Quote from: trechriron;1098676Spot on. Well said. Bob's your Uncle. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Much obliged. Now all I have to do is come up with the content and the discipline to actually produce a newsletter.

More seriously, if the objective is to figure out an RPG mode/design that actually improves things for players with physical challenges, I applaud the sentiment, but it seems to me the absolute best way to render those challenges irrelevant to the game and the group is simply to let the individual players give them as much attention as they want: no more, no less. Trying to make a consistent, ever-present philosophy of design and play out of it only seems like it would accomplish the exact opposite of making those challenges a mundane, normal element of life.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1098686More seriously, if the objective is to figure out an RPG mode/design that actually improves things for players with physical challenges, I applaud the sentiment, but it seems to me the absolute best way to render those challenges irrelevant to the game and the group is simply to let the individual players give them as much attention as they want: no more, no less. Trying to make a consistent, ever-present philosophy of design and play out of it only seems like it would accomplish the exact opposite of making those challenges a mundane, normal element of life.

And the award for "rational common sense of the day" goes to...!

Craig Maloney, sucking the fun out of RPGs in the name of inclusivity by Virtue Signalling.....

Quote from: Antiquation!;1098655See, this is my real problem with this article. I get that the outrage brigade has to wave their big red flag every now and then to ward off the evil -ist demons, but how do you contemplate a point-buy system like GURPS and think that disadvantages are literally anything but a mechanical expression and game element?

Why? Because these sociopaths are so divorced from reality that they think that RPing something, acting something, even reading something is the EXACT SAME as doing that something for real. Others are mundanes with obviously ZERO understanding of what it is like to be handicapped, minority, weaker sex, a rock, whatever they can virtue signal of the week over charging fourth to bravely defend us poor helpless cripples who are too stupid to know they are being oppressed! And toss in a few real representatives who have been brainwashed by these nuts.

And this isn't new. There was bitching some time ago about how unfair and bigoted it is to have all these disadvantages in Gurps. And on and on and on ad nausium.

As a handicapped person articles like in the OP piss me off to the Nth degree.

Now, if you want to talk about symbols and colors on dice, the size or readability of said dice, the colors chosen for book sections, etc. That's cool. Keeping color blind people, or people with bad vision, or people with other limitations in mind that you can make easier by a design choice, awesome! All this sounds like is another side-ways attempt at censorship and thought control.

Quote from: trechriron;1098702Now, if you want to talk about symbols and colors on dice, the size or readability of said dice, the colors chosen for book sections, etc. That's cool. Keeping color blind people, or people with bad vision, or people with other limitations in mind that you can make easier by a design choice, awesome! All this sounds like is another side-ways attempt at censorship and thought control.

Agreed 100%

Quote from: trechriron;1098702Now, if you want to talk about symbols and colors on dice, the size or readability of said dice, the colors chosen for book sections, etc. That's cool. Keeping color blind people, or people with bad vision, or people with other limitations in mind that you can make easier by a design choice, awesome! All this sounds like is another side-ways attempt at censorship and thought control.

I wonder if anyone has made audiobooks out of RPG rule books.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1098717I wonder if anyone has made audiobooks out of RPG rule books.

Our very own Grim just finished the SRD of 5e as an audiobook

A brief discussion with whomever runs the Evil Hat facebook page seems to indicate that by removing mechanical benefits to playing disabled characters (such as getting extra points to put into your GURPS character) was the goal. So you would play a blind or wheelchair bound character because its what you wanted, instead of paying off your Professor X powers. I'm not sure why this was supposed to make players with disabilities make characters with disabilities though.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1098721Our very own Grim just finished the SRD of 5e as an audiobook

Neat!

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1098656[video=youtube_share;yBLdQ1a4-JI]https://youtu.be/yBLdQ1a4-JI[/youtube]

Heh heh

(BTW do you know the context of this music clip excerpt?
It was done in tongue-in-cheek celebration of a very liberal law in Australia. It may not be what you intended...heh heh
Just sayin')

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1098659I think the core primal mistake lies in the quoted designer's stated purpose, i.e.:
"As a game designer, I feel like the biggest gift I can give to players is the ability to see yourself in the universe you play in."

Yeah I find this totally bizarre, I thought the whole point of rpgs was to create exciting co-operative stories about charactes who aren't ourselves?
I quite like Fate Core, but this is perhaps the most odd statement from an rpg designer that I have seen written about rpgs in all the time I have been playing them.

Quote from: Mankcam;1098768Yeah I find this totally bizarre, I thought the whole point of rpgs was to create exciting co-operative stories about charactes who aren't ourselves?
I quite like Fate Core, but this is perhaps the most odd statement from an rpg designer that I have seen written about rpgs in all the time I have been playing them.

  Well, there have been several 'points' of RPGs I'm familiar with in their history ... 'Become someone else', 'immerse yourself in another time/place/world', and 'tell a cool story with your friends' seem to be the predominant ones, with emphasis varying.

  Given that we've emphasized subjectivity and personal experience to the point that we're about three steps removed from solipsism and autolatry, I'm not surprised that the 'be your ideal self' one is waxing.

Quote from: Longshadow;1098727A brief discussion with whomever runs the Evil Hat facebook page seems to indicate that by removing mechanical benefits to playing disabled characters (such as getting extra points to put into your GURPS character) was the goal. So you would play a blind or wheelchair bound character because its what you wanted, instead of paying off your Professor X powers. I'm not sure why this was supposed to make players with disabilities make characters with disabilities though.

In games which are primarily Drama-driven, where character failure, damage and death are mostly functions of agreed-upon narrative development rather than tactically managed simulated risk factors, and character-specific limitations are about making the story more narratively interesting rather than balancing in-system effectiveness-niche tradeoffs,  I can see something of the logic in this.

Certainly it's an option even in GURPS that as long as you understand you won't get further points for it, you can take Disadvantages beyond what your campaign point limit allows, if you genuinely think it will be enjoyable to play or appropriate to your character concept. In a standard 100-CP starting game with a maximum of -40 points in Disads, once you've taken Blindness for -50 CPs, after all, there's no more mechanical incentive to take any of the more "fun to roleplay" Disads like Honesty, Overconfidence, Impulsiveness and so on.  Yet people with physical challenges are just as capable of having personality issues as anybody else.

The basic problem with this approach is that "how dramatically interesting is it to play this trait?" is ultimately even more subjective an evaluation than "how much does this impede a PC's in-game effectiveness?".  The latter at least can define specific modifiers to specific rolls in specific circumstances. The former would be so dependent on the individuals and groups making that choice that it seems like any attempt to generally codify it would be either uselessly bland, or cause more frustration and annoyance through imposed "this is the Right Way To Play" expectations than it would be worth for those few players who found it a help.

Quote from: Omega;1098700Others are mundanes with obviously ZERO understanding of what it is like to be handicapped, minority, weaker sex, a rock, whatever they can virtue signal of the week over charging fourth to bravely defend us poor helpless cripples who are too stupid to know they are being oppressed!

These peacocking white knight "I'm speaking out in defense of the poor disabled/immigrant/black/women/ad infinitum" shits are the types that piss me off the most, and are usually the easiest to spot. It's one of the most self-congratulatory, destructive and condescending forms of vanity; and one of the most common now, to boot.  

Quote from: trechriron;1098702Now, if you want to talk about symbols and colors on dice, the size or readability of said dice, the colors chosen for book sections, etc. That's cool. Keeping color blind people, or people with bad vision, or people with other limitations in mind that you can make easier by a design choice, awesome!

This I'm completely on board with. In fact, when I first heard the Accessibility Toolkit was announced, I actually thought it was going to be an audio version (with retextured FUDGE/Fate dice for easy tactile reading) or even just a large print/reformatted version of Fate Core. THAT would have actually been cool. I suppose one could use text-to-speech with the online SRD if they were so inclined, but effort would have been much better spent on assisting actual accessibility to the game than this toolkit IMO.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1098721Our very own Grim just finished the SRD of 5e as an audiobook

This is awesome, great job Grim.