed Turks into battle against the Christian Fleet at Lepanto?
Just a thought...
for the magicians...
Magic shackles! the runes encrypted upon them diffuses and eats the arcane that the spells are made up of, and the eaten magic keeps the runes from withering away and keeps them potent! so no magic ever!
of course the runes engraved onto the shackles are engraved into the metal quite deep so the magic reserves that keep the runes potent also make the shackles a little bit more brittle than the normal shackles put on nonmagical users. i think this is a balanced solution.
But now what will keep the divine characters from praying for a plague of rust to eat away the shackles and save ALL the desolate slaves and themselves in one fell swoop? the problem holds sway!
EDIT; after reading posts, i see that magic shackles are either too valuable for slaves or too cheesy.
SO, the only other advice i have is that if you are playing in Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, you could say that the slave traders have marked out routes in the seas and lands where the SpellWeave isnt there.
Actually, I like your idea of making them more brittle. Then the PCs have to work together at least a little. The stronger fighter can break the weaker magic shackles for the mage. Actually, now that I think of it, I think their defender is not the strength type--which means they might have to convince a stronger NPC slave to break their bonds for them.
As for the expense of such valuable items, heck, who knows? Maybe they can be part of the characters' treasure packet? I'm sure there is some way around the problem.
Has anyone played a scenario such as this? Can you give me any hints on what kind of escape attempts I should prepare for?
Thanks everyone for your comments so far.
I would set up more than one avenue for escape and allow the players to roleplay to find out which ones might work for them. Some of the clues might be good and others might be bad. For example some of the guards might be corrupt and will take bribes. The players need a means of working out which guards take bribes and what their price is.
There might also be a weakness in the walls - for example a blind spot which the guard towers cannot see because of a quirk of the terrain or an earthquake. A dwarf might see this if he spends the time looking over the defences, or an NPC might point it out, or the players might notice it when out on a work detail rto repair a damaged wall.
If working in a mine the players might come across rich mineral deposits they can use to buy stuff from the guards. If they are galley slaves, gold chains and debris from the battles above might provide them with gold. The guards will not sell weapons, but will provide tobacco, rope and other stuff.
There might also be a noble who wants gladiators and the players might want to audition for him or something, but they will have to convince him to do so.
If they are galley slaves they might be able to convince a greedy captain that there is gold on an Island somewhere and try and escape when they get there.
There will also be rmours of a secret passage, some of which will be false.
Just leave some clues lying around and allow the players to find them. Then they can decide how they want to escape and work out what resources they need and then think about how they might get them. For example to climb a wall they need a ladder so they need wood and twine or nails. They could get the wood from the fire used to keep the slaves warm at night or from their cots - one stick every night. The twine might come from a bribed guard, the barber shop or a musicical slave who players a stringed instrument for the Master at night.
They could make tools or weaponss from pieces of flint lying around as well.
The players will need somewhere to hide their contraband gear such as lock picks and so on. They might suffer setbacks such as searches or collapsed tunnels or a shift change which means their usual corrupt guard will not be there.
This could stretch out over a few sessions, but focus should be on tense prison drama. The players will be sweating when they hand over a jewel worth over 200gps for a lockpick and some eggs worth only 1 gp to the outside world. If the players like to fight, maybe they could fall out with a gang of slaves from another mercenary shop to provide some competition.
i'd imagine that a small plot where the PC's free the slaves on the ship would be a memorable victory. somehow, when they get rid of their magic shackles
, they let loose the slaved ogre that the captain of the ship keeps underneath the decks to punish slaves who act out of turn! (no pun intended) in the end the ship could be prone to sinking because the ogre unshackled could start breaking the masts, and the captain, concerned for his own life, has to turn the ship back to shore!
the encounter with the ogre could go a few ways; the PCs could get caught without their magic shackles on and are sent to the punishment chamber where the ogre resides, with a scarred back from cruel whips, wearing an eye patch because one of them had been gouged out in an earlier battle (for the pirate feel) and chained up and shackled to the walls of the room. the ogre smells the PC's fear, breaks the chains, and leaps ant them snarling!
in this scenario the pc's wouldnt have any of their equipment, because they were caught. D4's anyone?
but what i'm thinking is that there could be a lengthy noncombat encounter where the PC's try to come up with a plan to get out. if they make a better one that completely overrides the ogre, then cool!
this is how i would make it go for my campaign; they make it out of their shackles, and ask around for information about where different rooms are, especially the weapons room, then, using skill checks for stealth, diplomacy, intimidate, etc. and if they make the DC, they figure out where the treasure room/weapons room is, where the warden of the ship takes all the slaves' onhand stuff. then they make stealth and diplomacy checks when encountering any slaver crewmembers on the way to get their beloved swords and such.
if they fail, they get tossed in the room with the ogre! if they get caught in the room, have a pirate encounter with some scallywag slavers and make the pcs use turns finding their stuff with dungeoneering and theivery checks in battle. then if they win the encounter or if most of the pcs get bloodied, they get tossed into the ogre room. But because they made it this far, to make the outcome a little different, let them make a check where they could conceal their implements and weapons (maybe just implements) in their pockets to make the fight a little more fin for the PC's.
If they win, they face the rest of the slavers face to face, and end up freeing the ship and slaves by mutiny. If the last battle goes just so, then perhaps the BBEG could call up the ogre from the bottom of the ship and the PC's would have to fight it anyway.
There's a bit of risk in this whole ogre bit though; if they don't make it to the weapons room at all, then they go face the ogre and win, they would probably have to face the BBEG or walk the plank, and not get any of their items back.
Walking the plank is an alternative to most of it, and the PC's could make athletics checks and stuff for swimming back to she shore.
SO, if the PC's win, they keep their stuff, free some slaves, kill an ogre, and take the BBEG's favorite rum and treasures.
If they lose, they die or make it back without anything except the nonmagical clothing on their backs.
here's a timeline:
PCs break the shackles, then figure out where the 1 weapons room is or where the 2 Keymaster is.
1 Then the PCs either get into the weapons room unnoticed 2 or find the Keymaster or 3 they get caught trying 1 or 2 and get thrown into the ogre encounter.
1 the pcs find their stuff and take the ship by mutiny or 2 find the keymaster and get the keys from him and open all the slaves shackles and then take the ship over by mutiny or 3 get put into the ogre room and kill it and then have to walk the plank with all their stuff gone forever.
OR at the end of 3 instead of the plank walking the ending suggested at the beggining of the post with the ogre almost wrecking the ship and the captain having no choice to turn back for shore, where a few more encounters trying to get away alive from the slaver pirates ensued.
During any of the last battles for 1 or 2 the ogre could be summoned by the captain, at which point the ship will start to break and then sink, which will let the PCs escape with their stuff, but on the long swim home will have to end up dropping some larger things to the ocean in order to survive. a bittersweet ending.
Sorry this was a really long post. I hope you use this though.
You want to make sure they have the tools to escape...but they need not be obvious.
They should be able to talk to their guards and fellow captives and begin effecting a role played escape.
In one scenario I was in the players were in seperate cells...I was a wizard and I was chained to a wall and gagged so I could not cast or talk! But the other players could and they were not as tightly secured as I was. The strong one was able to break his bonds and the door to his cell...then one other player further along from where the guard was stationed called for the guard. When the guard came to him, the free player came up behind him and overpowered him. With the keys we all got free from our cells but then the adventure really started with us escaping the keep and then the city...
My suggestion is to put the pieces in place, the guards, the cells, the prison...and work on a time table so that players can time their moves to the changing of guards or meals etc. but first they have to be paying attention to such details.
They should ask a lot of questions about their means of confinement, where is their gear, how many guards are there, how are they armed etc. All you have to do is be able to answer those questions and when they act, provide reasonable reactions from the guards.