Would you allow a player race that is naturally blind but has enhanced senses (blindsight in the D&D context) to compensate for it? Is the role-playing potential worth the GM headaches and balance issues?
Yes, I would allow it.
In my T&T world I have an order of blind monk librarians. They use various spells to read the books. Some of the books are written in invisible ink or have magically masked pages so they appear blank to the normally sighted. Eyeless monks reading blank books creeps the players out.
I did once have a deep underground dwelling race that used sonar clicks like bats do instead of vision.
A heat sensing organ like pit vipers could also work.
It's the little things that make it complicated, like no color, not being able to read or even detect printed text, but they can also make it fun.
Not to mention the badass trope of the blind sword fighter (Zatoichi, for example). Sure, I'd allow it. Just like a flying PC: as long as it's established at the beginning of a campaign I can account for it.
Yeah sure. If it fits the setting and seems cool.* Why not?
Star Wars already has the Miralaku. Technically they were part of our setting, though I don't think we ever encountered one. And the Defel are kind of blind in strong daylight and we did encounter them.
* A couple of things to note though, I see the requirements of "fit" and "cool" as serious requirements. As the GM I am the arbiter of what fits the setting. And by "seems cool" I mean seems cool to me, not just to one of several players. If a player wants me to allow a new race it really needs to fit the setting and someone needs to make a case for how including that species/PC will make the game better for that player without making the game worse for the other players or too much hassle for the GM.
Nope. Blindness in GURPS is a whopping -50 pt Disadvantage, and it's my considered opinion that Mr. Jackson knew what he was doing when he made -50 pt disads as much of a suckfest as he did: they really ARE suckfests.
So much so that each and every time I've been stupid enough to allow one, it's dominated the character's roleplay to the point where it dominates play. Terminally Ill and all the plotlines are about you. Blind and everyone has to make special accommodations for you, all the time. A -50 pt Enemy? = the entire United States government is coming after you, relentlessly, and the order is to shoot on sight, to kill.
Not ready for that, don't want it.
Being handicapped and having had a blind playtester. These sorts of things can be very interesting to play. Or very hard. Your other senses change to adapt and to a mundane that can be hard to explain or role-play without a good explanation of what it is like.
If a sightless race has some other sensory means that allows them to navigate. Then they are effectively not sightless in the normal sense.
Being truly blind and out in the wilderness or combat would be hell. You can track by sound. But in a melee that might be hard. Its an alien concept to me as I lack any reference to sound having direction. Compensation hearing for the lack of sight might be the key there. But walking in the wilderness you either need sighted people with you or some safe way to gradually map the area.
Quote from: Omega;854899Being truly blind and out in the wilderness or combat would be hell. You can track by sound. But in a melee that might be hard. Its an alien concept to me as I lack any reference to sound having direction.
I have recently had direct experience with this as I am currently experiencing sudden and severe ideopathic hearing loss in one ear. I could only hear out of my left ear, so all sounds seemed to originate to my left. One day I was on my deck listening to a loud crow. I spent several minutes turning my entire body around trying to locate where the sound was coming from. When I finally did get a direction (which took at least 2-3 minutes of concentrated effort) it turned out that the crow was 180-degrees away from where I first thought the sound was coming from and at least 30 degrees from where my first series of corrections placed it. Weird and rather unpleasant though it did demonstrate why stereo hearing is a decided survival advantage.
Also as some folks know, but many do not, most people who are called blind aren't completely sightless. More common is to have some ability to see. My blind friend* could, if she concentrated, see colors and some shapes. Though she said the process of concentration was uncomfortable. She could, for example, tell what color shirt you were wearing (to some extent) and could (if pointed in the right direction) see whether a stop light was green or red. She wasn't a very good dart player, but we did play a few rounds in the bar.
* She was in a couple of our Runequest player groups, our original Call of Cthulhu play group, and she was part of the short OD&D campaign that I ran around 1989-1990.
Quote from: DavetheLost;854745I did once have a deep underground dwelling race that used sonar clicks like bats do instead of vision.
I read 'sonar dicks'
Quote from: Bren;854910I have recently had direct experience with this as I am currently experiencing sudden and severe ideopathic hearing loss in one ear. I could only hear out of my left ear, so all sounds seemed to originate to my left. One day I was on my deck listening to a loud crow. I spent several minutes turning my entire body around trying to locate where the sound was coming from. When I finally did get a direction (which took at least 2-3 minutes of concentrated effort) it turned out that the crow was 180-degrees away from where I first thought the sound was coming from and at least 30 degrees from where my first series of corrections placed it. Weird and rather unpleasant though it did demonstrate why stereo hearing is a decided survival advantage.
You can do that because you've had stereo hearing and so have the concept of left and right. To me sound comes from everywhere and nowhere. I have never had the full compliment and started out completely impaired.
As for why you misguessed where the bird was. You were tricked by the rebounds off walls. A few weeks ago I was sitting typing something and all of a sudden there is this "
CHIRP!!!!" of something right there near me. Bout jumped out of my skin. The bird was in a tree across the street across the house. We had been at some perfect rebound point for the chirp to navigate that far crystal clear. gah! Rebound of sound in a dungeon has been an aspect I have used before. Sometimes eerie sounds from no-where. Little snatches of conversation or noise that bounced all that way.
Quote from: Omega;854960You can do that because you've had stereo hearing and so have the concept of left and right. To me sound comes from everywhere and nowhere. I have never had the full compliment and started out completely impaired.
Stereo is needed. Otherwise it is time consuming process of turning around in circles a lot. And even then there is not the same level of surety as to where the sound is. Until the crow finally flew out of the tree I really was not sure where it was.
QuoteAs for why you misguessed where the bird was. You were tricked by the rebounds off walls.
Not in this case. The bird was just one example of the change. Suddenly having sounds incorrectly placed was very weird.
Spaces where the sound is intentionally focused, on the other hand, are cool.
Well, yeah, but I'd give them "Radar Sense" like Daredevil and make it carefully unspecified so you'd have a blind race that can see.
Because I'm really fucking lazy.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;854981Well, yeah, but I'd give them "Radar Sense" like Daredevil and make it carefully unspecified so you'd have a blind race that can see.
Because I'm really fucking lazy.
Not lazy really. A sightless race must have other sensory apparatus about as good as sight to be able to live in the absolutely hostile environment that is a D&D or other fantasy setting. Especially if a player race.
Simmilar to having a race without legs, or limbs even. To be a viable PC race they have to have some means of getting around or manipulating things on par with a every one else on some level. Telekinesis, robots, waldos, some sort of creature they ride or are the head for, etc.
As long as the player can role-play being blind and find it interesting for his character, I'm all for it.
I once had an idea to base a D&D monk character based off of this tiny little blind girl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukr5c07gaUI).
I think everybody who saw that show had the same thought...!
It's certainly close to D&D's very lenient blindsight rules.
I really like the concept but I don't see myself able to reliantly describe the einvironement whitout using sight Imput.
Edit: I missed Old Geezer's post. It's probably exactly the same thing I would do.
Quote from: Omega;854988Not lazy really. A sightless race must have other sensory apparatus about as good as sight to be able to live in the absolutely hostile environment that is a D&D or other fantasy setting. Especially if a player race.
Simmilar to having a race without legs, or limbs even. To be a viable PC race they have to have some means of getting around or manipulating things on par with a every one else on some level. Telekinesis, robots, waldos, some sort of creature they ride or are the head for, etc.
Both of these aren't really playing a handicap, so much as a vulnerability. Alternate sight usually has some limitation, like range or not being able to read flat text on pages. Robot beerers or Professor Xavier-style wheelchairs are able to be disabled/suborned, and might identify you as a futuretech user to those who see you. These are all reasonable and relatively easy to play. My last sci fi campaign I played in (hero systems), we had a race called the Ihgrin, which were hard, silicon crystal creatures. They were blind, but had excellent sonar. The player could see around corners, through people, etc., but couldn't read minotor screen.
Playing actual handicapping blindness should be doable. After all, if I can play and elf or a ratling, why couldn't I roleplay something that real people go through in my real life? That said, I'm not sure that I could do the experience justice. Sighted people are apparently bad at imagining what real blindness is like. I remember the show Tru Calling (Or maybe Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku either way), where they brought on a real blindness effort to help when the character went blind for an episode. They ended up not using any of their advice, because when they used it, Dushku didn't act "blind enough" for the test audiences).
Quote from: Willie the Duck;855204Both of these aren't really playing a handicap, so much as a vulnerability.
Exactly. Handicapped yet not really. To be effective in a combat oriented RPG or one where travel into the unknown is common then a blind character for example must have some means of sensing and navigating the environ or they are very dead very fast.
A personal example. There are some games that rely on stereo hearing to tell where attacks are going to come from. I am utterly incapable of playing these. The really funny part? One was designed for blind players.
Think I've mentioned it before but in high-school I had a one-on-one (i.e. just me and the GM) Rifts game where I played a Blind Warrior Woman character. They have radar senses and whatnot but it was kind of interesting in that without any sighted PCs, the GM ended up described everything in terms of what the character could sense.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;854729Would you allow a player race that is naturally blind but has enhanced senses (blindsight in the D&D context) to compensate for it? Is the role-playing potential worth the GM headaches and balance issues?
Objectively, sure why not? I've allowed blind pcs before. Subjectively I might be a little squicked as blindness is a big phobia for me but I've gotten over it before. It might be interesting coming up with the society and cultures for a race that has never seen and might not even have any concept for what sight is or at least things like color, brightness, etc.
A very long time ago I read a science fiction story in which most people could not hear. The people in town knew what hearing was but had a religion which demanded that anyone who could hear have their ears put out because it was somehow sinful; other people viewed being able to hear as some form of clairvoyance--people with that ability knew when someone was coming before they could be seen.
I would allow the blind race with an alternate sense that compensates; it comes down to various odd limitations that might not apply much (e.g., color blind, can't read most writing, can't see very far; all not that significant if you're mostly in dim dungeons with smallish rooms) or even provide an occasional advantage (e.g., sonar negating invisibility or insubstantial illusions). I'm not sure there's huge role-playing potential, though.
Races like this are a good fit fore fantasy and science fiction so I'd allow it. I'd also be pretty interested in any alternative senses they may have developed, particularly if they work very differently from sight.
Basing off of nature some possibilities other than sonar/radar or infra-red/UV are...
Electromagnetic: Sensing the ambient currents generated by living things and metals. Like some sharks have.
Thermal: sensing heat patterns. Some snakes have this.
Vibration: sensing locations of things via the vibrations of the ground. Some snakes have this, as do some worms and some tunneling predators.
Air displacement: somewhat like a passive sonar? Some insects have this as do some fish (water displacement in that case.)
I would generally allow almost anything as long as we can explain it. :)