I have run NPCs on crutches helping out the party during unsuspecting encounters before, so I can't truly shit on cripples adventuring in my games completely.  But yeah, wheeling up to the wizard's tower and being thwarted by stairs is quite funny.  The easiest solution would be a strong laborer NPC willing to take direction to carry the wheelchair-bound. 

To accomodate all of imagination to be American Disabilities Act compliant smacks of dystopian goodrightthink. But then I also expect those who want to try such extra challenges to be good roleplayers with voluntary ideas on how to make it work seamlessly in my campaign. I do the same in skill-based games where I favor not giving extra points for disabilities and flaws -- in fact, I like to reserve them as extra privileges for players I know will put in the work to roleplay them out in full. Seen more than a fair of munchkinism in GURPS and White Wolf and the like to tire of the pleas for extra points. 

This just feels like theater kids needing extra spotlight attention. If they can hang as an understudy or supporting character, basically "share the table", they might be a keeper. Otherwise I'd expect more drama somewhere else down the road if you relent here, too. Asking for a campaign premise to remain on theme shouldn't be a mortal breach of trust...

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on March 29, 2024, 07:02:38 PM
but I also don't want it to become a backlash where having the One Armed Swordsman or Professor X is suddenly a politically charged idea that people can't accept.

We're way past that.
I cringe whenever I see anyone who isn't an able bodied white male on TV because I expect every other demographic to be there for political reasons, and not talent or story reasons.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 31, 2024, 03:06:50 PM
I cringe whenever I see anyone who isn't an able bodied white male on TV because I expect every other demographic to be there for political reasons, and not talent or story reasons.

Honestly, that's the worst part of this whole thing. Can't wait til this stuff eats itself and we can go back to just having good stories again.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on March 31, 2024, 11:56:29 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 31, 2024, 03:06:50 PM
I cringe whenever I see anyone who isn't an able bodied white male on TV because I expect every other demographic to be there for political reasons, and not talent or story reasons.

Honestly, that's the worst part of this whole thing. Can't wait til this stuff eats itself and we can go back to just having good stories again.

Therein lies the problem. Seeing stuff like these damn wheelchairs is going to set people off because at this point the odds of it being legitimately just there because it interested the artist or designer, and not for woke points or outrage marketing is about zero now.

Whats really vile is that they do it to piss off handicapped people just for some free advertising.

When I see this sort of thing, I ask one question.  Why does this exist?  The only reason that this exists is, as far as I can tell, symbolic representation.  It's not about playing a disabled character and the role-play that might arise from that because the first thing is does is to eliminate any disability that might result from the character's disability.  It's also so hilariously over-powered for what it costs than there's no reason why every character wouldn't be using one.  If not for the virtue signaling angle, people would immediately write this off as just more over-powered homebrew.  Instead, they are calling people istaphobes for not allowing this thing.

Overall, the idea of a wheelchair accessible dungeon is stupid. In general, dungeons are dangerous places with monsters and traps, not a theme park where you have disabled accessible areas. Unless you're purposely make the dungeon that way. In that case, you're either a skittle haired doofus or you have a sinister ulterior motives....like trapping an access ramp, which I approve.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 31, 2024, 03:06:50 PM

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on March 29, 2024, 07:02:38 PM
but I also don't want it to become a backlash where having the One Armed Swordsman or Professor X is suddenly a politically charged idea that people can't accept.

We're way past that.
I cringe whenever I see anyone who isn't an able bodied white male on TV because I expect every other demographic to be there for political reasons, and not talent or story reasons.

Pretty much everyone I know is like this now. But we're all adults, so let's just vote with our dollars and our attention and give them none of it. I have plenty to do outside of blind consumption.

Quote from: Omega on April 01, 2024, 02:05:28 AM
Therein lies the problem. Seeing stuff like these damn wheelchairs is going to set people off because at this point the odds of it being legitimately just there because it interested the artist or designer, and not for woke points or outrage marketing is about zero now.

Whats really vile is that they do it to piss off handicapped people just for some free advertising.

What you're talking about here is people's motives - but others have been arguing that any wheelchair-using PC is ridiculous without regard to the motives of the GM or player.

---

I don't even know that I disagree.

When you say "these damn wheelchairs" - what are you talking about? The published examples mentioned in this thread are Lord Weathermay from Ravenloft II, and the cover of the Terminator: Resist sourcebook. Three years ago, I bought Candlekeep Mysteries because I was curious after Pundit's claim that the combat wheelchair was in it, for example -- but there were no wheelchairs at all in the book.

This all seems to me like an invented controversy from social media, not actual gaming or even actual gaming products.

Quote from: jhkim on April 01, 2024, 02:20:37 PM
This all seems to me like an invented controversy from social media, not actual gaming or even actual gaming products.

Quote from: tenbones on March 29, 2024, 11:30:18 PM
LOL this is classic jhkim cognitive dissonance.  Watching you guys wrestle with the pig in the mud is funny. (it's not like I haven't done a few rounds there)

Don't change man.

Quote from: jhkim on April 01, 2024, 02:20:37 PMbut others have been arguing that any wheelchair-using PC is ridiculous without regard to the motives of the GM or player.

We're talking about wheelchairs don't belong in high fantasy settings where healing magic is common, you disingenuous goober.

Stormbringer (early editions) is a very good game.

You rolled randomly for your character background.

You could be a diseased vagrant. Your character could begin VERY messed up and that character would rarely live very long.

Feel free to play messed up characters in dangerous RPGs.

Just don't complain when they don't survive.

One good thing this thread got me thinking about is how dungeons are always built around the assumption that everyone is around 6' tall. 

Imagine a group of players hired to raid a kobold's fortress, and when they arrive, they discover the kobold roof is around a whopping 3' 4" high.  Which is cozy for kobolds, and pretty awful for anyone else.  The humans and elves and tieflings and dragonkin and what not are literally crawling through the place, the dwarfs are scrunching over, and even the halflings feel a little cramped maybe.  And then the kobolds run around in the "murder shafts" above the party, poking them with dung covered spears when they aren't pouring boiling oil or molten lead on their heads (they save that for the special areas!).  But I digress.

Point is, I -do- think there's a place for diversity in body types and frames (and skin tones and what not), but it needs to either be accepted as window dressing or else embraced for its reality.  Otherwise at best it's virtue signaling to randos on the internet, or at worst it's diversity tourism for the sake of your character being "quirky".  Wheelchairs in D&D?  Hey, if your setting can figure out airships I figure wheelchairs aren't that big a deal.  Wheelchairs as viable dungeon vehicles?  Try rolling that thing down those kobold tunnels bitch.     

The closest thing to wheelchair in any of my dungeons are minecarts.

Given that most modern consumers of 5e these days don't see most of their "campaigns" are in proverbial minecarts and on a track, they should feel right at home.

The only good use of such minecarts in my games are to out-perform Temple of Doom. Or to unexpectedly drop on PC's.

Quote from: Habitual Gamer on April 02, 2024, 11:40:32 AM
One good thing this thread got me thinking about is how dungeons are always built around the assumption that everyone is around 6' tall. 

Imagine a group of players hired to raid a kobold's fortress, and when they arrive, they discover the kobold roof is around a whopping 3' 4" high.  Which is cozy for kobolds, and pretty awful for anyone else.  The humans and elves and tieflings and dragonkin and what not are literally crawling through the place, the dwarfs are scrunching over, and even the halflings feel a little cramped maybe.  And then the kobolds run around in the "murder shafts" above the party, poking them with dung covered spears when they aren't pouring boiling oil or molten lead on their heads (they save that for the special areas!).

I ran exactly this in an earlier campaign. The PCs had followed a enemy tribe of kobolds in the Underdark back to their lair, and their lair was in caves that the full-size characters simply couldn't enter. Two players temporarily took over playing NPC goblin henchmen while their PCs guarded the entrance, and the druid went in as a wolverine or something.

Another issue in the Underdark was light. Carrying a light source when in the Underdark was often a real liability, because it was a beacon for creatures. The party had a lot but not completely characters with darkvision. So sometimes they would just have no light source, and lead along the two PCs without darkvision. Some players would refer to this as the disability of "dark-blindness".

It all depends on the campaign. In some campaigns, being a human is a major disability. For example, Grognard GM suggested a hypothetical earlier of an all-underwater campaign where being air-breathing is a lethal disadvantage.

Quote from: Habitual Gamer on April 02, 2024, 11:40:32 AM
Point is, I -do- think there's a place for diversity in body types and frames (and skin tones and what not), but it needs to either be accepted as window dressing or else embraced for its reality.  Otherwise at best it's virtue signaling to randos on the internet, or at worst it's diversity tourism for the sake of your character being "quirky".

I agree about embracing reality to a degree, but it depends of the reality of the campaign. For example, in the Transformers cartoon, Chip in his wheelchair attaches a device to a Decepticon's leg during a fight. That's OK, I think, because it fits with the reality of the kids cartoon. Likewise, if I'm playing in a heroic game where a (non-magic) character can fall five stories and immediately run from where they hit, then that sets the tone for the limits I'm setting. If I'm playing Call of Cthulhu or HarnMaster, then the reality limitations will be much more strict.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on April 01, 2024, 04:50:38 PM

Quote from: jhkim on April 01, 2024, 02:20:37 PMbut others have been arguing that any wheelchair-using PC is ridiculous without regard to the motives of the GM or player.

We're talking about wheelchairs don't belong in high fantasy settings where healing magic is common, you disingenuous goober.

People other than you and I have been talking about everything from Terminator to martial arts movies.

If a GM wants to rule that there are effectively no crippling disease or injuries in the game world, that's their call. Also, there are plenty of other settings where wheelchairs don't belong. For example, the world of my current D&D campaign doesn't have worked iron or wheeled transport - so a wheelchair would be out of place there as well.

In particular, D&D is used for settings ranging from Ravenloft (with wheelchair-bound Lord Weathermay), Gothic Earth, A Mighty Fortress and other historical settings, and lots of others. I don't think one can generalize about all of them. In Eberron, for example, magic and healing are common -- but it's also a dark and gritty setting and there are a lot of hostile magics that could counter healing. I think it fits well with the setting for there to be crippled veterans of the Last War.