Prison Break

We’re back at it with another dual wandering monster entry today. With DM prep time always at a premium, it’s such a great feeling to create an encounter that covers a dungeon or wilderness setting. Let’s hop to it!

Our goal with these tables is to ensure a nice mix of purely hostile encounters and disruptive events. These disturbances might be violent depending on how the party proceeds, but they could also be turned into a positive. And that’s what we want to focus on with this table entry.

Let’s start by setting the scene for the player on watch. Things are pretty dull and uneventful until an easy Perception check reveals a bit of a clanking pattern sound briskly closing in on their resting spot. The odd noise is the sound of manacles and chains rattling in a bit of a panicked pattern.

Side note: DM Ben loves to tee up sound effects on his iPad for these types of moments. You can find just about any clip you need on good ol’ YouTube. Just find the right soundbite and add the link to your DM Prep sheet.

The group has encountered an escaped prisoner who is frantically running for his life. For that, we’re using a Slave STL from EC3D Designs and their swell Skyless Realms campaign. There are lots of great details here: the tattered clothing, the manacles, the heavy beard, and, of course, the bare feet. This poor fella is on the smaller scale side, so resident painter Kimmy Utah had her painting work cut out for her on this mini.

Now let’s craft up some more details on this runaway:

• Name: Barnaby Wickenburg
• Race: Human
• Stat Block: If necessary, a CR 2 Prisoner works here.
• Persona: Frightened out of his mind. Out of breath.
• Reason for Capture: Thief (but not a good one)
• Being chased by: Another adventuring group.
• Escaped: Guard fell asleep, and he slipped away.

Barnaby will beg for any sorta weapon and a couple of gold pieces. In exchange, he will give the group valuable information, such as enemy positions, tidbits on particular side quests, or intel on a hunted boss. He will politely decline an invitation to join the party because his goal is to get as far away from his captors as possible.

Our game group is making its way toward a suspected kidnapper’s cabin so he can share valuable tactical information, like how she always keeps one child strung up in the backyard and how the old bag loves to conjure up elemental guardians. As the DM, you should always have a couple of new nuggets of information handy for these sorts of scenarios.

Poor Barnaby has been through the wringer and lots of exposed cuts and bruises on his person. He clearly chose poorly in his last thievery attempt and paid dearly for it. The DM should really push for empathy in this NPC’s description and let the group know that his captors aren’t anyone the group wants to mess with here (but they may not have a choice). DM Ben will also make a face card for Mr. Wickenburg because it’s always fun to introduce a familiar NPC at a later time.

Let’s not forget who is chasing our prisoner! For our campaign, DM Ben will share the description of a “Six” tattoo, which is the mark of a rival group hunting down our adventurers in the free Acquisition’s Incorporated DnD 5e module. So, this encounter is a reminder that someone is still hot on their tail.

And with that, let’s update both our Wilderness table below and our ongoing Dungeon Delve table.

Until next time, friends.