Ideas for having my players get captured within the very early campaign

I am starting a new campaign soon with some friends, and I have been looking around for a good opening adventure. I found Greger's Grotto, which is exactly the sort of thing I want to put them through. If you are not familiar with it, the adventure begins with the players enslaved, a bag pulled off their heads, and being forced to fight in an arena against other captives.

Rather than starting them as slaves straight away, I thought it might be more fun to let them begin as normal level 1 characters in a town somewhere. They can wander about for a day, get to know each other, settle into the world, and then be captured and dropped into Greger's Grotto. I am unsure how best to handle that transition.

One option is to have the town attacked and make the fight completely unwinnable, ending with their capture. The problem is that forcing them into a fight they cannot win might feel harsh, and there is always the chance they actually manage to win it. On the other hand, I really like the idea of messing with them early on and letting them believe they have lost the very first fight of the campaign.

Any thoughts?

This idea comes up sometimes, and the short answer is, you can’t. There’s no satisfying way to let the characters move around in the world and be taken prisoner. It’s just a complete railroad. Even at level 1, the players will want to fight, and putting them in a fight they can’t possibly win or escape from is just un-fun. (And at that point, why are the players even there. You can just send them an email telling them what happened and have the same result.)

That’s probably why this adventure you’re describing starts with them already captured. Doing it off screen before things start is an option that can work and still be fun. But once the dice start to roll, you don’t want to force them into situations. 

...and being forced to fight in an arena against other captives.

No PvP for me.  while you do not say this, it sounds as if that is where it will lead to.  If the group wants a PvP situation, then great, but as a surprise, this sounds like no fun.  If you discuss it with them ahead of time, starting all ready captured is a great way to start this.

Quote from Xalthu >>

This idea comes up sometimes, and the short answer is, you can’t. There’s no satisfying way to let the characters move around in the world and be taken prisoner. It’s just a complete railroad. Even at level 1, the players will want to fight, and putting them in a fight they can’t possibly win or escape from is just un-fun. (And at that point, why are the players even there. You can just send them an email telling them what happened and have the same result.)

That’s probably why this adventure you’re describing starts with them already captured. Doing it off screen before things start is an option that can work and still be fun. But once the dice start to roll, you don’t want to force them into situations. 

 The best way to do this the way you're proposing  is, during session zero, tell your players what the campaign is about. Tell them "you're going to be forced into an arena to fight the other combatants. The adventure starts with you guys as adventurers in a town who then get captured. There's going to be a big fight in the town where the party is eventually kidnapped... how's that sound?"

If you get buy-in from your players, and they all agree they want to play through that initial combat where they get captured, they might even get more invested in giving their character that tragic early start and kind of work with you to make the capture more dramatic if they're into that story for their character. 

One way you could make the combat meaningful for the players is maybe the kidnappers are assessing potential arena combatants, and how well the party fights before getting taken down determines which division they're put in. Maybe the better fighters get better weapons, better quarters, or some other benefit, while those who go down in the first round are basically just lion chow, given no weapons, armor, or training. 

Basically, it can work, but ONLY if you have that buy-in. You might think it ruins the surprise, but if you spring this on your players, they will hate it. 

Quote from Character77006 >>

...and being forced to fight in an arena against other captives.

No PvP for me.  while you do not say this, it sounds as if that is where it will lead to.  If the group wants a PvP situation, then great, but as a surprise, this sounds like no fun.  If you discuss it with them ahead of time, starting all ready captured is a great way to start this.

 It's not inherently a PvP scenario. They might need to fight in groups allowing the party to stay together, and all the other combatants could be npc's or even monsters captured by the people running the collesium. 

Quote from CharlesThePlant >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

This idea comes up sometimes, and the short answer is, you can’t. There’s no satisfying way to let the characters move around in the world and be taken prisoner. It’s just a complete railroad. Even at level 1, the players will want to fight, and putting them in a fight they can’t possibly win or escape from is just un-fun. (And at that point, why are the players even there. You can just send them an email telling them what happened and have the same result.)

That’s probably why this adventure you’re describing starts with them already captured. Doing it off screen before things start is an option that can work and still be fun. But once the dice start to roll, you don’t want to force them into situations. 

 The best way to do this the way you're proposing  is, during session zero, tell your players what the campaign is about. Tell them "you're going to be forced into an arena to fight the other combatants. The adventure starts with you guys as adventurers in a town who then get captured. There's going to be a big fight in the town where the party is eventually kidnapped... how's that sound?"

If you get buy-in from your players, and they all agree they want to play through that initial combat where they get captured, they might even get more invested in giving their character that tragic early start and kind of work with you to make the capture more dramatic if they're into that story for their character. 

One way you could make the combat meaningful for the players is maybe the kidnappers are assessing potential arena combatants, and how well the party fights before getting taken down determines which division they're put in. Maybe the better fighters get better weapons, better quarters, or some other benefit, while those who go down in the first round are basically just lion chow, given no weapons, armor, or training. 

Basically, it can work, but ONLY if you have that buy-in. You might think it ruins the surprise, but if you spring this on your players, they will hate it. 

 I see what you’re saying, and that certainly makes it better. But still, at that point why not just skip to being prisoners. You’re just forcing the players to pantomime their characters getting captured. Why play through the sequence when the characters can not possibly have an impact on what’s happening?

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from CharlesThePlant >>

Quote from Xalthu >>

This idea comes up sometimes, and the short answer is, you can’t. There’s no satisfying way to let the characters move around in the world and be taken prisoner. It’s just a complete railroad. Even at level 1, the players will want to fight, and putting them in a fight they can’t possibly win or escape from is just un-fun. (And at that point, why are the players even there. You can just send them an email telling them what happened and have the same result.)

That’s probably why this adventure you’re describing starts with them already captured. Doing it off screen before things start is an option that can work and still be fun. But once the dice start to roll, you don’t want to force them into situations. 

 The best way to do this the way you're proposing  is, during session zero, tell your players what the campaign is about. Tell them "you're going to be forced into an arena to fight the other combatants. The adventure starts with you guys as adventurers in a town who then get captured. There's going to be a big fight in the town where the party is eventually kidnapped... how's that sound?"

If you get buy-in from your players, and they all agree they want to play through that initial combat where they get captured, they might even get more invested in giving their character that tragic early start and kind of work with you to make the capture more dramatic if they're into that story for their character. 

One way you could make the combat meaningful for the players is maybe the kidnappers are assessing potential arena combatants, and how well the party fights before getting taken down determines which division they're put in. Maybe the better fighters get better weapons, better quarters, or some other benefit, while those who go down in the first round are basically just lion chow, given no weapons, armor, or training. 

Basically, it can work, but ONLY if you have that buy-in. You might think it ruins the surprise, but if you spring this on your players, they will hate it. 

 I see what you’re saying, and that certainly makes it better. But still, at that point why not just skip to being prisoners. You’re just forcing the players to pantomime their characters getting captured. Why play through the sequence when the characters can not possibly have an impact on what’s happening?

 It's like a campaign hot start. The aim of playing through the combat isn't to win the combat, it's to introduce the characters. You can roleplay, you get to make a lot of snap decisions that might inform later on inter-character dynamics, and again you could have how they do in the combat have some bearing on their status in the arena-- but that would just be icing. 

I've just played in a lot of games where session zero comes along and the DM asks "so do you wanna roleplay how your characters meet or just start out already together?" and the other players just say "start as a group, that's easier" as a matter of course. This would be an interesting way to switch it up, if done right and the players were on board for where the story would go in that first fight. 

Not to mention it gives people a little tutorial kinda level where they get to try out their characters abilities right off the bat, show them off a little, and get a feel for them. Also, so many DM's have trouble gaging when a combat is too hard or unbalanced, and the only way to get a read on that is to run one to know what it feels like. This also gives the DM a risk-free way to get a feel for how the party plays together and then gives them a sense of where the line is between challenge and futility-- all the while the DM doesn't have to worry about killing anyone since the bad guys are just fighting to incapacitate and capture. 

CharlesThePlant is absolutely right about introducing this in session zero. It's pretty important to get player buy-in on "you're going to start out this power fantasy game stuck in a situation in which you have no agency." Also, some players are going to get turned off right away when the topic of slavery comes up, so it's important to bring this up in session zero to find out if everyone's okay with it or if this is going to be the thing that ruins the game for someone.

Assuming everyone is on board, then start the adventure in media res with the party already having been captured. The explanation for how they got captured could be as simple as "the food you ate at the tavern was poisoned/enchanted/whatever."  Have the villain (or a villain) explain the situation to the party and throw them in a cell for the night before the bad stuff starts the next day. When they're in the cell have them start telling each other (and/or an NPC who is also stuck in the cell with them) about their pasts. As each starts telling their story, transition to a flashback in which that player gets to play a brief scene or two and do some social and/or combat rolls before they wrap up their flashback. Get ideas for what to base the flashback scenes on by asking some questions during session zero. Everybody gets to learn a bit about each others' characters without feeling like they were free to explore the world and then got railroaded into captivity.

If you design a scene in which the players are confronted with an unwinnable fight, and you think the only logical thing that could possibly happen is that they get captured... you are very very very very wrong. Most of your players will fight to the death. Especially at level one! For starters, their hit point max is no bigger than their shoe size. Secondly, they haven't yet spent enough time with their character to get too emotionally attached to them. And thirdly, they will suspect that you must have hidden some secret clue in the scene that will be the key to their surprise victory. And they will exhaust their hit points trying to find it. And when they don't find it, they will be very unhappy.

It may be better to simply be honest with your players before you even begin the first session. Just watch "Gladiator" together and then tell them your idea. Tell them they're all prisoners of some big City, maybe they're POWs, or heretics, or criminals of some sort. And they have all been sentenced to fight to their deaths in the Colosseum, for the entertainment of the crowd. But if they're clever, and lucky, and work together, they might be able to survive the fight, escape the arena, and escape the city. That way, you start off with a fight that they can win, which gives them not just purpose but hope. That's immediately followed by a chase scene, which is always a chaotic hoot. And if they make it to the docks they steal a ship and sail off into the sunset.

So rather than starting off getting beaten down and demoralized, they start off with a win, and a ship, and a bit of trauma-bonding. 

Just my 2 c.p.

It's not PvP. The captives they fight against are NPCs.

Give them a fight that's hard, but winnable. Village attacked by bandits or whatever fits your fancy. If they win, through tactics and maybe a bit of luck, give them a breadcrumb trail to the arena and capture some important NPC. That way, they can go and investigate, and maybe get captured there, but it feels more natural, and if they lose, then they are forced into the arena anyway.