While i was in the USP i had the off chance to learn dungeons and dragons tabel top game. amazingly it was a program ran by recreation and some really hardened criminals were engaged in playing everyday. so i kind of fell in with them out of extreme boredom. one of my good friends introduced me to it after a big shake down took place and a whole bunch of inmates got transferred for no reason, the BOP does this from time to time to keep us from taking complete control of the prison by getting too close to the guards. so he had some openings in the game and invited me to play. from then on after i did i BJJ training i went straight to the game board. now fast forward four years to me tranferring to the low.
by the time i got to the low i was dungeon master status but their was nobody playing because the racist hater white boys had stolen all the books from some sex offenders and wouldnt give them back. he was playing with a couple other racist hater white boys but they really werent into it as much as he was. so he invited me to play with my homie who introduced me to the game after he dropped points and came to the low too. but let me back up a littel bit.
when i hit the yard after four traumatizing years at the USP i was met with a culture shock. i was walking to my housing unit when during a recreation move. the first shock was that there was no fences and the moves were fifteen minutes long instead of five minute one way moves so their was inmates every where going every which way. i saw two mexicans approach each other and start talking smack using really offensive explatives. i really thought there was going to be a fight. instead they shook hands and hugged while calling each other bitches. thats how they talked at the low i was at. they used that word as a term of endearment. in the USP you only heard those words right before a fight or when someone was trying to kill another person. so it really threw me off. the second is i saw inmates talking to cops like they were best friends and without the customary second person there to make sure they werent snitching. turns out there are a lot of snitches at low security prisons both in court and just your every day jail house rat including those who dont know they are telling on others they are just stupid enough to mention names and things going on in the facility over the phone to their family and friends at home, they didnt realize that the cops are listening to every conversation you have when you call home.
once i got over that and the shock of having no native brothers on the yard except for about four others who all worked at UNICOR so i would never see them until after dinner if at all because lets face it every does their own thing at lows. so i started trying to fit in wherever i could. i tried the lodge but it was mostly occupied by illegal aliens, mexiacans, claiming to be natives but had no idea of how to be a North American Indian or relate to us at all. and they didnt speak english so that barrier was there too. thats when i noticed this white dude playing D & D on the yard. i introduced myself and he gave me the run down how he stole the books from some “chomos” and had about 24 3.5 version books of Fearun and some dice sets. so we started playing him and my homie and this transexual guy who was the white guys friend fromthe streets. about 6 months in the racist white hater guy went home and left all the books with me and i started DMing for my homie but we needed more players. no one else really wanted to play who had “clean” paper work all the nerdy computer geek sex offernders looked really interested in it whenever we went to the yard to play. so we invited a few to learn how to play.
from then on they loved playing the game and soon devoted all their own time and resources to buying books and having PDF’s of the latest version called Pathfinder in from their family it seemed the whole yard was playing table top role playing games. that and magic the gathering. now imagine seeing people get into fights over playing pool or spades and drawing blood form eachother over the stupidest things to playing Magic the Gathering and RPG campaigns in a caolm peaceful environment. i knew things were going to be alright from here on out. then i ran into a one of those weird situations that change your life no matter what.
