Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog

In 2004, Wisconsin prisons banned the playing of D&D. Earlier this week, an appeals court upheld the decision, and I have spent several days mulling this over in my head.

The rationale used for banning the game is that it forms a gang-like structure. It creates a close-knit group of players with a clear-cut person in charge (the DM), and that the violent fantasy basis of the game could lead to a divorce between fantasy and reality with violent repercussions.

Usually, I would simply scoff at this, but the ruling states that punishment is a fundamental aspect of imprisonment, and prisons may choose to punish inmates by preventing them from participating in some of their favorite recreations. No arguments here. I would not expect to be able to engage in all the recreation I currently enjoy were I in prison. Skiing, for example, would quite clearly be out.

But what of their actual arguments? Again, worrying about gang-forming and violent behaviour seems ridiculous when formed outside of prison, but inside prison could be a different manner. These are, presumably, people who have already been convicted of such behaviour and incarcerated for it.

However, the Wisconsin government has admitted that there appears to be no link between roleplaying games and increased violence or gang activity in prison — that being “divorced from reality” is not particularly induced by roleplaying games. People in such a state should be in a mental institution, not a regular prison. There are many books that could also encourage such escapism, but books are not banned — unless they contain rules for a roleplaying game. Or a shiv.

Still, that does not mean that roleplaying ought to be allowed — prison is a place for punishment, after all. However, here at the Big Bad Blog we do not understand how taking away a creative non-violent outlet from prisoners is productive to their rehabilitation; a prisoner writing a 96-page manuscript for a D&D game scenario that he hopes to run for other prisoners is doing something positive, non-violent, and for other people.

In other words, if the world inside a prison turns out not to be so entirely crazy that a D&D group turns into a gang, running a roleplaying game for other prisoners would seem to be the sort of behaviour that prisons should be encouraging, not prohibiting. These inmates will, after all, be freed eventually.

Of course, with the manner in which Wisconsin has phrased their roleplaying ban — it is not simply a ban on any sort of collective make-believe — diceless systems like Amber which depend on few stats could still be used. Inmates simply need to keep track of everything in their heads and talk.

Wisconsin prisons — and the court — seem to be missing that, at its core, roleplaying is simply pretending to be somebody else in a collective, storytelling, environment. Dice, papers, 96-page-plans, rulebooks and character sheets are just tools that make it easier. Two like-minded people free to converse can roleplay, anytime, anywhere.

Hence their ban — that inmates are not allowed to engage in or possess written material that details rules, codes, dogma of games/activities such as ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ because it promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling — is pointless. The activity is still permitted, so long as they do not have a rulebook for it.

Seems odd, does it not? A prison will allow prisoners to play, so long as they do not play by the rules …

The final verdict? Legal, but dumb.

Sources
BoingBoing
Inside Bay Area
New York Daily News
The Volokh Conspiracy

Photograph: Roleplaying Pro

observations and opinions, roleplaying D&D, dungeons and dragons, inmates, law, prisoners, prisons, punishment, rehabilitation, roleplaying, wisconsin

Getting old? Starting to forget things? The miracle cure is here! Blueberry juice! Remember your birthday, where you forgot your keys, the names of your grandchildren! Also — it’s delicious!

(photo can be traced back to here — does it go further? Is that the photographer? We do not know.)

The editor of the Independent believes that everything on Flickr is public domain, and can be used in their newspaper without having to pay for or credit their photos. If one actually reads his comments, he seems to be making the claim that if a rights-holder makes something available via the Internet, they automatically give up all rights. Strange, that.

Do you roleplay? Do you want to help people in Haiti? Then break out your roleplaying-game money and help them! If you donate $20 to Doctor’s Without Borders via Drive-Thru RPG, they’ll give you free roleplaying PDFs that would otherwise cost $1,000 — although it may take a few days to actually download them, as the offer is creating a wee bit of a strain on their servers.

morning coffee blueberry juice, charity, copyright, doctors without borders, flickr, haiti, independent, math, mathematics, memory, roleplaying, saturday morning breakfast cereal, science, yorkies

Guestblogger Curgoth here again on the RPG beat.

This time around, I’d like to talk about “monster races”.  Orcs, Kobolds, Drow, Dragons, Trolls and their ilk.  Entire species whose ecological niche is being antagonists to adventurers and heroes.

It is my contention, dear readers, that any campaign (D&D or other game), should have only a handful of monster races.  Too many monsters, I feel, disrupts the narrative flow of the game.  Compare the average D&D game to your favourite fantasy series.

The Lord of Rings has  wargs, goblins, orcs, ringwraiths, wights, fell beasts, balrogs  and trolls.  Middle Earth has dragons, but none appear in LotR.  Not including Sauron, that’s eight.  Even if we include elves, dwarves, olyphants and Tom Bombadil (hey, *I* wanted to kill him), that’s only an even dozen, over a beefy trilogy.

Compare this to even one volume of the D&D Monster Manual, or just one published adventure.  Lots and lots of monsters.  This is fine if your play style is hack n’ slash – in a dungeon crawl, the dramatic tension is created by the wacky monsters the PCs find and hack to bits.  If you’re looking to create a larger story arc, though, narrowing it down will have the PCs feeling like there’s something big going on that they’re involved in.

This doesn’t mean every encounter has to be the same – sure, units of orc shock troops to mow down are fun, but having specialized orc units as the PCs get more powerful gives them more involvement in the great orcish invasion of the kingdom.  As the PCs realize that a lot of their opponents are working together to some common (and nefarious!) goal, they get an idea that there is more at stake than the local village and the reward they posted for the rescue of their prize cow.

It also goes some way to reinforcing the believability of the setting.  A single world can only support so many critters – there are a limited number of ecological niches, and even goblins need to eat more than they can forage unless they have an isolated area to hunt and gather in.

To sum up, my recommendation is to keep it down to a dozen or so types of enemy, and your story will thrive.  Overdo it, and your epic battle for the universe may devolve into “what the hell is a slaad?!”

roleplaying D&D, dungeons and dragons, lord of the rings, monsters, roleplaying, Tom Bombadil

The Big Bad Blog is wrapping up our first year, and we now take a quick look back at the most popular bits from the blog this year.

Honorable mention: Rule Obsessions
We have written quite a bit about roleplaying here at the Big Bad Blog over the past year, but none of these articles have made our top five. Our look at those who are obsessed by the canonical text of the rulebooks proved to be the most read of these articles in 2009.

#5: The Bill Gates mock facebook page
This would seem to require no further introduction. Simply sharing a photo found online was the fifth most popular item on the blog in its first year. With 423 views, it was the only member of the top five not to garner 500 views.

#4: War of the Tubes

Back in August, I discovered that there exists a Cardboard Tube Fighting League, with chapters worldwide. It’s a fantastic idea, and a whirlwind of research quickly led to what would become the fourth most read article on the Big Bad Blog in its first year.

#3: Imprison the tourists
The first article on the Big Bad Blog to gain over 1,000 views, this was the first piece on what was to become a repeating theme on the Big Bad Blog — the harassment of photographers by the police.

Not surprisingly, this theme arrived around the same time as my photography hobby began and the photoblog category truly sprang to life.

#2: The Microsoft Dilemma
In June this year, it was reported that Microsoft would have to ship Windows 7 without Internet Explorer in Europe — but left to the company to determine how this was to be done. Microsoft later came up with a solution, and the European Commission dropped its case against them in December.

#1: The Marshmallow March
Shortly after buying my Nikon D300, the London Marathon was scheduled with the route passing only two blocks from my flat here in London. I wandered out to the race with my new camera, determined to take a ton of fantastic photos.

Nicole had told me that two of her friends were going to be running the race dressed as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and asked me to get a photograph of them. So I waited for them, long past the time when I would have otherwise left.

I was not disappointed — her two friends rounded the corner carrying a giant Stay Puft on a metal frame. I snapped away, and dutifully created the resulting blog post shortly following the race.

What a reaction I received.

I simply could not believe it, and continually refreshed my stats to watch the number of views increase. They finally topped out just short of 25,000 views — although that milestone has since been reached via the occasional random web surfer passing through. People were coming in from all over the internet, and it was fascinating to surf back to these places and see people coming in.

The marshmallow march shows how strange the Internet can be. Completely random things can simply catch lightning in a bottle, and what you wrote — or your photograph — can suddenly be everywhere.

Prior to this, I had only had approximately 5,000 views in the life of the Big Bad Blog — three photographs combined to get five times that number in approximately 72 hours. Today, that article still counts for nearly a third of all visits to the Big Bad Blog.

Hence, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is crowned the champion of the Big Bad Blog for 2009:

observations and opinions best of, Bill Gates, cardboard tube fighting league, cardboard tubes, costumes, EU, facebook, fancy dress, ghostbusters, Internet Explorer, london marathon, marshmallows, marshmellows, microsoft, most popular, obsessions, photograhpy, police, roleplaying, rules, running, stay puff, stay puft, stay puft marshmallow man, terrorism, terrorists, tourists, tubes, windows