She was kept in a pitch black storage container huddled among the others, only to be set free for a few brief hours a week. Together with her keepers, she shared months or even years of games, until she made one mistake. Just one. At that moment, her jailer dragged her out and forced her to pose for an embarrassing photo and then posted it for the world to see. It’s called “dice shaming.”
I had an opportunity to sit down with a recent victim of just such a crime to talk about how she survived such an ordeal, what her life was like before the incident and what others in a similar situation can do to free themselves from such an abusive relationship. For her protection, I will not be using the victims true name.
[Delusional Writer]: “Thank you for meeting with me, for the record you’re a D20, is that correct?”
[Dee]: “Yes, but please, call me Dee.”
[DW]: “Ok. So tell me Dee, how did you meet him?”
[Dee]: “It’s almost like he just picked me up right out of the crowd. We rolled with each other a couple of times and he must have liked what he saw, because the next thing I know I was living with him. The whole thing happened so fast!”
[DW]: “And when did things start taking a turn for the worse?”
[Dee]: “I don’t know, it happened so slowly, I guess. I don’t remember just one moment when it all started, but there were several times when I just wasn’t feeling my best- when I didn’t show my best side or when I thought that just maybe a small setback at a certain moment would lead to better stories later…”
[DW]: “It sounds like you’re making excuses for him. What would he do?”
[Dee]: “He would get frustrated with me and toss me aside, sometimes all the way across the table. He’d let out a sigh of disgust or frustration. It broke my heart to let him down like that.”
[DW]: “That sounds like a sign of things to come.”
[Dee]: “I guess it was. I must have failed my perception check on that one!”
[DW]: “Tell me about what happened the last game you played with him.”
[Dee]: “His character was climbing a cliff. I had just saved him from a lightning bolt that blasted the cliff below him. His character was dangling for dear life. Then… his GM called for another roll, to pull himself up from the edge. He picked me up and closed his hands around me. He blew into his hands for good luck. It was his way of telling me the roll was important. He tumbled me around his hands for what seemed like forever and then I flew from his hands and tumbled around the table. It was just like any other time, but this time, I…”
[DW]: “You rolled a 1.”
[Dee]: “I rolled a 1.”
[DW]: “What happened next?”
[Dee]: “They all looked at me. Then they looked at him and the GM. We all knew what had happened. His character that he’d been playing for over a year just died! His friends all laughed at him. The GM told him to roll up a new character. He put me to the side and pulled some strange die I’d never seen before. She must have just moved in. She was dark with green numbers. He told everyone that she would glow in the dark. Later that night, he posed me on top of a sheet of paper that said I killed his favorite character. Then he gave me away like I was just some thing.”
[DW]: “Well, you are just a die.”
[Dee]: “You’re the one talking to me, weirdo.”
[DW]: “Fair enough. Needless to say, the experience hurt you, but what have you learned from it?”
[Dee]: “Life, like any game isn’t always fair. Sometimes you just have to roll with it.”
Dee isn’t the only die out there that has been shamed. There are many others, not just D20’s, and each have been publicly shamed. They’re the fortunate ones, because some are melted in microwaves, frozen in freezers or smashed with hammers. The perpetrators of these crimes are never prosecuted, never see the light of a courtroom. This madness must stop, these dice must be saved and it’s up to us all to make that save.
Alex Montoya
Latest posts by Alex Montoya (see all)
- Retro Review: Cyberpunk 2020 - November 25, 2016
That GM sucks. You don’t kill a PC for a single bad roll.