
How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband - kibwen
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/padk7z/how-inmates-play-tabletop-rpgs-in-prisons-where-dice-are-contraband
======
VyseofArcadia
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 punish inmates) for
breaking the rules as they are to do the same because they stubbed their toe
or someone looked at them funny.

Thankfully we do have some more progressive correctional programs making a
little headway like the one I taught for, but nothing about this article
surprised me.

edit: I accidentally a word.

~~~
EggsOnToast
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 ubiquitousness of rape jokes about prison. The reason I
mentioned that the point about the prisoners deserving it from a legal
perspective is because I think this is the point where most people lose
sympathy for the prisoner population, it's the moment when they just sort've
assume that anything that comes after being found guilty is just more of a
reason not to commit a crime in the first place which is a horrific outlook in
my opinion.

~~~
pmarreck
> 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/](https://www.innocenceproject.org/)

MY opinion of the US criminal justice system is that
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation)
is almost definitely not being followed, with the bias far into the false-
positive conviction camp.

Come to think of it, why is the criminal justice system not "tested"? In other
words, set up a mock situation where you know in advance who is innocent and
who is not (because it's a setup), and run a mock trial by all the rules using
actual jurors, and compare the outcome of the trial to the actual innocence or
guilt of the actor?

~~~
edanm
> Come to think of it, why is the criminal justice system not "tested"? In
> other words, set up a mock situation where you know in advance who is
> innocent and who is not (because it's a setup), and run a mock trial by all
> the rules using actual jurors, and compare the outcome of the trial to the
> actual innocence or guilt of the actor?

Probably for the same reason most things are or aren't done - some form of
status-quo bias. I mean, someone has to think of the idea, push it, administer
it, etc. It's a lot of work. And no one really has an incentive to do that
work right now.

Btw, your statement isn't really accurate: >> 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:

The fact that eyewitness testimony is the #1 cause of wrongful convictions
doesn't tell us anything about the rate at which wrong convictions occur. It's
possible for eyewitness testimony to be the #1 cause of wrongful convictions,
but for there to be only e.g. 3 wrong convictions a year out of 100k trials.
Which would probably be pretty "acceptable".

(I say this because it sounded like you were making the common probability
mistake of flipping two things: knowledge of how often a wrongful conviction
is caused by eyewitness testimony, and knowledge of how often eyewitness
testimony causes a wrongful conviction. Knowing the former doesn't mean we
know the latter. Not sure if you're actually claiming this, but wanted to
clarify what it sounded like to me).

~~~
deadmetheny
>It's possible for eyewitness testimony to be the #1 cause of wrongful
convictions, but for there to be only e.g. 3 wrong convictions a year out of
100k trials. Which would probably be pretty "acceptable".

"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person
should suffer." Three innocent people being punished is a travesty and in no
way acceptable.

~~~
pmarreck
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation)
actually says that it is better that 10, not 100, guilty go free.

And sadly, in a world of imperfect information, it is arguable that 3 wrongly
convicted innocents out of 100,000 trials is "acceptable," because you're
never going to get to 100% precision/accuracy.

~~~
deadmetheny
Benjamin Franklin's paraphrase of the principle says 100, which is my direct
quote ;D

I don't disagree that it's unrealistic to achieve 100% accuracy, but it should
never be accepted - we should never, ever stop striving for improvement in
this arena, and to err on the side of letting people go free if it can't be
conclusively and impartially proven they are guilty.

------
stryk
At the prison I was in (northern Indiana), dice were banned as "tools for
gambling" \-- yet playing cards were OK. Yea, it didn't make sense to any of
the staff either.

We carved our own out of bars of "state soap" (the cheap Barker brand inmate
soap that gets distributed in just about every institution). We carved out the
little divots on each side for the numbers and used Kool-Aid to stain them.
Some of the older guys who had been incarcerated for a long time were so good
at making them[1] that they were damn near indistinguishable from the real
thing until you felt them of course (they were made out of soap after all).
They actually rolled fairly true as well.

\-----

1: they could also carve out some very intricate chess pieces. I mean these
were damn near works of art. You couldn't use state soap for those though,
it's far too thin and brittle. You needed the good Ivory-brand stuff from the
commissary.

~~~
NeonVice
What did they carve with?

~~~
stryk
I can only speak for what I saw done first-hand. Some guys used their own
shanks/shivs/whatever you want to call it, basically any old piece of metal.
This was obviously done in their cells on their own. Much more frequently [and
out in the open] though was guys using the plastic butter "knives" that came
in the dinner trays (think KFC, individually wrapped sets of 1 plastic spork,
1 wetnap, and 1 plastic butter knife with a kinda serrated edge - though still
dull as all hell). For doing the divots we used the end-tip of the long piece
on the cap of a typical old-school style Bic pen - this worked extremely well
and quick.

~~~
LoSboccacc
you had bics? like these?

[http://webcuriosita.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/penna-
bic....](http://webcuriosita.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/penna-bic.jpg)

at school we used those as dices directly, notches on each of their six sides,
making them roll in a bunch was random enough.

~~~
stryk
Close, but they were more the "older" style Bic pens from WAY back in the
days. These:

[http://www.bonvan.com/images/up_images/officepen/229.jpg](http://www.bonvan.com/images/up_images/officepen/229.jpg)

The end of the piece that sticks out from the cap worked just like a tiny
plastic shovel

------
Notorious_BLT
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.

~~~
Unbeliever69
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-
pris...](https://mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-prisoners-
what-the-u-s-won-t#.mQMRZKmf6). 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.

~~~
tuxxy
>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
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...](http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/gilmoreprisonslavery.html)

~~~
jnbiche
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 educate people that prison affects _all_
communities, and not just communities of color.

Because there will never be reform as long as around 30% of America's white
population believes that prison mainly hurts black people.

Just like it took heroin to finally wake white Americans up to the fact that
the drug war is hurting us all, so we must find a way to wake people up to the
fact that the prison system is terrible burden to us all. Repeating the false
claim that prison is primarily a black problem only prolongs the problem.

~~~
aseipp
OP never said anything about race or incarceration statistics -- he just said
the prison system is a mechanism to recreate slavery. To Americans, the word
"slave" has a very, very particular meaning -- revolving around the nature and
history of black people in our country.

But it should not, and _can not_ , not be divorced from the abstract concept
of what slavery _is_. Slavery is about power, and slaves come in many forms
and fashions. And if you forget that, you'll be made a slave yourself. You
don't have to be in chains to be one. This is what OP is referring to -- not
that prisons and their systems seek to reintroduce "black american slavery",
but to reintroduce, and normalize, the abstract concept of 'slavery' in
society, all on its own. That's much more dangerous.

You see it in a lot of places where people talk about the lives prisoners
lived, during and after release -- go check the comments on any news article.
You'll see how many people think it is "just" that said convict has their
entire being and life crushed. That it's good, good that they're a slave, in
return for the crimes they committed.

This isn't really very different from what you're saying, in a sense -- that
everyone is set back when we lose track of these things. But the difference
between "slave" meaning "black american slaves" and "slave as a concept" is an
important distinction to draw. There's an important ontological gap, there.

Frederick Douglass took note of this well over 150 years ago:

> The power of the antebellum slaveholding class, after all, resided not only
> in its direct domination of black slaves, but in its ability to divide and
> exploit an even larger multiracial working class. Douglass knew how well
> this system worked from bitter personal experience: As a hired slave in
> Baltimore, he was assaulted by white dockworkers with bricks and handspikes.
> Yet he remained clearheaded about who benefited from this racial violence.
> As he wrote in 1855: “The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to
> themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, laboring white man
> against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white man almost as much a
> slave as the black slave himself…. Both are plundered, and by the same
> plunderers.”

[https://www.thenation.com/article/the-enduring-
struggle/](https://www.thenation.com/article/the-enduring-struggle/)

~~~
jnbiche
> OP never said anything about race or incarceration statistics -- he just
> said the prison system is a mechanism to recreate slavery.

He used the term "recreate slavery", which in this context would mean to re-
establish the chattel slavery of people of African ancestry that existed
previously in US. And the article he referenced very specifically discussed
African-American slavery. So that's what I responded to.

As an aside, Americans of Scotch-Irish [1] ancestry (which includes my own
background) are a very vengeful people. This culture, which also has some
positive traits (bravery, loyalty, etc), had a huge impact on the general
culture United States and its attitudes toward criminal justice.

But if you've never been around rural people of Scotch-Irish ancestry, you'd
probably find their beliefs on justice fairly shocking. These are the people
who often believe that if someone who goes to prison for a relatively minor,
non-violent offense, and is raped in prison -- even if they're a family
member! -- that this person "had it coming" or "deserved it". Prison is for
suffering, not redemption.

Ironically, these same people are frequently very overt Christians, often
evangelicals (they converted en masse from Calvinism--typically
Presbyterianism--to Baptist during the great awakenings of the 19th century).
But they're definitely Old Testament Christians, with not much use for most of
the New Testament (except perhaps Revelations).

Anyway, combine that kind of culture with some of the other factors you
describe, and you end up with the prison culture we have today in the United
States.

1\. And no, for us it's not "Scots-Irish". "Scotch-Irish" was in common usage
when they immigrated to the US in the 18th century, and that's what's been
passed down over the years (and it's how my grandparents described our
ancestry, which after careful genealogical study was indeed Ulster Scots with
a bit of German thrown in): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-
Irish_Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Disappointing to hear that some prisons are cracking down on D&D, like the
Idaho State Correctional Instutition whose rules are quoted ITA. It seems like
a productive outlet to me. Locking someone up for a few years with nothing
interesting to do sounds like a good way to make someone come out the other
end worse than they were before.

~~~
cr0sh
> Locking someone up for a few years with nothing interesting to do sounds
> like a good way to make someone come out the other end worse than they were
> before.

Given the (growing) number of private, for-profit prisons - that would be seen
as a feature, not a bug. Because if they leave worse off, they'll likely be
returning - thus generating a steady income stream courtesy of taxpayers.

Cynical, yes - but likely true.

~~~
paulie_a
Do you have any info on the growing aspect of private prisons.

The last time I looked they were statistically insignificant. Even then I
don't agree with the concept but if my hazy memory is correct it was close to
5 percent

~~~
fenwick67
> Broken down to prison type, 19.1% of the federal prison population in the
> United States is housed in private prisons and 6.8% of the U.S. state prison
> population is housed in private prisons.

> the overall trend over the past decade has been a slow increase

> In the past two decades CCA has seen its profits increase by more than 500
> percent.[22] The prison industry as a whole took in over $5 billion in
> revenue in 2011.[23]

> A 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice asserts that privately
> operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive
> than other federal prisons

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#Development_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#Development_2)

------
aphextron
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 the time of writing down
word for word the entire script of LOTR: Return of the King in a notebook,
from memory, to pass the time.). It's one of the few things that kept me sane
during that time.

~~~
ishi
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.

------
jfries
I was waiting for the article to mention using those 6 sided pencil stubs in
the first image as dice. Seems like a good way to disguise a die.

~~~
scrumper
We used these at school. We punched indentations in the sides using a compass
point. Obviously _that_ isn't going to work in prison, but you could make
marks with a fingernail easily enough. (Of interest, note how the pencil is
short in the photo - makes it harder to use as a shank.)

------
walshemj
Surprised that prisons ban dice but not cards which can be used to substitute
for dice.

Interestingly some of the early board games used spinners as dice where seen
as sinful, normally by the more hard core protestants.

~~~
aerotwelve
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"?

~~~
politician
The prisons want to ban gambling and currency counters (coins, chips, etc) in
order to disrupt the rise of debt-based gang activity.

"The house always wins" turns a prison into an organized structure of debtors
and owners fairly rapidly, I'd imagine. And you can't fault the far fewer
security guards from wanting to avoid a face-off with a unified enemy.

~~~
pessimizer
Well, there's no house in non-casino gambling; it's just in the nature of
gambling that some people will lose and some people will win, and some people
will borrow money to continue to play when they shouldn't. The only mechanism
to force repayment of loans without government is violence or monopoly.

~~~
nybble41
_The only mechanism to force repayment of loans without government is violence
or monopoly._

Nonsense. First, while this is phrased to position government as an
alternative to violence, forcing repayment of loans _with_ government involves
both violence and a monopoly—a monopoly on "legitimate" violence being the
main factor which all governments have in common. Second, government cannot be
relied upon to force repayment of loans (e.g. they allow debts to be
discharged in bankruptcy). Third, social pressure can effectively force people
to repay their loans without resorting to violence. As things stand today, the
main factor that keeps people from skipping out on loans is not the threat
that the government might get involved, or a more general fear of violence,
but rather the impact it would have on their credit score—in other words, the
risk of acquiring a reputation as someone who does not repay their debts, and
consequently losing access to future credit.

------
pesfandiar
Well, they can't ban 1-bit random number generators (e.g. coins) and with a
bit of time, you can simulate any of dice used in RPGs.

~~~
kibwen
"With a thunderous roar, the colossal red dragon envelops the party in a cruel
wave of fire! You each take 24d10 damage, but while I'm sitting here flipping
this coin six hundred times please do let me know if you make your reflex save
for half..."

~~~
setr
If you converted the rules to be powers of 2, each coin representing a binary
digit, it shouldn't be too bad

24d10 becomes 0-240, so change it to 0-256 and you've got 8 flips (8d2?)

Distribution won't be correct but hey, 8 flips

~~~
kzrdude
I didn't know the central limit theorem when I played D&D, but it's
interesting how massively different those two distributions are -- 24d10
versus a uniform 24-240 distribution.

24d10 is 24 independently rolled d10's, that means we convolute the uniform
distribution with itself 24 times and the result will be nearly
indistinguishable from a scaled bell curve.

Edit: Click the “Graph” button here to visualize:
[http://anydice.com/program/4ddf](http://anydice.com/program/4ddf)

~~~
Y_Y
I'd like to just add a shoutout for the word "convolve" as the verb referring
to this particular action of convolution.

~~~
kzrdude
Ah that's nice. I took the relevant course in Swedish, where we use the German
loan word "Faltung" (turns to faltning in Swedish) for this operation.

------
cease
This is a refreshing read that I can relate to personally. I have never been
to prison, but myself and a group of fellow soldiers played D&D in army basic
training. We drew all maps on notepad paper, played using rules someone either
recalled or made up on the spot, and carved bars of soap into dice. It always
sticks out in my memory as a great example of how humans can figure out a way
to find joy in an _extremely_ bleak environment.

------
batmansmk
This article is extremely well documented. It must have taken a lot of time to
investigate the matter. It becomes rare enough to notice this!

------
dumbfounder
Or they could simulate dice by each person picking a number, adding them all
up, and then modding by 6 (+1). Could lead to interesting results methinks...

~~~
kibwen
This would be a variant of Odds and Evens
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 pick the numbers (the GM and one player), which will
be just as random as having all players pick the numbers (setting aside the
human tendency to pick "random" numbers non-randomly, which is hopefully
mitigated by the adversarial nature of the choice). You'd also need some way
for the adversaries to prove that they chose their numbers before the other
number was revealed, which, as in Odds and Evens, you can do with your fingers
(don't fret about the d20, you can count to 20 on your fingers with enough
imagination).

~~~
dumbfounder
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.

~~~
ufo
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.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Exactly. A good DM thinks up challenges that make players work together to
succeed. If plot material is available, the DM doesn't necessarily have to be
able to think that up, but it was by far the funnest part of being a DM for
me.

I once ran a group adventure where the players' characters were hired by a
noble to provide escort for his daughter to a distant kingdom. Along the way,
in every town the players stayed, mysterious murders started taking place.
Over the trip, authorities started to suspect the adventurers due to
circumstances. This really rankled the players and when they discovered the
noble daughter in their charge was an evil assassin having fun, they had a
massive range of emotions to their reaction. Not only did they have to prove
their innocence, they had to find evidence to do so. Some of the players were
really torn - what would the noble father do to them if they turned the
daughter over? What would happen to them if they didn't?

One interesting effect to running a good adventure in the prison was that a
number of non-playing inmates wanted to hear about the latest gaming events,
much like following a soap opera.

------
jernfrost
Comming from Norway where we have a very different attitude towards prisoners,
I never cease to being amazed at the sheer pettiness towards prisoners in the
US. Are they not supposed to have an ounce of enjoyment in life? A dice is
contraband!!! Seriously!!

Is the point of prison to be miserable every single day? How is hating
yourself, your life and everything every day supposed to make somebody a
better person?

It often feels like the US is mentally speaking where we were 100 years ago in
Norway. It is just bizarre how such a modern innovative country is so
backwards with respect to how people are treated. Norway legislated national
maternity leave over 100 years ago. It still doesn't exist in the US.

Somehow it seems like the US is regressing. Many of the progressive ideas we
use came from the US originally. Liberal American professors have spread ideas
which have benefited Nordic countries a lot, such as Harvey Milkman which
solved the drug and subsistence abuse in Iceland.

------
fenwick67
There is an enthralling article in The Intercept by incarcerated hacker
Barrett Brown about his time playing DnD and other RPGs in prison.

He also details the spinner:

> With unlimited paper and pencils provided by the federal government, we had
> everything we needed except for a set of variously sided dice. It turned out
> that this was generally handled by making a spinner out of cardboard, a
> paperclip, and the empty internal plastic tube from an ink pen. This latter
> item is impaled loosely on the paperclip, itself positioned in the center of
> the cardboard, on which has been drawn a diminishing series of concentric
> circles divided into 20, 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4 equal segments, respectively.

[https://theintercept.com/2016/10/16/i-am-fully-capable-of-
en...](https://theintercept.com/2016/10/16/i-am-fully-capable-of-entertaining-
myself-in-prison-for-decades-if-need-be/)

------
drdrey
You can also use the last digit on a stopwatch stopped randomly (hundredth of
a second), or open a book on a random page

------
radarsat1
I understand the dice ban somewhat, I mean, gambling is principally what
they'd be used for, but why is chess of all things banned? Seems..
counterproductive.

------
chisleu
We used to make them with toilet papier-mâché.

Just add water and push them into the corner of the locker. When it dries, put
on dots and wrap it in clear tape to protect the dots.

~~~
walshemj
Would not using cards (which appear to be allowed) be simpler

~~~
kibwen
Even though the section on cards mentions that "many prisons" do allow them,
what the article is trying to emphasize there is that playing cards can be
used to simulate dice _if_ the prison happens to allow them (while also
implicitly demonstrating that the rules against gambling are often
inconsistent and arbitrary). The implication seems to be that there are more
prisons that disallow cards than that allow them, and indeed earlier on the
article quotes a prison handbook that explicitly mentions cards as contraband.

Furthermore, even if cards are explicitly allowed by the rules, that doesn't
mean that cards (along with pretty much anything else) can't be confiscated at
any moment. For those instances, it's good to have a backup that involves
materials that are always on hand.

------
snakeboy
No dice? Sounds like they'd be better off playing Diplomacy instead.

------
pure-awesome
Personally, I would probably have just played a simple, diceless RPG, like
Archipelago:
[https://norwegianstyle.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/archipelago-...](https://norwegianstyle.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/archipelago-
iii/)

------
SN76477
I did this in the 90s, we just used card and referenced a table for whatever
card was drawn.

------
Fjolsvith
We used cardboard spinners. A thumbtack was pushed through and bent over to
form the pivot. We got the cardboard from the back of notepads of paper.
Concentric circles had equal divisions to form the d4, d6, d8, d12, and d20
ranges.

------
an4rchy
Fascinating read, didn't know this was a thing in prison, but makes total
sense.

Also, now have a few more ideas of how to get creative when pieces of games
are missing. Creativity FTW.

------
rootw0rm
When I was a teen I hung out with a SHARP crew in SoCal, we played D&D all the
time. We had some members go to prison and they started up their own games
inside.

------
euler_
Aren't dice and coins banned because they can be sharpened into a shiv? That
would explain why cards are allowed.

~~~
an4rchy
If that were true though, then they wouldn't confiscate any of the makeshift
dice, made of paper/cardboard etc.

~~~
VyseofArcadia
Nah, sometimes stuff is confiscated just to make life more miserable for the
inmates.

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farnsworthy
Some of those dice are beautifully designed--it wouldn't surprise me if people
would buy them (if able).

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Beltiras
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 be found on Gist [2]. This can of course be
adapted to provide tables for common probabilities (say 3d6 for example). All
of the methods the prisoners are using is "good enough". Having a table that
is not accurately 5% for each number should not be a problem. It will depend
on the books used as well. Sample output:

    
    
        a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j  k  l  m  n  o  p  q  r  s  t  u  v  w  x  y  z 
     a  6 15 14 16 18  4 12 16 11  5  7 13  9  3  7  1 11  9  5  2  4 16 20 13 20 20 
     b 18 13  5 16  3 13  8  5 20  1 15 18 20 20  6 12  3  9  2 15 11  3  9  1 13 14 
     c 18 10 12  6  1 18  1  1 11 11  8 15 14 20 20 19 19 17 17 19 17 10  1  4  7 10 
     d 13  6  3 10 17 15 10 12  6 15 20  2 11  1  8  3  3  7 11 19  6  3 13  2  8 17 
     e  1  4 12 19 17 12 13  6  3 15  9 14 14  9 10 11 19  4 15 10 16  3 14  4  1  9 
     f  2  2  2 14  7  5  6 13 14 14 16 12 13 13  9  2  9 12 16 11 20  1 12  5 12 20 
     g 16  8  7  5  1 18 12  8  1 13 13  8 13  2 17 10 12  1  9 11 10 13  5 18 17 12 
     h 17 13  6 13 17 16 14  1 10  5  6 19 20  1  6 16 16 10  6 12  3 13 15 19 16  6 
     i 15 12 20  3  6 12  9 17  4  7  1  9 19  9 11  7  5  5  7  9 12  6  5  1  1 10 
     j 14 12 19 11  1 12 14 12 14 10 12  8 18  4  9  4 13  4 10 13  1  1  2 14 19 14 
     k 19  1  7 17  5  4 15  9 14  5  7  3  2 12 14 20 14 15  8 12 10  8  5 19 16  3 
     l  4 15  7  7  1  4  6  6 15 15 15 15  6 15  3 17  9  6 10 15 18 13 20 16 19 20 
     m 14 19 13 14 14  5 12  5 11  5 16  7 18 10 14 16 16 19  7  4  7 16 15  2 15  9 
     n 11  6 17 15  5  2 17 13 17  8  8 10 16  2 13  6  3  9 13  4 11 19  6 17 18  7 
     o 20 13  6  3  1 20  4  7  2 12 19  9 19  2  4  2 16  4  1 10 18 15 15 14  7  2 
     p 19 19 20  3  4  6 14 18 11  1 19  3  9  7 10 14 13 14 12 17  7  4  3  2  6 15 
     q 12 20  7 15 17 20 20  2 12 20 13 11 19 14 16 12  9 17  7  4  8 10 19  5 13  4 
     r  8  2  9 14 13  2 18 19 20 18 19 10 14 11  5  7 20 14  5  1 12 11  9 19  2  9 
     s 17  1 10  4  5 18  5 13 16 15  2 17  9 18 14 12 18  9  4  8 11  9  3  6 17 16 
     t  3  5  7  7  3 13  5 14 19  3 16 15 16  9 16  1  1 17 18  8 11 17 18 16  4 18 
     u 12  5  6 17 20 16 15  6 19  5  8  5  9 14  8  7 10  2  5 14 12 16 15  8 14  5 
     v 17 16 19  4 12 10  2 16  5 13 12 17  2  7 16 15  8 11 18 10 17  4  2  7 11  4 
     w  5 11  8 20  7 13 18 17 20 20 20 11  5 13 12  4  5 13 12 10 11 17  1 11 13 12 
     x  3 10 12 10 10  2  9 13 13  3  1 12  2 14  1 14 15 12  6 19  7 18 14  6 13 12 
     y 13  6 13  8 15 19  9 17 13  7 12  3 18 10 20  6  4 14 14 12  4  8 16  4 16 12 
     z 16 18 11 12  6  7  2 15  8  5 20 13  4 16 10  9 18  9  7 17 11  5 19 13 19 19 

Difference between maximum and minimum odds: 0.004783609999999994

    
    
      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency#Relative_frequencies_of_the_first_letters_of_a_word_in_the_English_language
      [2]: https://gist.github.com/arnists/d23194c4c48880979ed0993bd3ec4b7c

~~~
kibwen
Using a Bible is a good idea (and also amusingly ironic), because it would
allow you to open to a random page, point at a random word, and use the
_chapter and verse numbers_ as your random elements, no script required. The
statistical distribution might be a bit curious, though...

~~~
Beltiras
Chapter and verse would not be good enough, they are not "random enough".

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jp57
tl;dr - they make dice.

