Shortly after I made Drakken in 2022 I was approached by an organization in California that was dedicated to promote literacy in prisons. Apparently, Dungeons & Dragons was their most requested reading material from inmates at the time. D&D being expensive as it was at the time was simply not possible, but the potential benefits of TTRPGs for inmates was too good to pass up. They were hoping that I would be willing to let them, for a modest fee, distribute Drakken, remixed a bit to meet their requirements.
I told them they could have it for free.
A Little Compassion for The Men Behind Bars
The way in which we treat convicts in the Anglosphere is, while certainly miles ahead of most societies, still awful. We have a habit of turning a blind eye to the abuses of a system that has turned men in prison into a disposable cash crop for powerful corporations. Some people cannot be rehabilitated, and cannot be trusted to walk free in civilized society. But for every person too far gone, there is a room full of people who can be, or didn't deserve to be incarcerated in the first place.
Our culture(s) produce a lot of unjust laws that a decent human being wouldn't enforce or imprison someone for, and yet we have a machine that forces police, judges, and government officials to do just that. And once someone is in the Carceral System, the System seems geared to keep them and amplify the circumstances that make ordinary people become criminal.
Look, we can't be a civilization built on the idea that human beings have inalienable rights, innate Dignity, and Rule of law, and then toss them into a place where we barely enforce the law and alienate those rights. Hypocrisy eats away at the foundation of a culture. If we treat human dignity as optional in the prisons, then it is optional everywhere, and the state apparatus will reflect it.
So, if I can do some good supporting education and offering a little escapism to our incarcerated brothers and sisters at no cost to me, I will.
How to Make your Zine Penal-System Friendly
- To make Drakken available in the prison system, I had to make sure it met certain specific criteria:
- It had to fit on folded A4 paper.
- It cannot be cut, stitched, or stapled, so it needed to be foldable, fitting 4-pages to a side,
- Whoever is printing them might not have access to software with a "print as booklet" option, so the pages will have to be arranged in a specific order.
- Subject matter restrictions may be in place, and so I made it a point to ensure there was no suggestive content in my 'zine. (Not that there was in Drakken, but it helps to double-check.)
- Use black-and-white friendly versions of your images by de-saturating them then adjusting the brightness/contrast until they look good.
The order that the document needs to appear in is this:
1st sheet:
Back Cover, Outer | Front Cover, Outer
Front Cover, Inner | Back Cover, Inner
2nd Sheet:
Last Page | First Page
2nd Page | 2nd Last Page
3rd Sheet
3rd Last Page | 3rd Page
4th Page | 4th Last Page
4th Sheet
5th Last Page | 5th Page
6th Page | 6th Last Page
If your document has a page count that is a multiple of four (which it should if you want it to be a printable Zine) then you can continue this pattern as long as necessary until the pages meet in the middle.
Page numbers were a difficulty in Google Docs, so I literally manually added a page number in small font at the bottom of the page manually.
Where to Send It
I haven't got my contact's permission to share his info. But if you Google "Prison Literacy Programs" you are pretty much guaranteed to find one in your state or province. 9/10 they will love to hear from you!
Need an Example:
Here's the version of Drakken I laid out for use in correctional facilities in early 2023:
(And I will reiterate that I hereby grant any person involved in a prison literacy program unlimited license to print and distribute the game without stipulation or warranty)
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