A Prison Campaign

[Decamber]

Imagine a prison in a fantasy world; a well-guarded complex with 50ft walls and the Black Gate from Two Tower's, opened by ogres (?) as well. Orcish guards, a high level aristocrat as warder (think Shawshank Redemption) – lawful evil in alignment – and a torture chamber for those who won't abide by the Rules. A specific department for spellcasters. An execution room near the evil warder's tower (office). Different traps to make it nearly impossible to escape. You could base the whole campaign around this prison!

The prison holds Faerun's (or whatever) most dangerous criminals. (Think Alcatraz). There are gangs, mobs – mafia families – in the prison. Don Dwothic the Duergar vs. Don Corleone; the latter has the orcish guard team Lower Cellar on his side to fight the dwarves. The prisoners trade with... any ideas? (Similar to cigaretts, but more fantasy-ish).

The player character's are either to-be-prisoners (that is, you play some sessions where the PCs are committing a serious crime or being wrongfully convicted; the latter seems more fun IMO, btw), or they already are prisoners. They could either be newly arrived or they could be leader's of a respected gang. Or you could integrate the Shawshank Redemption plot (book and movie by Stephen King) – A LITTLE SPOILER – and let one player have an intelligent character skilled in economy, who helps the warder and guards out with financial problems. END A LITTLE SPOILER The door is open for any idea – the campaign could be serious, loony, tragical, gangster-ish, adventurous; hack-n-slash, story-telling, puzzle-solving, adventure-solving – practically anything.

What's going to happen on each game session, then? The PC's couldn't go around doing nothing – they have to earn experience and gold! Well, this is the tricky part. I guess they could help friends to get goods from outside. They could work as a lawyers – perhaps you could have a little union movement going on for the sake of the prisoners' justice. Do you have any ideas?

How does this sound? I guess it's a little wierd and not so suitable for a D&D campaign. I think I'm just a little exalted by having recently seen the great movie Shawshank Redemption (recommendation).

 

[Keith]

I think this is an interesting idea, although I can't really see how it could function as a campaign for an extended period of time. Sure seems like the right place for some Rogues to pick up skills to advance levels, but other classes might be well out of luck. Could any prison hold sorcerers, I wonder, as well? In terms of an internal monetary system, it seems to me that spell components might suddenly be valuable instead of negligible.
Overall, I could see getting a few sessions out of this environment, and then perhaps having a major riot; maybe the characters break out and are on the run, or maybe they defeat the ring-leaders and are exonerated. Oh wait, that is "Con-Air". Well, why not?

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Carceri...

I had been working on a similar concept, but instead of a prison, the PCs were all imprisoned on Carceri (or whatever that prison plane is named).

The easy way out, of course, is "we were framed for a crime we didn't commit," but what I would find even more interesting is if the PCs *did* commit a crime, but they were breaking an unjust law (like, maybe freeing slaves..something even a Lawful Good character would do) and were imprisoned as a result

But I'm an evil and sadistic bastich like that.

EVIL AND SADISTIC, DO YOU HEAR ME?!?!

 

[Staffan]

I have never run a prison campaign, but I have on occasion considered a campaign inspired by the old computer game Dragon Wars, where you start out in a big ruined "prison city". The exact reason for going there isn't exactly stated in the game, maybe you were a dissident or a magic-user or something like that. The start of the game was spent trying to get yourself some gear (you started with literally nothing) and then trying to get out of the city - there were several ways of doing this, the best one probably being to hide among the body bags being dumped in the harbor and then swimming to freedom.

 

[heimdall]

I played in a campaign with a similar idea, PCs were slaves. Needless to say, we conspired to break out immediately, which we managed to do by the second gaming session. I think the biggest problem was that the spellcasters seemed to be at a disadvantage, as has already been posted. Our DM couldn't come up with a way to reconcile this correctly and moved on to a waterborne campaign. If you can find a way to explain how wizards keep their books and enable to be primary contributors as well, I'd say you've got a good idea.

 

[Staffan]

I played in a campaign with a similar idea, PCs were slaves.

As an old Dark Sun DM, I can definitely say that I've ran campaigns where the PCs started out as slaves or quickly became slaves. Didn't stay that way for long, though.

 

[Bloodstone Mage]

Ooh...I like this campaign concept. It has so many possibilities. After all, the PCs will have to make up a reason for why they're in prison.

My suggestion is to watch the HBO television show Oz. Sure, it's a bit melodramatic and displays its struggle to shock viewers, but it's a good launching pad for prison adventure ideas. The show's over now (series finale was this year), but I'm pretty sure you can rent the DVDs from your local entertainment store. If you do decide to sit down and watch it, be sure to pay attention to the difference in characters, and be prepared to see some graphic situations.

Three of my personal prison-related films: Escape From Alcatraz starring Clint Eastwood (you can't go wrong) is very good; Buffalo '66 isn't really a prison movie, but the main character just got out of prison, and the storyline provides a great base for creating start-ups for a campaign (which I will use someday); The Story of Riki-Oh is a great cheesy and violent foreign prison movie (I don't think that's the exact title, but it's something along those lines) about an extraordinary martial artist, and it contains a lot of blood and fake-looking body explosions (anybody remember The Daily Show with Craig Kilborn? One of the popular clips on the show where the guy explodes is from this movie).

 

[thullgrim]

One of Simon R Green's Hawk and Fisher books was about a magical prison and a riot therein. There was a special wing that house spellcasters and extradimensional beings. The description of the prison as a whole was a little incomplete as the story focused on this one wing but it fairly well described and some of the beings in there were simply great.

Thullgrim

 

[Hypersmurf]

The description of the prison as a whole was a little incomplete as the story focused on this one wing but it fairly well described and some of the beings in there were simply great.

Interesting.

I really enjoyed all of Green's Hawk and Fisher stories... except that one.

I found it tedious and clumsily-written. I think Hawk and Fisher are great, but the whole prison sequence had me wincing.

-Hyp.

 

[Decamber]

Nice to see that more than me likes the concept.