30 Prison Guards
The guards who spend their working lives behind the walls of the Paul and Peter Fortress, watching over the scum of society so that you don't have to.
1-Mr Nasty
This prison officer goes out of his way to make things unpleasant for the convicts, spitting in food, beating people without provocation, being racist, and reporting people for trivial breaches of the rules, as a result, most of the prisoners would be happy if he were murdered.
2-Mr Mackey
A stickler for the prison rules, but much fairer in enforcing them then Mr Nasty and therefore he is not as despised and hated. He still has to be careful and watch his back as many convicts have suffered at his hands. One of those prison officers who has spent most of his life in the job.
3-Mr Fixit
For a price, this corrupt prison officer will make things more bearable for the convicts in small and not so small ways, smuggling letters out and smuggling letters, drugs, mobile phones and even knives in. He draws the line at anything that will lead to one of his fellow officers being killed or hurt, however.
4-Mr Careful
This prison officer is near retirement and really does not want to end up being murdered on the job, so he has a largely live and let live attitude. As long as the convicts are not caught blatantly breaking the more important prison rules, he will overlook what they do. Some of the convicts privately like him, although they are careful not to show it openly.
5-Mr Muscles
One of the strongest people in the prison, he is the one called to deal with particularly dangerous convicts. As long as the convicts are not armed, he will take off his badge, put down his baton and deal with them informally without having them given more prison time afterwards. Another of the officers that is respected if not much liked by the convicts.
6-Mr Daily Mail
Unpopular with the convicts and the vast majority of his fellow officers alike, Mr Daily Mail constantly whinges about how things used to be back when there was the whip and the darkroom to punish convicts with. Yet when there is serious trouble he is normally the last officer to come to the scene, by which time the trouble is over. One or two officers privately wish that he would get hurt.
7-Mr Hangman
The officer called upon to hang convicts that have been sentenced to death, Mr Hangman takes pride in the speed of his deadly work. A firm believer in capital punishment, he wishes that it applied to more offences other then murder and high treason. On the scaffold he wears a black mask as he is superstitious and thinks that this way the ghosts of his victims will not know whom to haunt.
8-Mr Happy
Somebody who will tell jokes and chat with fellow officers and convicts alike, he tries to keep people happy and thinks that most convicts can be reformed, much to the disgust of Mr Daily Mail who thinks that he is too friendly with the convicts. On the great festival days it is he who insists that the prison is decorated and that the convicts have decent festival food. Most convicts like him and can talk with him without being suspected by other convicts of being informers.
9-Mr Doglover
A lover of animals, his main job is to look after Old Red, the prisons tracker dog that has tracked down many would be escapees. He does not have much contact with the convicts so they have no great dislike of him, but several of them, those who escaped and were recaptured, would poison Old Red if they could get away with it. He loves Old Red as if he were a son.
10-Mr Racist
Whilst he is all right towards most white convicts, he has a hatred for convicts without white skins and goes out of his way to make their lives hell, whispering racist slurs to them. The Governor would sack him if he could prove it, but the other officers cover up for him.
11-Mr Dark
On the surface, a good prison officer who can control people without brutality. He does seem to have a great hatred of sex offenders, but then so do most people. When off duty he likes to find young runaway girls who have noone to turn to, and then beat and rape them, confident that he will never get caught and brought to justice for his crimes.
12-Mr Undercover
His fellow officers would be horrified and furious if they discovered that this seemingly friendly and competent officer was in fact an undercover journalist who
Has been secretly taping and filming them for weeks as part of an exposé on the state of the countrys prison system.
13-Mr Drugged
He used to be a competent officer until somebody sent him a package with a live Silverspider inside and he reached inside and got a bite on his hand. Since then he has been addicted to the venom, and the person who got him hooked sells it to him in small tubes in return for money or confidential information. Sooner or later someone will notice the damage from his drug abuse.
14-Mr Surgeon
The prison doctor, he has saved the lives of several convicts after secret knife fights or suicide attempts, and he has treated a few officers too. He suspects that something is wrong with Mr Drugged but wants to be certain before he informs the Governor of his suspicions.
15-Mr Bored
This prison officer actually enjoys when a riot or an escape attempt is taking place, because he finds life otherwise almost as boring as the convicts do. He knows that his fellow officers do not feel the same way, so he keeps his feelings to himself.
16-Mr Fat
This officer has a nice personality but in the view of the Surgeon he is far too fat for his job and should either resign or go on a diet. He finds it hard to run to trouble, and by the time he gets there he is often too out of breath to do anything. The convicts think this is really funny.
17-Mr Moonlighter
This officer secretly and illegally moonlights as a barman in a pub where criminals and organized crime figures often hang out. If they were ever to discover that he was a prison officer he might well end up dead or at least very badly hurt.
18-Mr Dreamer
This officer dreams of being a rich nobleman and travelling all over the country. However, he does not let his dreams get in the way of his job and is always there when needed.
19-Mr Average
Neither the first nor the last on the scene at any violent incident, he does his work well but not so well that the others with him seem to be working badly compared to him. As a result he has several friends amongst the staff, whilst the convicts dislike him but no more then they dislike the majority of the staff.
20-Mr Traitor
This officer joined the prison staff to sabotage the prison from the inside. He is actively aiding the escape of a notorious gangster by smuggling keys to him, and even worse, he has found out where three of his fellow officers live and is planning to give their addresses to the criminals that he is secretly serving so that they can be murdered in their own homes.
21-Mr Lawful
One of those who do everything by the book. Whilst he will bust convicts for the slightest breach of the prison rules, he refrains from meting out any violent unofficial punishments so the convicts have a grudging respect for him despite hating his guts.
22-Mr Trusty
Twenty years ago he was sentenced to a long prison term for armed robbery. Once inside he turned his back on his criminal friends and became a prison trusty, making tea for the officers and helping in the running of the prison. After he saved the Governor from being murdered by a convict with a knife, he was paroled but turned up the next day at the gates wanting a job. Knowing that if it were not for him he would have been murdered, the Governor hired him on the spot. He is despised by nearly every inmate in the prison for switching sides.
23-Mr Lecher
He is one of those who patrols the womens wing and likes touching up female convicts and, if they consent (and some, with no other chance of making love to a man until their sentences are up, do) he likes making secret love to them in their cells. He, unlike Mr Dark, is no rapist.
24-Mr Newbie
Today is his first day on the job, and if he is not careful, he could get hurt. He has no real idea, which convicts are really dangerous and which can be pushed around with impunity, and could end up trying to push around the wrong one. He overestimates his own strength and does not sense the danger he could end up in.
25-Mr Innovator
One of those people who thinks he is always right and that traditions decades old
can be changed by him, he hassles the Governor with ideas to change things, thinking that changes are needed to rehabilitate the convicts better. The Governor is on the verge of telling him to shut up and do his work like the others or face being fired.
26-Mr Union
The shop steward of the Prison Officers Association, this officer will not hesitate to call his fellow officers out on strike if he feels that they are underpaid or badly treated by the Governor. The Governor hates him but there is nothing he can do, as if he tries to sack him everyone else will stage a walkout. For his part Mr Union makes sure that he stays within the law and does not cause trouble needlessly.
27-Mr Sloth
He falls asleep on watch, fails to lock doors at times, lets convicts look too long at his keys meaning that they might copy them in the prison workshop later. He has not been sacked because the other officers have covered up for him so far as he is after all one of them, but they are getting tired of it. Mr Union has told him privately to shape up or ship out.
28-Mr Paranoid
He is convinced that all the convicts are trying to escape and checks the bars, walls, gym equipment by tapping them with his baton. Very unpopular with the convicts as he conducts regular on the spot inspections of their cells and often uncovers their contraband or hooch and has them marched off to the punishment block. Even his fellow officers think that he should chill out a bit.
29-Mr Paperwork
His great talent is in doing paperwork and in making sure that it gets to the right people at the right time. He has also saved his fellow officers money legally by doing their tax returns, making himself well liked. After several years in the prison service he has become the Governors deputy and carries out many of the Governors tasks for him.
30-Mr Governor
As a prison officer for forty years and the Governor of The Paul and Peter Fortress for the last ten of them, he has witnessed riots, an escape or two, over a hundred executions and a score of prison suicides. He cares about keeping the Fortress stable more then anything in his life. Convicts came and go, but the Fortress remains unchanging and he likes it that way.
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? Responses (12)
I would have preferred to see a less stereotyped collection of NPCs. While the list effectively gathers the cliches common to depictions of prisons, it doesn't really add anything to them.
You seem to be under the impression that prison rules are enforced through intimidation or that rules are enforced as a means of harassing the inmates. Nothing could be further from the truth. Inmate despise the weak and corrupt just as much as they hate those who are arbitrary or disrespectful.
My comment to Wulf is, if you don't like it... write one up you do like, that "rings true" for you.
30 Prison Guards II has a nice ring to it.
Ah, stereotypes. I suggest we call this one "Shawshank Redemption Syndrome" or "Green Mile Fever." Though if you've got a different one, I'm cool with hearing it.
The listing seems very modern, appropriate for a modern day prison, but not a medieval one where less political correctness and respect for personal rights were in play.
While it is a complete listing, I would of liked to see how these people interact with each other. Are they all drinking buddies or do they just kind of do nothing with each other? Does anyone have a specific grudge against someone?
And I would think given the prison, that the guards would not be living outside, but living inside in dorms. But, that is seperate, and ignorable, issue.
Too modern, as Moon states, and what Wulf said too. Its an arbitrary smattering of cliches and stereotypes. These could be 30 prison guards, or 30 city guards, or 30 basic people anywhere.
In fact, many of these appear in some of your other thirties.
Mr. Fat?
Holding off vote for now.
Not one of my best Strolen.com submissions, but not one of my worst either.Best for a game set in modern times.
What they said, the formatting could be nicer as well. That aside, it is still a usable collection of minor NPCs, just the stereotypes you would expect in a prison. So nothing groundbreaking, but usable.
Man, that Mr. Dark's pretty messed up. Now, this would be an interesting scenario: a man on the outside, a somewhat infamous assassin (he's not very well-known within those walls, though; too often, he's been disappointed to hear other inmates say, "Khaled Hi-wha now? Never heard of ya.") known for a strong moral code is sentenced to twenty years in prison for attempted murder (his very first unsuccessful assassination). On his very first day, he's being transported from the precinct where he was being held to the prison by Mr. Dark, who suddenly pulls over to pick up a hitch-hiking young lady. To his horror, Mr. Dark then knocks her out and rapes her. Swearing to kill the prisoner if he ever tells people about his secret, Mr. Dark then dumps the girl in a roadside ditch and drives back to the prison. The assassin is placed within one of the high-security wards due to his dangerous nature, and needs to figure out a way to expose Mr. Dark for the evil bastard that he truly is. However, he needs to find a guard whom he can tell this secret and who will cooperate with him. He's got some theories about Mr. undercover (he thinks that he recognizes him from the hit that got him jailed), but he's waiting for confirmation on that. In the meantime, he's trying to garner the help of Mr. Innovator (who seems a little more likely to trust a convict) and Mr. Newbie (who doesn't know very much about the corruptive bonds between the guards yet, and might be a little more likely to help out someone trying to do the right thing). He's very reluctant to resort to murder, since that's what landed him in the fortress in the first place. However, if no other way presents itself, he is not above and beyond the idea of starting a riot, then using the pandemonium to slay Mr. Dark. He doesn't relish the process, believing that such scum should be prosecuted by the law, thus allowing him a much more unpleasant death, but if such a route is impossible, his code of honor, which greatly values respect towards women, must be satisfied. Mr Dark must pay the price, regardless of the road leading to that goal. Let's say that the PC's are a group of new guards either trying out for the job for real, or even criminals trying to bust out the assassin. How would they be drawn into this tale of dark deeds and even darker "hobbies?"
This is very useful and easily adaptable
Very good work here from the King of 30!
4.0/5
This is useful, and easily adapted to less modern games with a little imagination. The core personality is what really matters. If my PCs ever end up in prison (in ANY genre), I will be pulling this list out to help color their interactions with the guards.
The only major point against this piece is the amount you borrow from your OTHER 30s -- like Mr. Average and Mr. Racist. They appear in pretty much all of your lists, and it gets old when you read as many of these as I do.
P.S. Not sure if you've heard it, but here's a song about Old Red: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft9kGtuTTlA
Good feedback on this one, though frankly if a personality fits into more than 1 30, I don't see why it should'nt be used - subs, except where linked, should be standalone.
Having 5. See #13 in 30 Soldiers but as a guard is no better.
There should be some effort made to customize the archtype for the list, but apart from that...