The Jailhouse Battle Map - Launch

Hello Adventurers! The final map for this month is The Jailhouse! (Your free wilderness map is coming early next month). This is a city Jail/Prison with a layout reminiscent of old Victorian prisons. I’ve added a few areas I think could be fun to run scenarios in including: The mess hall, an infirmary, exercise yard, along with warden and guard rooms. I can imagine a bunch of fun encounters based on a location like this. Prison breaks, guards being held hostage, prisoner riots, mad doctors doing research on inmates, a mass food fight brawl in the mess hall or an attempted assassination of someone in the exercise yard.

Our next map is free!

My next map will be based around the theme ‘The Lake Shore’. It will be a wilderness map along a body of water, I’ll create a few variants for different environments so it's as flexible as possible. This is a free map I'm giving to all you wonderful Patron. It will be out early next month.

Finally welcome to the new people that joined this month, if you have any questions just let me know. Thank you all for your support, you're the best! Have a great week and as always happy adventuring! And now onto the map notes.

Introduction

The sun blinds you momentarily as you walk out of the dark prison block into a cold autumn day. The guards hustle your fellow prisoners forward into the exercise yard, splitting you up, some to the left others to the right. The gravel covered yard is split into three areas by tall inner fences, around the fence is a huge grey stone wall topped by spiked railings. In each corner of the yard are wooden guard towers, their occupants armed with crossbows and mean expressions. 

You search for your contact and find him patrolling between the fence and the stone wall. The guard is young, barely out of his teens, tall and lanky. He glances in your direction and nods slightly, his eyes flicking to a large haversack propped against the outer wall. If things go down your weapons should be close at hand. Looking around, you find the man you seek standing off to the side, hands placed in his armpits while stamping his feet to keep warm. You walk over and greet him with a grunt. The Warden has told you nothing about him, other than someone has put a large bounty on his head. Your job is to prevent that bounty from being collected, and so far you've been quite successful.

Your first indication of trouble is a loud roar and people screaming. From outside the wall a blast of white hot flame engulfing a watchtower. A burning body topples over the tower's guardrail and lands with a thud on the gravel below. A scaly head crests the outer wall and looks down hungrily at the prisoners below. Two great wings beat once, twice, carrying the beast over the wall and into the yard. Prisoners scatter as it lands heavily, snapping at fleeing men lazily. Its head scans the yard once, twice before locking eyes with your terrified ward. Hissing it begins to stalk towards its target. You've got to give them credit, this is by far the most creative assassination attempt so far.

Notes and tips

• 30x40 Grid
• Either your party is hired to stop a prison riot or they are caught up in it somehow.
• The party could try to break a friend or party member out of jail, break out themselves or could try to prevent a prison break from happening.
• You have been hired by the warden to infiltrate a prison gang, things go a bit ‘pear shaped’.
• A rogue alchemist is doing weird experiments on prisoners and things have gone very wrong, the prisoners are all mutated and running loose, the party gets to clean house!
• Mess hall food fight! But with shivs and gangs, so much fun!
• Locks could be magical or mundane depending on who is locked up.

Make sure you give your party fun ways to escape! Many of the areas are locked behind bars, or fences, try to add in opportunities to get past these obstacles with clever play. Rogues should get to keep their tools or buy new ones from other prisoners. Hint that some guards are corrupt and can be bribed, make sure your party has access to teleportation in some way or slip them a hill giant strength potion.

Variants

Night time unlit version

Night time lit version

Riot version (Day/night)