Help with a Grim Survival DF Setting

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by DAT

I go back and forth on that. A couple things they can do in the holding chamber and well chamber will help them later, but they will pretty much be on rails until they hit the ground in the Underdark.

So do those things in flashback. If they pull them off in the flashback, it helps in the present.

At the start of the session, I'll give them background that the Light knows how to handle captured prisoners, and they have seen hundreds of escape plans attempted, and all of them end with the would be escapees dying horrible painful deaths.

That's a synonym for "thrilling adventure". Either you explicitly tell the players that the characters are not going to escape (in which case they're just going to feel like they're being railroaded) or their attempts to escape will be the story. Better to skip that frustration.