The Prisoner RPG?

PRISONER OF THE PRISONER

Among other things, I am a fan of old The Prisoner show.

Why?

During my youth in Canada, American TV was still a rare thing except for blockbuster shows like The Six Million Dollar Man or Buck Rogers. Mostly, my earliest memories were of watching UK shows like Space: 1999, The Tomorrow People, or Blake's Seven, or the few Japanese anime that were trickling in.

Then The Prisoner came to our TV. My first memory was of the episode where Number 6 goes to a bar and orders a drink. He takes a sip and sees a word at the bottom of his glass.

YOU

Another sip, another word.

HAVE

Yet another.

BEEN

A last gulp.

POISONED

Cooly, he orders a half dozen whiskies, downs them one after the other, then goes to the bathroom to throw his guts up.

Brilliant!

Unfortunately, the program was shown out of order, so after that was a jumble of disjointed episodes. But the images - The Village, Rover, ball chairs, the theme song - all stuck with me. Later, I read the comic series, and it was fairly meh, more IP nostalgia tourism than a new work in the same universe. I have discovered there are novels, but honestly I am afraid to read derivative works and ruin my interest.

When I moved to Japan, I had a vivid flashback to The Prisoner at Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki. HTB is a HUGE Dutch-themed park, with Dutch people in traditional dress, millions of tulip bulbs, and delivery trucks with FISH or BREAD written on them. There are no store or brand names. No one speaks English.

It is the Village made flesh in Asia.

GURPS GOOD, BAD, & UGLY

So far as I know, the only RPG adaptation was the 1990 GURPS The Prisoner sourcebook. Like most GURPS books, it is an excellent read and IP sourcebook. Yet as a game, re-creating McGoohan's trippy psychedelic re-examination of spies after his successful Danger Man series in an old school simulationist ruleset like GURPs means lots of heavy lifting from the GM.

Couldn't we do better?

GAME vs FICTION

To make a fun and faithful adaptation of The Prisoner, you first have to reflect on the difference in genres, and how a TV show and RPG Game are good at different things.

The TV program showcased the individual fighting a faceless organization, while a traditional RPG has to incorporate the group and its dynamics united against a palpable threat. Last, the TV Show had a serious, menacing tone that was deliberately punctured by absurdist actions. Sitting around a table for hours with friends (and presumably some drinks and snacks in hand) playing a game, the tone cannot stay serious all the time, but peaks and dives in reflection of the high and lows of the story being told, as well as the freshness of players & the GM.

Note that I am sure there is a solo play or journalling game out that there could do a passable or even fun version of The Prisoner, but that is outside my wheelhouse. Please leave a comment if you know of a good candidate. The I'm Begging You To Play Another RPG Facebook page people suggest FATE, Fudge, Dread, and Wilderness of Mirrors as candidates.

What system would then work to recreate The Prisoner as a trad RPG?

THE PRISONER = PARANOIA

Since one of the themes of The Prisoner is paranoia and mistrust, how about we use the game Paranoia? Some of you might say that a game about super-powered clones trapped in an underground dystopia by a mad computer and killing one another over spurious secret society connections and accusations of 'Traitor!' wouldn't represent the source material well.

AND

YOU'D

BE

WRONG

Both the Village and the Alpha Complex are isolated dystopias, so settings are similar in feel.

The Computer and Number 1 are both near mythic overseers, close enough.

All clones have psychic powers, and in The Prisoner we see Number 12 (Alison) use hers at the end of The Schizoid Man. This implies that subtle and rare uses of psychic could work very well in the game. It also implies that player characters could all be double agents jostling to move up the hierarchy and become the new Number 1 by judicious use of their powers. The danger would be in having their powers nullified if discovered.

Delicious!

As for the secret societies, one staple of The Prisoner is the jostling and scheming background characters. In an RPG, the player characters are thus part of this system, and so connecting to like-minded NPCs would seem a natural part of the game.

Here would be a good small starter list:

1 Anti-Psychic League - Will try to unmask and nullify all psyhic powers while shamefully hiding their own.

2 Village Historical Society - Must find out how the Village came to be. Always trying to get at records or stories from older residents.

3 Houdinis - Will try to escape at all costs. Under constant surveillance, but somehow always manages to have a plan in the works.

4 Assassins - Dedicated to destroying Number 1. Keep this undercover and are always looking for an opening.

5 The Faithful - Devoted to Number 1 and protecting the Village. They make good traitors who sell out or sabotage other PCs.

6 Hedonists - Spend their time indulging in vices in pastimes, from playing chess to mind-altering substances.

7 Superiors - Pro-psychic group who see themselves as advanced beings. Can improve their abilities but normally keep them hidden.

8 Outsiders - Spies from the outside trying to smuggle tech and secrets from the Village back to their homeland.

Of course, all these societies could provide help and story hooks to characters, as well as the danger of being caught.

"How about security clearances?" you might say. I don't think Paranoia's system is portable as is, or particularly apt. Instead, we can use the system of numbers that already exists in the Village. Taking a quick glance at the Prisoner wiki, a rough outline would be as follows:

Number 1 - All access, never seen. Leader of the Village.

Numbers 2 Highest access, work directly under Number 1, mission is to break Numbers 6-11.

Numbers 3-5 High access, work under Number 2 to as technical, administrative, and consulting support.

Numbers 6-11 No access, high value targets kept under close surveillance.

Number 12-49 Partial access. Work in 'speaking parts' in the Village and cleared to interact with Numbers 6-11.

Numbers 50-100 Limited access. Work in non-speaking, menial parts in the Village.

Numbers 50-199 Low access. Village residents

Numbers 200+ Special access. Specially talented, unique individuals called in by the top 5 to assist in breaking 6-11 or other crises.

"What of clones then?"

In episode one "Arrival," Number 6's old associate Cobb supposedly dies, but comes back at the end of the episode. If we add medical revivals that scramble a character's psychic abilities and secret society alignment (or keep it the same if you wish), then we are good to go.

"How about the rules?" you might add.

Listen...

I played and ran in tons of Paranoia games back in the day.
I don't remember a thing about the rules.

They were innocuous and blended into the gameplay. We had a blast with the scenarios, and the rules backed that up.

Just what The Prisoner needs.

"Well, how about the Lore?"

See below.

BONUS! RANDOM TABLE

There are many fan theories as to the true nature of The Village. I would recommend the GM rolling a different one each episode and keeping that in mind as the canon du jour. This means that you will conserve the delicious ambiguity and contradictions of the series in your games.

1 Computer Simulation - On the surface, this seems like a boring, no-brainer. However, if we take the trope of assigning numbers instead of names, we can transform it into A trying to convince humans to join them and subsume their personality.

2 Alien Simulacra - This is the Ray Bradbury option, turning the setting into a mirage put up by aliens. This explains all the weirdness - the aliens are trying to communicate but cannot understand, only imitate humans.

3 Drug Induced Fantasy - This is a tad dark, but fitting for one off games of trippy weirdness. The drugs could be used to try and get secrets out of PCs, or else just a one off strange trip.

4 Alternate Dimension - Could be a reality warping machine or just a parallel dimension, feel free to have something slightly off and the events here happening in a pocket universe. Canon and consistency are suspended for a session.

5 Foreign Spybreaker - The whole Village is a facade created by a foreign nation to get the info from the player characters. Their might be subtle hints in the higher numbers.

6 Robot World - Villagers are 'sleeper' agents, totally normally until a threat, then turn into powerful automatons. Means there is probably a whole support system somewhere...

7 Mental Hospital - Another simly depressing option. However, if we turn it into a Shutter Island style narrative, where the protagonists each have to confront their own trauma or insanity, then it gets interesting.

8 Characters in a Story - The PCs are just characters in a spy novel, and may overhear the Narrator. They could try to break the fourth wall and contact their creator, or else Rick & Morty up the mate game.

And remember....

I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.