Welcome back! The last time we spoke, we had forgotten to put the Cooperative threats in the folder, but the first two are in there now! We’ve also uploaded the first scenario that we’re showing off, where the Guardians are sent into an interdimensional “Hyperspace Alternative Violence Eradication Nexus” to try and prevent the facility from jumping through realities without any control.
We’ve also added three more playable characters, as well as the full rulebook. As with all of the Meanwhile content, the rules are fairly complete; however, there are still edge cases and situations that are not covered, so please feel free to ask about anything that seems to be missing or unclear. The three new characters are a small increase in complexity from the Quickstart characters, with Squall and the Accompanist heavily using their Meanwhile slots to maintain and amplify ongoing abilities.
The Scenario calls for a number of new tokens that have been added to the token sheet in the dropbox, as well as a Secrets Bag filled with some Secret tokens. If you would prefer not to utilize tokens this way for any reason, you can also shuffle an Ace-6 set of cards or roll a six-sided die to achieve the same result. This Scenario also introduces an Environment Deck that is used to bring the setting of the scenario to life a little more and give players an additional measure of challenge.
Continuing our study of Abolition, we have included a passage from the first chapter of Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis.
The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs-it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism. What, for example, do we miss if we try to think about prison expansion without addressing larger economic developments? We live in an era of migrating corporations. In order to escape organized labor in this country-and thus higher wages, benefits, and so on-corporations roam the world in search of nations providing cheap labor pools. This corporate migration thus leaves entire communities in shambles. Huge numbers of people lose jobs and prospects for future jobs. Because the economic base of these communities is destroyed, education and other surviving social services are profoundly affected. This process turns the men, women, and children who live in these damaged communities into perfect candidates for prison. In the meantime, corporations associated with the punishment industry reap profits from the system that manages prisoners and acquire a clear stake in the continued growth of prison populations. Put simply, this is the era of the prison industrial complex. The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the de-industrialization of the economy-a process that reached its peak during the 1980s-and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling. Moreover, draconian drug laws were being enacted, and “three-strikes” provisions were on the agendas of many states.
Angela Davis “Are Prisons Obsolete?”
In order to understand the proliferation of prisons and the rise of the prison industrial complex, it might be helpful to think further about the reasons we so easily take prisons for granted. In California, as we have seen, almost two-thirds of existing prisons were opened during the eighties and nineties. Why was there no great outcry? Why was there such an obvious level of comfort with the prospect of many new prisons? A partial answer to this question has to do with the way we consume media images of the prison, even as the realities of imprisonment are hidden from almost all who have not had the misfortune of doing time. Cultural critic Gina Dent has pointed out that our sense of familiarity with the prison comes in part from representations of prisons in film and other visual media. The history of visuality linked to the prison is also a main reinforcement of the institution of the prison as a naturalized part of our social landscape.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?
As before, all of the material for the Meanwhile system Print and Play will be in this folder, and we will do our best to keep the scenario content organized in this sub-folder.
Also, the United States is continuing to have multiple cities with protests against police violence, and federal agents are beginning to deploy to cities in record numbers to assist local police in delivering state violence on protesters. Please find a local bail fund to contribute to, as detention for protesters often happens with no way to mitigate the possible transmission of COVID-19.
–Smith at the Forge
Lore Forge Games 