Shawshank Redemption d20, or GM needs help with campaign prep

Gilladian said:
That's very possible. On the other hand, with Idea #2, it gives the campaign a little direction once they're free. OTherwise it's just "Where do you want to go from here".

What I am thinking of doing is that if the PCs are evil-ish, I'll go with idea #2 WITH kenmarable's suggestion. If the PCs are good (and thus, are under the thumb of a not-too-good government), I'll likely go the route you suggest.

I also like the idea of having the prison be in a hostile environment. A desert or dangerous wasteland, an island in dangerous waters, or high in the cold, rugged mountains would all be possible choices rather than the (rather trite) swamps. Thus once they actually escape, they still have to survive getting back to civilization.
I live close enough to Georgia/Florida that the "Prison in the swamps" isn't really trite so much as truth in advertising. :) I didn't realize it was trite.

If I put it on an island, the real question becomes "How do they get off?" Without just some ships that are parked somewhere, or the ability to make rafts REAL fast, I'd be afraid they'd be in real trouble.
 

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Here's another way of thinking about it.

The PCs will escape the prison. We know this. That's the springboard for the campaign.

What we don't know is how much it will cost them.

I could go into more detail on this, but I don't know if that's your group's style or not.
 


I'm going to give this thread a bump. See if anyone knows a good place for floorplans, among others. :)

LostSoul, you're welcome to explain what you had in mind.
 

I don't remember where the castle plan I used came from, though I vaguely remember my husband printing it off the net after I couldn't find a plan that pleased me after digging through our reference books on castles. It doesn't have a website address printed on it. However, it was probably some place like this:
http://www.castles.org/architecture/

If your google fu isn't up to the task, my perrennial advice is: Head to the library. You will, if nothing else, be able to find generic floorplans of the standard types of castles - motte and bailey, timber, concentric, keep, etc.

You can also read actual escape narratives for inspiration. Every escape has two stages: First, exiting the locus of imprisonment (which may be a building, a complex, a distinct geographical feature, or even a country) and second, traversing the terrain to a place of security where active pursuit is no longer to be anticipated. You will easily find accounts of RAF and American escapes from German POW camps during WWII and survival stories from the same war's Pacific theater. Consider also American slave escape narratives, Cold War stories of escape from the Eastern Bloc and Cuba, and of course stories of escape from high-security prisons and penal colonies such as Botany Bay, Alcatraz, and Devil's Island.

Once you know who they are and have figured out why they're imprisoned, much else will fall into place. In my case, they insisted on not only breaking out of the prison but on breaking out of the town (and downtown San Antonio makes an excellent medieval city) with the children of the paladin's mentor and across country to the mentor's estate, where they finally felt safe enough to draw breath and look around them. If I hadn't had a day job (and therefore insufficient time for my style of DMing if I also wanted to write any publishable work), we could have kept going from there, because the political situation was already in place and the players had developed loyalties and causes during the course of the game that could have fueled a good strong intrigue campaign. The bad guys had no notion of the PCs, who were just a handful of civilians caught up in the mess of events that triggered the civil war, but the choices they made during the escape affected larger events and would soon have brought them into a prominent place on the national stage in an organic way with no guidance from me.

Part of the fun of an escape is the exercise of ingenuity in beating the precautions taken against is. If they can figure out how to get at the keys directly, great. If they come up with a way to make lockpicks out of innocuous pieces of clothing or bedding, even better - let them justify their attempt, set a DC for an appropriate skill (or set of skills) and make die rolls. My players figured out that sand was used in the mortar holding their cells together and managed to get the material component for a sleep spell out of it. Since one of them was a sorcerer, and one of their first moves on getting out of their own cells was to rescue some wizards they'd overheard being tortured, this was of great utility to them, and they took great satisfaction in having come up with it.

Flexibility and rewards for ingenuity - always good; essential in a game of this sort. They want to outsmart you and they want to work at it!
 

I wrote a kind of guide/adventure combo for Forever People's Opus Operandi campaign setting called Escape From Carthidge which pretty much suits your purposes to a T - its a d20 prison guide with floorplans and lots of details including escape scenarios (there's a perilous maze under the prison and a variety of other potential break-outs) plus maps, rules compendiums for what to do in different situations and things like wall/door strengths. Tonnes of useless information that might come in handy.

Its been around on RPG Now for a long time and nobody really buys it anymore, so you're welcome to a comp copy if it helps you set up your campaign. Drop me an email if it sounds of interest.
 


comp copy sent and you're more than welcome.
I just had a look through the file (funny reading something you wrote three odd years ago). It'll need a few alterations for 4e, but I think it should be helpful to your needs, especially the breakout scenarios and suggestions. There's a table in there for crafting escape tools too, which might answer the question of where PCs get their breakout gear from without resorting to the benefactor.

Let us know how the game goes!
 

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