First, of course, we must define "escape." For the purposes of this write-up, I'm using "escape" broadly, to refer to any situation in which characters leave the game alive, preemptively, against the stated desires of the game's runners. This means that I'm including rescues and so on, though not alternate win conditions such as the Ten Kill Release in TV. An "escape attempt" is an attempt to achieve such a result, regardless of success. Escape attempts may be strictly in-character (with the handler of the character who is trying to escape aware that the attempt will ultimately fail) or also out-of-character (with the handler attempting and hoping for their character to survive).
Escape is an interesting subject, because it's simultaneously an upending of the normal game concept and a fundamental component of it. For the most part, the focus of games is on the inevitable whittling-down of the cast to one, but at the same time the origin point for all of this—Battle Royale—prominently features multiple escape attempts. It's also been a bit of a hot button topic for the community since before I was part of it, and has been approached in many ways. I've been lucky enough to have at least a bit of a behind the scenes view of all of the successful escapes to date, so I'll be briefly talking about what did and did not work in each, and why.
The ultimate goal here is to better equip the reader to understand what makes specific methods of enacting escape-adjacent plotlines succeed or fail from a game-runner perspective, ideally to help them interact with the process while hosting their own games (or to better understand why staff choose to act how they do, if they're on the escapee side of things).
I think, to start with, we can broadly lop escapes into two categories: handler-driven and staff-driven. A handler-driven escape is one where the impetus behind the attempt comes primarily from handlers playing the game; they work with the resources their characters have, and from that they try to effect their characters' escape from the game. A staff-driven escape, by contrast, sees the core resources and action for the escape coming into play in a preordained way, at the hands of staff and as part of the metaplot of the version.
Another useful distinction is that some escapes are exclusive (allowing only a limited number of characters, possibly characters specifically selected based on some criteria, to survive) while others are inclusive (allowing a broader range and number of survivors).
Finally, some escapes are hidden (meaning that their precise mechanics and, in some cases, existence, are kept secret for a time) while others are open (meaning that the fact that an escape attempt is happening, and in some cases even the precise details of it, are publicly known).
All of these are spectrums, of course. Every escape will have some measure of staff involvement (if for no other reason than that staff control the metaplot and will have to write/approve the reactions), every escape will let some (but not all) characters in, and every escape will have certain information disclosed while other pieces are not. But the broad categories, I think, will be useful concepts.
I'm going to approach these topics now via a discussion of the successful escapes to date. The notable successful (with a few wiggly bits) escapes have been, in chronological order:
V3
Evo* (though this was never seen through to completion)
V4
PV3P
TV3
Supers
There are certain points of commonality between them, and certain points of marked divergence.
V3
The first escape to be successful, the V3 Escape, is an example of a staff-driven escape attempt. It's also generally considered one of the least successful escapes in terms of its impact on the version and overall plot.
The V3 Escape was a plot element devised by staff prior to the launch of V3. To bring it to fruition, staff made a number of adjustments to typical game protocol, including applying certain characters with specific skills and back stories, and then assigning those characters specific weapons to enable the escape rather than rolling them weapons at random. Roll protocol was, as I recall, also tweaked at a few points, with characters involved in the escape protected from rolls during certain spans as they entered the plotline, without the site as a whole being aware of that (I could be misremembering though; it's been a while).
The V3 Escape was an invitation-based plotline, and thus one of the most conspicuously exclusive escapes ever. Staff selected a number of handlers who had been around for some time and were viewed as trustworthy, and then played out the escape in a set of hidden forums with them. New handlers and unpopular handlers were excluded, not only from participating in the escape, but even from reading (or indeed knowing about) it until it was complete, making it also one of the most hidden escapes ever conducted.
This ultimately resulted in a number of the escape's biggest problems. While ambition ran high at the start, handlers lost focus and interest, and a number of key characters went inactive and were killed off for real. Whole aspects of the plot were jettisoned, and in the end it covered only about a third of the ground it was meant to. The effects of the escape on the version at large were also not great, as characters "went inactive" to enter it secretly, which led to a number of the most high profile characters just vanishing from the story for over a year. The characters built for the escape were given honest attempts at characterization, but it was hard to wring consistent pathos from characters who were, at their core, plot devices... and it felt bad for the entire plotline to hinge on these characters who meant nothing to the version as a whole.
In the end, the V3 Escape was concluded with a fade-out, the fates of most of the cast still up in the air, then revealed much later to the site as a whole (in fact, a couple of them still have not had their fates officially confirmed). While decently well-received at first, the V3 Escape fell sharply in overall esteem, partially because of the exclusivity component and partially because, as an entirely staff-driven affair, it took away much of the agency and protagonist credibility of the actual characters the roleplay was about. And its hidden nature meant that by the time it was revealed, much of the site had moved on (or was new and lacked context for the events).
Evo
The Evo Escape is perhaps the strangest escape of all time, in that it never actually properly happened. SOTF: Evolution was the first handler-run AU, entirely free of all the restrictions and safeguards applied to those nowadays. It saw twenty character injected with super serum and also nanobots, and told that if they stepped out of line the nanobots would explode.
The catch was, this wasn't true. There were nanobots, but they only stunned the characters, allowing for them to be collected and processed later. This meant that any character who "died" in a Danger Zone was not actually dead. This was not revealed to the handlers, though, except through extremely vague allusions hidden in the metaplot writings.
In a certain way, this removal of "dead" characters can itself be viewed as a staff-driven escape, but I would argue that it broadly would not count on that alone, as the implication was that anyone recovered in that way would be vivisected. On the other hand, there was a handler-driven thing too (and, full disclosure, it was mine, taking advantage of one of the very rare situations in which I had no staff say or insider information). This escape plan saw a character issuing an ultimatum to the figures running the game, offering to help them—indeed to join them—in exchange for her life being spared.
Interestingly, this is the genesis of the later V5 Escape Rule; I was asked if I'd be willing to commit without knowing if the plan would work or not, and only told how it'd fare (and that the nanobots didn't explode) after agreeing to those conditions.
But this wasn't all there was to it. You see, another character also jumped into a Danger Zone, but with no plan or idea of engaging with escape in any way, instead just angling for an easy death scene. But she was also rolled into the plan by staff, because of proximity more or less.
In this way, the Evo Escape was a very unusual blend of hard handler-driven and hard staff-driven escape at the same time. In hindsight, the staff-driven aspect feels really bad... especially since the character in question was actually rolled! Oh, and it also would've allowed both of the finalists to survive, rather than just one winner... again, a staff-driven escape component.
Of course, that leads into a whole different can of worms. The Evo Escape is the reason the V3 escape is only "one of" the most hidden escapes ever. The Evo Escape was hidden even more, taking its cues directly and intentionally from V3 and the siren promise of "surprise." As part of this, the character attempting the escape was "rolled" (actually, she was not, but this was before logs of any sort were posted so nobody questioned it), and the escape post itself was missing the chunk that actually detailed that an escape was attempted! Instead a fairly obvious gap where something happened was there, but the specifics were left nebulous, suggesting that it could just be a death.
This, then, is why the Evo Escape was unknown until I spilled the beans. It was buried between the lines, the staff of Evo vanished, and the other handlers involved ultimately didn't reveal it in the conclusion of the version.
As to whether the Evo Escape was inclusive or exclusive... that's a messy question, but I lean towards grouping it as exclusive. My own part, the handler-driven one, was absolutely exclusive—a ticket for one. The staff-driven section I would say is broadly exclusive in that eligibility was based on unknown factors that handlers could not possibly predict, or on being in the final two.
The Evo Escape was tons of fun in the moment, but my view of its mechanics is, with hindsight, quite dim. I think that the secrecy of it is its cardinal sin; messing with rolls feels especially bad, editing posts in this specific way feels less than great (hints or no), and the opaque operations at play were less clever foreshadowing and more of a swerve with some vague hints underlying it. Letting the plotline cancel a roll, or subvert the choice of Endgame, feels bad when those offers were extended seemingly arbitrarily. The core of how staff interfaced with me during the process was mostly solid, but everything else leaves it perhaps a blessing that it was revealed only through a retrospective OOC post.
V4
The V4 Rescue is the first escape I was involved with from the staff side of things while it was ongoing, and it took a number of significant lessons from its predecessors. The V4 Rescue saw STAR turn up to challenge the terrorists, ultimately assassinating their leader while also rescuing almost thirty students from the game.
This was the first wide-scale escape to be generally handler-driven. Staff had decided prior to V4 that STAR would attack the island and kill Danya, but this being leveraged into a rescue as well came down to the actions of a handful of characters. One managed to disable her collar and then do damage to the infrastructure supporting the broadcast and operation of the game, forcing the terrorists to adjust how the collars functioned on the fly. Another walked a group of students through figuring out how to restore power to a computer on the island, allowing them to retrieve the island's location and then broadcast it in code to the world outside. Together, these things allowed a STAR spy who had infiltrated the terrorist organization to share information on how to stop the collars from being detonated en masse, and where to go to retrieve students.
The STAR rescue force arrived at roughly the point where 30% of the game remained, soon after the escape plotlines reached their conclusions. STAR announced that they would carry students out of the game... except for a number of students who had killed without justification. In-character, this was done to cause damage to the game's operation, assuming it couldn't be destroyed all at once. Out-of-character, this was an evolution of a V3-era plan for a possible V4 Rescue, while I'll discuss below.
The Rescue had specific rules, but anyone who met the requirements could participate. This made the V4 Rescue the most inclusive escape to date by a wide margin. That said, there are aspects of it that still ended up exclusive, some of which I might do differently with the benefit of hindsight.
Perhaps the inevitable point of exclusivity was the stage of the game at which the Rescue arrived. With only about a quarter of the cast remaining, a large number of handlers had been eliminated already. While twenty-nine survivors is the most of any version, there were still dozens of handlers who couldn't participate who would surely have loved to (V4 was big). Had the Rescue been more thoroughly staff-driven, the late arrival would've been semi-inexcusable for this reason, but tied as it was to handler actions, that's kind of how the cookie crumbles.
The exclusion list, on the other hand, feels bad in retrospect because it was a blindside. Handlers had no way of knowing that writing killers would see them barred from a cool plot event (and from having their characters survive), and several handlers only had characters on the exclusion list left alive. While I stand by the core idea from a plot perspective, if I were to do it over nowadays, I would have one of the STAR rescue squads simply ignore the list, allowing handlers of killers to still let their characters survive if they so desired (and introducing all sorts of fun new drama).
The V4 Rescue was also the most open escape event to date. The lead-up to it was all conducted in public, with handlers able to read (and interact with) both of the escape groups on the island, and even some of the terrorists sent in to deal with the problem. The STAR mole plotline took place in the announcements, with aspects of its direction pretty directly disclosed, and while the actual arrival of the rescue operation was a surprise, everything relating to it was conducted in public.
A lot of this was a direct reaction to the V3 (and, to a lesser extent, Evo) escapes. Where V3 was staff-driven, exclusive, and hidden, V4 swerved to being handler-driven, (comparatively) inclusive, and open. The V4 Rescue was much better received and defined the meta for what escapes could look like when they worked out... and, while there are some little quirks and regrets relating to it, I'd say that the framework and theory holds up to this day, with echoes in more recent versions (especially Supers).
Now, back to the trivia promised above: there was at one point a plan for a drastically different V4 Rescue. In late V3, the idea was floated that STAR would kill Danya at the final ten of V4, rescue everyone who wanted to leave, and abandon the psychos to fight it out.
This would've been terrible for a number of reasons. First off, it would be back to being entirely staff-driven, with no agency or interaction with the plot for the characters (the stars of the game). By coming so late, it would be just as exclusive as V3, simply replacing the hand-picked selection with whoever randomly made it that far without getting rolled. I suppose it would've been kind of open, to its vague credit... though possibly not foreshadowed or set up meaningfully. And that's not even touching on how the idea of "psychos" was semi-obsolete by V4. Even by the middle of V4 Pregame, staff could recognize how bad of an idea it was for all the above reasons, and it was dropped, replaced with the Danya assassination that eventually morphed into the actual V4 Rescue.
PV3P
Where the V4 Rescue was an attempt to learn from the mistakes of the V3 Escape and use those lessons to do something completely different, the PV3P Rescue was an attempt to do something akin to the V3 Rescue but get it right.
PV3P (Program V3 Prologue) was a whole version pitched with a simple concept: halfway through the game, an external force would arrive, disrupt the proceedings, and rescue most of the surviving characters. Handlers were told this before they even made a character—were in fact given this information with the very announcement of the version. This was part of what made PV3P the single most open escape ever to occur. Additionally, PV3P featured no rolls and no activity enforcement. Any handler who wanted a character to survive could get that, no chance of being messed up by dice or inactivity. In this way, it was also the most inclusive escape ever.
Why such a direct, open setup? Basically, this was the only way to make a strictly staff-driven escape palatable. Normally, the problem with staff-driven escapes is that they come across as unfair. It feels bad to be excluded from something simply because of bad luck, and even more so if it all comes as a hard swerve from the game's premise. While escapes are an important character motivation to have in play, generally out-of-character they're a bonus; handlers sign up to play a death game, and if that suddenly is no longer the game, it feels bad to those who counted on it and also bad to those who want to participate in the escape but aren't able to.
PV3P had hiccups, for sure. It went way longer than expected, though much of this was due to handlers becoming invested in it (and due to an unexpected site relocation in the middle). Activity came and went, the rules were a touch confusing at points, and we were stricter than we had to be about certain subjects (kills, say). But the rescue part itself went down really smoothly, and while post-game activity was pretty low, it was generally a positive experience for those who participated (as well as being the biggest Program version by posts, words, characters, whatever). Where there were problems, they weren't really with the escape aspect, but rather the surrounding experiments.
If I was to do it again... I might change some of the details, but the core design (maximum openness, maximum inclusivity) are still I think fundamental to making a wholly staff-driven escape not suck.
TV3
The TV3 Escape is still pretty new, and in fact some of the nitty-gritty details have yet to be publicly revealed. The core of it is that a number of characters made attempts to work out how to escape the game, but in the end only one figured out the trick.
Escapes in the TV universe work slightly differently than in other versions. For many TV versions, staff builds in a flaw for the collars, a trick that characters can discover through investigation. This mirrors the in-universe introduction of flaws by the show's producers, who see escapes as good viewing material (as long as they're not too destructive). That said, while the ultimate mechanic behind the escape was seeded by staff, this was very much a handler-driven escape. TV1 and TV2 also had these same opportunities, but nobody engaged with them enough to figure them out, so no escape occurred. TV3 could've easily been the same.
TV3 also ended up one of the most exclusive escapes, as only one character made it out. In this case, this was due partially to the actions of the other characters, and partially due to rolls. No other characters were with the escapee when she finally figured everything out, and so nobody else benefited from her discovery. Other characters pursued the same goal earlier in the game, but were all rolled out before the fateful breakthrough was made. With a different set of rolls, TV3 could've easily seen half a dozen characters escape instead. That said, there would always have been a certain level of exclusivity to it, in that the producers would've shut down the escape avenue before it could cancel or empty the game. In effect, there was an aspect of first-come, first-served.
The TV3 Escape was largely open. The presence of flaws in the TV collars is well known out-of-character, everyone got the same information, and there were even a handful of hints seeded throughout the version, most notably in a pair of inactive deaths.
Of all the escapes I've been involved in from a staff side, the TV3 one is the one where there really isn't anything about the setup and progression I'd change. The process worked like it was supposed to, in a way that fit the version. Only a small slice of the version benefited from it, but that was due to luck and the choices they made; everyone had an equal opportunity, which is what's important.
Supers
The Supers Escape I just saw some of the framework for in the course of approving the AU; I played no part in running it. That said, it's a really interesting implementation of a lot of the theory we've discussed previously.
The Supers escape saw a force of villains in over their heads lose track of one of the characters in the game, who walked out of the arena at a height of a thousand feet or so (Supers being so named as all the characters had superpowers). He went a ways before encountering a vigilante trying to hunt down the villains, and pointed this person towards the game. This outsider then arrived in the wake of several other break-outs, and engaged the game-runners long enough for everyone left alive to flee the arena, bringing the game to a premature end.
I rate the Supers escape as mostly handler-driven. Like TV3, there were tools available for handlers to use, including the presence of the vigilante, but their use was not guaranteed. Had nobody made a run for it, or had the escapee not directed the interloper towards the game, things would have proceeded as normal. Staff offered an opportunity for an escape, but handlers were the ones who made it happen.
Supers was also relatively open. The presence of the force that saved the students was established early on, and every aspect of his interaction with the first escapee was played out in a public space. So, too, were the individual escape plots various other characters engaged in.
I'd put the Supers Escape at a midpoint that's just slightly more exclusive than inclusive, in that characters who escaped under their own power did so in small cadres, and the mass break-out landed right near the end of the game—one roll before Endgame, had everything proceeded as normal. While this is proportionately not that different from where the V4 Rescue fell (~23% for Supers vs. ~31% for V4), the smaller number of characters in the version (and lack of multiple characters per handler) meant that a smaller chunk of handlers got to take part.
That said, in case it's not obvious by this point, I don't think exclusivity is in any way inherently bad. By and large, I really really like the mechanics, setup, and execution of the Supers Escape. I think it did a great job of being an element of the metaplot that reacted to the actions of the characters and let them influence the course of the game, and it's something that would've never happened without player input. It takes after the V4 Rescue, but with a few dials tweaked to better enable such a thing to occur, and without one of the more frustrating aspects of V4 (the exclusion list swerve).
Okay, cool! That's an overview of all the successful escapes. But what does that mean? Or, more specifically, what does it mean for a hypothetical future game?
If it's not obvious from the above, I have some pretty strong opinions on each of the spectrums.
Handler-Driven Vs. Staff-Driven:
I think that, by default, escapes should be handler-driven. Handler-driven escapes are good game-running because they allow handlers to influence the fates of their own characters. They involve the players directly in the story, giving them agency and letting them do cool things. This is, at the end of the day, what RPing (and collaborative writing) is all about.
Staff-driven escapes are an absolute minefield, with the potential to suck on a narrative level, create significant out-of-character bad feelings, or both. A staff-driven escape steals the opportunities for coolness that could otherwise go to player characters. More than that, in most versions handlers are actively attempting (and likely failing to execute) escape attempts. If a handler has previously been told no (or, god forbid, had a character die over a failed attempt), to have an escape then arrive as a freebie is a slap in the face. If a handler has been rolled out of the version, having a staff-driven escape attempt feels horrible, because they're excluded by random luck. And, worst of all, a staff-driven escape often completely changes the premise of the communal activity, violating the implicit social contract. It's like agreeing to go swimming, turning up to your friends' house in your swimsuit, and then being driven to a bowling alley and told that—surprise!—bowling was the host's plan all along, and they implied otherwise because they thought it'd be more exciting that way. You might like bowling. Some people might even be cool with the swerve! But it's a jerk move to pull unannounced.
To make a staff-driven escape work, it has to be super open and super inclusive. Tell people you're going bowling. Let them bring their bowling shoes. And don't make anyone sit in the car because they're not dressed right.
Inclusive Vs. Exclusive:
Generally speaking, I don't think there's a wrong answer here, but it does change the character of an escape. By default, most escapes are exclusive, in that they benefit only the characters who display the initiative (and take on the risk) of attempting them. I think that's totally fine. Escape doesn't have to shake the whole game, and indeed it usually shouldn't.
Inclusive escapes tend to be much more disruptive to the game. They're big fun, but much more work and require careful handling. Sometimes an inclusive escape really is the logical result of a character's actions. If someone manages to blow up the game-runners' HQ, killing them all, that's that. I'm a lot more charitable towards this if it's handler-driven than if it's staff-driven (unless, again, it's all known well in advance), because then it's a huge cool moment springing from the organic development of the game. But it'll change things, and some people won't like it.
My advice here: know what the handlers are trying, know what the effects on your game will be, and think everything through. I fat all possible, leave an option for handlers to continue with the core activity/game if that's what they prefer, even if most people will likely leave. And, for the umpteenth time, never run an exclusive staff-driven escape.
Open Vs. Hidden:
Generally speaking, I think the more open an escape is, the better.
Hidden escapes can be fun under very specific circumstances, but I think that hidden aspects work best when handled sparingly. If something's a secret for a couple weeks, or if there's a brief moment of twist, that can be a big highlight. If a character did something really cool, it's fun to let them have their moment in the spotlight to do their reveal! Small aspects of escapes being hidden can be awesome! But on the whole, everyone should know the score so they can plan accordingly.
By contrast, the worst thing that can really happen with an open escape is that everyone sees it coming a mile away, and guess what? Versions spend a lot more time being completed and in the past than they do being played in the present. People will be spoiled anyways.
A nice middle ground for handler-driven escapes that often gets the best of both worlds is to make it clear that something is probably happening, but to then reveal the exact specifics as they play out. This lets the handlers and characters have more control over the flow of their narrative. The more staff-driven an escape is, the less room there is for hidden aspects, and the more frustrating improperly-telegraphed twists become.
Two Good Examples:
1. A version in announced with the premise that it tells the story of a version that aborts halfway when a horrible accident causes the game-runners' ship to sink. Handlers may submit up to three characters, and are told that at the halfway point, anyone left alive lives. Rolls are conducted by handler instead of by character, with rolled handlers choosing who of their cast dies, and any handler with only one character cannot be rolled.
This version is staff-driven escape, but compensates for that by being very open (the escape is known from the start and is the core pitch, everyone knows how and when the game will end) and largely inclusive (everyone gets at least one character—presumably their favorite—out alive). It still adds some traditional chance/SOTF dynamics with rolls, and some handlers will get to keep more than one character as a survivor, but everyone knows that stuff from the outset too.
2. A fairly typical version is set on a peninsula, with a large electric fence around the arena and no collars for the students. A group bands together and sets up a tent to "camp" near the fence, but actually they use looted shovels to dig under the fence, making a run for it in the middle of the night so that they're hidden in the woods before the game-runners realize. The game-runners seal the hole and announce that anyone who comes within twenty feet of the fence will now be shot. All of this plays out publicly in threads.
This escape is handler-driven, with their creativity getting their characters out. It is generally open, with everything visible to the community at large. It's broadly exclusive, with only characters in the initial batch able to escape, but that's due to their own actions, and the game-runners simply take logical steps to prevent recurrence. And it's inclusive in that anyone could have joined the escape group before its success was known if they felt like it.
Two Bad Examples:
1. A version runs along as normal, with occasional teasers in the announcement fluff that a group of navy seals is stalking the villains. When the game is 80% complete, the navy seals bust down the door, shoot all the bad guys, and save the remaining students.
This is terrible for a number of reasons. First off, the plot is resolved with no player agency—the handlers are made spectators to their own characters' fates, for no particular reason. It's the worst sort of staff-driven escape, one that privileges staff interests over the collaborative project that is the game, trivializing the story everyone came to tell in favor of one run by a small group.
It's also exclusive in a big way. While there's no actual list of who is and isn't allowed in, landing this so late in the game guarantees that most handlers won't get to participate. Moreover, based on rolls, some handlers may have many characters survive, while the majority will have none, and will be locked out of engaging with the plot.
Finally, while the setup makes a pretense of being open, nothing exists to lead the handlers to expect such a fundamental betrayal of the pitch they signed up for. This is the sort of thing that really must be communicated out-of-character before the game... if not directly (but it really should be direct) then at least with a "Hey, this game is going to have a huge twist, and you should be ready for it to be different from what we're saying."
There's a reason this premise has been more or less the go-to example of a terrible escape story across every staff team I've been involved with, from late V3 to the present day.
2. A version goes on as normal. Partway through, a character disables their collar through clever application of magnets (how do they work?) and steals a car from the mall parking garage to drive into the sunset. This is not known to the site at large, however; an entire fake scene is written where the character drives off but then their collar explodes and they die. Staff invite five of the most popular characters to also get their collars off using the same magnets, then drive off in a bus, which is also written as a fake-out death. Then the garage becomes a Danger Zone for the rest of the game. Six months later, it's revealed that the characters survived when a subforum detailing their road trip to New Jersey is opened for reading right as Endgame starts, and the fakeout deaths are explained as edited footage.
This is a handler-driven escape, but it's still quite dismal! It's exclusive, and the exclusivity is tied not to handlers involved with the plot, but to those staff liked. More than that, it being a hidden escape leaves the inevitable feeling like there's a cool kids' club that most of the game just isn't invited to, and that tends to leave most people feeling very left out. It also just straight up lies in a way that doesn't telegraph the possibility of deception in any way.
This has all the bones of something reasonable, but in favoring some characters over others for out-of-character reasons and being way too precious with information, it steps on a rake and falls flat on its face.
Escape Rules:
Finally, we'll talk about various escape rules, how they work, what they do, and why. We must, of course, start at the beginning of the codification of escape mechanics—with the V5 Escape rules.
This rule comes in strong and hard by giving the consequences of flubbing an escape attempt very real teeth: the death, unrolled, of the character attempting it.V5 Escape Rules wrote:1. Escape Reform
The method in which escapes are handled is being changed pretty drastically for V5. As usual, escape attempts are allowed. If you want to try one, send the staff a PM, detailing what your character wants to do, ideally step by step, as well as a list of all the characters involved.
Unlike in past versions, though, the staff will not be pointing out any flaws in the plan, aside from physical impossibilities. Should you choose to enact the plan, you will need to handle it step by step. After each step, SOTF_Help will let you know what happens, either by PM, or, if you do something that would result in your character's death, by posting such in your thread. At that point, you will get to write the death.
In short, what we're doing here is bringing realism to escape attempts. If your plan has flaws, it'll kill the character who is trying to implement it. Realistically, they wouldn't be able to try again if their first plan wasn't perfect. They'd get blown up. If your plan involves other characters, we will need a direct PM from each handler involved, stating that they are approving their character's involvement and potential death. Basically, escape plans now have a very heavy risk associated with them, so consider wisely before enacting them. Also, a note: security has been tightened, the collars improved, etc., so no method floated in V4 will work.
I wrote this rule in response to certain aspects of the V4 escape meta. Specifically, a number of handlers would come to staff with escape attempt after escape attempt. As soon as one was deemed impractical, they'd go back to the drawing board for a new one, using whatever information they gleaned from the previous denial to modify it. This meant staff was spending tons of time dealing with escape pitches, which were taking much more research to arbitrate than they were to create, and all the while handlers were extracting information their characters had no practical way to know.
The V5 rule was written in discussion with some of the more prominent V4 escape handlers (I specifically ran it by storyspoiler prior to pitching it to staff as a whole), and the general agreement was that it was tough but fair. That said, it has a few really specific things about it:
- It disincentivizes escape attempts. Full stop. This rule makes people try fewer escapes. That is, in fact, exactly what it is intended to do. It encourages handlers to really think hard, make sure they want to take the risk, and then take their best shot only when they don't think they can improve it any more. It moves the onus for endless research and workshopping onto the one making the attempt.
This served to both save staff a lot of time and also help the metaplot. By sheer weight of volume, endless escape attempt pitches created more escapes. But the threat of the game was lessened when every version had escapes, so this rule tried to narrow it to the best of the best by pairing a big old stick with the carrot of character survival. - It relies on trust. Staff's ruling is final. There's no appeals process, and the cost of failure is, again, singularly high. The rule works only if you believe that staff will fairly consider all attempts, and it relies on their competence and objectivity to do so.
- It streamlines things. Handlers ask questions/lay out the process as they go, and staff responds where necessary. There's much less back and forth needed than in the V4 days, with no need to nitpick endless minute details of the plan. Any given action is possible to try or it's not, and if it is possible to try you learn what happens when you try it.
These rules are an evolution of the V5 Escape rules, with a few major changes. Things are much more clearly structured, based on lessons learned in practice, and everything has detail that predicts and preempts questions.Mini Escape Rules wrote:Procedure for Collar-Related DeathsFor any collar-related deaths besides Danger Zone detonation, please consult the staff at least three days prior to the death deadline for approval, including a draft and explanation of the desired death. Staff try to make sure that collar deaths are handled consistently, and wish to have enough time to provide handlers with guidance when it comes to representing collar-related deaths.
Danger zones are an exception because their mechanisms are constant: a ten minute timer of escalating beeps followed by detonation unless specified otherwise in the setting information of a given version.
Supplies for Use in EscapesAny item you intend to have your character use as part of an escape attempt, no matter how seemingly-innocuous, needs to be approved for scrounging by staff. Moreover, you need to inform staff of your intentions to use the item in an escape attempt when securing permission. This will, generally speaking, not have any effect on whether or not the item is approved, except insofar as it allows staff to have a better idea of what's intended and whether or not the item would be available in the first place. Staff will not deny an item merely because a handler wishes to use it in an escape attempt, but may note that an item is unsuitable for a given attempt (for example, if a handler has a character who wishes to try to disassemble the collars, they may ask permission to scavenge a screwdriver. Staff, upon consulting, may rule that normal screwdrivers are available in the arena, but that the collars use minute enough workings that specialized equipment, such as jeweler's tools, is required to make any headway, and that such tools have not been left around).
There are situations in which this rule may be difficult to enforce, such as when a character scavenges an item with no eye towards escape, and then some other character later wishes to roll that item into their plan. Staff will usually allow the use of the item in such cases (or explain why it is unsuited). Nobody will be penalized in such cases. The same is true of items that are initially not intended for escape but that a handler later wishes to use. We do, however, require handlers to act in good faith, and should evidence of deception manifest the consequences will be severe, including, at a minimum, the denial of any escape plan built upon that deception, regardless of its other merits. The staff team is not the adversary of handlers or of attempted escapees—at least, not in any way except a narrative one. There is no room for guessing games in approaching escape attempts, and playing them will do nothing but hurt your ultimate chances.
Escape AttemptsCharacters may attempt to escape the game. This does not make them likely to succeed; in fact, even in the universes most amenable to escape, the odds are great that most attempts will fail.
Any escape attempt requires close consultation with staff. As soon as you start mulling the possibility of an escape attempt, you should open communications with staff. The earlier you do this, the better.
While some of you may be familiar with the dire risks associated with escape attempts on Main, Mini is not quite so punishing. There are still typically mechanisms in place to prevent the "go fish" method of escape (where a handler proposes endless escape plans until they eventually find one that works), but characters will not die in escape attempts unless the handler chooses so.
Escape is dealt with as follows in the primary three SOTF Mini universes:
Students participating in escapes remain on the rolling list (and thus subject to rolls, inactivity, card use, and the like) until such time as they are safely outside the grasp of hostile forces. In SOTF-TV this occurs fairly quickly and easily, while in SC and The Program students are very likely to be hunted down by those running the game even if they find some initial success.
- SOTF-TV is the universe most amenable to escapes. Escapees make for good viewing in many events, and escapes have an established place in the show's history. The producers often leave intentional flaws in collars to allow for the possibility of escapees, though typically if an escape has recently occurred the collars are made more secure for the next few seasons; there's no magic in escapes if they happen every time, after all.
The producers do not detonate collars of escapees unless forced to do so to protect the integrity of the overall game/show or unless attempted escapees push their luck and disrespect the situation they are in. The producers do, however, throw spanners into escape attempts, going out of their way to ensure any success is hard-won. They may shake up plans that at first fail by dislodging students from strongholds via Danger Zones, detonating captured collars students are attempting to dissect, and so forth.
In SOTF-TV, students can usually keep trying to escape after an initial failure. What they're most liable to lose in the attempt is time (as well as the element of surprise, raising the potential for hurdles introduced by the producers if they seem too comfortable).
Students in SOTF-TV need merely escape the arena to be allowed to go free; once a student is safely out of harm's way, the producers welcome them with open arms and see to their medical needs.- Second Chances is the universe most analogous to the Main SOTF universe. The game is run secretly, by a group of terrorists with a mysterious and vast network of resources. They have a major vested interest in preventing escapes, as any escapes threaten their ideological message and their own safety.
As such, the terrorists take quick and decisive action to stymie escape attempts, directing students to abort any problematic activities as a first recourse, but quickly resorting to detonating collars if need be. This means that characters effectively have one shot at escaping before they face severe scrutiny of the sort to render future attempts nigh-impossible. If your initial escape attempt is unsuccessful and not suitably undetected, staff are likely to declare that your character has attracted enough attention that further pursuit of escape will result in their execution by the terrorists. If your character's plan is such that their death would be its inevitable result at any stage, staff will note that and inform you that your character can't come up with an idea that won't get them killed; you will at this stage be disallowed from floating further plans for the character in question.
One of the biggest hurdles in SC is escaping the arena, as the terrorists favor isolated locations away from prying eyes. Students are still at risk until they manage to remove themselves from the terrorists' reach; merely disabling their collars and hiding in a Danger Zone is not sufficient to escape in SC.- The Program is the universe least conducive to escapes, as it not only operates with full support of the government and the majority of the public, like SOTF-TV, it is also prone to summary executions of persistently rebellious students like SC. While it may not feature quite the advanced security of SC, with the introduction of collars being a recent phenomenon, arenas in The Program are surrounded by trained military forces and any student who gets away is likely to spend the rest of their days as a fugitive from the government.
The runners of The Program act quickly and decisively to silence dissent, often intervening even in cases where rebellious students stand no real chance of causing damage to the game's integrity or operation. As such, much as is the case with SC, students may quickly blow their chances by drawing the attention of the government officials with a poorly-conceived plan, and students with a bad plan are liable to be barred from further attempts by staff even more quickly than in SC.
Students who somehow do escape the arena are still at risk for the foreseeable future, and will immediately find themselves the subject of a massive manhunt. While the arenas tend to be less isolated than those of SC, often situated on the mainland, the forces arrayed against any student who slips loose more than makes up for that small advantage. All of this make The Program the Mini universe least amenable to escapes, and plans here stand a very, very slim chance of finding success.
While generally speaking any handler is allowed to attempt escape with any character(s), staff are a slight exception. Staff are barred from spearheading any escape attempt in any game in which they are operating with insider knowledge. They are free to do as they please in any game where they lack such knowledge. While the most common such scenario is AUs in which the staff in question lack notable insider knowledge, it is possible for staff to be sequestered from information and decisions regarding escapes in a version at their request. Should this be the case, it will be noted publicly at the start of the version. At least half the staff team, including at least one of the admins, must be on the inside-knowledge-escape-committee for any version besides an AU.
Staff characters may join up with escape attempts spearheaded by non-staff if they so desire, so long as they do not leak any information or take any untoward actions. Should any misbehavior be discovered, it will be dealt with extremely harshly, likely through the dismissal of the staffer(s) in question. A staffer involved with an escape, even if not in the driving seat, must recuse themselves from any decisions regarding the success or failure of that attempt (though they may still offer their opinion in a non-voting capacity).
There are no restrictions on escape attempts designed intentionally to fail, though such attempts may complicate or render impossible future actual attempts at escape.
Collar-related deaths are controlled in order to make sure handlers are depicting the collars in a consistent way. This matters because handlers often use depictions of collar function in their own escape attempts; if someone shows a collar detonating when heated when actually staff have decided that the collars have a flaw that makes them deactivate when exposed to extreme temperatures, that death may screw up someone else's escape attempt by leading them to avoid the key.
At the same time, the most common collar death situation is explicitly laid out to avoid tremendous wastes of staff time reviewing mechanically-identical Danger Zone deaths.
Escape equipment is specially called out as there had been issues in V5 with handlers having their characters casually find items, then declaring that these items were fundamental pieces of escape plans threads later when their existence was fait acompli. The rule is written specifically in a way that assumes good faith and is gentle, while also clearly expressing the goal of the rule.
Next up, escape attempts are keyed towards specific in-universe situations. Escaping TV is comparatively simple, because escapes in the TV universe do not threaten the core premise of the game or the grasp of the Producers. Here, the rule follows the logic of the universe, with characters able to try again, and with the challenges they face being geared not to rendering escape impossible, but to ensuring it's hard-won.
By contrast, in SC and The Program, escape is a massive, game-universe-shaking deal, and so it faces hurdles almost as high as the V5 rules. The key difference is that the stick has been dulled considerably; a character who screws up is merely barred from repeat attempts. This solves the V4 problem without discouraging escapes quite as heavily, and also tilts the balance to feel better if attempts are denied, as it no longer costs such a unique, irreplaceable resource (a character's life).
There's a specific ethics discussion making sure that staff are approaching escapes in a fair and reasonable way (and we have had staff opt out of escape knowledge, though never successfully escape when doing so). This makes the internal fairness more explicit, and directly explains the process to everyone.
And, finally, an exception is carved out for failed escape attempts. This is important because sometimes handlers just want to have their character die in a cool way, and that's something we generally want to encourage. So this makes explicit that such cases will be handled more gently; after all, the point of the rules is to make escaping difficult and rare, and blowing up in the attempt, if anything, sells that difficulty more than anything.
The Supers process is formalized in a specific way, landing somewhere between the V5 rules and the typical Mini rules in terms of execution and stakes. The process for escaping and interfacing with escape is directly laid out, as well as the risks, with an extra little hurdle in that characters are not home free until they pass a roll set out of bounds—a big risk in Supers, which featured large roll sets.Supers Escape Rules wrote:Escapes
- Escapes will be handled in a very specific way, contrary to how escapes are handled in normal Minis and Main.
- Handlers will still submit their escape attempts (such as attempts to remove the collars, damage the cameras, etc) for approval as normal, but should their attempt work as planned, they will then need to contend with the escape process.
- The immediate outside of the arena's perimeter will be represented by an area marked as "The Outskirts". The Outskirts will start out as a Danger Zone from the very beginning of the game, to represent it being the entire out of bounds area. In order for a character to successfully escape, they must enter The Outskirts and remain within it until the next roll set is posted.
- Should the character survive the roll cycle after entering The Outskirts, they will successfully escape the arena without being caught. Should they get rolled (and not saved), however, they will be successfully hunted down and killed.
- Once a character has been marked as having successfully escaped, The Outskirts then serves as the dedicated area for them to write what their character does in the aftermath while the game is still occurring (such as reaching civilization and contacting authorities).
I really like this in a version that ended up foregrounding escape. By laying out a direct path like this, with clearly enumerated risks, escape attempts are subtly encouraged; handlers are shown right away that there is a process in place to play out escapes, which directly signals that escapes are in play in a real way.
My one nitpick here is that the results of a failed attempt (one that never even reaches the outskirts) aren't actually super clear here; I didn't notice it right off the bat, but because the version did such a good job encouraging escape thinking, the absence did become notable at a point (and I do not remember what the answer was, as nobody flubbed it).
Short, sweet, and to the point. SOTF: U is not a game about traditional escape, so it's barred on an out-of-character level. Just as it should be.SOTF: U Escape Rules wrote:Escapes
Simply put, there is no escape from this version of SOTF. You may attempt to do so, but given the climate and other perils present on the island, that is almost certainly a death sentence.
However, that is not to say that there are no ways to fight back against the Experiment, should your characters choose to.
There's a huge lesson to take from U: you don't have to allow escapes or deal with escape stuff. It's not right for your version? Just tell people at the start, and it'll be good.
This rule sets up the oppressive nature of the U situation, and also how relatively helpless the characters are. But, at the same time, in some ways it opens the version up to more dynamic acts of resistance. If getting out is off the table, you can cause a lot more trouble without fundamentally breaking down the game... which the U cast was quick to do.
So that's quite a bit of writing about escapes, their history, their theory, what makes a good escape, what is accomplished by escape rules, and so forth. I don't want folks to be intimidated by this, but I hope they'll take it into consideration when crafting their versions to make escapes a positive, fun part of the game (or not one at all, if that's how they feel) while also engaging with the players on the matter in a harmonious way.
The long and short of this is:
- Write your rules to encourage escape behavior that fits your thematic vision for your version.
- Engage with handlers in good faith and collaboration.
- Let handlers drive escapes, or else make the escape central and overt in your premise from the get-go.
