Prison

Frame · Institutions and order thematic

Locked up, watched, restricted – a place where freedom is the most valuable good and every rule is a wall.

Design question – Imagine your game is set in a prison. What is the goal – escape, survival, justice? And whom can you trust?

Associations

• Typical Activities – Planning (escape), Hiding, Negotiating, Surviving
• Typical roles – prisoners/guards, gangs, secret alliances, betrayal
• Typical spaces – cells, yard, walls, surveillance points, tunnels
• Typical conflicts – escape, struggle for survival, negotiation, secrecy

Atmosphere

oppressive, tense, claustrophobic, hopeless or defiant

Coherence

Implied Activities: Planning (escape), Hiding, Negotiating, Surviving. Mechanisms: Hidden Movement (secret tunnels), Resource Management (contraband), Bluff (deceiving guards), Cooperation with Traitor (whom to trust?). Ludic Organisational Structures: political order (power hierarchy), conflict order (prisoners vs. system).

Compatible with

• Gloom (AT-07)
• Uncanny (AT-14)
• Dread (AT-17)
• Confrontation (SI-01)
• Intrusion (SI-06)
• Cult (SO-07)
• Hierarchy (SO-09)
• Democracy (SO-10)
• Marketplace (SP-13)
• Abyss (SP-22)
• Before the Storm (TM-08)
• After the Catastrophe (TM-10)

Tension with

• Farm (TH-01) – A prison with an attached farm. Rehabilitation through farm work – but who controls the harvest: the prisoners or the guards? Freedom grows in the garden.