Imaginary Worlds - Escaping Prison with Role-Playing Games

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder aren’t just played in game shops or living rooms. They’re also very popular in prisons – if the prison officials haven’t banned them. I talk with Joseph Krauter, who is formerly incarcerated, and David Annarelli, who is currently incarcerated, about the role that playing games have had on their mental health, personal development and socializing in prison. Plus, they discuss the ways they’ve had to MacGyver whatever they can find into makeshift gaming materials. Michelle Dillon, a board member at Books to Prisoners in Seattle, and Moira Marquis, founder of Prison Banned Books Week and lead author on PEN America’s report on book banning in prisons, explain how prisons have justified banning game books, and their efforts to get those books to incarcerated gamers. This week’s episode is sponsored by Hims, Henson Shaving and TodayTix. Start your free online visit today at hims.com/imaginary. Visit hensonshaving.com/imaginary to pick the razor for you and use the code “imaginary” to get two years' worth of blades free with your razor – just make sure to add them to your cart. Go to TodayTix.com/imaginary and use the promo code IMAGINARY to get $20 off your first Today Tix purchase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. I was in San Francisco recently and I went to a community space called the Radical Reading Room to meet with Joseph Crowder. It's a very comfy space with couches, tables, lamps, and artwork on the walls. Joseph brought game books, dice, and other gaming materials. So I brought a bunch of cards. These are Magic the Gathering decks. He showed me these really cool containers for decks of Magic the Gathering cards. He got them online.

And one of the card containers looks like a tiny dumpster. Another one looks like a little toxic waste barrel. Oh my god, he has his biohazard. Yeah, that one little toxic waste barrel. Oh my god, yes, it's biohazard. Yeah, that one's an outhouse. Oh my god, this is hilarious. It literally looks like a tiny outhouse. How do you open this? It pops open from the side. There's like a little one. Oh, I see. Yeah. And then, you know, like when I first got out. A well-worn dice. Yeah. Those are, that one and this one are from, from prison. I was gonna ask you that because this dice is really very, very, looks very old and worn. Yep. That's been rolled on every possible surface from dirt to grass to gravel to wood. Wow. Yep.

to grass, to gravel, to wood. Wow. Yep. Joseph was in four prisons up and down California. He used to be a casual gamer before he was incarcerated, but in prison, he says those games became a lifesaver. I knew from articles and podcasts that tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons are really popular in prisons.

But I didn't know until recently that a lot of prisons in the US are banning these games. And the reasons why turn out to be pretty complicated. And when I read about these bans, the word I kept thinking about was escapism. Escapism usually has a more neutral connotation when talking about fantasy. You might say, I had so much fun playing that game or watching that movie, I got to escape for a few hours and forget about the real world. But I wanted to know what is the role of escapism when you're incarcerated? Can role-playing games open up new virtual spaces in your mind when the physical world around you is heavily controlled and compromised.

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Prescription products require an online consultation with a healthcare provider who will determine if a prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply. See website for full details and important safety information. David Annarelli is currently incarcerated in Virginia. He wrote a powerful blog post on a D&D website about the need for tabletop role-playing games in prisons. I arranged a call with David through the prison phone system.

I began by asking which games he's played. I heard that one of the most popular games is Pathfinder, which is similar to D&D. He told me about games I hadn't heard of. Like I didn't know there was a role-playing game based on the video game Fallout. But he says incarcerated gamers can't afford to be picky. In prison, I think first and foremost is going to be availability. There's Pathfinder stuff everywhere. Everybody's got at least one book float around. So I think after being introduced

and then finding out like, oh, you've been playing Pathfinder for a couple of weeks, and now someone shows you the Fallout book or the Cyberpunk book, you're like, oh, well, let me look at that because I'm familiar with this other gaming system. Then it becomes a matter of taste. Joseph Crowder also played a lot of Pathfinder and D&D in prison. When he played those games, other people took on the role of Dungeon Master or Game Master. But he was the Game Master for World of Darkness.

That was his domain. World of Darkness is a series of tabletop role-playing games set in the modern world with werewolves, vampires, demons, and other horror-related characters. And he likes World of Darkness because it gives the game master a lot more leeway to create their own stories and locations. The players used to call his storyline

the Bakersfield Saga. People called it the Bakersfield Saga because that's my hometown. That's where I'm from. Because I know Bakersfield like the back of my hand. So I have like all the maps and all the stuff in my head. And so I created this multi-chapter saga using all the different books that I had at the time. So like they started out as mortals, then they created werewolves,

and those werewolf characters came in and interacted with the story ongoing, possibly interacting with their mortal, now NPC characters. If you're not familiar with the term NPC, it stands for non-player character. The game master controls these characters, does the voices for them. NPCs are usually there just to give exposition

to the players, but the Game Master can flesh out the NPCs and turn them into important parts of the story. And if a player wants to try out a new character, they can give up control of their old character and hand it over to the Game Master, turning it into an NPC. Joseph says that happened when they completed a chapter in his larger story. Then they went to mages, then they went to vampires, and so on and so forth, until the very end of the story where all of their previous characters are now NPCs in the plot doing

their things. And at the very end of the saga, they come in as monster hunters, human monster hunters, and take back the city block by bloody block, killing all their previous characters. Wow. Wait, so how long did that campaign last? That was like four and a half, like five years.

He says being a game master helped him develop his skills as a storyteller because you have to be really specific to get the other players into your world and create what's called the Theater of the Mind. It's not just like, okay you guys, you walk onto this platform and there's a half dragon. No, it's like the ground is hot. It's gravel, but the gravel is wet and sticky. The smell surrounding you is sulfur and blood, and in the distance you can hear the screams of the ghosts that have died before you. That type of stuff, that type of thing. And that's how it changes you because it touches like that

magic that's still inside you that's being like forced into submission by the garbage and the trauma that prison inflicts on people. Tabletop role-playing games can have other benefits. American prisons are often segregated by race. This is a voluntary self-segregation among the people in prison. But the role-playing table is one of the only neutral spaces. Again, here's David. Yes, there is a lot of self-segregation and there's actually a lot of overt racism in

general. And the D&D table is generally neutral. Probably one of the most neutral spaces you'll find, like the poker table, that stuff will bleed through. But for some reason, role-playing games create this like, it doesn't matter what your crime is. And there's a lot of segregation on that based on some of the more important crimes,

but the D&D table, the role-playing table, is very much a neutral space. There are other benefits too. I've never seen a fistfight spawn out of an argument from the gaming table because there's this understanding that they can shut you down, they'll stop the game, and no one wants that. It's a positive, socially interactive atmosphere

that engenders camaraderie. It inspires critical thinking and creative thinking. You need a basic understanding of reading, writing, and arithmetic. So when people come to the table who haven't mastered those skills or even at a basic level, they want to get better at it. And the character sheet actually allows for that because things are kind of spelled out for you to use a pun. A character sheet is full of statistics. It has the numbers for your character's strengths like dexterity or wisdom. When you go into a fight or cast a spell, your success is a

combination of your character's innate statistics and the role of the dice. So there's a lot of math in D&D. Plus, whatever species you choose to play, like an elf, an orc, or a gnome, has their own innate set of characteristics. And then once you've got the hang of that, then you start getting interested in like, oh, maybe I want to go read all these fantasy books. And it actually encourages people to become better educated. And we know that education is paramount when we talk about breaking the cycle of incarceration. He says these games are also good for his mental health. When I'm playing role-playing games, I'm not in prison in my head.

I get to let my creativity out. And it doesn't matter whether I'm actually playing an elf wizard or one of my favorites, a gnome bard or a gnome monk, or whether I'm preparing an adventure by drawing maps and imagining, you know, non-player characters that are pertinent to some story hook, I get to step outside of the prison inside my mind and in a way that's safe. This is why you have so many drug problems in prisons, because they want to get out of here if it's only just for a little while and no matter the risk.

Role-playing games provide that in a safe and nurturing way that doesn't harm anybody. In the outside world, it's hard enough to get a group together on a regular basis. People have scheduling conflicts or need to drop out. Obviously, imprisoned players don't have that freedom of movement. But disruptions happen all the time. In here, you will have the same group of people, although they can be randomly transferred out of the building. They can be randomly transferred to another prison without any real rhyme or reason to

it. The prisons just do what they want. You can lose players that way or gain new players that way. And that interferes with new players that way. And that interferes with the dynamics that develop. And anyone who's a gamer knows how the stable dynamics and the camaraderie, the familiarity with your players could develop over time. So that can be interrupted. To make matters worse, a lot of prisons ban the use of role-playing games. We'll get to the reasons why,

but first I wanted to know whether the bans actually work. Joseph was incarcerated in California, where restrictions on games tend to be more lax. He says even when their materials were confiscated, they still found a way to play. MacGyver can suck it when it comes to prison ingenuity. I've seen and even personally myself, like I've made dice out of wood. I've made dice out of soft gravel by like painstakingly grinding it against the concrete.

I've made them out of toilet paper, tooth powder, and dental floss. And when we couldn't make dice or the dice were just too craptastic and we didn't have the good enough materials to improvise, we would use card systems. We made ours out of soap. And you would scrape your soap down into a powder,

and then add enough water to make it like clay, and then you would form it into these, into the shapes of your six different shapes for polyhedron dice, and then you would use colored pencil tips crushed up into a powder, and mix those with the soap to get your color and then again to make like a paint so you could, after you engraved the numbers you could paint

inside or on top of the soap numbers. They would get quote unquote contraband book glue from a librarian or floor wax from one of the cleaners and coat it so that it had a hard surface so that it wouldn't, you know, dull, which it did over time anyway. So they worked fairly well, actually. Had good weight to them, rolled well if they were made well, and had some durability. I had a set that were gray with black numbers made six years ago, and they lasted all the way until I got transferred to this prism where they promptly confiscated them as contraband. There's other options to make

spinners out of cardboard and colored pencil drawing and the inside of a pen the point of the pen becomes where the pointer is. They're making dice out of they make cutouts that are geometric shapes and you fold them together like an origami project and then before you put the last fold in, you take bits of toilet paper and wet them. And after you've gotten all the water out so that they won't bleed into the paper, you shove them in there and when they dry, they have weight to them. Basically anything you can ban in prison, the prisoners are smart enough to find a workaround. The prisoners are smart enough to find a workaround.

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Advocates for criminal justice reform have been trying to lift restrictions and help incarcerated players get access to materials. Michelle Dillon was a program coordinator. She's currently a board member with Seattle Books to Prisoners. When she first joined the organization, she thought she'd be getting a lot of requests for literary fiction. I would look at the letters that were coming in from our incarcerated readers and I saw that there was this huge demand for role-playing books, whether that was Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder or

Vampire the Masquerade. And so I noticed that there were a lot of people who wanted these tabletop role-playing games, but we often didn't have a lot of books that we could send to them. Or we would get people writing back saying, thanks for trying to send in the monster manual, but it was actually rejected by the prison. Or we'd get a package back from the prison itself saying that we are not allowed to send in those types of materials. And one of the most heartbreaking things is that if you're being moved from your cell to another cell or from one block or unit to another area, oftentimes your possessions get tossed or they don't always make it to your next destination. So people have written to us and talked about how they've lost hundreds

of hours of creative writing as a result of this. Moira Marquis organized prison book programs for 17 years. When she first started, she was also surprised how many requests were for game books. You know, we would get requests all the time from people that say, you know, I had this book, I don't have it anymore, can you please get me this copy? People also share books, even though they're not supposed to. And, you know, then the person who they shared it with gets transferred and then they lose the book.

And also they can just get worn out. It can just fall to pieces. Moira was also the lead author on a report for Pen America about book banning in prisons. I asked her, what are the reasons why game books are banned? And she said, a lot of people have been trying to figure that out. Prisons aren't required to give a lot of robust explanation.

Prison systems have lists of censorship criteria. They can be very specific or they can be very vague. The vast majority of the time fantasy literature is censored under safety and security concerns. For instance, an incarcerated man in Wisconsin sued the prison system for confiscating his game books. He lost his case in 2010. The prison officials argued that D&D groups were structured like gangs and a dungeon master can act like a gang leader. They also argued that D&D groups were structured like gangs, and a dungeon master can act like a gang leader. They also argued that role-playing games, quote, foster an inmate's obsession

with escaping from the real-life correctional environment. Again, here's Michelle. And because of that court case, actually in Wisconsin, you are not allowed to receive any role-playing materials, whether that's Pathfinder, D&D, the Star Trek RPG, the Star Wars RPG, Call of Cthulhu, you name it. It is all banned in Wisconsin. As I mentioned, some prisons are more lenient than others, but Moyra says the more lenient policies don't always fall into place by themselves. says the more lenient policies don't always fall into place by themselves. The facilities where people are have respite and have opportunities for growth. It's because of the individual work of individual staff who advocate for people to have these opportunities. And there are some amazing carceral librarians, caseworkers, you know,

people who go into the field in order to try and do something from the inside. They make the difference when there are opportunities. In some of the prisons that Joseph was in, he says there was a difference between the official policy and the unofficial policy. So the official policy stated that you could not have, you could not have materials that could be weaponized. And that included hardbound books because they could be used as a blunt instrument or the cardboard could be molded

and folded into a stabbing weapon. You could not have dice because the dice could be used for and folded into a stabbing weapon. You could not have dice because the dice could be used for gambling and illegal activities, or could be also be melted down and turned into some form of a stabbing weapon. Or they could be used as some type of a monetary exchange because the books and the dice are worth money.

You could slit open the seal on a hard bound book and then like line it with drugs to get it smuggled in, and so on and so forth. Unofficially, they knew we were just a bunch of dorks that wanted to play games. In some states, fantasy is looked upon with a lot more suspicion. Moira says a Louisiana prison banned a specific fantasy book because they claimed it was a source of violence and promoted the pagan belief of Wicca. The book that is censored is a drawing book of sprites and other kind of nature spirits. I mean the book when you look at, is just very kind of innocent. It has cartoon

nymphs and little elves and a description of the creatures and what their kind of attributes are. But it is kind of fascinating that they are taking this so seriously. HOFFMAN According to Michelle, some of the safety concerns stretch the boundaries of reality, which is ironic. Prison book programs came together a few years ago to do an amicus brief on behalf of the Human Rights Defense Center as they were taking a censorship case to the Supreme Court. The prison book programs were listing all of the most egregious examples of censorship that they had seen.

One of the groups had had one of their books censored because there was a map of the moon included, and that was determined to be a security threat. Florida has a long history of banning things that it considers to be code. So Klingon dictionaries, for example, those are banned in Florida. Never mind the fact that you can make code out of literally anything. You can make, you know, code whole cloth.

Again, David Annarelli. Oh, so these are these are hilarious. And if you got to see the banned book list, some of the reasons they write. So they banned Star Wars role-playing games because it had, like, one of the things you can do is hack a computer or pick a lock. They've actually banned Harry Potter books just from reading because there's a spell for unlocking locks. Despite the requests for documents and the statements made by prison officials, it's hard to know if they actually believe these reasons.

I've heard a theory that correctional officers know perfectly well that fantasy games are just entertainment. That's why they're banning them. Joseph told me a story which confirmed his suspicions. One of the most amazing conversations I ever heard. It was eavesdropping. And it was a veteran lieutenant of the yard I was on. This was in San Luis Obispo.

It was a veteran lieutenant of the yard giving a tour to a rookie. I just heard it while they were passing by. And the lieutenant asked him, it's like, so what's your program? How are you going to run the yard when you're on shift? And the guy just was punching his fist, just like, oh man, I'm going to crack skulls. I'm going to lock it down. These people are not supposed to be comfortable. I'm going to make sure they understand that they're in prison, especially all those soft people over there shooting dice. They're probably gambling. And he pointed at us. There was like six of

us and we were playing D&D or Pathfinder or something. The lieutenant says, oh yeah, is that right? And he's like, yeah. He's like, I'm going to make sure they understand they're not supposed to be happy and they're in prison for a reason. And he's like, okay. And then he points us out, not by name, but just points us out by conviction. And he's just like, murderer, murderer, multimurderer, arsonist, gangbanger, street terrorism, and just like, and fingers all of us. And he's all, every single one of those persons classified is potentially dangerous. And all they want to do is roll dice and fly an imaginary dragon. Leave them the fuck alone.

Several years ago, I posted an article on Facebook about the popularity of D&D in prison. Someone commented that they were bothered by the article. They argued that many of these people committed serious crimes. They need to pay for what they've done. So a prison shouldn't feel comfortable. A prison shouldn't feel like a student dormitory. I think this gets to a larger question of what prisons are for. Do you want a prison to punish people or reform people? And if it's both,

how far do you lean in one direction versus another? Michelle says there's another question we should consider. Most people who are incarcerated will be released. They're coming back to your community. How do you want these people to show up? Do you want them to be people who have just spent the last 10 years staring at gray walls with nothing to do? Or do you want them to come back being centered, educated, happier people. You learn about emotional regulation

when something doesn't go your way. You learn about risk management, you know, when you're actually going to charge headfirst into this battle versus when you're going to maybe try to find an alternate path around or maybe negotiate with the other party. You learn about communication with team members. You learn about peer teamwork, how to effectively delegate to other people. There's that argument. And then there's also the one that I would prefer, which is just a person is not defined by what they have done. a person is not defined by what they have done. Even though I'm not in school anymore, fall still feels like the beginning of a new year.

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Go to todaytix.com slash imaginary. Todaytix.com slash imaginary. Joseph Crowder and I talked a lot about the benefits of role-playing games in prison, but I also really wanted to geek out with him. I know what it's like to be in the middle of a role-playing game, and you hit that sweet spot where the walls of the game shop

or whatever room you're in melt away. You and the other players are in this collective dream space together. It can be exhilarating. I asked Joseph to describe me one of those moments in prison, and he told me about a time they were playing D&D. The dungeon master was a guy named Mesro.

Mesro is still incarcerated at San Quentin. We had an encounter where we were facing a cyclops and the thing was a monster. It was like 30 feet tall. And I was playing a character class called a brawler, which is a mix of like a fighter and a monk, but they can only use their fists. And my brawler character had an ability called knockout, where if I landed a successful attack using that feat, the defender had to make

a will save or get knocked the F out. So everybody's gearing up for this fight and Mesro is like, he's standing up over the map and we had character pieces. We weren't allowed figurines because they're plastic and you can melt them down and make dangerous stuff. So what we did was we collected thrown away Scrabble tiles and we'll cut out little pictures and photographs from magazines and glue it

or tape it onto that for a physical representation of who we were on the map. And so Mesro takes this monstrous like four tiled, like one-eyed, one horned looking thing that he found in a comic book and slaps it on the map. And he says, this is what you see, this is what you face. Everybody give me fear checks. Like his voice is really resonant and deep.

So it's starting to carry. And we were inside the gymnasium and there's a couple of guards that walk in and out, you know, during their shift to patrol and they hear him. And so they walk over and they see all of us getting ready. Everybody give me fear checks and everybody rolls their dice and everybody, you know, makes it one person fail. So they start like they go pee pants and like have have to stay back stunned. He's giving this incredible description of the furs that the thing is wearing, the armor plating that it's wearing, the glint of blood and iron coming off its club and how even

though it's 20 something feet tall, you can still smell the reek of rotted human like humanoid flesh coming off of it out of its mouth. And the thing gets to go first and it immediately just clubs the fighter mercilessly to the ground and everyone's like, oh, fuck, man, that was like our tank, we're screwed. Everybody's getting into it. Everybody's getting energetic. There's like pounding on the table. So the guards are coming closer and closer to us. And then they just like make like a half circle behind us. And they're just watching us. I decide to be a complete jackass because I figure that this we're all gonna get killed by this thing.

And I say, I'm gonna like on my turn, I move up to it. Can I say something, you know, without it being my action? And he's like, Yeah, sure. And so I say, he shout up at the thing, Excuse me, you have something on your face. And cock my fist back. And Mesor just looks at me and his eyes go wide. And he's like, give me, what would it even be? Like a persuasion role or something like that. And I was just like, I suck at this stuff. I was like, what would it even be, like a persuasion roll or something like that? And I was just like, I suck at this stuff. I was like, yeah. And I hit it.

Well, this thing's dumb as a brick. So he he fails. And he's just like, yeah. And then I'm just like, and just like leap forward with my knockout punch and hit it. He fails his will save and got knocked the fuck out after, like like taking out like two of our party members and everybody just screams. They're just like, oh my fucking God.

No, that's insane. That's insane. And all the guards are just like, holy shit, dude, what the hell just happened? You know? So when the guards are surrounding, were they worried that you guys are going to start like rioting or were they just like, hey, something interesting is going on? Half and half. Okay.

Yeah, definitely half and half. Like, they... The more veteran and experienced guards that interact with the gamers know that we get excited, but it's not going to be anything crazy. The other ones who don't work those positions or posts normally, they'll get nervous, and they'll be like, hey, guys, tone it down, or, you know, tone it down or pack it up. And so, but these ones, they'll get nervous and they'll be like, hey guys, tone it down or tone it down or pack it up. And so, but these ones, they knew us and they were just like,

a bunch of them were like, fuck yeah. And then after a session like that is over with, I mean, are you just flying high or do you kind of come crashing back when the thing's over with? At that time, like all of us were veterans to the system. Right. Like we'd all been us were veterans to the system. Like we'd all been in for at least a decade. It was more of like a gentle release.

Instead of like snapping viciously back like a rubber band. It's more of just like a, okay, time's over until next episode. Right. So another thing I think is fascinating and any of these games, when you play with people a lot, you start to understand how their characters are kind of alter egos in different ways.

Like I knew this guy who was like very, very easygoing and mild mannered, but he always played these like completely amoral rogue thieves. Oh yeah. You know? Like how did you start seeing with the people you played a lot, the alter egos kind of emerge? It's very interesting.

One person in particular who was like a very good natured and quiet person, like you said, would create characters that were untouchable, like they could not be hit, their attacks were like incredibly vicious but they were always long-distance attacks so they would pick like an archer or something to that degree where they would always stay out of the way and not be noticed until it was too late and even if you tried to hit them you had no chance. I have incredible social anxiety and don't like to be noticed at all and that comes with being on the spectrum but my characters that I created were like these loud, like sometimes

obnoxious characters that were always trying to do the right thing in a weirdly chaotic unstructured way. Because that was definitely not me. A lot of people wanted to just be heroes and just be the guy who saves the day, the guy or gal that just saves the day and step away from more of like, not necessarily like the opposite of their personality, but the opposite of what society thinks they are. When you create a character in D&D, you choose a moral alignment for your character.

And there's a chart with an axis. One line of the axis is pure morality. Are you good, neutral, or evil? The other line of the axis is how you feel about the law or rules and regulations. Are you lawful, neutral, or chaotic? Your character is a combination, so you can be evil and lawful, like the Emperor in Star Wars. Or you can be chaotic and good, like Wolverine in the X-Men. I asked Joseph, among the guys that he played with, what kind of alignments do they usually choose?

All my guys were chaotic good, but there were a lot of people that were lawful good and neutral good. That was how it was. We all wanted to be the good guy. The definition of that or not the definition, the classification of that or the identity of that was different in multiple myriads of ways. But at the base, the base platform of the construct of the character was, I am a good person. Like I was dealt a wrong, a raw deal, or I did wrong before right now, but I am a good person and I am showing that by the deeds that I do. What about you?

Do you feel like you went through a change by having, by doing all these games? Absolutely. Yeah. I learned, like I learned that I was a storyteller and I learned that I could actually like speak and communicate to people. It inspired me to pursue a writing degree.

I'm in San Francisco State right now, pursuing a creative writing degree. And all of it was like inspired one way or another through the games. Just reading the books, studying them, learning people's responses. Like being autistic, like I don't have the natural ability to like pick up on people. The games taught camaraderie. The games taught me that there are people worth being around and friendship and positive joy. Like there's joy in prison. The prison can be a monster factory. It can strip

away whatever you are and make, and the choices you make can turn you into something that you don't want to become to survive. When I met the gamers from prison to prison, we were an island of like positivity unto ourselves. We chose not to remain segregated. We chose not to let the bullshit of prison grind us into dust. Yeah. So, how long have you been out now? I've been out for four years now, I think.

Almost five. And do you have a group now? No. Really? No. It's hard. And work and school just work, school and relationships like kind of take control. So do you miss it?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I missed it a lot. Even though prison was a terrible thing, the most incredible times I've had, good and bad, happened behind those walls. And even though a lot of them happened on paper and in our imaginations, I don't care because they still helped me to make steps forward, become like the man that I am now, the man I'm supposed to be versus the person that I was that made horrible decisions and made horrible mistakes and committed a terrible crime. I'll never forget that, you know, those choices. And I will hold those regrets without forgiveness for my life.

But given the chance to meet amazing people where there's supposed to be nothing but monsters and then play games and have comfort and soothing moments. That's the magic. As I mentioned before, in role-playing games, your character has a set of strengths and weaknesses that they're born with. When you take an action in the game, you have three factors. Who you are, what you choose to do, and the luck of the dice. It's easy to forget that only one of those factors is really in your control. You just hope the dice rolls in your favor.

What I like about role-playing games is that they give you the freedom to fail. The consequences might seem dire in the game, but you get another turn. You get another roll of the dice, no matter what your dice are made of. That is it for this week. Special thanks to Joseph Crowder, David Annarelli, Moira Markey, and Michelle Dillon. Extra thanks to Bruce Wallace from the podcast Ear Hustle. It's a great show about life in prisons, and they helped me a lot in putting this episode together. Also, if you're interested in D&D character alignments, I did a whole episode about it in 2016 called Why They Fight.

David Annarelli has been trying to fight his conviction and his sentence. To learn more about him and the organizations that Michelle and Moira work for, I provided links in the show notes. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If you like the show, please give us a mention on social media or leave a review

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