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How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

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Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#211

Post by emodendroket »

EggsOnToast wrote: post #70
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #53

For a semester, I taught in a state prison for a prisoner educational program. Every time I went in, I was struck by how punitively petty so many of the rules and corrections officers were. The environment is carefully crafted to suck out all joy and hope from the inmates. Azkaban with its dementor guards is a pretty good illustration of an American prison. Guards are as likely to confiscate gaming materials (and pun…

I'm just giving anecdata here so I'm curious to see if you agree with me. Having known two people that went to prison, my opinion on the system is that I think people usually go to prison for the legally correct reason. That being said, a lot of people I meet seem to associate going to prison with deserving to live in a hellhole. No one considers the social exclusion itself a hellhole as evidenced by the ubiquitousne…

I mean, the very idea that prison rape jokes are widespread is illustrative of a certain barbarism in our collective thinking.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#212

Post by emodendroket »

pmarreck wrote: post #74
EggsOnToast wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just giving anecdata here so I'm curious to see if you agree with me. Having known two people that went to prison, my opinion on the system is that I think people usually go to prison for the legally correct reason. That being said, a lot of people I meet seem to associate going to prison with deserving to live in a hellhole. No one considers the social exclusion itself a hellhole as evidenced by the ubiquitousne…

> I think people usually go to prison for the legally correct reason Or not, if most of the incriminating information was eyewitness testimony, the #1 cause of wrongful convictions: https://www.innocenceproject.org/ MY opinion of the US criminal justice system is that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation is almost definitely not being followed, with the bias far into the false-positive conviction…

Wrongful convictions are a serious issue, but at the same time, I don't think that we could say, even if it were solved tomorrow, that everything else about the correctional system is fine.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#213

Post by walshemj »

vkou wrote: post #14
aerotwelve wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ready to take the hit for asking a very stupid question: why are dice considered contraband? Wouldn't it make more sense to allow inmates access to dice and real spinners? They're human beings with brains. Wouldn't correction officers prefer that they spent their time playing games instead of thinking of ways to escape or "cause trouble"?

Because gambling is a moral failing, and prison is supposed to give inmates time to reflect on their moral failings.

Not sure my "scary" great great uncle who was an off course book maker in brumigum pre ww2 would agree with you

Then again not every one has quite the same take on peaky Blinders as I do ;-)

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#214

Post by emodendroket »

rb666 wrote: post #182
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #53

For a semester, I taught in a state prison for a prisoner educational program. Every time I went in, I was struck by how punitively petty so many of the rules and corrections officers were. The environment is carefully crafted to suck out all joy and hope from the inmates. Azkaban with its dementor guards is a pretty good illustration of an American prison. Guards are as likely to confiscate gaming materials (and pun…

This is really a thing in the USA and other 2nd-world countries. In most European countries this is very different.

The term "second-world" refers to former Communist states. It's not a ranking system.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#215

Post by emodendroket »

mark_edward wrote: post #129
sergiotapia wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're in jail - not a vacation.

Do you think petty cruelty towards prisoners makes society safer and reduces recidivism?

I think for many people (not sure about the OP in particular) that's beside the point, because the goal is pure punishment rather than rehabilitation.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#216

Post by isleyaardvark »

r00fus wrote: post #150
jnbiche wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite black Americans being incarcerated at greater rates than white Americans, there are far more white Americans incarcerated than there are black Americans. So if the objective was to re-create slavery, they did a very poor job out of it. No, our prison system hurts all races: white, black, Asian, native, etc. And sadly -- because of the racism prevalent in US society -- if we want true prison reform, we have to…

Slavery isn't entirely synonymous with racism. Just mostly so. The elite need their lower class.

Yep, racism came later. Racism developed to justify slavery. Slavery didn't come into being due to racism.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#217

Post by clort »

Fifer82 wrote: post #116
jdietrich wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a widespread moral panic over D&D back in the 1980s. A lot of Christians sincerely believed that D&D was a recruitment tool for satanism. Well into the 1990s, many evangelical groups were producing materials warning that D&D inevitably leads to witchcraft, murder and suicide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATUpSPj0x-c https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/us/when-dungeons-dragons-...

Damn I really wish I could title the book, it is on the tip of my tongue but I read the same thing. What I found abhorrent is that the people interviewed in that book, ended up being prescribed meds by good professional Christian Doctors using all means to change their paths from evil. To avoid D&D as it was the devils work. I would say that those parent's were mentally ill and/or uneducated and that the doctor's wer…

You are probably thinking of

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dungeon_Master

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#218

Post by ufo »

dumbfounder wrote: post #205
kibwen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a variant of Odds and Evens ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds_and_evens ), though Odds and Evens is kept honest by the fact that it's an adversarial game, so there's no point in players colluding to fix the outcome. To obviate any concerns of player collusion you'd need to ensure that the GM is one of the people picking the numbers, and once you've gone this far you actually only need two people to p…

I have never played any of these games, are some of them without competition? Like everyone is on the same side? It wouldn't work in that case. But all you need is one person picking numbers to be on an adversarial team in order for this to work.

The typical D&D game will have a group of players working as a team and exploring a monster-filled dungeon. A different person is the Dungeon Master and is responsible for crafting the plot of the adventure and presenting challenges to the players (monsters to battle, though choices to make, and so on). However, it isn't really an adversarial thing. A good DM doesn't "play to win" as their goal is to create the most fun experience for everyone.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#219

Post by ufo »

Beltiras wrote: post #188

I'm fascinated by this as a problem. I had an idea how to solve it. Books are not contraband and you can pick two random words from, say the Catcher in the Rye or to name a less controversial book, the Bible and use the first letter of each one to "roll the die". Wrote a small script that tries to balance the odds given the frequency of first letters of words in the English language (odds taken from [1]). Script can…

That is a really interesting idea. But if we pick words by randomly pointing at a page in the book we might need take into account how big the words are in addition to how frequent they are.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#220

Post by ishi »

aphextron wrote: post #56

I have fond memories of playing D&D in the barracks with my fellow "volunteers" during US Army basic training. For those not aware, the conditions for enlistees are very similar to prison. We made a d20 out of wadded up toilet paper and a sharpie that had to be kept hidden until late at night. Our "rulebook" consisted of the hazy memory of our DM who had memorized most of 5E (He also had a separate project going at t…

This reminds me of the semi-relevant story about the first translation of "The Hobbit" to Hebrew: four fighter pilots who were POWs in Egypt from 1970 to 1973 decided to translate the book so that their non-English-speaking friends could enjoy it too. It took them 4 months, and filled 7 notebooks. Even though their translation was not a professional one, it got published in 1977 and became pretty popular.
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