that could be really cool
Meh. Dude beat a guy to death with a hammer. I don’t have a problem with him losing his Player’s Handbook privileges. And the whole “D&D promotes gang behavior” thing gives me a warm glow of nostalgia for the '80s D&D Satanism panic. It’s kind of amazing how many people back then thought that Jack Chick’s “Dungeons of Darkness” was a reasonable scenario.
Anyway, the fact that this asshole needs a book and dice to run a game just shows what sort of tyro he really is.
Don’t be silly. Waupaun is a maximum security prison. It wouldn’t be much of a secure jail if it hadn’t a permanent Enlarged Antimagic Field cast on it.
It would.
However, wardens and other security folk like to keep the climate comfortable at an institution. So it’d be unlikely they’d restrict the general population from watching the super bowl. They’d watch it the same way they get to watch regular tv, in most cases: On the unit TV in relatively small groups. Act up and get sent to your cell. Where you may or may not have your own TV, depending on your privileges, etc.
And I should apologize because I didn’t mean to scold you and it came off that way. I’m sorry. The more I practice, the more cynical I get about courts. We were all taught that version of summary judgment (SJ ain’t Society of Jesus in the law, despite being taught law by Jesuits).
Does this mean they only took his materials? Can he (or the generic prisoner) continue to play using memorized rules? Can the warden prohibit him from playing even if playing consisted entirely of talking with other prisoners?
To be fair, that’s not a scenario I’d run or want to play in.
Player 1: I try to escape from prison!
DM: How?
Player 1: I bend back the bars.
DM: When you try, the guard threatens to skewer you with his spear.
Player 1: I try to bribe the guard.
DM: With what? You have no money.
Player 1: I tell him I have 100 silver pieces back home that I’ll bring to him.
DM: He laughs in your face.
One of the first scenarios that I ever ran was a prison escape. I designed it to be impossible to escape. No found key, no hidden doors, nothing. The players figured out something on their own.
Damn liberal DM. Putting heros right back on the street.
Fundamental flaw in character creation, the dude in the OP’s wisdom was too low.
They had the elf in the next building miswrite a magic a fireball spell for a magic competition and accidentally blow down the prison wall?
I agree that this is just stupid. D&D (and other role-playing games) enjoy great popularity among members of the military because they make being confined to base *, eating crap food, and the boredom of routine all more bearable. It really does sound to me, all humor aside, that they decided that the inmates had found a way to make life less horrible- so they banned it. If they were playing certain games that allowed or even encouraged the characters to behave like real world criminals (Say a Cainite running a street gang or selling drugs in Vampire The Masquerade, or a hacker performing cybercrimes in Shadowrun, or especially a character who is a hitman in GhostDog), I could understand the decision. But D&D is not like that. Even an evil thief character relies upon outdated methods of centuries ago and magics that just don’t work in reality. A party of characters does work like a gang in some ways- as does any group of people. I find the decision cruel, stupid and ridiculous.
- I’ve heard, sadly without cite, that D&D is wildly popular on submarine crews.
My brother and I used to play RPGs when we were little kids. When we effectively stopped doing our homework, our parents took away our books on schoolnights. So we played from memory instead and used a deck of cards to generate random numbers. Our parents thought about it for awhile and just returned our materials during the week. It was kind of an interesting problem.
A friend of mine was involved with a case in Texas a year or two ago where the state was trying to execute a man whose attorney was claiming him to be mentally retarded. The D.A. was trying to gather evidence evidence to the contrary. In the prisoner’s cell, they found a copy of one of the D&D players’ handbooks. Apparently it’s a popular game in Texas prisons, too. The D.A. tried to get the author of the book to come and testify that any inmate capable of reading and understanding that book and the game itself must not be mentally retarded. The author refused. We never found out if they found someone else to do the job.
Wow, it’s like you were there.
I heard a rumor about this new accursed 4th Edition, I’m glad they never went forward with publishing it.
No, I just read the book.
At first I was :rolleyes:, but then I remembered that D&D is pretty much roleplaying as graverobbers &/or thuggish “samurai” types (not a compliment).
Yeah, I can see why a prison wouldn’t want to encourage that sort of antisocial power fantasy, & its unrealistic reward system (Sorting Algorithm of Evil, anyone?) I know too many people who use it just to play evil characters, & even the good characters aren’t such hot role models.
Oh, well, that’s dumb. The DM is often the antagonist. That said, a DM who acted as wise leader & protector, acting in collusion with his charges, that could be ganglike.
Crap, that’s not dumb after all.:eek:
Consider what happens if someone who’s already a controlling ‘gang boss’ personality is DM, & does it his way, rather than the standard way.
MR yes; brooch (note spelling) yes; ring of spell turning (usually results in caster and target each taking partial damage); staff of the magi yes; staff of power no; ring of spell storing only if the spell is deliberately cast into it as a recharge (but a rod of absorption will do what you want); and to the listed spells add shield. Also a scarab of protection allows a special save (net 20, with automatic +1 for the scarab itself and any general saving throw bonuses from other items and spells).
Don’t make me come over there. 
If people find out they can play D&D in prison, and if rumor shows they can have cheetos and mountain dew, watch the crime rate jump!
I’ve always been sort of interested in D&D, my first time actually playing, we spent 7 hours on character building, came back the next night for the (obviously sucky) GM to run a game that allowed his psycho girlfriend to derail the game and have everyone around the forest for 5 hours looking for a lost dog she “found.”
Needless to say, there was no night 3.