Day 9 Prompt: Privilege
Week 2 Prompt: Intellect
Weekday Prompt: Blessed
As you can see from the graphic and above notes, “Privilege” is the prompt for Day 9 of the RPGaDAY 2026 Challenge. And yes, I’ll be twisting this one as well. I didn’t really see an anagram or near-word. But there is a rhyming word, “village”.
So instead of making something up in this blog entry, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite locations that had its own unique characteristics. The Village from the surreal 1967 spy-fi British television series “The Prisoner”.
Short intro: Patrick McGoohan plays a British espionage agent who is kidnapped by persons unknown and sent to a place called “The Village”. The forces who control The Village want to know why McGoohan’s character (only referred to as Number 6) retired from his espionage assignment without giving a reason to his superiors. In The Village, Number 6 discovers that other prisoners in the gilded cage may also be “retired” secret service agents or possibly witnesses to things that should have not been seen.
When I started using this challenge to bring about the wonderful locations that are characters themselves, The Village was one of the best examples of this. When Number 6 is trying to gather information about his captivity, he is only given maps like the one above that are generic enough to prevent escape. There are hidden cameras everywhere keeping an eye on the inhabitants. If they wandered too far, special devices called “Rovers” would appear and incapacitate (or even eliminate) the offending individual. These “Rovers” appeared as a large white balloon that could herd or smother those that they tracked. It is not known if they were autonomous, semi-independent or just remote controlled.
The needs of the inhabitants were well taken care of in this cage with no bars. They were provided with an apartment, food, clothing and various entertainment options. There are stores, a hospital, recreational options, labour exchange, café, a town hall and even a phone box (no it’s not blue).
Some of the inhabitants knew that they were prisoners within this location. Others were participants in trying to obtain information from those who had been brought here. And there were others that no longer possessed all of their mental facilities.
The Village sits on a warm coastal location somewhere in Europe. In the show the exact location is a bit of a mystery. In one episode, it’s easy to get to from London. In another episode it takes a while to get there. This may have been on purpose as the bulk of the stories in this 17-episode season are mind-fucks (for lack of a better word). We are never told who controls The Village, the fate of the inhabitants or if Number 6 ever gets to be a free man. This vagueness has contributed to the appeal of the show. Fans could debate facts, information tidbits and theories about this series for years (and continue to this day).
This location begs to be used in a spy-fi espionage RPG campaign. While some GMs may enjoy watching the entire TV series, there are some other quicker options for additional information on this location. Both Wikipedia and The Prisoner Wiki have entries on The Village. And there was an actual RPG supplement released for it that I talked about in a 2021 RPGaDAY entry. Steve Jackson Games released GURPS The Prisoner when they had a massive expansion of IP related supplements. It was one of the few GURPS products I kept when I had an RPG book purge in the mid to late 90’s (I look back at that with regret). This supplement had suggestions on types of games that could be played, how to introduce the characters to The Village and a guide to the episodes. If you can pick it up, I’d recommend it.
“Be seeing you.”
What other locations have you seen that would provide a number of stories for a roleplaying campaign? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
