Oh they say that it's over...and it just had to be

Gygax, Frazetta, Dio. Somebody check on Moorcock. I haven't the heart.

And you can't play D&D here? I call bullshit.

That's Wisconsin's Waupun Correctional Institute, where inmate Kevin T. Singer this week lost an appeal in his lawsuit against prison officials who had banned D&D and confiscated his rulebooks, magazines and home-brew campaign notes.

A letter to Singer informed him, “Inmates are not allowed to engage in or possess written material that details rules, codes, dogma of games/activities such as ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ because it promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling.”

Officials also claimed the game, in addition to all these ills, promotes gang activity. (They also warned of possible "escapism," because it's apparently penologically vital to imprison not only an offender's body, but also his mind).

The evidence on the gang thing? The bald say-so of the prison's resident gangbuster, "Disruptive Group Coordinator" Bruce Muraski. D&D, he had deduced, involves players taking directions from a "Dungeon Master," much as Bingo has a caller or muscial chairs has that guy who starts and stops the music. This, in Muraski's world, "mimics the organization of a gang."

He admitted there had never been a recorded instances of D&D players organizing into nerd-posse prison gangs, but hey, better safe than sorry. Singer, in contrast, presented 15 affidavits from fellow player/inmates and from experts on roleplaying games, and never stood a chance.

I'll refrain from further belabouring the ridiculousness of this power-tripping petty cruelty, backed up by the most specious of arguments and unchecked institutional power. Everyone's already had a good, sad, sick laugh over it. If you haven't had enough, the decision is  here.

If all of this DMG-burning goofery sounds woefully familiar, though, that's because it is.

Back in the 80s, Tipper Gore and the other culture warriors of note didn't have much time for gamers. They were too busy with Judas Priest and Ozzy. (As he surveyed the wreckage of the 2000 election, I wonder if Al Gore took a moment to calculate how many metalheads of voting age there might be in Florida).

We had to settle for third and fourth-raters, like loopy pamphleteer/mullah Jack Chick and Mad Mother without peer Patricia Pulling. Not to speak ill of the dead, Patty, but you were one obsessive, crazy, lying harpy. Rest in peace.

Still, we had our moments, a few murders and suicides dubiously blamed on the game, media mic-wringing over satanic cults springing up across North America, and the hilarious Mazes and Monsters, featuring Tom Hanks.

The moral panic over D&D soon collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity, but when a certain sort of person finds himself in a tight spot, beating up on the weird smart kids just comes naturally. During the last presidential election, John McCain spokesass Michael Goldfarb made repeated derogatory comments about D&D players as some sort of bizarre attack on sissified, book-reading Obama supporters. Ah, the enduring popularity of losing tactics among losers.

So, are gamers a gang? Playing generates a lot of camaraderie in my experience, but the gamers I know are not followers. These cats don't herd. Their politics are all over the place and they like to have their own fun their own way. Hence the appeal of gaming.

But maybe we should be a gang, and maybe we should stand up for Kevin Singer. Yes, he's in for murder, but this rule applies to every sad bastard in that prison. Can we allow this kind of ignorant horseshit to go down an hour and a half's drive from Lake Geneva, home of Saint Gary?

A warning to anyone considering direct action: It seems you might be locked up for two years and liable to a fine of up to $500 if you smuggled a 20-sider into Waupun.

And that’s if they don’t consider it a controlled substance.