Help with Prisons

[Tom Clarke]

My group needs to brake/ sneak/ lie there way into a secure prison and rescue a valuable allie. Not done DM before so was wondering if anyone had some experience and cool things that could go on whilst going through this campaign. Trying to make at least a night out of this (so about 4 - 5 hours of game play). Thanks in advance :D

[Shining Wrath]

Patrols. Moving groups of guards make taking rests more challenging.
Doors that require puzzle solving to open rather than just picking a lock or finding the secret door.
Reinforcements that arrive N rounds into a battle, encouraging spell casters to spend the big spells and end the battle quickly next time.

[RickAllison]

Alternate points of entry and paths. Plan out tunnels that past inmates may have tried, or a secret exit tunnel for VIPs. The Elder Scrolls games are a good source for this, just about every jail had an escape route in Skyrim, while Oblivion opened with the reveal of an escape tunnel for the king to the sewers.

Consider RP potential solutions. A rogue may feel confident in being able to enter as a prisoner, then get everyone else in after they break out.

Prepare to split the party. Some will disagree with this, but learning to keep everyone interested while split allows for unique situations and harder challenges. A wizard who was separated from the party could release a collection of thugs, conmen, and psychopaths to act as muscle; give the other members some character sheets and let them create the atmosphere.

Unorthodox methods could make for great opportunities. A Druid can Polymorph a Bearbarian and Wild Shape to get not just those two inside, but the equipment of any PCs infiltrating the compound through imprisonment.

Consider the motivations of different prisoners. Some will want to help the party in exchange for freedom, some will narc in order to get a reduced sentence from the warden, and others will just sleep. A prisoner claiming to be innocent could be so, or he could be a serial killer. You don't need many fleshed out, but the few you do can make a difference.

[unwise]

I was a bit of a bastard to my PCs last time they did a prison break. Prisoners were kept in groups of 5 in cells. If anybody from your cell escaped, you were all killed horribly. If anybody from the cells to your left or right escaped, you were all killed. So the prisoners would all call for the guards if they saw anybody escaping, or grab them through the bars to hold them until the guards arrived.

To stop the prisoners turning them in, the PCs had to convince them that they were going to release every cell. This was particularly tricky, as some cells held members of blood-feuding factions. So the PCs have to try and escape with a lot more prisoners than they though. Some of the prisoners will turn on them at the first sign of something going wrong, in order to try to placate the guards into not hurting them. Not to mention that the prisoners often have family members in entirely different jail areas within the complex, so insist on rescuing them, alerting the entire place.

[gfishfunk]

Alright, I'm stealing heavily from the Angry GM (this is not exactly how he did it) but...

I have been designing dungeon layouts by making a large scale map and showing interconnected rooms, and then figuring out what is in each room in the abstract, like:

Entrance --> Hallway --> Room 1
|
|
V
Backdoor --> Basement --> Room 2

I would do more, but it would get confusing. Imagine that there is a connection between Room 1 and Room 2 as well. So, figure out what kind of rooms there will be, and then start figuring out a few ways to get through the rooms (combat or otherwise) or bypass the rooms to get where the NPC is being held.

For a prison, I would do 8 rooms: 2 empty rooms that are connecting hallways or supplies or something to give them a place to hide. 1 goal room, 2 possible entrances, and a number of other rooms.

Lying is good in small doses. If all they do is lie, then the encounter becomes boring. Let them know that they need a certain document signed by a guy in room 4 INSIDE the dungeon, so they first have to talk with him if they are lying. Let them know ahead of time that he is VERY sharp, and is likely to detect the lie. They can lie their way to him or on the other side of him, but they cannot reliably lie through him. This forces them to use several approaches rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.