Games as Resistance
Today marks nine months of resistance to the carceral state of Massachusetts in the form of play. Nine months of playing games and building community in defiance of imposed isolation. Nine months of reaching across the wall to laugh, to cry, and to share in each other’s lives.
I originally connected with my friend Shawn on June 6th, 2025. I messaged him on Corrlinks and we started scheduling regular phone calls to chat. We immediately connected around our shared love of RPG games and fiction, and within a month, we started a regular RPG game night. We gathered a few friends to come together around a phone while Shawn called in, and we played. We started by creating a setting together using Microscope by Ben Robbins. We had a great time inventing a fantasy world with vampires, elves, dragons, and giant fish and improvising the tragic moment that magical song was first discovered. Then for the following 6 months, I led a campaign in that world using Cairn first edition by Yachai Gal. Cairn is a lovely rules-light RPG system that is contained entirely in a 20-page zine. I loved that I could mail Shawn a full copy of the rules, but I didn’t love that the GM is referred to as a ‘Warden.’ (Needless to say our group ignored that rule.)
Every week for those 6 months we gathered together to share a meal and an adventure. (We also put money on Shawn’s books so he could enjoy some snacks with us.) Collectively, we’ve comforted each other in the face of evil wizards, shadowy anti-magic factions, traumatizing work shifts, and triggering phone calls with siblings. We have braved hoards of spiders and poor Wi-Fi connections. We’ve navigated dark subterranean tunnels and emotional boundaries. We’ve been vulnerable, we’ve been resilient. We’ve been there for each other each week. We’ve built a community through imagination, play, and care.
Now having completed our first full campaign, there’s only more to look forward to. We have launched a monthly community game night to host games for even more people (incarcerated or no). Shawn and I have entered a game jam together on itch.io. We have just started a new campaign with Shawn as our GM. And most importantly, Shawn will be coming home in only a few months.
A connection became a game. A game became a shared space. In this space, we are nurturing a culture of support and joy. We feed each other. We make space for each other. We prioritize each other’s engagement and comfort. We have norms, structures, and habits to support each others’ needs. I look forward to expanding and deepening these systems of support in the coming months as we receive Shawn on the outside.
It should be said that we depend enormously on the fact that in the state of Massachusetts, calls from jails and prisons are currently free. In any other state, we would have spent many hundreds of dollars during the past eight months just to speak over the phone once a week. I am grateful for this fact. I do not take it for granted (sadly), but I do take it for due. Free contact with friends, family, and community is the lowest of bare necessities for our incarcerated loved ones, and we should come it expect it. I look forward to a future when many millions across the US understand and advocate for the necessity of free phone calls. That reality is one small step towards abolition of the prison system as a whole, but still perhaps a large leap from our present reality.
Incarceration is hell on earth. Even if you look past the legal abandonment, medical neglect, forced labor, unsanitary conditions, psychological/physical/sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and physical violence, incarceration is hell on earth. Incarceration is isolation. Isolation is torture. Incarceration is a system of vindictive and neglectful violence that poisons our society with the promise of punishing and rehabilitating “evildoers” while meting out compounding suffering to the most vulnerable. It is a blank check for abuse behind a curtain of concrete and societal shame. It is a woefully outdated concept, and only continues to exist by the willful ignorance of most of the US population.
I look forward to the day when our society can stand in the cold sunshine of true healing. I look forward to the day when no one is deemed disposable. I look forward to the day when we can meet the complex needs of every human being without averting our eyes in shame. I look forward to the day when prisons, jails, and detention facilities are well and truly obsolete. In the meantime, I have chosen to resist this hell alongside Shawn and so many other friends. We have chosen to resist by building community. I celebrate and give thanks to that.
Resistance takes on many forms. Our resistance is jokes and laughter. It’s card shuffles and dice rolls. It’s phone calls and emails to prison staff. It’s home-cooked pasta and handmade Oreo candy cakes. It’s driving through an hour of traffic both ways on a week night because it’s fun, because we love each other, because we love the worlds we create together.
Once a week there is no wall. We are imagining ourselves and our realities as something different. We are inseparable.
~ Dan Morrow