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BP: We’re Bull Press. We make games – conversational tabletop games – for a prison environment. Most of us have spent time in prison, and we’re based in the USA.
Oh dang, where to start? We have a variety of games – our biggest are Illadelph (a hip-hop game set in 90s Philadelphia), Corpse Thieves (kung fu and mystery solving) and Stirring Giant (cyberpunk neo-noir). Please see the game printed in this edition of the paper called “Rot”, which was made by a friend in Texas. It’s a blast to play.
To play the games, you get a group of people and you all work together to solve a mystery or track down a ring of tomb robbers – or whatever scenario the game you’re playing presents. Our conversational tabletop games are basically cooperative storytelling, which everybody knows how to do. It’s inherently pro-social. It's also the only hobby I know of that can bring a crew of five strangers of completely different backgrounds to the same table and keep them coming back every week for years.
Tabletop games in general are fully analogue: no electricity, no internet, no screens. Our subgenre, conversational games, don’t even require a board or pieces – just people to chat with.
They’re unlimited in their creative enrichment. The more time a player puts into drawing, writing, designing interesting scenarios for their crew, the better the games get. That’s more time spent building with people, practising creative skills and less time getting up to the bad shit we’re all prone to when we’re bored.
They force you to take others’ perspectives. That’s the central engine of gameplay: creating main characters – characters who are very different from you – and then putting them in interesting situations. Taking these perspectives and navigating the uncertain social scenarios the game presents is a powerful builder of emotional intelligence.
Back when I was getting in trouble as a kid and in prison, I wanted to get games going inside. Tricky, since it’s not exactly an environment that rewards going around asking people if they wanna play pretend wizards. Also, we weren’t allowed dice, hardcovers or maps – barriers and barriers.
Content restrictions vary prison-to-prison and by whoever’s working the mail room that day.
Component-wise, the big restriction is no dice, since they can be used for gambling. While we sometimes include spinners in games, an easy DIY is filling an index card with all the numbers in your dice’s range. To roll, just close your eyes and point, and whatever number your finger lands closest to is the result.
It’s also crucial to be able to pitch a game that’s respectable in the prison environment, which can be asking a lot: not too nerdy, not too soft – but also nothing that’s gonna get the game thrown out in the mail room.
Prison staff familiar with the hobby love it, since they know how the hobby builds community and social skills. Some have been very supportive.
For easy distribution, we design everything into a single book (scenarios, character sheets, spinners etc.) and then mostly send boxes of these books to our friends at the dozen-ish books-to-prisoners workspaces (volunteer run initiatives that send books to incarcerated people in the USA). We also mail sourcebooks directly when prisoners or their people request them.
We get some thank-you letters, which, I’m not such a knuckledragger I won’t admit, I’ve gotten misty-eyed reading at times.
Knowing you were able to open up a door to better worlds for somebody, those same doors that helped us escape nightmare childhoods and personal tragedies, gave us a connection with hobbyists even through razorwire and concrete – you can’t put a price on any of that.
Conversational games are the most fun you can have just talking with people. It’s just a structured conversation, a method of cooperative storytelling. Because it gets everybody on the same team, gets them solving problems and navigating social scenarios together, it builds social intelligence, creates community, gets people taking others’ perspective and gets everybody feeling all on the same side.
The hobby's inherent creative element also completely obliterates boredom (perhaps the prisoner's greatest enemy) and throws open endless doors of possibility. There's a specific moment when many first-timers realize the hobby can bring to life absolutely any fiction they can think of – all those years of daydreams and interior stories. You can see how their eyes light up at that realisation and the worlds of creativity it brings out of them over the years – the joy I've seen it create is truly unquantifiable.
Our distribution network definitely covers Australia. If you’re interested, just have your people shoot us an email at requests@bullpress.org or send the request in letter via About Time, and, so long as our fund allows, we’ll mail you some sourcebooks.
BP: We’re Bull Press. We make games – conversational tabletop games – for a prison environment. Most of us have spent time in prison, and we’re based in the USA.
Oh dang, where to start? We have a variety of games – our biggest are Illadelph (a hip-hop game set in 90s Philadelphia), Corpse Thieves (kung fu and mystery solving) and Stirring Giant (cyberpunk neo-noir). Please see the game printed in this edition of the paper called “Rot”, which was made by a friend in Texas. It’s a blast to play.
To play the games, you get a group of people and you all work together to solve a mystery or track down a ring of tomb robbers – or whatever scenario the game you’re playing presents. Our conversational tabletop games are basically cooperative storytelling, which everybody knows how to do. It’s inherently pro-social. It's also the only hobby I know of that can bring a crew of five strangers of completely different backgrounds to the same table and keep them coming back every week for years.
Tabletop games in general are fully analogue: no electricity, no internet, no screens. Our subgenre, conversational games, don’t even require a board or pieces – just people to chat with.
They’re unlimited in their creative enrichment. The more time a player puts into drawing, writing, designing interesting scenarios for their crew, the better the games get. That’s more time spent building with people, practising creative skills and less time getting up to the bad shit we’re all prone to when we’re bored.
They force you to take others’ perspectives. That’s the central engine of gameplay: creating main characters – characters who are very different from you – and then putting them in interesting situations. Taking these perspectives and navigating the uncertain social scenarios the game presents is a powerful builder of emotional intelligence.
Back when I was getting in trouble as a kid and in prison, I wanted to get games going inside. Tricky, since it’s not exactly an environment that rewards going around asking people if they wanna play pretend wizards. Also, we weren’t allowed dice, hardcovers or maps – barriers and barriers.
Content restrictions vary prison-to-prison and by whoever’s working the mail room that day.
Component-wise, the big restriction is no dice, since they can be used for gambling. While we sometimes include spinners in games, an easy DIY is filling an index card with all the numbers in your dice’s range. To roll, just close your eyes and point, and whatever number your finger lands closest to is the result.
It’s also crucial to be able to pitch a game that’s respectable in the prison environment, which can be asking a lot: not too nerdy, not too soft – but also nothing that’s gonna get the game thrown out in the mail room.
Prison staff familiar with the hobby love it, since they know how the hobby builds community and social skills. Some have been very supportive.
For easy distribution, we design everything into a single book (scenarios, character sheets, spinners etc.) and then mostly send boxes of these books to our friends at the dozen-ish books-to-prisoners workspaces (volunteer run initiatives that send books to incarcerated people in the USA). We also mail sourcebooks directly when prisoners or their people request them.
We get some thank-you letters, which, I’m not such a knuckledragger I won’t admit, I’ve gotten misty-eyed reading at times.
Knowing you were able to open up a door to better worlds for somebody, those same doors that helped us escape nightmare childhoods and personal tragedies, gave us a connection with hobbyists even through razorwire and concrete – you can’t put a price on any of that.
Conversational games are the most fun you can have just talking with people. It’s just a structured conversation, a method of cooperative storytelling. Because it gets everybody on the same team, gets them solving problems and navigating social scenarios together, it builds social intelligence, creates community, gets people taking others’ perspective and gets everybody feeling all on the same side.
The hobby's inherent creative element also completely obliterates boredom (perhaps the prisoner's greatest enemy) and throws open endless doors of possibility. There's a specific moment when many first-timers realize the hobby can bring to life absolutely any fiction they can think of – all those years of daydreams and interior stories. You can see how their eyes light up at that realisation and the worlds of creativity it brings out of them over the years – the joy I've seen it create is truly unquantifiable.
Our distribution network definitely covers Australia. If you’re interested, just have your people shoot us an email at requests@bullpress.org or send the request in letter via About Time, and, so long as our fund allows, we’ll mail you some sourcebooks.
Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison still holds powerful memories for many thousands of people. The prison’s towering bluestone walls were an imposing presence in Coburg, and almost all Melburnians have a story to tell about this notorious place.
A new children’s book addresses the incarceration of parents. It’s titled My Dad’s Gone Away and was written by Andrew Krakouer and Jacqueline Dinan.
The 2024 Paris Olympics started with a splash (literally). The Opening Ceremony featured 90 boats, filled with country teams waving flags, all floating down a rainy river Seine, as the crowd of 300,000 cheered from the riverbanks.
The genre is crime fiction, set in the Australian outback, in rural, sometimes insular communities where everyone seems to know everyone else. This is set in the outback NSW town of Cobb where a woman, a local school teacher, has been stoned to death.
An overview of recent sporting events, including horse racing, motor racing, AFLW and cricket.
Knowing what an incredibly powerful story he had – not to mention unique artworks – after the interview I asked Mohannad if he would be interested in having art exhibited in Australia.
A collection of sports news from the past month, including Brisbane possibly being our new sporting capital, Aussie women finding lots of wins in Cricket and loutish crowd behaviour marring the Ryder Cup.
Prison is a noisy place, yet at Risdon Prison, in Tasmania – nestled near bushland and close to the Risdon Brook Dam – the sounds of nature still break through. Despite the din, the calls of native birds are unmistakable.
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All donations of $2 or more are tax deductible. If you would like to pay directly into our bank account to avoid the processing fee, please contact donate@abouttime.org.au. ABN 67 667 331 106.
Help us get About Time off the ground. All donations are tax deductible and will be vital in providing an essential resource for people in prison and their loved ones.
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