Driving People Crazy

How would you design a prison intended to drive adventurers insane? I've been working on a plot where adventurers need to bust a friend out of some kind of super prison, but this prison isnt just any old prison, its one designed by a genius psychologist to absolutely break its prisoners without the use of physical violence except in the most extreme of cases.

The prisons claim to fame is that the prisoner cells would always be left unlocked, the prisoners, presumably after countless attempts to escape, eventually just stay in their cells by choice, or even lock it themselves. Though i feel ive written myself into a corner with this. What could drive someone to imprison themselves, and yet not so far as to just commit suicide?

Alternatively, just share stuff that fucks with people you could incorporate into a dungeon.

The "claim to fame" is just propaganda. In truth he just keeps them in a drugged stupor.

Patrolling the hall are Brundlepenises that rape any adventurer that tries to leave. The only safe space are the cells.

Multiple levels of simulations to the point where the prisoners aren't even sure what's actually real. For the most part the simulations are perfect except that they sneak in a couple of details that give away the deception like 3 AM lasting two hours or titles of famous movies being slightly off. When the prisoner dies in the simulation, they wake up back in their cell and another begins.

The halls are filled with kender

The prison is made of modular segments that are shuffled daily.

Every prisoner wears a full body suit with a mask and a voice synthesizer so everyone more or less looks the same.

Well, what you're describing is a state of learned helplessness, so the question becomes something like, "How do we maintain a persistent state of learned helplessness in human beings?" Which is very similar to the question, "How can we induce clinical depression in our inmates?"

I don't have a clear answer to that question, but I can think of some things you might want in a prison like this:

1) Everyone who tries to leave gets caught, and everyone knows that; everyone can see that anyone who tries to leave gets caught.
2) They don't know exactly what will catch them. The guard system is perfect but unpredictable.
3) There are incentives for prisoners to rat each other out. Entrapment is not penalized. You could have the equivalent of an agent provocateurs-- someone who furthers escape attempts only to ensure that they play into the hands of the authorities.
5) The system is designed to encourage fear of the outside world. It uses propaganda to insinuate that life on the inside is better than life outside-- that, say, prison life is shitty but reliable, whereas the outside world is straight bonkers. Or you could isolate them from social contact and play up the role of the prison system as a harsh-but-caring provider.
6) You could also try to crush the inmates' self-esteem or dignity. For example, you could remind them that nobody will employ an ex-convict.

Look into the psychology used in the development of Guantanamo for an example of how the field can be (mis)used for this purpose.

Whoever runs the prison makes it clear to every adventurer interred that they can earn their freedom just by getting through a simple gauntlet. The gauntlet is very lethal, but fortunately that isn't much of a problem because should you ever die inside the prison, you will revive inside your cell one day later, feeling slightly exhausted but otherwise no worse for wear. In essence, you have an infinite amount of retries to beat this gauntlet. The gauntlet itself doesn't change at all, so as long as you keep trying you should eventually get sufficient practice that you can beat it and escape. Sounds simple enough, right?

The gauntlet itself, however, does not play fair at all, and is an extremely long and arduous ordeal that operates on a level of bullshit equal to the bastard child of Tomb of Horrors and I Wanna Be The Guy. Just to get an idea of how awful it is to get through, imagine there's a corridor, 200ft long. In the end you can see a door with a sign above it labeled EXIT. Immediately in front of you is a spiked pit, ten feet across. You easily jump across the pit only to fall into the SECOND spiked pit immediately beyond the first one, as the floor above it is an illusion. Next day you try jumping slightly further, and after a number of retries make it across both pits in one go... only for a giant blade to swing out from the wall and behead you instantly.

Imagine the entire 200 feet of corridor is filled entirely with this kind of bullshit "gotcha!" traps. Now imagine that, 195 feet into the corridor, 5 feet from the exit, a boulder trap is triggered, and you have to run all the way back through the corridor in order to not get squashed by the boulder. Through all those dozens of traps you've spent months getting through, that have all just been reset.

cont.

I can't say I understand. What is the aim of this place? Is it rehabilitation into polite society? If so, is "break" the word you should use? Is it for purposes of incapacitation and complete removal from society? If so, why not just kill them all, or trap their souls, or whatever?

What is the grade of prisoner? Political? Criminal? Insane?

I think maybe you've bunged yourself by not thinking about these things before playing it up, m8.

The halls are littered with trapdoors, and the prisioners are given some form of ID chip, if they fall through the trapdoor, they're teleported back into their cell, with a chute to give them a quick drop, if they have no ID? they're teleported out the prison!