help me design a prison (my players, stay out!)

[Piratecat]

In an old Dungeon, there was a great prison that was a huge horizontal wheel with cells at the ends. Every day, all the prisoners would push it ten feet; your cell would reemerge at the one opening 365 days after you entered it. Food would be dropped in through little holes in the ceiling.

Incidentally, I'll slide this into General, as it's more about plots than specific rules.

 

[Scion]

For traps yes. But prisons work better as bags of holding IMHO.

Actually, in the 'Ecology of a bag of devouring' I read from some d&d source the bag is only a dimensional transit to an actual creature in a very odd universe.. peopple can survive there for weeks or months depending, but it is nearly impossible to escape. Plus if you toss in a few specialty items: 'cursed' bracers that surround the creature with a type of antimagic field and they will return them to where they were placed on him after a period X of time, and give the creature wearing them some sort of digstion resistance

From what I recall, when inside of the creature it is a large open space, with pockets of 'land' from previously undigestible items. Every month or so the acid pools flow up to a few feet above everything for a few hours and then go back down again. If the creature makes it to the outside the creature is a floating blob on a vast sea.. there is no other land, but there are other blobs which lead to other bags of devouring

 

[Ferox4]

Help! Help! There's this crazed cat devouring my po....munch, munch

 

[Piratecat]

Dang! Ferox, I just deleted the first of your two posts, while you were editing the second one. Sory for that.

You had said:

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From what I recall, when inside of the creature it is a large open space, with pockets of 'land' from previously undigestible items. Every month or so the acid pools flow up to a few feet above everything for a few hours and then go back down again. If the creature makes it to the outside the creature is a floating blob on a vast sea.. there is no other land, but there are other blobs which lead to other bags of devouring

Man, that's so bleak. What a way to go.

I think it was in Dragon a few years ago.

 

[Scion]

Definately bleak, but hard to escape. If you dump in some food for them now and then it definately is a hellish prison.

It can be modified to suit, using just about every idea here already actually. Makes for a very difficult prison to escape from, but with the right allies it is still 'possible'.

 

[Ferox4]

For traps yes. But prisons work better as bags of holding IMHO.

Prisoners will suffocate in a Bag of Holding.

 

[herald]

How about the characters plan a break in only to find out that the gnome along with other prisoners have already escaped about 12 hours before. The players don't find out until they sneak in. Then they have to figure out how to escape themselves.

As a further twist, one of the prisoners is actually crazy, and is killing off ther rest of the prisoners, without the rest of escapies knowing. The party has to follow the path of dead bodies, avoiding the authorities, and catch the psycho before he does in the gnome.

 

[Ferox4]

Good stuff, herald - I like it.

 

[rkanodia]

Thanks for all the great ideas!

Sorry guys, I think the bag of devouring and bag of holding go somewhat beyond the scope I was looking for. Ditto on the 'Lord of the Flies' prison - my campaign will have only about 9 more sessions before people start graduating, and I'd prefer to get this over with in a reasonable period of time to allow for some true Spelljammer swashbuckling action. On the other hand, I do very much like the idea of the prisoners escaping early, leaving the PCs scrambling to catch them! I'm not sure I'll do the 'psycho' thing. Hmm. What I'd really like is there to be an illusion of the prisoners sitting in their cells; perhaps one of them could be holding a scroll that reads "Better luck next time, scalies!" Actually, now that I think about it, there is an NPC who could have plausibly sprung the jailbreak... and I'm sure the PCs will absolutely love finding out that it's his fault that they walked right into a trap while trying to save their companion!