Quote from: Omega;1145704Didnt we discuss this to death four threads ago? And bang arouns all manner of ideas on how to make it work? Or better alternatives?

Sorry, I missed out on the previous threads, and I just now did a web search to find the D&D wheelchair article. This isn't to you, Omega - but it would be helpful if people were to provide links if they're making reference to a specific other discussion or article.

Quote from: Omega;1145704At this point do I care if some fake handicapped person makes us look like morons, again? Yes. And No. Because this isnt the last we will see of stuff like this and it isnt new either. Sometimes its not a malicious inclusion. Someone just thinks its a cool idea or are handicapped themselves and think its worth including, or did research and think its worth including. Im one of those in the "handicapped and thought it was worth including" types and actually surprised a few RPG designers way back because they admitted the idea had never occurred to them. I put it in my book as a chargen option with the notation that its going to be a problem. As mentioned before I had one player who was disabled who wanted to play a disabled character who was for all intents and purposes not disabled through various magical workarounds. The character was created normally with no bonus points.

That's cool, Omega. Could you say more about what the chargen entry was in your book?

Quote from: The Exploited.;1145713A person who wishes to play a cripple should also be willing to make some sacrifices to the group and not be a dick either.

Exactly. As noted above, wanting to play a disadvantage without being at a disadvantage compared to the group (or refusing to admit that the PC may thereby become a dangerous disadvantage to the group) is the problem, because it's trying to eat one's cake and still have it.

QuoteThe guys I generally play with are all pretty cool. So, you'd not get any one person screwing the group dynamic up.

The key there is your group is all already operating in established trust and good faith with one another. Thus the absolute axiomatic error of making such ideas about a political ideal of "representation" -- because that destroys good faith by assuming it's absent to begin with.

QuoteIn a high-fantasy 5e setting you could get a floating magical chair thingey. But not in a low-magic or gritty setting.

From which we can get the general principle: Yes, a player who wants to make managing a solution to a PC's personal difficulty part of his game can sometimes be accommodated... but that solution has to work as a viable part of the chosen game, just like everything else, especially if it's meant to be a long-term element of it.

As with all other forms of entertainment, the game has to come before the message, whatever the message.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1145716Exactly. As noted above, wanting to play a disadvantage without being at a disadvantage compared to the group (or refusing to admit that the PC may thereby become a dangerous disadvantage to the group) is the problem, because it's trying to eat one's cake and still have it.

Playing a disadvantage is eating cake?

Why does it have to be a disadvantage? If you have a magic wheelchair in GURPS that compensates for your disability with no more limitations than working legs, it should be net 0 points. If it's a game like D&D, there aren't even any rules for something like that. It could just be an alternate way of getting around, neither advantage nor disadvantage. It won't fit in every world, but that can be said about anything.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1145707To look at the other side of it, I can imagine somebody with an impairment in real life starting to find it really painful playing characters who don't share it. Sometimes forgetting one's problems temporarily only makes having to remember them again all the worse.

To that point, we are all disabled with respect to the fantasy characters of our imagination. Personally, I find it terribly painful to recall that I can't throw fireballs, and have less than 18/00 strength. Still, I'm not sure I'd want to play a powerless wizard or feeble fighter in an RPG as a means of remedying that situation.

Quote from: Zalman;1145742I find it terribly painful to recall that I can't throw fireballs, and have less than 18/00 strength.

Likewise. But nobody else around me in real life has those capacities either. There is a difference.

EDIT: I will walk back the snarkiness of the above and concede that I do understand your point; like I said back on page 1, all RPGing is about wish fulfillment to some degree, so I see nothing wrong with anyone else's in itself. But there's also a difference between healthy and unhealthy extremes of wish fulfillment fantasy, and it can be easier (which is not to say it's guaranteed by any means) for it to become unhealthy if it's for a real, normal capacity that one is exceptional in lacking.

If the magical wheelchair is a full replacement for legs, and completely negates any disability, doesn't it then stop being representative of said disability, and therefore become just a redundant bit of appearance fluff? As if, for some weird reason of identity, the character wanders around casting a permanent illusion of being in a wheelchair?

If we're already going that far, why not just say that this magical chair, which incurs no disadvantages and has no effect on gameplay, just happens to look exactly like a common ambulant pair of legs.

I'd argue that if the purpose of the chair specifically is representation of paraplegics in D&D, the character *must* suffer some disadvantage associated with the chair. Otherwise, whatever it is they're after, it isn't representation.

All that said, I have zero issue if someone wants to play a paraplegic character in a fantasy setting. Since there's so many more fun and practical ways for them to get around than in a chair. Anything from spider constructs, to something like Thunderdome's Masterblaster or GoT's Hodor. Chewy carrying C3PO also comes to mind. Why not tied to the back of a trained animal or familiar? Why would you want a wheelchair, when you could be riding a wolf?!

On the one hand, it's a fantasy realm, we can make anything work. On the other hand, if we can make anything work, why in hell do you want a wheel chair?


EDIT - I don't know why or when I started imagining this theoretical disabled character as a gnome magic user, but I obviously did. It'd certainly be more practical.

Quote from: RollingBones;1145774If the magical wheelchair is a full replacement for legs, and completely negates any disability, doesn't it then stop being representative of said disability, and therefore become just a redundant bit of appearance fluff? As if, for some weird reason of identity, the character wanders around casting a permanent illusion of being in a wheelchair?

Because a wish-fulfillment fantasy isn't about becoming someone entirely new. It's about being you, but better. And being restricted to a wheelchair can be a pretty significant part of someone's identify. Taking away the wheelchair can make a character feel less like them. So they keep the wheelchair, but come up with fantastic ways that it's no longer a hindrance.

So this whole saga is just about using D&D to provide specific wish-fulfillments that support player identities?

I misinterpreted that the mission was representation. My mistake.

I'm not sure the average player seeks to create fantasy versions of themselves in RPGs. People regularly play characters of different genders, species, abilities, even flaws and disabilities; rarely do any but the newest players run fantasy versions of themselves, or seek to create a character that feels like them.

If that's the game that the GM is running, sure why not, but that sounds like a very specific type of game. D&D could certainly be used as a platform for that, and in that context I don't see what objection anyone could have. It kind of reminds me of the old D&D cartoon.

I don't want to read into anything beyond what's intended, but if the game is supposed to be therapeutic, I don't think the average gaming table is an appropriate environment.

Those of you who are being disingenuous about what the hell the big deal is, I'll play along and give benefit of the doubt:

It's like Paizo's bullshit declaration in PF2 about trannies... if you got a group that has a need for something like this, you'll realize it and you'll figure it out with your group.  The corporations and the creators shoving it in the game are doing it to literally show how compassionate they are and some of them are secretly or openly fetishizing.

It being an article just out in the wild on the internet?  No big deal but we're all expecting it to become an official supplement or rolled into their new diversity plus player's handbook.

There's some bad blood out there in a lot of you go at each other as much out of habit as anything else, and I'm grateful we have a forum where this occurs I don't want it shut down.

This horse has been beat to death and if you hadn't looked at Grim Jim's video, he gives a handful of suggestions at the end for games where it might work, and a lot of reasons why it wouldn't in DND.

Wheelchair or no, I'm already writing up my rough living, hard drinking, mastiff riding, Gnomish wizard. Hamlet Halfleg. He may be a small creature, but he's medium where it counts.

Quote from: jhkim;1145714Sorry, I missed out on the previous threads, and I just now did a web search to find the D&D wheelchair article. This isn't to you, Omega - but it would be helpful if people were to provide links if they're making reference to a specific other discussion or article.


That's cool, Omega. Could you say more about what the chargen entry was in your book?

https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?42337-Combat-Wheelchairs-in-the-Ministry-of-Truth-(WotC-retroactive-book-revision)

And another, I cant find.

As for how I approached it. Totally abstract, The player could gain some points for being handicapped and had to define it. More points based on just how debilitating it was. And a note that it was going to be a problem. And that buying it off would likely take some effort and RP points to find a cure. And later in the book an example of a handicapped character that was created normally because the character had a workaround that negated being handicapped. Another approach possible was to take a handicap for extra chargen points then use those points to buy an enhanced other sense to counter it in some way.

That allowed for alot of different approaches if a player wanted to go that route. It also allowed handicapped players to explore workarounds without getting too far into unknown territory if they preferred that.

Quote from: RollingBones;1145808Wheelchair or no, I'm already writing up my rough living, hard drinking, mastiff riding, Gnomish wizard. Hamlet Halfleg. He may be a small creature, but he's medium where it counts.

When I saw the mechanical defender option and other tricks the Artificer could do in 5e D&D one of the first things we bounced around was could this be made into a sort of sentient conveyance and other fun things.

Quote from: RollingBones;1145789So this whole saga is just about using D&D to provide specific wish-fulfillments that support player identities?

No. I just provided one explanation that fits the "representative of said disability" angle you were discussing. I speak for no one else in the thread, and my personal preferences would fall more along the lines "is it fun?".

Quote from: Pat;1145819No. I just provided one explanation that fits the "representative of said disability" angle you were discussing. I speak for no one else in the thread, and my personal preferences would fall more along the lines "is it fun?".

100% agree, it all just comes down to "is it fun".

What I was trying to say about being "representative of disability", is that if the wheelchair totally negates the disability, it isn't, by its very definition, representative or inclusive of disability.

If the disabled character isn't disabled, then where's the representation?

It's just cosmetic fluff, with a massive pile of mechanics and excuses to try and make the fluff into something more. Worse than that, it's unnecessary fluff that has been specifically written in service of an ideology. Not in the name of fun.

I don't think anyone's really totally against a player (ambulant or otherwise) running a paraplegic character in their games. But many GMs will be against having something as anachronistic as a 'combat wheelchair', instead of the many creative solutions that are internally consistent with the established lore.

Honestly, I couldn't care less what people put in their own games, but it irks me when I see people demanding works of fiction (D&D) conform to a certain moral standard. Especially when that system already encourages people to make up their own games and include whatever homebrew they want.

If it's really all about the chair, then by it's basic nature, D&D has always included combat wheel chairs in potential. There's never been any rule blocking anyone from saying, hey, my character's in a wheelchair; or a GM saying, guess what guys, in this one-shot, you're all wheelchair bound barbarians. If it's ever happened, it'll have been rare, mostly because it's a bit stupid considering all the creative options at hand. But hey, it's always been possible, and it didn't need this recent social media posturing to make it so.

This isn't a case of just making a cool thing because your wheelchair rolling gaming buddy thinks it'll be a laugh. This is a person going out of their way to say RPGs are inherently wrong-fun unless they are pre-modified to be extra inclusive, because she feels the implied total inclusivity afforded by the OGL is inadequate. It's almost as if she thinks GMs are too stupid to enable wheelchair users to maximise their fun unless it's in the RAW? Wizards of the Coast can't stop anyone putting whatever they want in any of their games. If anything, they encourage it.

The whole combat wheelchair project stinks of virtue signalling in the name of kofi and patreon $$$.

Quote from: RollingBones;1145826What I was trying to say about being "representative of disability", is that if the wheelchair totally negates the disability, it isn't, by its very definition, representative or inclusive of disability.

If the disabled character isn't disabled, then where's the representation?

I look at it from the standpoint of the individual. If the player thinks the character represents them, whether it's wish-fullfillment, a desire to explore something different from themselves, or just comedy, that's real representation. "Disability" isn't a person, so whether or not they're "represented" doesn't matter.