Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

[TheQuestionMan]

Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns? This Thread is intended as a Resource Fans and enthusiasts of the up coming STRONGHOLD sourcebook. I also need information for my upcoming Breakout Adventure for The NEW Champions of Vancouver!

 

 

STRONGHOLD

 

 

Escape From Stronghold

Designed to hold the toughest Supervillains in your campaign! This supplement contains full maps of the prison, individual cells, cell design system, exciting scenario outlines, and six NEW Supervillains! This reusable supplement is a vital addition to your Champions Campaign!

 

 

Champions Presents #2

For the Hero 4th Ed. Champions setting. *Murder In Stronghold (by Timothy Keating) is a super-powered mystery that the character must solve before time runes out . . . for them.

 

 

Lockdown

So your heroes have captured yet another super-villain. Where are they going to put them all? In prison, of course! Lockdown is a sourcebook for Mutants & Masterminds, describing a prison for super-convicts. It details all four levels of the Buckner Ridge Superhuman Penitentiary, the first privately run super-prison. You get details on the prison's layout, operations, and staff, including its super-powered guards. Lockdown has profiles on various inmates and factions within the prison, as well as a description of the nearby town of Buckner Ridge.

 

Lockdown saved its failing economy, but is it worth the price of having a prison full of the world's most dangerous super-criminals in its backyard? Lockdown comes with numerous adventure ideas and ways to use the prison in your own Mutants & Masterminds campaign. You can make it a background element or build an entire game where the characters are convicts! Plus, Lockdown comes with a secret: a conspiracy that could bring the prison crashing down and threaten law and order across the world!

 

 

Gramercy Island

Gramercy Island Penitentiary is the first super-prison in the world, where the most dangerous and powerful criminals are contained. A great sourcebook for GMs and players alike, with scores of villains, mega-villains, vigilantes, and lunatics of every level and stripe. Includes detailed maps and descriptions of the penitentiary, descriptions of 98 prisoners, super-containment systems and power nullifiers, super-gadgets, gizmos, power armor, robots, and aliens, Argonaut prison-guard robots. Also includes the lowdown on Warden Harker and his agenda of hate and power, and 101 adventure settings and ideas!

 

 

Escape From Alcatraz!

Is an 85 page sourcebook for M&M 2nd edition, detailing a complete prison for super-criminals: the Rock. Alcatraz includes two dozen villains as well as heroes and civilian staff, maps of the island and the prison block, a history of the prison from its construction in the 19th century to the present, and an enormous mega-adventure that ties everything together. Can you prevent the escape of Prince Primeval, Father of the Human Race, on the eve of his execution? Fully illustrated and in color, character art by Bill Jackson.

 

 

List of Correctional Facilities in Comics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_correctional_facilities_in_comics

 

Prison, Penitentiary, or Correctional Facility

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison

 

Psychiatric Hospital

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psych_ward

 

Sanatorium - Hmmm... How many victims of Menton, Fleshstone, etc... who survive in such places. A fantastic idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitorium

 

Who Do You Think They Will Lock Up In Stronghold

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32072&highlight=Stronghold

 

Assault on Stronghold

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50763&highlight=Stronghold

 

New Avengers vol. 1 Breakout - Individual Heroes drawn together to fight a massive breakout on SHIELD's Raft.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Avengers-V...907768-3216666

 

Thunderbolts vol. 1 Justice Like Lightning - A staged breakout to convince others they are heroes.

http://www.amazon.com/Thunderbolts-J.../dp/0785108173

 

Backlash - Breaking a Cabal agent, Taboo, out of prison to help him on his quest.

http://www.geocities.com/area51/dimension/5063/bio_backlash.html

 

Suicide Squad - Superhumans and Supervillains who work covertly for the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Squad

 

New Warriors vol. 1 - Vance Astrovik, aka Justice. Murder Trial

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vance_Astrovik#Murder_Trial

 

Daredevil - Superhero Lawyer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daredev...rvel_Comics%29

 

Breakdown - Former Superhero breaks Dad outta jail.

http://www.pullboxonline.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=3

 

 

Cribbed from Closed Thread

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1404977#post1404977

 

 

QM

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

I had "Strycker's island but Gravitar stole the island. Now an old missile silo is being used as a stopgap facility. I'm using the missile silo/mad scientist's lair put out by steve jackson games lots of super reinforced walls and doors.

[Pyre-Archer]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

Just for a real world touch:

 

Correctional Services Canada Institutional Profiles http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/region/institutional_profiles_e.shtml

-includes capacity and a very rough overviews

 

I should note that the CSC home page has some useful links detailing topics such as a timeline of correctional services in Canada, media files, and operating procedures for those of a more legal bent.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

We have two such facilities in our campaign: An EU/NATO one located on the Isle of Man beneath an RAF base and and administered by the British Army; and a similar American government facility built in New Mexico or Arizona in the US. (The exact locations are secret, for obvious reasons). While our team MidGuard has had two combats at the European Metahuman Detention Facility, the American one has been left for further development by any interested GM in our campaign.

 

Rumors of a similar Chinese facility remain unconfirmed.

[Balabanto]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

I'll repost the information from the other thread since it seems to be relevant here, with a little more.

 

Well, I have many superprisons, rather than one that are openly known. (Yes, this is a blatant reboot, but I HAD to. There were problems with the very IDEA of stronghold)

 

What, may you ask, is my problem with Stronghold? Here it is.

 

There is no way on this Earth that any American government would allow non-american nationals to run prisons on their soil, no matter how superior the technology.

 

There's the Butte, the Mountain, and the Plateau. (Europe), and The Gulag (Russia/Eastern Europe). Ironically, now that Russia is much smaller and has split up into component states, Russia's superprison is VERY well funded by countries that can't afford to keep Supervillains on their own. Pay to play is nasty, but it has advantages...and disadvantages....for heroes.....a real test of their moral character.

 

Examples:

 

1) The PC's now know that some supervillains may be pardoned by the governnment in exchange for black operations. Rather than imprison the villain in American Prison, they pay the Russians to imprison the villain in secret. No one's tried this yet, but I have a feeling it's only a matter of time.

 

2) A third world country is paying to keep an enemy of a PC locked up, and has just defaulted on their payments, or worse, changed governments completely. Now this enemy is returning home. And worse...he's a HERO OF THE PEOPLE now that the government has changed. Good luck.

 

3) A supervillain captures a PC, and pays the Gulag to incarcerate him while posing as a fellow hero or agent of a government. Now the PC must escape the Gulag without powers and survive the Siberian wasteland, while facing down Russian Supers, the elements, and the Russian Army, who are better at fighting in these conditions than anyone in the world with the singular exception of the Finnish. (The Finnish scare EVERYONE!)

 

 

 

America and Canada get along well enough that America will allow Canada to store their supercriminals in their superprisons, but for the most part, most countries don't have the resources or the finances to have their own superprisons.

 

Yes, it's rumored that the Kuwaitis or the Saudis might be building one with raw cash.

 

But some governments SECRETLY impriison supervillains, and/or use them as government agents in exchange for their freedom. Recently, it was revealed that an organization within the US government had been doing this FOR YEARS.

 

NO ONE KNOWS what happens to Supervillains that get captured in China.

 

No one bothered to ask the President whether or not he APPROVED OF THE POLICY. They only knew that the person was doing it without his authorization.

[Mike W]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

I call it Stronghold, but it's run more like The Vault in Marvel Comics. Guards have low grade power armor. Cells each have special tech to compensate for the powers of the villains. Like Marvel, it's also in the Rocky Mountains - in an out of the way section - where escapees have a long way back to "civilization".

[Vondy]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

In the Freedom Patrol game supers have been known since WWI, but only became prevalent during WWII. Since the game started in 1950 the US, where the lion's share of supers are, has little experience with it. The FBI has a Metahuman Crime Taskforce (no supers, just investigations), and the DOD has a special project with a super-cadre "The Freedom Patrol" that reports to the national security adviser. That's it. In terms of prisons the few attempts that were made in the 20's and 30's were miserable failures and the only options, even into WWII, was hotsleep or putting them into isolation in a maximum security prison (often not an option). In '47 Alcatraz was handed over to the DoD. The original prison was demolished and a shaft for a multi-level underground hotsleep center was created. In '51 however, the Supreme Court ruled that the indiscriminate use of hotsleep for all powered villains was unacceptable and ordered the government to seek other means of incarcerating all but the most dangerous powered villains. In '56 the first operational wing of the Medicine Bow Facility in the Cheyenne Mountains went online. By '58 - the last year of the campaign, a second wing was online with a third under construction. Trained Supernormals are generally incarcerated in a special isolation wing at Leavenworth.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

In my game, I use the Gramercry Island info but located it at Riker's Island (after a supervillain attack practically leveled the original prison). That's Stronghold East. The CU Stronghold is located in New Mexico, but as the heroes tend to deal with stuff on the eastern half of the US, they haven't gone to Stronghold West yet.

 

The thing I like about the Gramercy Island prison is that it has sections for supervillains as well as normals, so I don't have to worry so much about where "normals with skills/gadgets" or powered-armor types get sent. Those that are seemingly less of a threat get housed in the non-supers section of the prison. Those that are basically normal but still a threat (for instance, you don't want Utility having access to a normal prison's machine shop) still get housed in the supers section, though.

[OzMike]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

I've bounced around a couple of ideas:

 

Otherwhere - an extra dimensional prison where unshielded powers don't work and the incarcerated live a Pleasantville-meets-The-Prisoner-type existence. Learning to become part of a community where you don't know who the jailers are. A village in an uninhabited Limbo. Or is it?

 

The Zone - a Mental Illusion Prison where the villain's fantasies become reality but have negative consequences, and positive actions have positive consequences (being bad is bad, being nice is good). Eventually the curable learn from their mistakes, while the incurable are kept happy. Each individual 'lives' separately from the others... but what happens if their 'cells' become or can be shared? What happens if an outsider breaks in? And what happens if something else breaks out?

[Zed-F]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

Prison facilities for superhumans in my gameworld are identical to real-world prison facilities. So far, there is no supertech to build more secure prisons. This means that many supervillains cannot be safely or adequately imprisoned.

 

Welcome to the real world, two weeks after eruption.

[Psybolt]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

In my old Champions campaigns I had several super powered villain containment centers. One was a Star Wars type cryogenically frozen prison. We saved it for the worst of the villain... oddly enough one of the PCs wound up there (well deserved by the way).

 

Another one was a man made satellite that orbited the earth. The moon was the base for the prison guards and the satellite was surrounded by a force field. It was the size of a small moon

[Doc Samson]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

The supervillain prison in our campaign is called the Labyrinth. It is made up impenetrable ever shifting metal walls (though despite this fact, several of our stories have involved break outs). I'm not sure why but many aspects of it follow a Greek Mythology theme. It was created an run by a Mr. Fantastic style inventor named Daedalus. It is located on a man made island in Lake Michigan off the coast of Illinois. The captain of the guard is called the Minotaur (of course!). The guards are equipped with powered armor designed by Deadalus and are called "Bulls", a slang term for real prison guards and a pun on the Minotaur.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

The supervillain prison in our campaign is called the Labyrinth. It is made up impenetrable ever shifting metal walls (though despite this fact' date=' several of our stories have involved break outs). I'm not sure why but many aspects of it follow a Greek Mythology theme. It was created an run by a Mr. Fantastic style inventor named Daedalus. It is located on a man made island in Lake Michigan off the coast of Illinois. The captain of the guard is called the Minotaur (of course!). The guards are equipped with powered armor designed by Deadalus and are called "Bulls", a slang term for real prison guards and a pun on the Minotaur.[/quote']

 

"Darn it! Who keeps mailing supervillains those balls of yarn?"

["V"]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

I'll post this as it's just about sort of nearly on topic.

 

I'm not currently running a supers campaign, but I am running an Ars Magica campaign set in the 19th Century, and the Order of Hermes had what seemed like a great idea to imprison rogue Magi - they did a deal with the Elves of Avalon and shipped the Magi off to be incarcerated there - in a faerie realm detached from the real world.

 

Unfortunately the faerie inhabitants turned out to be rather more unpleasant than the Order expected (a bias of my own...) and effectively began torturing the inmates by probing their minds and then subjecting them to personalised and well crafted immersive illusions to torment them using their innermost fears, hopes etc etc.

 

All in a realm outside time where the inmates had no hope even of death...

 

This was discovered by one of the PCs when he was sent to stage the breakout of one inmate who had vital information and he was horrified to see the state of the inmates (villains though they were) and the glee with which the elves tormented them.

 

Guess where he woke up the next morning having been set up without his knowledge by his superiors to "sell" him as a traitor to the order & encourage the bad guys to accept him...?

[hfergus]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

My campaign basically has Stronghold as is. No mass breakouts and few indiviual breakouts. However... It is basically full, and controversally so. At the begining, out of the country villains were taken in for the money. Now, they can't get rid of them because A) They need the money, the prison was not allotted enough. If some of the international villains were transferred out, they'd basically be freed, there is nowhere else to put them. This actually could result in international incidents.

 

Most people don't realize this, and thus oppose expansion and building another. And, of course, there is the NIMBY syndrome (Not In My BackYard). They are looking into a space prison to solve that, but the cost goes up.

[zakueins]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

In my game universe, we have The Slab for metahuman criminals.

 

In the middle of the Alaska tundra, 500 miles from anything that can be called a city, The Slab has layered levels of criminal security from Level 1 (you get to see daylight occasionally, you just wear a tracking collar and more like a "regular" prison to Level 5 (sealed individual cells the size of a small studio apartment, each fitted with a lethal self-destruct mechanism if opened improperly, food and clean linens/clothing via an airlock structure that uses lethal securing system).

 

Guards wander around with heavy assault rifles and body armor, backed up by combat robots.

[death tribble]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

There are two missing from The Question Man's List. One is Escape From Alcatraz which is a M+M Superlink product where they have re-opened the old prison to house and execute Supercriminals.

The other is an old V+V product where villains were stranded in Earth's past.

 

As for me I use Stronghold and Gramercy Island as prisons with several other used for the Omegas, particular villains you don't want loose if they escape. For example the magnetic wielding Quantum is in a facility at the bottom of the sea.

The Animator is kept in Hot Sleep as he was found to be trying to draw creatures from his imagination and memories in order to help him escape. He is imprisoned in a facility far away from most centres of population.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

I decided to BUMP this Thread to allow us to Post what Steve has asked us not to on the STRONGHOLD -- What Would *You* Like To See... Thread. So here we are once again with a idea in my head and a long way to go donw to river road.

 

 

LOL

 

 

QM

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

Facilities in the Frisbee-verse:

 

The Hole

This underground vault in western Maryland is designed to hold the most dangerous (not necessarily the most powerful) supervillain on earth -- Isotope, The Radioactive Man. It has failed on three seperate occasions to do that but is still the only facility in the world capable of holding him for any length of time.

 

Stronghold SuperMax Prison

Located inside of Jackass Mesa in Nevada. It is the standard Stronghold as presented in Classic Enemies.

 

Lakehold SuperMax Prison Platform

Similar to Stronghold, this facility is mounted on a deep water platform 15 miles east of Lakeport (Milwaukee), Wisconsin.

 

Bloc Island SuperMax Prison

A larger Stronghold-type facility on an island in the bay near the current campaign city (Bay City, Delaware). Instead of isolating the prisoners, however, the prisoners are fitted with neurostimulation collars that cause increasing levels of paralysis and debilitating pain to punish not only those who break the rules, but anyone who happens to be around them at the time. This forces prisoners to police themselves and the other inmates to stop disruptive behaviors. (The ACLU has raised a number lawsuits claiming this is inhumane punishment, many of which are still working their ways through the courts, though no judge is insane enough to order the collars removed or disabled.)

 

Matt "Bundle-of-joy" Frisbee

[Certified]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

Reading through this thread got me all inspired and stuff. In the Metahumans Rising timeline I had mentioned Black Mountain a couple of times but this got me to actually write something about it.

 

Black Mountain

 

Opened in 1990 Black Mountain is the US’s only Metahuman detention facility. Located eighty six miles outside of Salt Lake City Utah Black Mountain is accessible only by air or on foot. The underground facility can house up to three thousand regular (non-powered) inmates as well as an additional two hundred unique prisoners.

 

 

Black Mountain itself is a winding maze of underground catacombs with no single direct surface exit below the bulkhead floors. Security access divides the prisoners by threat level splitting them between twenty floors below the three bulkheads. Each of these floors can operate as an autonomous prison facility with cafeteria, food supply, water and sewage piping, and ventilation. Prisoners are kept in isolation between eighteen and twenty three hours a day depending on the assigned security level.

 

 

Metahuman residents are confined to single rooms under maximum isolation. The Black Mountain facility itself uses a unique sonic resonator that shuts down the aggression centers of the brain. This resonator renders almost all Metahuman abilities nonfunctional. Black Mountain guards wear modified NBC protective suits to shield against the disruptive waves.

Currently Black Mountain is to some seven hundred of the nations most dangerous criminals as well as Metahuman criminals from Europe. This includes twenty seven Metahumans. Most notably the living nanite factory Grey Matter, convicted on seventeen counts of murder, treason and attempting to incite sedition. Grey Matter is kept in a supercooled state using the facilities cold storage.

 

At this time only Russia has a comparable Metahuman detention facility, the Ice Palace. Built during the nineteen sixties to deal with complications from the RRX project. After the Red Square incident in nineteen ninety two the Ice Palace facility was updated in a joint venture by member nations of the UN Security Council. A third facility is currently under development in the UK.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

In my campaign, I currently use basically Stronghold, though I haven't fixed exactly where it is, or how its set up entirely yet ( its introduction was part of a minor offhand setting comment that exploded into a subplot unintentionally ).

 

I have established a lack of Magic Power Nullifier Collars, though. Some powers can be jammed or disrupted, but there is no technique that will equally depower a cyborg brick, a mutant psychic, and a magically empowered energy blaster, say. For example, the applicable inmate, Meltdown, was kept in his cell via a thick DU lining ( to keep him from being exposed to ambient radiation ), and structural hardening ( to keep him from forcing his way out via whatever metastrength he retained ).

 

Anybody thats too powerful or too difficult to otherwise contain gets Hot Sleep.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

Hot Sleep is synonymous with Big Sleep.

 

The Government hires corruptible scientists to create perfect clones, replicas, etc... of extremely dangerous prisoners. Swaps places with the originals and executes them with extreme prejudice. The Duplicates are mindless creations whose only reason for being is to hide the hard choices from bleeding heart liberal types.

 

 

Dark Thoughts

 

 

QM

[Metaphysician]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

Not in my campaign. OTOH, one problem with that idea: a lot of the people who are prime candidates for Hot Sleep, are also the type who would be exceedingly hard to execute. Even if your no longer thus restricted to humane means, you may have somebody you can't feasibly kill ( especially if you need to keep the execution secret ).

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

"Sunspots, sir. Sunspots. That radio interference you just detected was most certianly NOT a black-ops tactical nuclear strike going off. Can you look at this, please?"

 

*FLASH*

[Dominique]

Re: Prison facilities for super-human criminals in your Campaigns?

 

While it's not for Champions, here’s a little info on the various metahuman prisons operating in my M&M universe.

 

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) maintains an agreement with the FBI, US Marshals Service, DHS, and the BSI (Bureau of Special Investigations) to handle transport, confinement, and if necessary execution, of any “supervillains” taken into custody by the US government, or an allied government requesting US assistance.

 

Other than regular prisons, there are currently four facilities specifically designed and built to house supervillains. The first two are “Supermax” facilities. One's located in Nevada, near the US Dept. of Energy‘s Nevada Test Site , the other’s in the Black Hills of North Dakota. Both are primarily used for the non-powered, or low power level villains.

 

Both facilities maintain large, well trained security staffs. In addition, BOP Special Operations Response Team (SORT) and BSI tactical response units (Special Response Teams - SRTs, STOP teams, and SLAM units) are on standby to respond to any security incidents that may arise. There's been some discussion about having BSI's Office of Detention and Transportation form some sort of tactical unit (its working name is the Detention Response Unit) to relieve BSI's already over taxed SRT and STOP teams. The main debate is over how to fund the unit within the current budget.

 

The other two facilities are “Ultramax” (nicknamed "The Pit") and the Special Containment Facility (SCU, or "Deep Freeze"). Ultramax is located on a small island off the coast of Alaska, and the SCU is located on a small atoll in the South Pacific. Both facilities are constructed deep underground.

 

Ultramax is currently home to some the more powerful villains such as Graviton and the villain team "The Disciples ", while the SCU currently houses a number of classified subjects in "cold sleep". It's believed that the alien entity, "He Who has No Name", is one of the beings housed there.

 

Unlike the Supermax facilities, both Ultramax and the SCU have a military detachment assigned to them from the DOD's Joint Meta-human Special Security Task Force. Their job is to study the abilities of the villains currently confined there, and come up with defenses against them. They also have a military Special Security Unit (SSU) that handles perimeter security, and would respond to any attempted escape or security related incident.

 

The overall military commander is Brigadier General John T. Hazard, a hard as nails former infantry officers (his troops like to joke he’s as hard as woodpecker lips). The staff for both facilities is assigned there for a one year tour, and then they rotate out to a less stressful position. No more than 25% of the staff will rotate out at any time, that way there is always a "seasoned" crew on hand for emergencies.

 

The Pit was constructed on what was a Cold War early warning radar site. The site is only accessible by air, with all sea passages being monitored by a series of highly sophisticated acoustic and magnetic buoys, surveillance satellites, US Navy and Coast Guard vessels. In addition, several Alaska Air National Guard fighters are maintained on “Strip Alert” ready to respond at a moments notice.

 

"Deep Freeze" is located on Atuu Atoll. It's exact located is classified. It's a former US government bio-warfare research facility, that was closed down in the early 80's, only to be reactivated in 2001 and converted into a super prison. While most of the facility is constructed underground, the facility has a dozen buildings above ground (Air Traffic Control tower, aircraft hangers, boat dock, maintenance buildings, etc.) along with an airstrip capable of receiving C-17 transport aircraft.

 

What's unknown to most of the staff is that in the event of a successful security breach, both facilities would be destroyed by small nuclear charges planted during their construction (Codename: Project Failsafe). As a second failsafe measure, USAF B-1 and B-52 bombers, based in Guam and Diego Garcia, have the atoll’s location programmed into their navigation computers, and several nuclear equipped Tomahawk cruise missiles have been pre-positioned for easy access.