The violent nerd movement has suffered a serious setback. Yesterday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Dungeons & Dragons ban in Wisconsin prisons. According to court records, prison officials were concerned that inmates were forming a “gang” around the fantasy role-playing game.

The suit was brought to federal court by Kevin Singer, an inmate serving a life sentence for first-degree homocide at Wisconsin’s Waupun prison. In 2004, officials confiscated Singer’s collection of game manuals and other nerd paraphernalia, as well as 96 pages of dungeonmaster’s notes.

This is one of the most subtle travesties to Mankind’s freedoms I have seen, and I can confirm its validity, as I had a cousin that just got out of prison after four years. He was able to play games the first few years, but they started cracking down on gaming later, D&D specifically but all were looked at with suspicion, and some were denied being sent to prisoners because they contained specifically violent or “informative” wording, so I ended up with a Vietnam roleplaying game, because it talked about killing other people or something totally ridiculous.

I remember they went through, at least leafing, the pages I sent him, and some just got kept with no explanation as to why, and some people’s RPG books (some of which cost over $40 USD) just disappeared into the ether after being “examined for violations” by the guards. He couldn’t have dice, they kept the DM’s guide in a homemade bound paper “book” that was actually hand-copied bible verses – ingenious. Most amusingly to me, the Call of Cthulhu game, about ancient tentacled alien gods plunging from the stars to be freed from their tombs by human sacrifice, and enslaving mankind and casting spells to wither and sicken people, never really had any trouble being in there. Go figure.

I could go into a longer observation about this kind of ignorant mindset, but the long and short of it is, these prisoners are still HUMAN, even the worst ones (well maybe not the WORST, worst ones), and our mind and imagination is one of the few things we have that is truly our own and unable to be regulated or restricted, and I agree channeling these prisoners’ anti-social habits into gaming IS therapeutic, my cousin saw and experienced this first hand, and to deny them this escapism and outlet is perhaps the worst possible decision that could be made, for society and them. All of the gamers in there were the more intelligent, philosophical and thoughtful types, mostly amiable and laid-back. So of course the system wants THAT to stop. Brilliant.

A podcast of Wil “Wesley Crusher” Wheaton plays the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game, with the guys from Penny Arcade and PvP webcomics.

http://media.gleemax.com/podcasts/DnD_PAPVP2_ep1.mp3