Tag: disability

Five or So Questions with Jack Berberette on DOTS

I found out about the DOTS GoFundMe that Jack Berberette is doing to purchase and use a Braille Printer to make braille games available for gamers through G+, and Jack was willing to answer some questions! Check his responses out below, and give the video he made about braille translation a view if you can!

—

Tell me about your Braille printer project. What excites you about it?
One of the things I’ve learned, after starting on this project, is that electronic equipment, learning materials, books, and more are beyond expensive for the visually impaired. The braille embossing printer, for example, is normally $3,500 to $4,000 dollars (it just happens to be on sale right now). The bottom of the line printer is normally 2 grand! I’m sure I’m not alone when I say, “I can’t afford that!”

I translated (with some tweaks) The Black Hack RPG. The Black Hack is a FANTASTIC game system created by David Black. The game has been streamlined to a 6″X9″ booklet with about 20 pages, give or take. A brilliant system put out there under the Open Gaming License.

Anyway, the braille translation weighs in at about 80 pages. Now if you went to an office store and had an 80 page book printed and spiral bound it would cost $5 – $8 bucks tops. I reached out to a few companies and they wanted over $200 to make 4 copies of the book (spiral bound)! Now let me put this in perspective…while the printing equipment is expensive, the paper only costs 3 cents per page, and no ink is used in printing braille. Their material cost is about $1.75 if you include the spiral binding and thick front and back covers. It would only take about 30 minutes to print all four books and let’s ad in another 30 minutes to clamp on the spiral binding. Even if the person was making $15.00 an hour and we add in the $7 for the four books….the total cost is $22. AND…this is a “non-profit”, braille printing company…other places had comparable prices.

What is so exciting about the printer, is that I will be able to print a duplex page for about 3 cents. This means that I will be able to afford printing a lot of things for free, or at cost depending on what’s being printed. The Black Hack braille book, for example, I wouldn’t charge anything but the few stamps it takes to mail it.

ALSO, and this is freaking awesome, the printer will print 8 levels of tactile graphics and comes with a full suite a translation and graphic design software. This means that I can translate D&D 5e character sheets, Pathfinder Character sheets…any character sheet in to braille with tactile squares where the values are placed (Ability scores, hit points, etc.). The plan is to glue felt into the squares and then print out number chips with Velcro on the back so visually impaired players can fully and independently manage their character sheet.

I can also printout dice labels and transform regular polyhedral dice into braille dice. I’m currently doing that but I have to, dot by dot, use a slate and style to create the numbers, then modge-podge them to each side of the die. With printed stickers, I could cut the out, slap them on then spray a poly protective coating. This would cut my time drastically and afford me the ability to make a bunch more sets which I give away for free!

With the graphics capabilities of the printer, we can even add in tactile dungeon maps for the GM. How freaking cool would it be for a visually impaired GM to be able to actually feel AND read a map of a dungeon?!

Here’s a really cool video that shows how tactile graphics can be created/

What excites me more than anything though is the thought of being able to have the equipment to put a game book in the hands of a blind player. Giving them the same excitement of flipping through spell lists in that frantic time before your initiative comes up…just like a sighted player. Enabling gaming independence so a visually impaired player can experience the full range of activities a sighted player does.

LOL…I didn’t realize just how excited I am about the printer until I typed all of that out. I’m very passionate about helping people and this printer will allow me to do wonderful things for the visually impaired community.

…(more inside!)



What motivated you to translate into Braille?
I was talking with my visually impaired gaming buddy one day. He has several World of Darkness Books, Changeling, etc. So I asked him one day what equipment he had at home, and basically he has a computer (without a braille reader because it’s expensive) and an iPhone. (Here’s a link to a braille reader so you can see what they do…they are nifty devices but are SUPER expensive).

I brought up the books and asked how he “read” them…the answer broke my heart. He’s never “seen” nor “read” a page of those books…he has an awesome gaming group that reads things to him from the book. I do want to say however, that this guy is a masterful GM and remembers EVERYTHING he hears and can point you to pages in the book from memory….he blows my mind :).

Sorry…back to what I was saying, I asked him if he talked to other visually impaired people that were interested in tabletop roleplaying. He told me that he has had several people ask about how to get into it but had to explain to them that they needed a sighted player to take them in because there were no gaming materials accessible to them. That’s when my furnace lit and I KNEW that something ha to be done. So I reached out to him and another friend and the project has taken off since then.

I remember vividly my first gaming session…the magic that it instilled in me. I still carry that spark with me today and I’m almost 50. I want the visually impaired to be able to experience that as well…but with a feeling of independence. I want them to enjoy flipping through page after page planning their next move, how to design their character, to argue rules LOL!

That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing…and why getting these translation out there is so important.


Have you tested this with any gamers who would find it useful, by putting the game in their hands?

LOL…this is the magic question. The answer is no because I don’t have a way yet to print the materials in braille. So for anyone reading this DONATE AND HELP SPREAD THE WORD! 🙂

What type of games are you interested in translating? Are you sticking to traditional games, or would you be branching out into indie games like Dungeon World or OSR products like Lamentations of the Flame Princess?


That’s a great question and the short answer is ALL of them! Gamers are a very diverse group, so I’m hoping that we will be able to translate all sorts of RPGs. I love OSR games but I also love really cool things the indie designers are coming out with like Dreamchasers. I would love to see Savage Worlds, Tunnels & Trolls, D&D 5e, Gamma World, and more translated. But for now, I’m working with some indie game designers to translate their games (4 projects are in the works) as proofs of concepts. Once we have that process really fine tuned, I would like to put together a translation team and start taking on bigger projects….books from the heavy hitters like WotC, Paizo, and Green Ronin. The thing we have to be careful of is making sure we work directly with the companies so that we adhere to Intellectual Property policies.

I’ve already translated The Black Hack by David Black, and I’m working on another Black Hack game called Kaigaku by Jacob Ross…this is a Samurai fantasy game!

How do you want to get the translations to people – is the hope to put them in game stores, or sell them online?

To start, we are raising funds for a braille embossing printer that will print not only duplex pages, but also tactile graphics. For games that are free, I’ll print them for free or at cost and only charge shipping. If a game designer wants to make a braille version of their game available, I’ll print it for them at cost and they can sell it to the customer. My ultimate dream is to raise enough awareness that places like DriveThru RPG have contracts set up with braille translators and printing houses so that braille books will be one of the options when purchasing from their site. Same goes for the industry heavy hitters!

If any game designers are reading this please reach out to me! Let’s blow open the doors of tabletop roleplaying games for the visually impaired!

Here’s our current GoFundMe!

What do you think you would do for games that have supplementary materials like cards or dice or playmats – is that a someday goal?

Well starting out I’m focusing on books and dice….basically using those as projects to raise awareness for game designers out there to see the need for accessible materials. But my end game is to raise awareness to the level where designing for the visually impaired becomes a normal part of the game design process, to include but not limited to dice, cards, playmates, character sheets, dice boxes. deck boxes, etc. What I want the gaming industry to realize is that there are a lot of gamers and potential gamers in the visually impaired community…and they need to be an equal consideration when games are designed. I was floored that in this day and age, there is almost a complete void of gaming materials for the visually impaired. How in the world did we overlook an entire demographic who would TOTALLY embrace tabletop gaming, if simply provided the materials to do so.

I turn 50 in less than a year, and I have been gaming since I was twelve…it’s a huge part of what shaped me into who I am today. I am dedicated to planting the seed that will grow into a thriving piece of the gaming industry. Come hell or high water, I’m going to make the gaming community aware of this need and will give every ounce of energy I have to seeing that need met.

Get ready gaming world, the doors of tabletop gaming are going to be blown wide open for the visually impaired…just wait!

—

Thanks so much to Jack for answering my questions and for his awesome initiative! According to the GoFundMe, the printer itself has been ordered, but Jack is aiming to get a 3D printer to print out dice as well, so go check it out! Keep up with what’s going on with DOTS on their Facebook group, too!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Off Target


An experience


Needed
8 people
Random props, 10 per player (smaller is good)
Prewritten lists of items.
Playlist of muzak, played in the background with random control of the volume. Include at least one song played twice in a row (“Call Me Maybe” is great for this).


Roles
Four players are the cognizant, and control the mind.
Four players are the present, and control the body.


Setting
Players are people shopping at a Target [or equivalent shopping venue] for five things on their list. Each character will experience the dissociation of their mind from their body. When the parts of the character separate, the players will risk failure.


Play
There are ten things in the store as options to buy, and only five of them are on the characters’ lists. Characters must buy exactly those five items. When they enter the store, cognizant players flip a coin. On a heads, the character buys the first item on their list. On a tails, they miss it. After flipping, the cognizant steps one step back, away from the present. They must verbally communicate to the present no matter how far away they are, or how many people are shouting.


As they travel through the store, the players should converse about their day (in character or out). As each character finds an item, the cognizant will flip the coin to see if they buy it and take a step back. The present will pick up the item if appropriate. If the coin is ever dropped, the present will drop an item at random.


Play continues for no more than 15 flips. At the end, the cognizant tears up the list entirely and throws it away. The cognizant and the present come together and look at the items, to see if they matched their list to their remembrance.


Even if they did, they have no means to confirm.


– end –
It’s recommended to use the Script Change tools to ensure all players enjoy the game. It’s highly recommended to have a Wrap Meeting to go over the events of the game and decompress.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Of Three Minds (x-posted Imaginary Funerals)

This post has been crossposted from the Imaginary Funerals blog that has since been discontinued. Posts are hosted on the Imaginary Funerals G+ page.


OF THREE MINDS (link to main host)

by +Brie Sheldon (originally posted July 7, 2014)

I sit at the table and roll the dice and don’t care how they land.

I sit at the table and play out stories and cry for real.

I sit at the table and my friends are my friends, are not my friends, are alien.

I sit at the table and break into bitty pieces when my character dies.

Playing games when you have bipolar disorder is really an experiment in experience. Sometimes I feel normal, and play normally. What is normal? I don’t know, it’s how I feel when I’m on the level. But, I respond to things appropriately, my emotions make sense, and I’m in something resembling a good mood. That means my characters act rationally and I have fun.

But then sometimes I’m manic, and I respond to everything erratically. I can’t focus, and I talk too much. Sometimes I’m over-excited so I am hyper positive. Other times I’m irritable and just want to kill things in game, so my calm characters become murderous and my good characters often find their way to evil, or something like it. I’m antagonistic to other players. My emotions are unusual and nonsensical. I laugh or cry at inappropriate times. I am confusing.

When I am depressed, it is the worst. There are two sides to depression for me: sadness and apathy. Sadness, I can deal with. I play tragic characters, in tragic situations, and eke out little bits of bittersweet happiness. I cry when my characters cry. I cling to my friends and companions in desperation – don’t let me go to where the sadness is. I struggle for happiness. But apathy… apathy is the hardest. Of all of the things I have experienced – fear, paranoia, mania, anger, elation – apathy takes away more than any of them. To take something that brings me joy and rip it away from me and leave me absently writing out character details and hoping that something will happen that is extreme, so maybe I finally feel something, it is painful. But it only lasts so long, and when it wears off, it is truly extreme. It either gives way to sadness that wearies me or mania that tears me apart.

And so I feel like I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The bomb to go off. Waiting for my mind to decide that this character is going to risk everything and get themselves killed because I’m having a bad day. Waiting for my mind to decide to blow up the plot, or leave the party, or burn down the fictional house. For me, this shows up in game as small aggressions – my characters might ruin other players’ plans, or I might unknowingly metagame, or I break the rules. I get a little twisted around on the split between fiction and reality. But in a game, I can leave the party, or burn down the house – and the divisions between game and life don’t really seem to matter anymore. The most important part is that my reality isn’t everyone else’s reality, and it’s entirely possible that my breaking will break the game.

It doesn’t matter which part of the cycle I’m in, I just know that the next step is unpredictable, and that it puts my games and my friendships at risk. I just have to wait and see.

I am a time bomb.



This post is free, but Thoughty is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Gaming with Fibromyalgia (x-posted Imaginary Funerals)

This post has been crossposted from the Imaginary Funerals blog that has since been discontinued. Posts are hosted on the Imaginary Funerals G+ page. 


GAMING WITH FIBROMYALGIA (link to main host)

by +Brie Sheldon (originally posted January 24, 2014)

A little background:

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia when I was 12. It was a lousy diagnosis to get at such a young age, but the symptoms were pretty clear and they’ve only gotten worse since then. If you want to know more about fibromyalgia, a quick internet search should answer any questions you have.

I started tabletop gaming around age 15 or 16 (I’d done text RPGs for years by that point). At that point, my fibro wasn’t too extreme, but I still dealt with some of the problems – leg cramps, soreness, and fibro fog. These things have increased in severity and frequency since then.

I know a lot of people have it way worse than me, but I wanted to share my experience. Maybe it will help other people, and maybe it will help con organizers, GMs, and other players understand the difficulties people like me face. So, what’s so hard about gaming with fibromyalgia?

Managing climate control. Holy crap is this hard! I don’t know if gamers just run hot or what, but virtually every gaming space I’ve ever been in is too cold for me. A lot of people game in basements, which (even when finished) are often cold and sometimes damp, and it leaves me aching and sore and generally pretty miserable. This year at cons I ran into the problem of it simply being way too cold in some of the rooms, so by the end of sessions I was cramped up and ready to go lie down. But sometimes, you can’t lie down – you have to keep going, especially when you feel the social pressure to be involved or just really want to be involved.

Standing or sitting for long periods. This is something I’ve complained about before, but, super long lines for badges? Standing in food lines? Waiting outside con rooms? Yeah, standing for like 20 minutes is rough. My legs cramp up, my back sometimes seizes, and there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. Accommodating disabled people is not something cons are great at. It’s troublesome, as well, when you don’t have a visible disability, like me, or when (like me) you don’t have special tags designating you disabled-enough-for-people-to-care. Likewise, sitting at a table (especially in the aforementioned cold rooms) can mean that standing up is a struggle, and it is simply embarrassing to be a 20-something woman who can’t stand up from the table without wobbling. People stare.

Fibro fog. This is probably one of the toughest things. The pain and stiffness I deal with every day in every type of situation, so it becomes a quiet echo of my life, “pain, pain, pain” beneath my breath every moment. You kind of get used to it. The fog, though, isn’t constant, and is worse during times of anxiety and stress. Basically it makes it hard to focus and makes me seem dumber because I can be slow to respond or get confused. For the longest time I didn’t understand what it was, but now I’m pretty familiar with the feeling. I try to hide it because it’s legit one of the things about my illness that makes me feel the most stupid and useless. Ever try adding together dice or adjusting target numbers when your brain feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton? It’s like that all the time. It’s kind of like when you have a sinus headache or like a post-narcotic headache. (This is also a problem when navigating conventions because I get lost and lose track of time very easily when the fog sets in.)

Feeling singled out. I rarely game with other people with disabilities, just because of the way my circles have worked. This means that I’m often the only one at the table who needs accommodations. I’m the only one who needs to be given a break or time to stretch during long gaming sessions. I’m the only one who needs help doing basic addition when my fog is too foggy. It’s just me sitting there having trouble. So far my groups have been pretty great about it, but that doesn’t make it easier for me to feel good about it. An example: asking people to please grab me a drink because that extra walking today just is a bad idea. Most of my group would happily do so, but that doesn’t make me less embarrassed or make me feel less like they should hate me for taking advantage of their kindness.

Gaming with fibromyalgia isn’t easy. It’s got a lot of pitfalls and there aren’t really bonuses for being disabled.

This post is free, but this blog is supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Women with Initiative: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry

Hi all! Today’s Women with Initiative feature is with Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, a well-known writer, designer, editor, and creator, as well as a accessibility coordinator and consultant for conventions. She is a huge advocate for disability accommodation, representation, and accessibility in gaming and fiction arenas, and has started doing educational programs like the Writing the Other Master Class, Writing Deaf and Blind Characters coming up September 10th (spots are still open!). 
Elsa blogs regularly on Feminist Sonar, talking about everything from feminism on screen to her personal experiences and how they impact her and the world around her. She’s worked on a number of fiction and RPG products including writing Elizabeth Bathory for Dracula Dossier, and her current game DEAD SCARE, a tabletop RPG of zombies and 1950s housewives that Kickstarted last year. I asked Elsa a few questions about her work on DEAD SCARE.

What were the most important things you found you had to focus on while designing DEAD SCARE in terms of inclusivity, accessibility, and staying true to the fictional goals you had for the game?

I wanted to write a game about zombies that wasn’t actually about the zombies. At its core, DEAD SCARE is about communities, and how they react under pressure. In order to do that, I needed to pay attention to how women differentiate themselves from each other, while still making sure that each and every single playbook could be played by a woman of any race, class, ability or age. It was important to me that racism not play a part in the way in which the game read to players.

DEAD SCARE can include some very scary and intense situations. How do you design the game to help GMs and players navigate you, and do you have an example of an experience at the table where you thought your efforts in that regard showed fruitful results?

DEAD SCARE has a section on what I call the tone dial. Essentially, you can play DEAD SCARE any number of ways, from it being a LEAVE IT TO BEAVER episode where zombies just happen to show up and ruin the church bazaar, to a game where everyone engages with the social and political struggles of the 1950s. It’s a game where you opt in to the difficulties, not a game where you force players to engage with them. I like to run Dead Scare as a story about community, but some players want it to be a dungeon crawl through suburbia.

What lessons have you brought from your work on Dead Scare as you move forward with more RPG products, and what projects are on the horizon for you?

DEAD SCARE taught me that I shouldn’t be afraid of mechanics, which is something that I have brought forward to my work on the FATE ACCESSIBILITY TOOLKIT. In the next few months, though, I am focusing on teaching writers and how to write disabled characters. I’ll be teaching a course with Writing the Other on writing D/deaf and Blind Characters. I’m currently working on a book which I’ll be querying to agents hopefully this fall, and many short stories. I’m working to diversify what I write, moving to do more fiction, because I love it.

Thank you so much to Elsa for allowing me to interview her for this month’s feature! Make sure to follow her blog posts at Feminist Sonar and her words on Twitter @snarkbat, and you might still be able to grab a spot in her Writing the Other Master Class on Writing Deaf and Blind Characters by registering here! 

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

I AM Mental

A slight diversion from our normal content, here. It’s semi-political, if my mental health is political. 

Content/Trigger Notice: mental health, depression, bipolar, and similar illnesses are all discussed/specific mentions of binge drinking, suicide, and self-destructive behavior. 

I was going to write about Are You Mental? and its Kickstarter when I got home today. I don’t need to, because there’s this excellent post by Kate Bullock, who is wonderful. I’m going to say shit anyway.

I know I do problematic things in relation to mental health and representation, I totally do, but I’m also extremely aware of how my literal crazy is heavily misrepresented by media and fiction crazy. See, here’s the thing. I live my crazy in public. I don’t think there has ever been a day when someone has asked me about my mental health and I’ve denied them an answer. I joke about it, occasionally, but not often. Often, I’m too busy with it. 

For reference, I have bipolar disorder, anxiety (generalized and social), mild obsessive/compulsive behaviors, issues with seasonal depression, a history of emotional abuse, and have many panic attacks.

Somewhere around 2013ish, I’m not sure when, I started a spiral into an incredibly tragic and damaging mixed/manic episode in which I destroyed friendships, professional relationships, had abusive relationships and may have been abusive myself, wasted more money than is reasonable, experienced massive physical health issues in part because of the irresponsible and self-destructive behavior, and I did a lot of wrong things, including some things that other people would never admit to.

If you ask me? I will try to tell you honestly what happened. There are some times I don’t really know. The funny thing about being so crazy is that you don’t always remember the worst things. Or the best things. Like, I remember drinking an entire bottle of vodka after my then-partner screamed and shook the dinner table for half the meal and tried to hit me. That was not my crazy, nope, but there it was, nestled in the situation my crazy put me in. I don’t remember seeing some of my best friends at conventions where I was so manic, so close to breaking, that I didn’t really sleep for almost 72 hours, and barely ate, and talked so fast I don’t even remember how I managed to talk. I crave those moments. Those moments, at a gaming con, as a gamer, where I was crazy.

I am well medicated, doing therapy, and thankfully with access to good healthcare to keep those things. (No worries, potential employers!) Not everyone has that. Even having it doesn’t mean you’re safe. Everyone who watches me on social media sees these ups and downs of my moods, my bleak moments of depression, my hypomania. Lithium is great, but it does not cure me.

If you sit down and play a game, and you play a mad character, a crazy character, oh, it’s so exciting, isn’t it? To be crazy? To be INSANE? You can do whatever you want! No matter what you do, it’s okay, you’re crazy! Hahaha OMG NOT REALLY.

My freelance career is mostly in tatters. I couldn’t do the work. I couldn’t’ focus. I got nothing done. I have some work – thanks to some very, very generous people – but I’m not a professional. I burned that flag to ashes and dust. I was not a nice person. I wasn’t respectful. Hell, I honestly feel like I lost tons of social relationships alone on this, in part because everyone thought I made someone cheat on their wife,* because that’s totally something I want on my resume.

I am very honest about my mental illnesses so that people can see, in reality, what crazy is. It is not laughing enthusiastically because things are so, so funny, it’s laughing because you actually can’t stop and you don’t know what’s wrong and if you stop you might die. It’s not feeling morose and sad, sitting at a windowsill dripping with raindrops, it’s sitting on your kitchen floor crying because you almost killed yourself, again, you might do it again, you might die. It’s not being nervous around new people you’ve never met before, it’s being afraid to go to your best friend’s house and if they see how much of a goddamn mess you are, you might die. Some of these are figurative. Some of them are extremely not.

Are You Mental? may be super fun and exciting and make a lot of people very happy. All I can say is that I am, actually, mental, and games like that make me feel like I should fucking die.

——————————–

Small addendum: 1) I am not asking for this to be paid via Patreon. That feels weird. 2) I did do consulting on the essays for mental health representation in the Lovecraftesque game by Becky Annison and Joshua Fox, and I’m available to do that for other games. Just comment and tag me and we’ll go from there.

*I literally have no desire to deal with people’s defenses of this or justifications. Just leave it alone, it’s better off dead.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

How Interactive is Your Game?

As a roleplayer, I have played in a number of different situations. Most people have played home games – at your place, or the home of a friend, in a closed environment. Some people have played at local events, or even large cons like GenCon. With larping, people play in all types of environments – small house events, large outdoor weekend events, convention hall rooms, and so on. Our environments often shape our play – how loud we talk, whether we move around, and our props or costumes.

Today I’m thinking very deeply about interactivity. This is not just “does your game involve you and do you do a thing,” but instead “how much does the player emotionally and physically interact with a game?” I wasn’t able to find a lot about interactivity in relation to tabletop and live-action roleplaying games. If I’m missing something, obviously feel free to share them in comments, but please avoid diluting my points.

I’m proposing some concepts on how to evaluate interactivity in tabletop and larp, and these are key for accessibility and player choice. 

Ask these questions:

  • Will players sit at the table, stand, or move around, or a combination of those?
  • Will players speak in character, use distancing (third-person), or alternate as comfortable?
  • Will players “perform” their character – changing from sitting at the table to standing, entering into other players’ personal space, raising their voice, moving hands more than just standard “talky” movement?
  • Will players be required to do these things, encouraged to do them, or have the option to do them?
  • Is there an opt out option for any of these things, or is the only option not to play?(1) 
  • Will players be in separate spaces, or in one space?
  • Will players need to move from space to space?
  • Will players have assistance moving from space to space if needed?
  • Will players have character sheets, index cards, name tags, props, or other materials to represent characters, powers, abilities, or resources?
  • Will these materials be available in alternate formats, or is there a standard?
  • Is it possible for players to have access to materials in advance?

There are probably more questions to be asked! This is a really complex subject, and it’s come to me from a very specific place: my own fears. Most people who know me are aware that I operate with pretty clear awareness of my fears because without that I can’t make it past them. This comes through in games! I ask for use of X-cards or Script Change or pre-game discussion on boundaries because I can decide then what I’m really comfortable with, and with who. However, the one thing that none of these cover by default or even in some extrapolation is interactivity. 

We rarely discuss at the table “Hey, are we going to talk in-character for this session?” or “Can I stand up if my character wants me to?” or “Can I sit while others are standing in this session?” or “Can I just write these character stats on an index card for while we move around?” However, these questions are incredibly important! Not just from an accommodations point of view for mental or physical disabilities, but also from the perspective of safety and comfort. I’ll give a brief example.

I was playing a local home game with some people I was mostly familiar with. It was an emotional game, for sure, and the situations were pretty intense at times, but after a few sessions, we had still only used descriptions of raised voices or physical action, and that had been okay. However, the GM at this point brought forth a very (for me) scary and intense situation. In playing the NPC character, they stood up, walked over to me, and screamed at me. Repeatedly. As someone with some history involving abuse and raised voices, the combination of the yelling and interference with my personal space completely terrified me. At that point my mental options were to 1) react violently (which I didn’t), or 2) freeze up. I haven’t spoken to the person about it,(2) but that’s partially because I still feel anxious around them.

I can’t be the only person who has experienced this. If I had known that these kind of actions would have occurred in game, I might not have ever played. Did I have good times? Yes. Was it worth that panicked experience? No.

Upon hearing recently that some people at Games on Demand were playing with more intense interactivity (characters were arguing, so players raised their voices and were physically acting), it brought this idea to the forefront. I’m really frustrated that I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about this, actually, because yes, we’re all playing games and having fun. But, not everyone has fun in the same way, and not setting these expectations can ruin someone’s time.

This is normally when people come in with the “if they don’t like it, they don’t have to play!” or “we aren’t writing/running games for people who won’t do improv/aren’t willing to be physical/can’t handle intense situations!” and you know what? Fuck you. I’m actually really tired of it. Games are not just for one specific class and type of people. You can design games and run games in any way you want to, but if you aren’t willing to tell people up front what to expect, you are doing it wrong.

There is no reason I should be unable to play games because I am afraid someone will shout at me at the table. There is no reason I should be unable to play games because I can’t stand for four hours. I might not be able to play all games, but I should be able to play some games, and if someone tells me the situation and expectations, I can determine whether I can meet those expectations of that game. 

If you are designing games and/or running/facilitating games, please take these things into consideration. It may take time! It may even take effort! But if we want people to enjoy our games, why wouldn’t we take time and effort? People have spent decades designing entire adventures with the minutiae of what potions are available in a chest in the sixteenth room of a 25 room dungeon, so I think we could take a half hour to ask ourselves how interactive our games will be, regardless of their type, to ensure that everyone involved has a good time and can contribute to the game comfortably.

Thank you for reading!

(1) The second is not condemnation, it’s just important to note.
(2) If you see yourself here, this is not the time to talk about it. If I ever want to talk to you about it, I’ll come to you.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

We Need to Talk About Disabilities and Gaming

Talking with John (husband) about disability literacy for the able, how literacy is a weird term, & how to handle being unable to write at a game table.

Virtually every RPG requires the ability to read and write. This is an issue for bringing games to illiterate individuals (who exist!), which is another huge thing that I don’t even know how to address. However, something I can address is my own situation.

I have hand tremors that have grown relatively significant and some minor muscle spasms. I can’t handwrite really at all anymore. I risk tearing paper or very far stray lines, and it’s also really stressful to try to write because it’s embarrassing and difficult (and sometimes painful because of the muscle strain to avoid shaking). The issue here is that almost every single game involves writing at least something on a character sheet and I have no real objection to that. I like customizing characters. However, these days I need a second set of hands to do those things.

When I go to a table and have to ask someone to fill out my sheet, it’s awkward and embarrassing. Most of the time it is eased because I’ll go to tables with friends (this is part of why I seek out friendly, familiar tables). However, I sometimes want to game with new people! I can’t always rely on people I know to help me write down my stats and stuff, and I want to emphasize that having friends at a table will always make this easier, but it is not enough.

There is a huge lack of literacy in regards to disability in the world in general, but I’m surprised at how significant it can be in the gaming world. I realize that it’s hard to achieve this, as schools don’t really address it, workplaces do their best to avoid it, and honestly, disabled individuals can easily be alienated socially too. But it’s really not okay.

If I ask for help at a strange table, I get stared at, awkward mumbles, and eventually someone will help but it’s very hard to feel comfortable at that point. I’ve outed myself. I have to give an explanation. It takes time away from the game, I delay the other players, and I know it’s an inconvenience, and it also puts me in a weird place socially. Now I’m kind of the invalid, I’m a weight on other players. They treat me differently, and it makes me feel really sad.

The issue, in reality, is not that I can’t get help. Most people will (even if begrudgingly) help me. Some are even happy to do it. At friendly tables, it’s awesome because my friends are so supportive. At a stranger’s table, it’s harder. People don’t know enough about disabled people to know how to react when a disabled person needs help. They don’t know that it’s just a simple need, so sometimes they treat me like a child. They don’t know how extensive it is, so sometimes they get annoyed.

I’m writing this massive blargh of text to say this: We need to talk about disabilities and gaming. There are some great people talking about it already (Elsa S. Henry and Shoshana Kessock to name a couple, and I think Matt Weber as well, and I know there are more of you out there!!), which is awesome, but more than a few people need to be talking. We need to ask for accommodation at conventions and events. We need to talk to players and GMs about how to help disabled players at their tables. We need to be willing to help, and to not judge people for needing help.

I’m asking now, as a gamer and designer and player and everything else, for your help in teaching others how to be an ally for disabled gamers, in working with businesses and organizations in gaming to make things approachable for disabled gamers, and in making spaces more accessible.

Here’s the thing. I’m here to support you in this effort, but in part because I _have_ disabilities, I need more legwork from those who have the energy. Speak to disabled gamers to get their feedback, do research online, and be aware of situations that might put disabled gamers at a disadvantage or keep them from participating. This week, I spoke to John Ward at GAMA about Origins, and we discussed some work they’re doing to improve registration next year to make it more accessible. All it took was a polite and well-worded email and a willingness to discuss options, and I think that next year’s registration might be a lot easier for me and players like me. It’s worth the effort.


I hope you’ll join me in this. I know we have a lot of causes and inclusivity movements to keep up with, but if you can take just a little time – even if it just means helping a player out at a con table you share and treating them like a person when you do it – it can really make a difference.


Thank you to my friends who have supported me while I’ve dealt with my illnesses. You’re the best!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.