Dungeons And Dragons And Prisons

Dungeons and Dragons is, surprisingly to me, very popular within U.S. prisons (but banned in Idaho, because fuck Idaho).  However, dice are almost always banned as gambling utensils.  So what's a con wanting to get his elf on to do?  Improvise!  To wit:

"During his time behind bars, Gabriel made dice using one of the most common resources of all: toilet paper. 'You don't even need glue, just toilet paper,' he says, 'The way I did it is just by folding it into very thick square, wetting it, and then shoving it into a square corner, say a window sill. You do this over and over again, applying water when it starts to dry out, alternating corners. Eventually you have nicely shaped square. You have to continue shaping it as it dries with your makeshift corner jig. It shrinks a bit and gets quite hard.'

Where May was housed, 'No one ever got in trouble (that I know of) just for making them. If someone pissed off a C.O [corrections officer]. they could theoretically get written up for making dice (gambling paraphernalia) but mostly the cops didn't actively harass us in closed custody. If a person lost their dice it would more likely be during a one of the big shakedowns, where the cops go cell to cell and throw almost everything out on the tier. As in the real world, folks in prison hoard random stuff. They'd go through and throw it all away once a month, once every few months, or whenever someone OD'd on meth or something. When I got to medium and then minimum custody they really stopped throwing dice away, and in fact those kind of tier wide cell tosses were much rarer.'"

Other means of randomization include playing cards, spinners, and perhaps most simply a cup filled with numbered chits.

This is all interesting to me as I slowly make my way through Jon Peterson's Playing At The World.  While six-sided dice quickly became a modern board game convention, early war-gamers grew frustrated with having to rely on limited variations of 1/6 (roughly 16%).  In fact, the first incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons solely used variations of one or two six-sided dice.  Eventually, savvy war-gamers in the 1970s became aware of an obscure Japanese mathematics company that would, for a princely sum of two or three bucks, send you some amazing creations -- both the 10 and 20 sided dice.