The Gaming Den

Something that has bugged me for quite a while: when characters in fiction yield to enemies because those enemies took bystanders hostage and threatened them.

I feel like doing this (giving them more than they would have gotten without taking the hostage) contributes to the problem, by setting a precedent where taking hostages gives you an advantage.

I have not managed to come up with any counter-arguments, and was wondering what you all think of the issue.

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Note that I'm only talking about hostages who didn't personally involve themselves in a conflict first (although that might be interesting to consider too); I haven't thought enough about those who have.

Counter Arguments would apply if people in general were more hardass than anything else i think.
take no hostages, you go to jail.
take hostages and don't harm them, you go to jail for longer.
take hostages and harm them and you get the death sentence if you survive the incident of taking the hostages and harming them in the first place.


wait a second here . . isn't that kinda sorta how it works usually?

Well, aside from the automatic death penalty at least...

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Something that has bugged me for quite a while: when characters in fiction yield to enemies because those enemies took bystanders hostage and threatened them.

My biggest pet peeve in fictional stories is a slight variation on that, that happens to actually be like 90% of all instances of hostage taking. It goes something like this:

1) Bad Guy Takes Hostages.
2) Bad Guy Threatens to do X with Hostages unless Good Guy Unconditionally Surrenders/Puts down gun/whatever.
3) Good Guy does so in a way that does not even remotely stop Bad Guy from doing exactly what he would have done, even though Bad Guy is known cheater asshole who goes back on word all the time (or neutral about keeping word, but whatever).
4) Surprise Surprise, Bad Guy does exactly what he said he was going to do.
5) ...
6) Either Good Guy is Righteously Furious, and gets back at him later in some way and we are supposed to like Good Guy, or Good Guy feels guilty about not having stopped Bad Guy from doing X, but then, when presented with the exact same situation later, still accedes to demands.

Also, sometimes Bad Guy tries and fails because of Deus Ex Machina.

Well, yes, that is a problem. It's why real police are trained to not ever do that.

So, it's a case of the truth being better than fiction?

RadiantPhoenix wrote:So, it's a case of the truth being better than fiction?

It's a case of your generic Hero not being trained for hostage situations. Also the fiction would get somewhat dull, if the BBEG's dastardly escape was replaced with five hour long standoff.

Longes wrote:

RadiantPhoenix wrote:So, it's a case of the truth being better than fiction?

It's a case of your generic Hero not being trained for hostage situations. Also the fiction would get somewhat dull, if the BBEG's dastardly escape was replaced with five hour long standoff.

This is why I liked Keanu Reeves' attitude in Speed, it prevented both the problem of obvious hero stupidity and 5-hour standoffs.

(No, I don't think hostage training is even as much to ask as a typical action hero's martial skill and bucket of Fate points.)

Omegonthesane wrote:

Longes wrote:

RadiantPhoenix wrote:So, it's a case of the truth being better than fiction?

It's a case of your generic Hero not being trained for hostage situations. Also the fiction would get somewhat dull, if the BBEG's dastardly escape was replaced with five hour long standoff.

This is why I liked Keanu Reeves' attitude in Speed, it prevented both the problem of obvious hero stupidity and 5-hour standoffs.

(No, I don't think hostage training is even as much to ask as a typical action hero's martial skill and bucket of Fate points.)

Martial skill doesn't necessary make you ready to sacrifice innocents. And Fate points is a meta concept hero is not supposed to be aware of.

Whether you should negotiate or not is s a matter of context and keeping your eyes on the prize. For starters, deterrence isn't really the primary reason why the police refuse to negotiate with Mr. I-Fucked-Up-This-Robbery-and-Grabbed-A-Teller. Certainly, it makes for great posturing to say that you brook no concessions, but that's a lot easier to say when every other conceivable bit of leverage is on your side, which is typically the case for police in your standard opportunistic hostage taking scenario. Now, if you crank things up to the global political level, most authorities actually will consider offers when push comes to shove. Oh, they do so secretly, and only after double checking that they can't just send in da choppa instead, but many will grudgingly cut a deal if they can be reasonably sure that the bargain will be honored. That's because giving up what you want to protect in order to make sure that people won't attempt to take things from you again is kinda stupid if what you stand to lose is irreplaceable (like, say, a human life and some of your political rep). Sure, it sets a bad precedent, but hostage taking is still a risky activity and you'll want to be putting effort into preventing such things in any case.

As far as fictional scenarios go, I don't have too much to say, since they often feature people with deeply personal vendettas, plot armor and gratuitous power disparities.

A few months ago (or maybe last year) there was a hostage situation in the subway of Beijing

The police negotiated with him until their sniper was ready to shoot the guy in the head
http://www.military.com/video/law-enfor ... 867697001/

Because the flip side of it is that if you have a reputation for just shooting hostage-takers, they get much twitchier trigger fingers.