Another player who was at the table during the incident sent me this meme after the problem player in question (they had a history) left the group chat.
Felt like sharing it here because I’m sure more people should keep this kind of thing in mind.
I don’t have an issue with it, but that wheelchair does look mismatched to everything else, looks too modern.
I wouldn’t consider it “too modern” since contemporary fantasy commonly includes things like tobacco and potatoes, nation-states, and 20th-century English. It’s more like a departure from what you might typically see in the genre of fantasy.
Ok but a wheelchair would be dumb when you could just get some enchanted armor.
Similar idea re: magic
Guild Wars 2 hit the trans issue with one of their Npcs in Lion’s Arch. Different toon after season 2 rebuild, same name. Talk to her after the event (him, before the world event) and she says something like “well, it’s a magical world… I figured: new Lion’s Arch… time for a new me.”
Also Yao in New Kaineng, self describes as “agendered”.
There’s a line of dialog something like “… and he had a husband!” in part of the story.
Nice to see diversity represented, sometimes feels a little clumsy but I’ll put that down to writers that are learning how to do it.
This is my issue.
Its a fantasy world. Dont copy paste non magic human solutions to disability. Create fantasy ones.
Enchanted pants that give you mild telekenesis while wearing them, but only on the pants. You can walk with your mind now, but you need the pants to do so.
Youre still disabled, but now your disability is more akin to glasses. An aide that is required, but in most cases completely masks your disability and lets you go about your day to day mostly unhindered, all while maintaining the worlds flavor without the weird clash of having a piece of tech that doesnt match the world around it.
Dont want your disability fully masked? Give them a familiar to ride. Or keep the telekenesis, but make it a chair whose legs can walk.
Its fantasy so we can ignore reality for a lil while. You dont need real solutions to problems, you need fantasy solutions.
Gnome paraplegic? Be a gnome in a mech!
Fuck me thats funny, I love the idea of being a semi agoraphobic ironman
The benefit of homebrew. None of these need to be considered an actual restriction by the PC. Where X is the disability
- Paladin: Oath of Restriction: You lose X in favour of your patrons
- Warlock: Any pact: Patron takes X and wishes to see how you fair in life
- Sorcerer: Any: Born with X but also born with innate magic powers
All of these have a reason to have a special Counter Remove Curse item.
A more general idea, cursed heart causes X but if curse is removed host dies.
I guess a fucker could still steal the homebrew item but if you’re doing that much to negate it that’s a player problem. No reason an enemy would attempt to remove a PC curse unless the knew the affects of the last one.
The other obvious choice is to play it like real life and refuse the help because its part of your identity
Spider legs on the chair for rough terrain would be badass.
One of the PCs (new guy brought in after the other guy left) at the table literally has prosthetic legs as an artificer because his character was born without them.
Magical legs work better for an adventuring party for sure IMO but a wheelchair bound NPC in a city is fine.
Hell the artificer has made it a personal goal to no matter the cost allow people to walk again with their prosthetic legs. (A generous patron gave them their first set) He’s going to encounter one soon (I’m the DM, it’s going to happen) and the player will (likely) have the gold for a set. But they’re not free to make and the components aren’t free.
It’s interesting to me to put problems in front of my players for them to solve in inventive ways. They never fail to surprise me.
That sounds like a very high level magic item which would absolutely not be available to a character at level 1 (let alone a lowly NPC or pre-adventuring PC). And by the time it does become available, the PC might be so comfortable with their wheelchair that it wouldn’t feel right to them to change.
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It is like saying a Wizard isn’t allowed to have glasses.
I’m dreaming of a VR game with a disabled wizard who is confined to a chair and uses telekinesis or teleportation to move around. That would give the game a lore reason for VR locomotion.
I don’t doubt their existence but the wheel chair doesn’t look like fantasy.
Since fantasy is by definition not real, everything can be a fantasy aesthetic.
Fantasy is a genre and has been defined pretty clearly. Sure anyone is free to do their own thing just as I am free to critique their said thing.
What about a wheelchair doesn’t fit into a fantasy setting, especially DnD’s fantasy setting with it’s various steampunk elements?
I think he ment this specific wheelchair in the image doesn’t fit. As in a fantasy wheelchair would likely have a different design or be made of different materials.
Can confirm, this is what I meant. The wheelchair would be more closer to maybe attack on titan or full metal alchemist. Full metal alchemist is basically fantasy but I think it’s closer to steam punk. Attack on titan is not traditional fantasy.
If we’re talking high fantasy the wheelchair would more than likely be an arcane device or some stump with wagon wheels.
It’s an AI drawing, blame the prompt.
Maybe not your fantasy. But maybe someone elses fantasy world.
Fantasy is a genre and has been defined pretty clearly. Sure anyone is free to do their own thing just as I am free to critique their said thing.
Since they’re a magic user, a conjurated floating chair would fix a lot of issues with the concept as well as look awesome
I can easily accept a blind npc or pc, and also a wheelchair npc, but a wheelchair pc is a bit convoluted in a fantasy setting. Like this was literally a subplot in doctor strange. There is just too much power in player parties to not knock this out in the first few adventures.
Whether through healing or artifacts or levitation. Just makes no sense unless you want the tactical “guy in a chair” trope, or want to have navigation be a major part of each story.
If I want to play Steven Seagal, then I will damn do so.
“Roll for dexterity” when you enter a city that’s not wheelchair accessible at every single stairway 💀
oh cool. Failed roll, roll for constitutional save. Roll for damage.
Nat1, just roll for damage, or if you are a fun DM, have another roll for dex for the objects at the bottom of the stairs.
Ironically unable to roll anywhere at all anymore.
Depending on the magic it might not make sense because people could heal everything, although you could explain it away by saying that the character could not afford a skilled healer.
I looked it up and the first known wheelchair that you could move yourself in was invented in the 1600s, which was after firearms became relatively common.
Of course wheelchairs were after guns, after all how you fight in a wheelchair before that
Personally I think of guns as just being specifically missing in fantasy, rather than a marker of when it takes place. Like crossing an ocean in a sailboat doesn’t feel out of place, even though the people who did it in real life had guns.
Yeah, there are some books I’ve read where their technology is clearly advanced enough for guns (ex: The Wheel of Time has advanced metalworking and fireworks, basically all you need to make a gun), but it would completely ruin all of the combat scenes and mess up the plot.
Yeah the typical D&D setting is not “mediaeval period but with magic”. It’s a weird hodgepodge of mediaeval, renaissance, early industrial, and classical technology, fashions, and cultural practices. If there’s something from any time period from 3000 BCE to 1700 CE and you want to include it, you pretty much can, and it won’t feel out of place in a typical D&D setting.
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Ive played a one armed barbarian before. He touched a cursed item that was slowly Turning him into a demon, so he chopped off his arm.
The DM said I lost Ambidexterity for that, Which I accepted. I later found out that I derailed part of his plan to make my character evil & work as a minion for the Big Bad.
Was there a reason for them to be blind?
Reminds me of my favourite Flamethrower
Source Tyrant of tower defence gameI mean, you’re correct but that meme’s vision of what a disabled character should look like in a fantasy setting is probably the most boring I’ve ever seen.
A manual wheelchair? In worlds where levitation, flight, telekinesis, etc exist?
Fuck, even the X-Men have a hovering chair.
Odd because blindness is very commonly represented in mythology and fantasy.
A wheelchair is a tough sell in a questing/adventuring party, but in the right context we have seen paraplegics manage, in a popular fantasy setting ( GoT, bran), but it required someone to move them around
And then there’s bloodborne.
First guy you meet in bloodborne is in a wheelchair.
The old man who helps you is in a wheelchair.
You get shot at by tricked out wheelchair tanks.
One of the PCs (new guy brought in after the other guy left) at the table literally has prosthetic legs as an artificer because his character was born without them.
Magical legs work better for an adventuring party for sure IMO but a wheelchair bound NPC in a city is fine.
Hell the artificer has made it a personal goal to no matter the cost allow people to walk again with their prosthetic legs. (A generous patron gave them their first set) He’s going to encounter one soon (I’m the DM, it’s going to happen) and the player will (likely) have the gold for a set. But they’re not free to make and the components aren’t free.
It’s interesting to me to put problems in front of my players for them to solve in inventive ways. They never fail to surprise me.
I think the real problem is that magic in D&D is so mundane that any problem can be “magicked away”, be it healing a wound, curing diseases or exploding an enemy. That makes some situations only really plausible when it’s explained as some stronger magic or “weird power” interfering with common magic.
It’s a magical fantasy setting, I get it, but magic being so common and consequence free makes it a deus ex of whatever flimsy explanation you can imagine. “Why do disabled people exist in typical D&D?” Cue that meme of the cartoon’s Dungeon Master “It’s magic, I ain’t gotta explain shit”.
A lot of this has probably been said already, but I want to point out that restrictions breed creativity.
This is a magic fantasty world, how would your character deal with their differences? What coping mechanisms would they develop? Would a blind character develop some alternative to vision? Would a physically disabled character find some other way to navigate the world?
I see people asking “why would disability exist in a world with magical healing” as a way to dismiss the entire concept. I feel that engaging with the question, and trying to answer, it leads to more interesting characters.
Toph from Avatar is an example of following these restrictions. Would her character and abilities even exist if the writers didn’t sit down and wonder how a blind character would work in their universe?
I don’t have a problem with having disabled people in a TTRPG setting, but I hate the “it’s fantasy, stop whining about realism” argument.
