10 ms·

I guess I can understand the dice ban (sort of?) but the fact that some prisons have apparently have banned games like D&D altogether is bizarre to me. It seems

I guess I can understand the dice ban (sort of?) but the fact that some prisons have apparently have banned games like D&D altogether is bizarre to me. It seems like a healthy, relatively peaceful way to pass time and do something creative. I can't see it having a negative effect that other prison activities don't already make possible.

protonimitate 9y ago
As far as pastimes go it seems pretty innocent, but I guess one could argue that because jail is supposed to be punishment time passing actives aren't a priority (not saying I do or do not agree with that stance).
- John23832 9y ago
  That’s probably the problem. Jail/prison should primarily be for reform, not pusnishment. If I punish without helping you change, I’m only telling you to not get caught next time.
  - labster 9y ago
    But how will the corporate prisons earn future profits if prisoners reform in jail?
    - eximius 9y ago
      Hire them?
      - tachyoff 9y ago
        Way easier to pay them like $0.15/hour in prison than the federally-mandated minimum wage. (That number might be hyperbole, but prison wages, if they even exist where you are, are abysmally, illegally low. I believe some of them are indeed sub-dollar.)
        kamaal 9y ago
        Slavery is protected by law under the 13th Amendment.
        labster 9y ago
        Yes, it doesn't apply in prison: Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
        gorogue 9y ago
        20 years ago in Ohio, the average was $18 per month. But you could make (a little) more if you made clothes for the prison industry. And all that was spent on soap, toothpaste, and other necessities that the state didn't provide.
        eximius 9y ago
        I meant after they served their sentence...
    - Jeff_Brown 9y ago
      Prison and wealth inequality are similarly socially inefficient. Human capital is our most valuable resource, and we systematically waste it by depriving people of the opportunity to improve themselves.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    Criminal justice is for reforming but also deterring criminals. If it were only for the former reason, capital punishment wouldn't exist.
    - scarmig 9y ago
      Whether prisons are effective for deterrence is an empirical question. As it turns out, they're not particularly effective. The people who go and hold up a convenience store aren't doing it because of a reasoned cost-benefit analysis based on risk of capture, differential value of prison vs freedom, and future discount rates. They're doing it because they don't do those things. That leaves three real reasons: 1) Reform 2) Reducing society's exposure to criminal elements 3) Punishment as a moral good in itself, as a way to rectify injustice.
      - abakker 9y ago
        To add to this is a simple truism, "people commit crimes because they don't think they'll be caught". Sure, it's not always true, but it encapsulates a lot of the mindset.
      - dictum 9y ago
        > The people who go and hold up a convenience store aren't doing it because of a reasoned cost-benefit analysis based on risk of capture, differential value of prison vs freedom, and future discount rates. They're doing it because they don't do those things. Conversely, at least some percentage of the people who don't have made that cost-benefit analysis. Plus some part of the people who go and commit felonies, mainly the young and naive, have made at least some basic cost-benefit analysis; they mistakenly think they'll be the leaders/tough ones in prison and it'll be okay. I'm not a fan of the punitive prison model, but fear of consequences is a good deterrent. (I sound like an uptight prick, but I'm speaking from experience. Then again, I've never been in a US prison, so I can't say much about them and I don't like what little I know)
        scarmig 9y ago
        ...and the point is that the elasticity of crime with respect to punishment is minimal. You're saying those people exist, which is true and undisputed, but they're relatively rare and statistically insignificant, and not a useful angle for thinking about policy.
  - tdeck 9y ago
    The Reveal podcast did an excellent bit where an undercover reporter worked as a prison guard: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.revealnews.org/episodes/the-man-inside-four-months-as-a-prison-guard/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.revealnews.org/episodes/the... One of the things that really struck me is that when the prison stopped offering programs to occupy the inmates time, they tended to fill it themselves. By getting into fights. So aside from the punishment aspect, there seems to be real value to the system to have pastimes that keep a lid on things, be they work programs, classes, or a cheap board game.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    Your point is valid, but I disagree about the primary purpose of prison. The primary purpose is to protect broader society by removing bad actors. If you can also reform the prisoner, then that's a bonus.
    - Xylakant 9y ago
      That would be inefficient unless you plan on removing bad actors permanently. That would mean life-long sentence for all, even minor, infractions. This is obviously not sustainable. The goal is to remove bad actors by re-educating them to no longer be bad actors. It's the only viable alternative. The other goal is to punish bad actors, thus bringing justice back into balance.
      - Consultant32452 9y ago
        I didn't intend for it to be either/or. If removing bad actors from the general population wasn't the first priority, then there wouldn't be prisons at all. There would only be fines, etc.
- thomaskcr 9y ago
  I think that's a cynical view on their reasoning -- if anything prisoners not being bored is in their best interest in terms of keeping guards safe. My guess is that a lot of problems stem from gambling debts -- you can allow cards and stem gambling a bit by preventing chips from being introduced (in whatever form). With DnD tracking across the game is important so it's not as easy to prevent a ledger from forming.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  If we were solely concerned with punishment it would probably be far cheaper to sentence them to 20 lashes and send them on their way.
VLM 9y ago
In high school we had one guy who was a bit of a sore loser, so I can see the guards not being remotely interested in getting in the middle of any gaming disputes. As the corrections officer quoted in the article stated mentioned, DnD is good for almost all people. What we have here is an abstraction of the gun control argument, if its good or harmless for 99% of the population, then we must ban DnD because one nutcase will flip the table and shank someone, probably the DM/GM. Back to my high school, the sore loser kid actually did punch the DM in the nose when they were both high school juniors, after the DM TPK'd the party because one of the other guys flirted with his girlfriend and the sore loser guy was indignant about being punished for it, yet people wonder why I didn't play DnD in high school with those guys... As May wrote in the article, DnD was banned much as gambling was banned on premises at my high school, but as long as nothing bad happened and the participants were good people the ban was not enforced. The situation they're trying to avoid is inmate A shanks inmate B because B stole his heroin, and in the investigation, he's not dumb enough to mention H but is smart enough to ramble about B's chaotic evil necromancer screwing over the team (and what would you expect, anyway?). Likewise I grew up before Columbine when it was "normal" to build levels in FPS matching your school blueprint because, hey, we all know our school layout and there ARE some good camping points, and this is number 311613 on the list of fun things to do when I was young that would get you swatted or at least arrested today, back then if you weren't a screw up they complimented your obvious skill at possibly getting into CAD drafting. Anyway in a similar manner if players run the Rise of the Runelords campaign they're almost certainly in the clear, but if they make something up where the characters kill the wife or kid of castle guard X and then gloat about it and have a big laugh, then real world corrections officer coincidentally also named X is inevitably going to flip the table when he finds out regardless if its permitted or not and a documented policy that RPGs is prohibited is just the usual thin blue line stuff. Pariahdog119's advice about simply play any RPG except the famous DnD, was also helpful in 80s public school. The more rules lawyerly kids who signed a pledge at church to never play DnD to prevent the devil from stealing their soul or whatever, were chill about the zillions of almost-clones of DnD that existed. The only name I remember from that era was "Castle Perilous" and it had a yellow cover with a pretty amazing ink drawing on the cover. And via the magic of google I found a link to a picture. I probably haven't seen that book in 35 years or so. Pretty wild. Oddly enough I don't remember any of my public school textbooks but I remember "Castle Perilous" LOL. In that book there is a dungeon raid and I DMed it with some friends and my now long since deceased grandfather, insisted on playing with us to make sure I wasn't up to anything inappropriate as he had heard of the DnD controversy, and he ended up enjoying the RPG experience greatly, and in retrospect I wish I had invited him to other RPG games. That was probably about 1982 or so. http://tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18708&sid=30418de8a52f8721af1db2168d986f6c http://tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18708&sid=3...
skissane 9y ago
Some fundamentalist Christians are convinced that D&D is occult, a gateway to Satanism and demonic possession, a cause of suicide, etc. I wonder if any prison administrators share that belief system, which might contribute to a decision to ban D&D.
- philipov 9y ago
  I think it's more a matter of people using their authority over prisoners to satisfy their sadistic power fantasies.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    ...Which they could probably satisfy less destructively with role-playing. The irony is extra ferrous.
- csours 9y ago
  As illustrated in the well known documentary "Mazes and Monsters" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcL-fQNPfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcL-fQNPfQ
  - sevensor 9y ago
    There's a memorable chick tract on the same theme as well.
    - partomniscient 9y ago
      The girl in it casts the Mind Bondage spell on her Dad to make him buy $200 worth of D&D stuff. I was rather incredulous at the time because a) they thought it was the case that spells in D&D work in our reality and b) there didn't appear to be a Mind Bondage spell.....unless perhaps they meant Charm Person? What's their take on Stranger Things?
      - Izkata 9y ago
DoreenMichele 9y ago
D&D and similar have a really negative reputation in some circles, including religious groups. I was a gamer in my teens. One younger member of the group was probably being given a hard time by his religious family for being a gamer. He was often absent from gaming sessions. The weekends he was absent consistently included stories like a drunken car wreck, and now he has a broken leg, or a wild party where some gal says he is the daddy and he has no idea if he even slept with her. I never could fathom why his family didn't just tell him to go gaming every weekend. We fed him free food, used no drugs or alcohol and drove him home safe. But we were Satan worshippers, I guess, because we gamed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- dfee 9y ago
  Do you think this is a representative sample or a bizarre situational experience?
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    When I briefly attended church in Germany while hosting games at home for my husband who still played, one gamer consistently got up on very little sleep to go to church on Sunday morning. Where I would then listen to the preachers talk about what evil pieces of shit we were. Meanwhile, every single gamer who left Germany came to my apartment to tearfully say goodbye because gaming at my apartment was an escape from eating at the mess hall and getting drunk at bars. It was the only thing that kept them sane and not an alcoholic. I don't know about most gaming groups, but where I have been, it's a bastion of civilization in an otherwise cold, cruel world.
    - dfee 9y ago
      I cannot relate to any of this, but the clergyman’s approach / perspective definitely seems bizarre. Gaming has much to offer, as does the social scene at a bar. Where I’ve been these two aren’t at odds. I wonder why they have been in your experiences - maybe it’s the military scene (referencing where you said mess hall).
Unbeliever69 9y ago
U.S. jails/prisons are designed specifically to make the inmate's life as miserable as they are allowed to by law. Trust me, if jails/prisons could ban books or commissary, they would. What you describe is what the Swedish prison system is all about. https://mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-prisoners-what-the-u-s-won-t#.mQMRZKmf6 https://mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-pris.... This is a system designed to make people not only pay for their crimes but to help them rehabilitate and reintegrate into society. Pretty much the polar opposite of the US system of mass incarceration with a revolving door attached to the end.
- throw1257 9y ago
  Maybe this is a good thing.
- tuxxy 9y ago
  >if jails/prisons could ban books... They sorta have. If you want to send a book to an inmate, it must be paperback, must be brand new, and shipped from the retailer. The books cannot have "controversial" material. I've heard of some tech books getting rejected because of "hacking". I know all of this because I have participated in my local Anarchist Black Cross events which is a prison abolition group. Often times, we would hear about some of the prisoners we wrote to having to undergo solitary confinement for some amount of time for minor rule violations. The US prison system as a form of rehabilitation is a cruel joke. Prisoners are treated as scum the moment they enter with no rights. Worse, when prisoners leave, they expect the inmates to adjust back to life normally while employers can discriminate against the former inmates, and the government still treats them like scum. Often times, former inmates can't even rent housing anymore and political/social elites act so surprised that homelessness is on the rise.
  - kolpa 9y ago
    The US prison system is largely a loophole to recreate slavery without violating the letter of the 13th Amendment. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/gilmoreprisonslavery.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/gilmoreprisonslavery...
jopsen 9y ago
If people want to gamble they'll find a way. It's not like you can prevent random events from occurring.
Fjolsvith 9y ago
I ran D&D games as a DM for the entire time I was in prison. Socially challenged inmates tend to gravitate towards those games, and I welcomed them into the group. D&D was a great way to help them learn to interact and work with others. We used a cardboard spinner with a push tack for the pivot.

protonimitate 9y ago

As far as pastimes go it seems pretty innocent, but I guess one could argue that because jail is supposed to be punishment time passing actives aren't a priority (not saying I do or do not agree with that stance).

John23832 9y ago
That’s probably the problem. Jail/prison should primarily be for reform, not pusnishment. If I punish without helping you change, I’m only telling you to not get caught next time.
- labster 9y ago
  But how will the corporate prisons earn future profits if prisoners reform in jail?
  - eximius 9y ago
    Hire them?
    - tachyoff 9y ago
      Way easier to pay them like $0.15/hour in prison than the federally-mandated minimum wage. (That number might be hyperbole, but prison wages, if they even exist where you are, are abysmally, illegally low. I believe some of them are indeed sub-dollar.)
      - kamaal 9y ago
        Slavery is protected by law under the 13th Amendment.
        labster 9y ago
        Yes, it doesn't apply in prison: Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
      - gorogue 9y ago
        20 years ago in Ohio, the average was $18 per month. But you could make (a little) more if you made clothes for the prison industry. And all that was spent on soap, toothpaste, and other necessities that the state didn't provide.
      - eximius 9y ago
        I meant after they served their sentence...
  - Jeff_Brown 9y ago
    Prison and wealth inequality are similarly socially inefficient. Human capital is our most valuable resource, and we systematically waste it by depriving people of the opportunity to improve themselves.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  Criminal justice is for reforming but also deterring criminals. If it were only for the former reason, capital punishment wouldn't exist.
  - scarmig 9y ago
    Whether prisons are effective for deterrence is an empirical question. As it turns out, they're not particularly effective. The people who go and hold up a convenience store aren't doing it because of a reasoned cost-benefit analysis based on risk of capture, differential value of prison vs freedom, and future discount rates. They're doing it because they don't do those things. That leaves three real reasons: 1) Reform 2) Reducing society's exposure to criminal elements 3) Punishment as a moral good in itself, as a way to rectify injustice.
    - abakker 9y ago
      To add to this is a simple truism, "people commit crimes because they don't think they'll be caught". Sure, it's not always true, but it encapsulates a lot of the mindset.
    - dictum 9y ago
      > The people who go and hold up a convenience store aren't doing it because of a reasoned cost-benefit analysis based on risk of capture, differential value of prison vs freedom, and future discount rates. They're doing it because they don't do those things. Conversely, at least some percentage of the people who don't have made that cost-benefit analysis. Plus some part of the people who go and commit felonies, mainly the young and naive, have made at least some basic cost-benefit analysis; they mistakenly think they'll be the leaders/tough ones in prison and it'll be okay. I'm not a fan of the punitive prison model, but fear of consequences is a good deterrent. (I sound like an uptight prick, but I'm speaking from experience. Then again, I've never been in a US prison, so I can't say much about them and I don't like what little I know)
      - scarmig 9y ago
        ...and the point is that the elasticity of crime with respect to punishment is minimal. You're saying those people exist, which is true and undisputed, but they're relatively rare and statistically insignificant, and not a useful angle for thinking about policy.
- tdeck 9y ago
  The Reveal podcast did an excellent bit where an undercover reporter worked as a prison guard: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.revealnews.org/episodes/the-man-inside-four-months-as-a-prison-guard/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.revealnews.org/episodes/the... One of the things that really struck me is that when the prison stopped offering programs to occupy the inmates time, they tended to fill it themselves. By getting into fights. So aside from the punishment aspect, there seems to be real value to the system to have pastimes that keep a lid on things, be they work programs, classes, or a cheap board game.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  Your point is valid, but I disagree about the primary purpose of prison. The primary purpose is to protect broader society by removing bad actors. If you can also reform the prisoner, then that's a bonus.
  - Xylakant 9y ago
    That would be inefficient unless you plan on removing bad actors permanently. That would mean life-long sentence for all, even minor, infractions. This is obviously not sustainable. The goal is to remove bad actors by re-educating them to no longer be bad actors. It's the only viable alternative. The other goal is to punish bad actors, thus bringing justice back into balance.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      I didn't intend for it to be either/or. If removing bad actors from the general population wasn't the first priority, then there wouldn't be prisons at all. There would only be fines, etc.
thomaskcr 9y ago
I think that's a cynical view on their reasoning -- if anything prisoners not being bored is in their best interest in terms of keeping guards safe. My guess is that a lot of problems stem from gambling debts -- you can allow cards and stem gambling a bit by preventing chips from being introduced (in whatever form). With DnD tracking across the game is important so it's not as easy to prevent a ledger from forming.
nkrisc 9y ago
If we were solely concerned with punishment it would probably be far cheaper to sentence them to 20 lashes and send them on their way.

VLM 9y ago

In high school we had one guy who was a bit of a sore loser, so I can see the guards not being remotely interested in getting in the middle of any gaming disputes. As the corrections officer quoted in the article stated mentioned, DnD is good for almost all people. What we have here is an abstraction of the gun control argument, if its good or harmless for 99% of the population, then we must ban DnD because one nutcase will flip the table and shank someone, probably the DM/GM. Back to my high school, the sore loser kid actually did punch the DM in the nose when they were both high school juniors, after the DM TPK'd the party because one of the other guys flirted with his girlfriend and the sore loser guy was indignant about being punished for it, yet people wonder why I didn't play DnD in high school with those guys... As May wrote in the article, DnD was banned much as gambling was banned on premises at my high school, but as long as nothing bad happened and the participants were good people the ban was not enforced. The situation they're trying to avoid is inmate A shanks inmate B because B stole his heroin, and in the investigation, he's not dumb enough to mention H but is smart enough to ramble about B's chaotic evil necromancer screwing over the team (and what would you expect, anyway?). Likewise I grew up before Columbine when it was "normal" to build levels in FPS matching your school blueprint because, hey, we all know our school layout and there ARE some good camping points, and this is number 311613 on the list of fun things to do when I was young that would get you swatted or at least arrested today, back then if you weren't a screw up they complimented your obvious skill at possibly getting into CAD drafting. Anyway in a similar manner if players run the Rise of the Runelords campaign they're almost certainly in the clear, but if they make something up where the characters kill the wife or kid of castle guard X and then gloat about it and have a big laugh, then real world corrections officer coincidentally also named X is inevitably going to flip the table when he finds out regardless if its permitted or not and a documented policy that RPGs is prohibited is just the usual thin blue line stuff. Pariahdog119's advice about simply play any RPG except the famous DnD, was also helpful in 80s public school. The more rules lawyerly kids who signed a pledge at church to never play DnD to prevent the devil from stealing their soul or whatever, were chill about the zillions of almost-clones of DnD that existed. The only name I remember from that era was "Castle Perilous" and it had a yellow cover with a pretty amazing ink drawing on the cover. And via the magic of google I found a link to a picture. I probably haven't seen that book in 35 years or so. Pretty wild. Oddly enough I don't remember any of my public school textbooks but I remember "Castle Perilous" LOL. In that book there is a dungeon raid and I DMed it with some friends and my now long since deceased grandfather, insisted on playing with us to make sure I wasn't up to anything inappropriate as he had heard of the DnD controversy, and he ended up enjoying the RPG experience greatly, and in retrospect I wish I had invited him to other RPG games. That was probably about 1982 or so. http://tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18708&sid=30418de8a52f8721af1db2168d986f6c http://tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18708&sid=3...

skissane 9y ago

Some fundamentalist Christians are convinced that D&D is occult, a gateway to Satanism and demonic possession, a cause of suicide, etc. I wonder if any prison administrators share that belief system, which might contribute to a decision to ban D&D.

philipov 9y ago
I think it's more a matter of people using their authority over prisoners to satisfy their sadistic power fantasies.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  ...Which they could probably satisfy less destructively with role-playing. The irony is extra ferrous.
csours 9y ago
As illustrated in the well known documentary "Mazes and Monsters" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcL-fQNPfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcL-fQNPfQ
- sevensor 9y ago
  There's a memorable chick tract on the same theme as well.
  - partomniscient 9y ago
    The girl in it casts the Mind Bondage spell on her Dad to make him buy $200 worth of D&D stuff. I was rather incredulous at the time because a) they thought it was the case that spells in D&D work in our reality and b) there didn't appear to be a Mind Bondage spell.....unless perhaps they meant Charm Person? What's their take on Stranger Things?
    - Izkata 9y ago

DoreenMichele 9y ago

D&D and similar have a really negative reputation in some circles, including religious groups. I was a gamer in my teens. One younger member of the group was probably being given a hard time by his religious family for being a gamer. He was often absent from gaming sessions. The weekends he was absent consistently included stories like a drunken car wreck, and now he has a broken leg, or a wild party where some gal says he is the daddy and he has no idea if he even slept with her. I never could fathom why his family didn't just tell him to go gaming every weekend. We fed him free food, used no drugs or alcohol and drove him home safe. But we were Satan worshippers, I guess, because we gamed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dfee 9y ago
Do you think this is a representative sample or a bizarre situational experience?
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  When I briefly attended church in Germany while hosting games at home for my husband who still played, one gamer consistently got up on very little sleep to go to church on Sunday morning. Where I would then listen to the preachers talk about what evil pieces of shit we were. Meanwhile, every single gamer who left Germany came to my apartment to tearfully say goodbye because gaming at my apartment was an escape from eating at the mess hall and getting drunk at bars. It was the only thing that kept them sane and not an alcoholic. I don't know about most gaming groups, but where I have been, it's a bastion of civilization in an otherwise cold, cruel world.
  - dfee 9y ago
    I cannot relate to any of this, but the clergyman’s approach / perspective definitely seems bizarre. Gaming has much to offer, as does the social scene at a bar. Where I’ve been these two aren’t at odds. I wonder why they have been in your experiences - maybe it’s the military scene (referencing where you said mess hall).

Unbeliever69 9y ago

U.S. jails/prisons are designed specifically to make the inmate's life as miserable as they are allowed to by law. Trust me, if jails/prisons could ban books or commissary, they would. What you describe is what the Swedish prison system is all about. https://mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-prisoners-what-the-u-s-won-t#.mQMRZKmf6 https://mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-pris.... This is a system designed to make people not only pay for their crimes but to help them rehabilitate and reintegrate into society. Pretty much the polar opposite of the US system of mass incarceration with a revolving door attached to the end.

throw1257 9y ago
Maybe this is a good thing.
tuxxy 9y ago
>if jails/prisons could ban books... They sorta have. If you want to send a book to an inmate, it must be paperback, must be brand new, and shipped from the retailer. The books cannot have "controversial" material. I've heard of some tech books getting rejected because of "hacking". I know all of this because I have participated in my local Anarchist Black Cross events which is a prison abolition group. Often times, we would hear about some of the prisoners we wrote to having to undergo solitary confinement for some amount of time for minor rule violations. The US prison system as a form of rehabilitation is a cruel joke. Prisoners are treated as scum the moment they enter with no rights. Worse, when prisoners leave, they expect the inmates to adjust back to life normally while employers can discriminate against the former inmates, and the government still treats them like scum. Often times, former inmates can't even rent housing anymore and political/social elites act so surprised that homelessness is on the rise.
- kolpa 9y ago
  The US prison system is largely a loophole to recreate slavery without violating the letter of the 13th Amendment. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/gilmoreprisonslavery.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/gilmoreprisonslavery...

jopsen 9y ago

If people want to gamble they'll find a way. It's not like you can prevent random events from occurring.

Fjolsvith 9y ago

I ran D&D games as a DM for the entire time I was in prison. Socially challenged inmates tend to gravitate towards those games, and I welcomed them into the group. D&D was a great way to help them learn to interact and work with others. We used a cardboard spinner with a push tack for the pivot.