Games Inmates Play

Hey, I’m back! I really needed a break, but now I’m rested and ready to go. If YOU tried blogging from prison for a year straight, you’d feel the same way that I did.

I’ll start by catching you up on what’s been happening lately. I’ve been spending more time with the nerdy gaming community as of late, and if they only liked me before, they now revere me as a minor deity.

Why? Because I had my editor mail in a few large envelopes with the rules and descriptions of a European board game called Carcassonne. Using the inmate black market, a pair of moustache scissors from the commissary, and the spirit of MacGuyver, I turned what I had into a close resemblance of the original.

So what’s the big deal about making a board game? Well, it’s not every day that someone can say that they have something NEW to do in prison. For a lot of the gaming geeks, this was a badly needed shot of Novocain to help numb the eternally mind-wrenching cavity of boredom that is federal prison. Needless to say, assembling that game earned me quite a few thanks.

I’m fortunate to have someone on the outside that is willing to do stuff like send me materials for gaming. More often than not, inmates are on their own. It’s as if family and friends forget about you while you’re locked up. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

One of my friends enjoyed the game so much that I had to let him borrow it. For the next few days, every time I saw him in the rec yard, he was talking about the game, playing it, or showing someone how to play.

One of the bad things about my version of Carcassonne was that if you handled the pieces too much, the paper cutouts would start to separate from the cardboard backing I used to give the pieces some substance. (I thought that using just a glue stick would be sufficient for this project, but I was wrong.)

Anyway, my friend FIXED the problem by wrapping clear duct tape around all 72 tiles to hold the pieces together. He did an incredible job! There are no wrinkles in the taped pieces, and the tiles shine as the tape reflects light. He even went so far as to use colored pencils to draw the “C” logo on the underside of the starting tile. (Google or Wiki this if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

He also swapped out the pieces I used as followers. Mine were plastic cuffs taken from retail clothes hangers; I guess that wasn’t good enough for him. The next time I saw my game, he had replaced my plastic cuffs with soldiers from an old Risk game that no longer exists. (I’m happy to say that my followers no longer have M or XXL on the side.)

My friend ended up adding a lot of polish to a game that I just designed to be functional. I guess that’s a good thing, since I have the feeling that it’ll be around long after I’m gone.

BONUS:  Listening to the good advice of my readers, I’ve gotten rid of the guy that’s been chasing me around wanting a relationship. Although I told him up front that I wasn’t gay, he was still going out of his way to visit me, wanting to cook for me, passing messages to me through other people, etc. When I told him he was freaking me out, he stopped approaching me. I hated to do so because he is a decent fellow (despite his amorous interests), but I think this was the best move. For both of us. So readers, I say thank you.