The below musings are my own opinions. I don’t need people to agree, I just felt this worth sharing and perhaps start a healthy discussion on.
I find that capture RP has a light and dark side.
The light side:
It can bring incredible development to the character captured and the people doing the capturing. If done well.
The dark side:
It can leave the captive dissatisfied when not done well and even create toxicity and a lot of drama. It especially tends to create a lot of drama for the friends of the captive who now struggle and fight to try and break their friend or family member free and feel entirely helpless and excluded from any RP with very few to no possible rescue attempts.
What constitutes good capture RP?
Good capture RP is where both sides show respect for one another and collaborate. The captive should consider that they were nearly dead most likely when they were captured and that something bad may well be waiting for them at the end be it torture, enslavement or the possibility of perma-death (yes, we should all treat death as if it can be our last).
As the captive you have a responsibility to RP that you know you are in a predicament like that. I have seen captives insult their captors with childish banter, throw acid bombs or cast spells at them and do all sorts of things that make me wonder why they even agreed to capture RP in the first place (remember this is entirely of your own choosing).
As the captor you have a responsibility to make it engaging and fun for the captive while ensuring they don’t start to feel uncomfortable. In addition, you can choose to ensure that their friends and family members are engaged in some way, but you have no real obligation to. Your obligation is to the captive in the first place, just be mindful there is a whole group who are now feeling stressed and want to participate. Consider sending minions to keep them busy. But the captive agreed to be taken captive so now you gotta make sure they have the best experience. It’s okay to try and find out what their expectations are and you can do this without organising stuff OOCly.
Where it always goes wrong:
There are in my opinion a few things that repeatedly go wrong or are being done wrong with capture RP (I’m not trying to criticise anyone, I’m just sharing my personal observations over the past few years)
1) The side of the captives storm the proverbial castle too quickly putting unneeded pressure on the captors which usually leads to unsatisfied experiences by the captive. I have seen rescue attempts being done as quickly as 5 minutes after someone is captured. Good capture RP can take several hours to actually have any meaningful impact.
2) capture RP is incredibly stressful for the friends/family of the captive. There is the expectation from others and from themselves that they must retrieve their loved one as soon as possible and goading from the other side certainly doesn’t help with that. Many players have an inherent must win mentality which leads to this behaviour. But the captive and captors should be mindful and considerate how their RP may impact those around them.
3) boring, repetitive and unimaginative
As the captor you really don’t have many options as to what you can do with a captive once you have them. I feel this is in part due to mechanical limitations but also because I feel some captors lack the imagination. What’s the point capturing someone if you’re just going to kill them again at the end? And is it really fun to capture people every week or twice a week to ransom them back for millions of gold? I’ll be honest, it’s a lot easier to be imaginative with your captive’s fate as a bad guy since you have so many more options. As a good guy you’re incredibly limited to your options. Even so, I do encourage people to be as creative as possible when holding the life of a captive. You will find that many people who agree to be rezzed or taken captive are also likely to agree to have something nasty done to them like a curse or spell.
4) be reasonable
Even as a good guy, think about making an agreement with them for a favour or perhaps get them to give you information in exchange for their freedom, have them spy for you, make them do community service, get them to steal something from a House or faction they work for. Etc etc. you have options even here. Try to think about what would create further opportunities for RP. Of course, if they completely don’t cooperate then they choose not to leave you any options for creativity. But at least you tried. As the captor you should also be flexible and reasonable when making demands to negotiate someone’s freedom. Asking them to make a significant change or decision outside of their control, asking them to pay millions of gold for someone’s freedom, these things are not reasonable and you are putting both the captive and their loved ones in a situation where they can all only walk away feeling disappointed and dissatisfied.
5) collaborate
Ask yourself why you want to do capture RP. Both as the captive and captor. What do you expect to get out of this? If it isn’t for character development and story, should you really be doing this? Why not just kill them, bash them and be done with it? If it just to flaunt your victory over the other side, then you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. If you’re getting captured because your buddies are on the opposing side and you enjoy RPing with them, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. If you don’t seek to collaborate in this and make sure everyone has fun (and that includes the captive’s loved ones), then why are you even doing it?
When I talk about captivity RP, I’m not referring to arrests etc. I’m talking about capturing actual enemies after raids or inner conflict wars.
Constantly kidnapping people and selling them back to their loved ones for millions of gold is unimaginative, agreeing to capture RP and then insulting your captors or throwing bombs or spells at them after you (nearly) died is immersion breaking.
I have felt this topic in need of discussion for a long time. I apologise as well if some of this may seem direct or blunt (I’m Dutch.. I can’t help it. But trust me, I’m not trying to insult anyone).