I made my comments about this in one of my videos.

[video=youtube_share;WgNxua6_bxI]https://youtu.be/WgNxua6_bxI[/youtube]

I recall Tim Kask, TSR's first employee & editor of Dragon magazine, saying that he REALLY disliked working the GenCon booth because he had to listen to players' stories of their characters.

So.

Yeah, (pronoun) was (select disability) and still (amazing party fluff resulting in THE WIN).

Had that cliche for breakfast last night.

Quote from: SHARK;1122836Greetings!

Indeed, my friend. I think all of this "deep effort" to include disabilities and focus on disabled characters is honestly pathetic, pandering, disrespectful, and entirely in poor taste.

I don't find anything funny about it, or particularly "sensitive" to include such rules in a game. It's bullshit.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I agree with this, IMO there are no cool ways to include disabilities in a game. Everyone I have gamed with that has disabilities usually plays a really bad ass character.

Quote from: ElBorak;1123167I agree with this, IMO there are no cool ways to include disabilities in a game. Everyone I have gamed with that has disabilities usually plays a really bad ass character.

Are you saying that a character can't be bad ass if they have a disability? I thought that many of the examples so far - like Thegn's one-eyes wizard - showed very bad ass characters.

Quote from: Thegn Ansgar;1122930I played a wizard who sacrificed one of his eyes to gain wisdom like Odin did. Was actually quite interesting; I wore an eyepatch over that eye whenever I played him just so I could get into the mindset of not being able to see out of that eye. That way whenever I was imagining a scene being described, the "blind" side wasn't actually being visualized. I also got into the habit of turning so my "good eye" was facing the player/GM when he was talking to someone.

He had a penalty to anything relating to vision and that included projectile based magic, and while it did make my rolls worse, interestingly the rolls were usually already bad enough that the penalty didn't matter. It caused me to have him focus on magic that wasn't projectile based and didn't involve being able to judge distances, perceive depth, or anything that required visual tracking.

I like this. Plucking out your own eye like Odin for magical power shows fucking dedication.

Quote from: ElBorak;1123167I agree with this, IMO there are no cool ways to include disabilities in a game. Everyone I have gamed with that has disabilities usually plays a really bad ass character.

A disability should not be cool. It can at some point save the day and be cool at that moment. But they arent called disabilities for nothing.

And having a disability is not a prohibitor of being a bad ass character. You just have to train and find workarounds to get there. And/or team up with others who can cover your weak spots. And hope someone doesnt figure out how to exploit your weak spots.

Of course players can and will exploit monster and NPC disabilities in combat. If someone has only one eye for example you might want to stay at range so their lack of depth perception works to your advantage. Or try to get around to their blind side. My great grandfather stayed in the service even after having an eye shot out. How he coped and adapted I'll never know. But I can imagine criminals trying to take advantage of that.

Quote from: jhkim;1123008Brad - I included some examples in my OP, and some others have added their examples. I'd hope you could respond to those.

I don't recall having a blind PC in any of my games, but I can easily imagine various middle ground between someone who is useless and Daredevil, particularly given science fiction or fantasy abilities. Someone could be able to navigate nearby spaces -- but be unable to see in the distance, read signs, shoot people, etc. This could be by cinematically enhanced other senses, tech sensors, magic, or whatever.

I have maiming tables in my games (and rules for overcoming maiming over time to become characters like Daredevil or the one armed swordsman). The idea being that initially a character who is maimed is going to be challenged a great deal by it. But they can eventually level out and even find an advantage eventually. Mechanically this means you have to take an ability called Adaptation of the Maimed, which just levels you out (and can take a while to get). Then there are abilities like One Armed Strike, which allows a character to use the space afforded by the loss of the limb to generate more force (this obviously follows wuxia/kung fu logic rather than an attempt at being something gritty and real world).

Blindness has come up multiple times, and one thing I would say to GMs is always remember if a characters is blind or maimed in some way. Nothing more embarrassing than describing something visual to a player whose character is blind and wouldn't have that info. It is a very easy detail to let slip.

Quote from: jhkim;1122827Thinking back, the first campaign that I GMed back in undergrad was a Hero System superpowered game in a more realistic setting. One of the PCs had electrical powers - and he had been shot in the back and was on the edge of death. I ruled that his spine had been severed - but over the course of his recovery, he found that he could still use his legs by using his powers, but that would require constant concentration. We re-worked his disadvantages and stats to reflect this. That gave his character a really interesting arc over the rest of the campaign, including how his girlfriend and he dealt with the change.

I really like the Hero System approach. Over the last year, I have been playing in a 5e Revised Hero game, and the revised version of the book describes sensory powers and how to express disabilities related to them in a much more granular way.

Quote from: jhkim;1123008Brad - I included some examples in my OP, and some others have added their examples. I'd hope you could respond to those.

Fair enough.

Quote from: jhkim;1122827Thinking back, the first campaign that I GMed back in undergrad was a Hero System superpowered game in a more realistic setting. One of the PCs had electrical powers - and he had been shot in the back and was on the edge of death. I ruled that his spine had been severed - but over the course of his recovery, he found that he could still use his legs by using his powers, but that would require constant concentration. We re-worked his disadvantages and stats to reflect this. That gave his character a really interesting arc over the rest of the campaign, including how his girlfriend and he dealt with the change.

This is just a typical comic book conceit; seems perfectly normal to me in that context. So essentially, his nervous system was "destroyed", which in turn led to electrical powers, and he could control his body with those powers. Again, plain old comic book stuff.

QuoteMy favorite case, though, was a one-shot game from a few years ago based on the sci-fi TV series Alphas -- where the main characters had low-level neurologically-based powers, each with an associated psychological/neurological downside. When all my players created their own alternate team, it made for a fascinating struggle for them to cover for their weak spots.

Among others, the PCs there included one who had perfect muscular control but couldn't relax and thus was always exhausted - only able to walk with a cane. Another had perfect accuracy paired with OCD. Another was able to recognize patterns but had a fear of crowds. They were investigating a new age woman who could cause hallucinations, who lived in a urban hippy house - where a big crowd of hippy-like young people were living in this old run-down house. Without realizing it as GM, suddenly the players burst back at me that this was a perfect trap for them. As I described it, the old house had steps with no railings, plus it was dirty and cluttered, and crowded with drug-taking people. Having those tightly-linked down sides gave a new perspective on what was challenging for characters.

This sounds sort of like the basis for a Mystery Men-style game. It definitely can be fun playing heroes with all sorts of fucked up stuff going on, dealing with normal-ish situations that become hard to deal with due to their disabilities. Overcoming their issues and actually being heroic is sort of what makes it worth playing.

QuoteI don't recall having a blind PC in any of my games, but I can easily imagine various middle ground between someone who is useless and Daredevil, particularly given science fiction or fantasy abilities. Someone could be able to navigate nearby spaces -- but be unable to see in the distance, read signs, shoot people, etc. This could be by cinematically enhanced other senses, tech sensors, magic, or whatever.

Sure, I mean realistically, a blind person in a modern day sort of game with zero super powers could actually be extremely viable because our society is setup to accommodate them for the most part. You could run an espionage game with a blind spy that has a form of eidetic memory and a seeing-eyed dog. No one will question the dog (who might also be an ex-Marine K9 attack dog or something), and the dude can just sit on a bench and do surveillance, reporting back explicit conversations.

Quote from: Brad;1123199No one will question the dog (who might also be an ex-Marine K9 attack dog or something), and the dude can just sit on a bench and do surveillance, reporting back explicit conversations.

Ah, nice to see the Casey Rybek "I'm just a cook" meme spread to characters' pets too.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1123200Ah, nice to see the Casey Rybek "I'm just a cook" meme spread to characters' pets too.

Master Chief Rybek to you, son.

Makes me think of Jay J. Armes. A private investigator who lost both hands when young and grew up to become an investigator and had an array of special prosthetics. Even a gun hand. Marketed himself well too. Had an action figure!

Well, in some RPGs, mainly sci-fi but also sci-fantasy, losing a body part can be a good excuse to get cybernetics...

Unless the cybernetics is a potentially bad thing.

On the other hand it allways struck me as a bit odd in Star Trek TNG that there were any handicapped people at all considering how advanced the science by then was getting to the point it bordered on magic a few times. Of course over the span of the series they show all of maybee three. So it could be that handicapped people are vanishingly rare. Id like to hope so.

Quote from: Omega;1123714Unless the cybernetics is a potentially bad thing.

On the other hand it allways struck me as a bit odd in Star Trek TNG that there were any handicapped people at all considering how advanced the science by then was getting to the point it bordered on magic a few times. Of course over the span of the series they show all of maybee three. So it could be that handicapped people are vanishingly rare. Id like to hope so.

transporter pattern buffer immortality. that episode where picard possessed by alien beams out as energy only into the nebula but wait we have his pattern so zip zang zoom we got him back. got cancer? pattern buffer! too old to live? we have a much younger you in the pattern buffer! act now and we'll throw in a slap chop with some of vinces nuts, and for a limited time, activate one instance of pattern buffer and get a free genital size enhancement courtesy of our pattern mixing specialists who operate the pattern buffer!

pattern buffer, the first last and middle word in buffering patterns! pattern buffer!





















pattern buffer!

Quote from: Omega;1123714Unless the cybernetics is a potentially bad thing. On the other hand it allways struck me as a bit odd in Star Trek TNG that there were any handicapped people at all considering how advanced the science by then was getting to the point it bordered on magic a few times. Of course over the span of the series they show all of maybee three. So it could be that handicapped people are vanishingly rare. Id like to hope so.

It is surprising how lacking in vision TNG was in so many ways, but then, they'd have to come up with practical effects to mimic what they could envision. But had they thought about it, you'd have no handicapped people at all, and everyone would be their ideal height and weight, and likely no baldies. Also, they would likely have much improved life spans.

They should have made Picard in the new Picard show 180.