How can a character in a wheelchair be an adventurer in Dungeons & Dragons or other fantasy roleplaying games? While I recently noted that ramps should be more common than expected, no matter how accessible your world is, you’ll eventually encounter rough terrain of some kind. Does this make adventuring in a wheelchair impossible?

1. Rough terrain is hard for everyone, thus the name.

Probably the most common question I get: “How can a person in a wheelchair navigate [some kind of terrain]?” This seems to assume everyone else has no problem. It’s called rough terrain for a reason. It’s difficult for nearly everyone to cross. It’s like a merfolk asking how you could navigate the ocean with those finless legs. You’d use an assistive device like a boat.

Different environments present different challenges for different people, disabled or not, but it’s easy to think from an able-bodied perspective and make assumptions based on our own experiences, calling the difficult “impossible” instead of making it “accessible”.

2. Ambulatory wheelchair users exist.

Many people think that anyone in a wheelchair must be paraplegic, but many wheelchair users can walk — it’s difficult, painful, or exhausting, but they may well be able to traverse a 10 foot staircase, possibly needing to take a short rest after and find a different means of retrieving their wheelchair from below.

Real-world ambulatory wheelchair users frequently face scorn from people who see them stand up to get something off a shelf or for some other purpose and criticize them for “faking it”. Don’t do that, and don’t make assumptions about fictional characters’ capabilities, either.

3. Are you adventuring alone?

While certain encounters may be difficult for any given individual to navigate, most adventuring parties consist of multiple characters working together. The caster levitates the rogue over the pit. The barbarian protects the caster. The walking party member assists the wheelchair user up the steps. That’s the whole point of a balanced party.

4. Wheelchair users can traverse steps alone.

See for yourself.

5. I present to you the Ramp spell. (or Floating Disk)

If you have a member of the party who can cast Floating Disk, they can put it under your wheelchair, and it will traverse anything an able-bodied person can. (See #3 above.) If not, I offer this alternative so you can do it yourself.

Ramp

1st-level conjuration (ritual)

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: V, S, M (a wood or stone wedge)
Duration: 10 minutes

This spell creates a plane of force, 6 feet wide, 1 inch thick, and up to 30 feet long, that connects 2 solid objects through an unoccupied space of your choice that you can perceive within range. The plane remains for the duration and can hold up to 500 pounds. If more weight is placed on it, if you move more than 30 feet away from it, or if one of the connected objects moves beyond the length of the plane, the spell ends, and everything on the plane falls to the ground.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the plane length increases by 20 feet for each slot level above 1st.

6. Rope exists in D&D.

You can either have a couple party members tow your chair over the steps or use a grappling hook and Batman the steps by yourself.

7. Some terrain is easier in a wheelchair.

If you’re in a wheelchair, you’re not likely to be knocked prone by slippery surfaces, so you’re effectively immune to the Grease spell or other effects that make the ground slippery unless sliding down a ramp, and even then, you probably won’t end up prone once you get to the bottom.

8. Heat Metal is a bigger problem for martials than wheelchair users.

I’ve seen comments that those in wheelchairs are vulnerable to Heat Metal. That assumes the wheelchair is made of metal instead of wood, bone, or some other substance, but even in that case, it probably takes a reaction to push yourself out of a chair until the spell ends. Armor takes 1–5 minutes to doff. The paladin will want help from the wheelchair-using rogue in that case, and is anyone really going to burn a 2nd level spell and their concentration on an escapable wheelchair when they could be turning the fighter into a baked potato?

9. Dodging in a wheelchair.

Can you dodge in a wheelchair? Given that dodging is an action in 5e, there’s no reason you couldn’t. Paralympians and other wheelchair-using athletes can move with amazing speed and dexterity. Add the superhuman nature of a 5e hero, and players should have no problem imagining this.

10. D&D is a game of creative solutions — that’s what separates it from video games.

I am not disabled, and it took me 20 minutes to compile this list of ideas before researching the details. Were I a disabled adventurer, I’d have a lifetime of ideas how to manage various obstacles. Many people who can’t imagine navigating these obstacles may benefit from honestly attempting to play as a disabled character, to take some time to think and research both accessibility and others’ lived experiences to expand their awareness. Others may choose a magical solution like the hovering capability of the Combat Wheelchair. But it’s D&D — anything is possible, limited only by your imagination and the parameters established at your table.

When Jennifer Kretchmer presented the scandalous idea of ramps in dungeons in Candlekeep Mysteries, a significant portion of the D&D community couldn’t wrap their mental dice bags around such a concept. It seemed incomprehensible to make dungeons more accessible, and I still get multiple daily angry or derisive comments to that effect whenever I run Facebook ads promoting our products.

But just as curb cuts, those little ramps in sidewalk curbs, were designed for wheelchairs but benefit strollers, shopping carts, bicyclists, and anyone else who uses wheels, including them in dungeons may be more sensible than stairs, regardless what adventurers may come investigating.

So since I get tired of writing the same responses repeatedly, as do others who fight for accessibility and disability representation, consider these concepts, and feel free to comment below.

1. Are dungeons supposed to be inaccessible?

Dungeons are designed to keep people out!

Are they, though? That depends on the dungeon. It’s a generic term that can refer to any number of structures for any number of purposes. Often, a dungeon is a space that has either intentionally or naturally changed purpose over time. Maybe it was once a castle basement used for storage or as a siege shelter. Or a crypt. Or a cave. Or a menagerie. Or a majestic castle. Or a forest in the Feywild. When considering the accessibility of a dungeon (or any other details in its design), the designer must consider its purpose, its owner, its age, its ecology, and many other factors. But while the 10’×10′ stone corridor underground is still a staple, it hardly represents the majority of adventuring environments in D&D.

2. Are dungeons all made from flagstone?

Flagstone, made typically from sandstone or similar materials, is the classic material design for a dungeon, but a dungeon can be packed dirt, a tunnel carved out of a mountain, the alleys in the darker sections of Waterdeep, massive caverns in the Underdark, the City of Brass on the Elemental Plane of Fire, a rickety old wooden mansion, or the rubble of ancient ruins. Each of these presents accessibility challenges to different characters — my tiefling warlock with chronic leg pain will manage a whole lot better than an able-bodied elf druid in the City of Brass, and if the steps in the haunted mansion suddenly become a slide, the walking character will be prone while the wheelchair user holds out a spear and yells, “Charge!”

3. What was the dungeon before it was haunted ruins?

How many people are specifically building dungeons, anyway? They’re difficult to make and not particularly practical. Most dungeons used to be something else (or still are). The dragon isn’t going to build human-sized steps into its lair. A xorn digging through the Elemental Plane of Earth will create smooth tunnels. Water eroding an ancient cavern won’t erode at jagged 90° angles. An ancient dwarven mine would never have stairs (and may even have cart tracks or elevators). And the inside of a crashed spaceship will have smooth hallways and elevators. That doesn’t preclude the possibility of steps, a stone cliff (which is difficult for anyone but the rogue or monk to climb), or other obstacles, but if you can creatively find a way to cross that pit filled with a gelatinous cube, you can bet that a seasoned adventurer has some tricks up their sleeve to overcome occasional rough terrain.

4. Have you ever tried carrying an occupied coffin down stairs?

Many dungeons were or are still crypts designed either for a wealthy family or to keep an ancient evil contained. If the current occupant came into that crypt in a pine box, you can bet there’s a ramp. I’ve attended and conducted dozens of funerals, and there’s a reason modern morticians use carts for coffins — they’re heavy, especially with a body in them! (And the bigger the corpse, the heavier.) So if you’re carrying that coffin to its (hopefully) final resting place, guiding a cart into an underground crypt on a ramp with a rope will save you a whole lot of effort, even if there’s also steps beside the ramp, either permanently or in the form of nearby removable timbers. A party coming to investigate a restless spirit would likely find the accommodations designed by the architect or implemented by a past undertaker.

5. What size creature were your stairs designed for?

Stairs are designed for the people using them, so modern stairs are designed for a human range of heights and foot sizes. But if a dungeon occupied by both a clutch of kobolds and a family of ogres will either require the kobolds to bring climbing gear to scale ogre-sized steps or the ogres to walk sideways up the steps, even then with a lot of foot pain. A ramp easily solves this problem, not to mention making it easier to drag in fresh meat from a successful hunt or drag out bags of bones of unsuccessful adventurers.

6. How do you feed your monsters?

Speaking of dragging carcasses, you need to feed that hydra that’s somehow in a chamber with only 10’×10′ corridor access and dispose of its waste. While I recommend an underground river or other sewage drain for the latter (which can be its own security problem when kobolds find it), unless you have a city’s worth of really gullible bullywugs that are willing to go investigate the noises that you insist are coming from a carnival with dragonfly ripple ice cream, you’re going to need to kill something and transport it into those snapping jaws, and you’ll have a much easier time pushing it over a ramp than stairs.

7. How did all those stones, trap mechanisms, and monsters get down there?

You know that big treasure chest full of gold and jewels? Yeah, it’s probably a mimic. But if it’s not, good luck lugging that thing down steps into the deepest chamber. Add tons of flagstone, support timbers, cages filled with monsters, chests of potions bottles, or whatever else you’re storing down there. Put those containers on wheels down a ramp, and your building process will be a lot easier.

8. Which lasts longer in treacherous environments, stairs or ramps?

As noted above, flagstone is usually made from sandstone. Sandstone erodes. That’s how sedimentary rock forms. If that ancient staircase is as ancient as you describe, it’s probably a ramp by now, albeit irregular, which would be even easier to navigate if it has some landings.

9. Dwarves had specific skills to detect ramps as early as 1st Edition.

In AD&D, dwarves could, “Detect grade or slope in passage: 1-5 on 1d6.” In other words, ramps in underground passages aren’t some new 5e concept — they’re oldschool. Some were gradual, thus the check, and some were more obvious, but they had this skill in the first place because when you’re digging a mine or underground city and need to move a lot of rock and goods around, slopes make a lot more sense than steps. And elevators, even better. And purple worms don’t burrow in straight lines.

10. It’s fantasy but makes the real world better.

All this fantasy talk is fun, but real lives are the most important factor. Discussions of “realistic” in a world where a spoken word can transform steps into a ramp or a mudslide or a mimic or a dimensional gateway, what matters most is the effect on our players. Even if a disabled player doesn’t want to play a disabled character, including disabled NPCs and the effects of their existence in your world tells your players, “I don’t want to imagine a world without you in it.”

How can you represent Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in 5e that reflects real world experiences? Here’s a free sample from Limitless Heroics to implement them in your game.

Content Warning: Cyberbullying

Last year, I posted an early draft version of this preview to promote Limitless Heroics as I prepared for the Kickstarter campaign. In December, it, and consequently I, became the target of a Twitter hater cyberbullying attack by hundreds of people throughout the TTRPG community.

As a result of that, I pulled it down and wanted to hide. I seriously considered canceling the campaign altogether and closing up shop completely, but too many people were counting on me, and I was encouraged by some well-respected people in the industry to carry on, so with much trepidation, I continued with the campaign, avoiding Twitter and literally getting nauseated every time my phone made the new email chime for fear of the subsequent hate that flowed from that attack, and it has taken me this long to work up the courage to make this revised sample live again, reminding myself that, as big as the Twitter mob was, I’ve received nearly as many heartfelt notes of thanks and support, and ten times as many have already backed or preordered it. And with help from a licensed counselor, I’m learning to manage the subsequent anxiety and depression I’ve developed.

Ironically, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD myself, so I post this revision with confidence as it also reflects my own lived experience and that of many more who also have given input and affirm this as a reflection of their own experiences, plus it has been discussed and revised based on feedback from five sensitivity readers from multiple fields.

Because ADHD is a complex condition with a variety of expressions, we broke it into at least 3 separate traits with options for more, depending on your experience, but here are the three most common associated traits. (I personally have several more.)

You can use this sample by itself for free or purchase a copy of Limitless Heroics for a more comprehensive guide to disability, neurodiversity, and mental illness representation in fifth edition. Thanks for your interest in making the D&D and broader TTRPG space more inclusive and representative. (If you use it alone, IE = Impact Extent. See the tables for an explanation.)

LAYOUT NOTE: The format of this preview does not reflect the final format of Limitless Heroics, which we designed for maximum accessibility, including dyslexia-friendly.

Here’s a growing collection of resources to improve your life or to help you improve the lives of others.

Representation Resources

• Ableist Tropes in Storytelling « Oppression Aware Podcast, Fairy Tales, and Games (Interview)
• Writing Characters With Disabilities
• Forge Ahead: A Party to Access
• DnD Disability
• Combat Wheelchair 3
• Limitless Heroics

Miniatures

• Limitless Champions
• Combat Wheelchair
• Skinny Minis

Accessibility Resources

• Accessibility in Gaming Resources
• Roll for Kindness
• A big list of accessibility resource lists
• Braille Dice (Interview)

Mental Health Tools

• Jasper’s Game Day (Interview)
• TTRPG Safety Toolkit
• Consent in Gaming from Monte Cook Games
• MCDM Tabletop Safety Toolkit
• #CouchCon Charity Panel: “Sanity Checks & Stigma- Mental Health in TTRPGs” – YouTube

Publisher Resources

• CNIB Clear Print Guide
• ADA Compliant Print Short Guide
• Accessible Print Guide

Feel free to add more in the comments below!

Update: Don’t miss the adventures!

We are making a book of adventures that feature these characters and demonstrate how to use them respectfully in a roleplaying game. Follow the Kickstarter to get notified when it launches for an early backer bonus adventure!

And sign up for The Dragon’s Hoard to get weekly inclusive gaming updates, discounts, free gifts, and more in your inbox!

We are making history!

• What if your fantasy RPG world included disabled people, just like the real world?
• What if that disability representation went beyond wheelchairs and pirates?

We’re creating the largest, most diverse line of disabled fantasy miniatures ever made with 5e stat blocks and cards, which launched in a Kickstarter campaign on May 2, 2023.

Limitless Champions will make history as the largest, most diverse collection of disabled fantasy game miniatures ever created.

Character representation includes:

• Alopecia Areata
• Amputation
• Anxiety/Panic Disorder (represented by a fidget, grounding device, and emotional comfort animal)
• Arthritis
• Blindness
• Cerebral Palsy
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis)
• Down Syndrome
• Dwarfism (Diastrophic Dysplasia)
• Ectrodactyly
• Fibromyalgia
• Face Differences (Treacher Collins syndrome, Cleft Palate)
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Quadriplegia

Each character includes:

• 5e Stat block
• Background & Personality
• Full color character art
• Miniature (Choice of STL, pre-printed mini)
• Plot hooks for inclusion in your game

Also included:

• Condition markers accessible to visually impaired gamers
• Wooden chests with custom artwork
• Digital Planner stickers & VTT Tokens (Stretch Goal)
• Service Animals (Stretch Goals)

The character collection follows accessibility principles for maximum readability (dyslexia, colorblindness, etc.) and will be available in multiple formats: PDF, ePub, txt, audio, and it will be included in Lair format for all subscribers.

Wyrmworks Publishing prioritizes hiring disabled, neurodiverse, and mentally ill creators for all of our projects, and characters on this project are based on a combination of research and conversations from previous projects, real-world people who commissioned characters based on themselves, and consultation with therapists, advocacy professionals, people whose experiences are represented here, and before the final sensitivity reading and edit, besides playtesting, we will send the manuscript to backers who are represented here for additional feedback.

Missed the Campaign?

All of the pieces are available in our store:

Check out the whole collection

We’re accepting ongoing applications from a variety of freelancers who are interested in working with us to make lives better through tabletop roleplaying games. If you are a TTRPG creator or artist who would like to work with us, please submit the following.

Fans, podcasters, streamers, and anyone else who thinks more people should know about Wyrmworks Publishing’s products and wants to join us in helping you make lives better with tabletop roleplaying games, we have an offer for you!

Join the Wyrmworks Publishing Affiliate program, give your fans a discount, and get a commission as our thanks!

1. Sign up using the form below.
2. We will review your application. If we feel you are a good fit, we will send you a link to our affiliate contract and promotion graphics.
3. Once you sign the contract, we will give you a coupon code.
4. Anyone new who buys one or more of our products using your coupon code gets a 10% off discount, and you get a 10% commission! It’s a win for you, a win for your fans, and it helps get the word out about our products and mission!

And if you want to use our products in actual play shows or similar uses, we can help you with samples or discounts.

When we launched Limitless Heroics, we said, ”Limitless Heroics is more than an RPG book. It’s a petition. Back this project, and you communicate to every game publisher on earth that disabled people exist and can easily be included in their games, that the customers want that representation, and that accessibility and representation are necessary core features for future products.” Some scoffed at that. Others called it virtue signaling. But we truly believe that these small actions have a ripple effect on the industry and the world.

Efforts toward inclusion have definitely improved over the years. Third party products like Ancestry & Culture and An Elf and an Orc Had a Little Baby offer suggestions for better representation and an alternative to the bioessentialism that has had such a prominent role in Dungeons & Dragons throughout its existence. Wizards of the Coast began making changes with Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and took racial representation to the next level with the announcement of Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, and we applaud these efforts and see the leader of the industry providing a positive example for racial representation.

But what about disability representation?

The first well-known effort to better represent disabilities in role-playing games came from the viral Combat Wheelchair, followed closely by the inexplicably controversial ”ramps in dungeons” adventure in Candlekeep Mysteries, but note that the latter, while published by Wizards of the Coast, was only designed to be accessible by its author, Jennifer Kretchmer, not by direction from the company, which is obvious in that that’s the only adventure in the collection that includes any deliberate accessibility. (GURPS and the Hero System also include disabilities, but it does more harm than good.)

Besides a handful of very small games floating around itch.io, Accessible Games produces Psi-Punk and Survival of the Able, and Evil Hat’s Fate Accessibility Toolkit was the first deliberate representation publication by a second tier publisher, and it’s still considered the best of its kind in the industry, and while it’s brilliant, it’s also the best because it’s the only one of its kind until Limitless Heroics finishes production.

Other third party offerings have stepped into the D&D system with examples like Adventures in ADHD and our own Accessible Adventures of the Week, but those examples remain rare.

Proof that Tony Stark Has a Heart

But now Marvel has thrown down the Infinity Gauntlet of accessibility with the Marvel Multiverse RPG, including limited but deliberate disability representation. Disney/Marvel by no means leads the TTRPG space, but they’re the first company to enter it in recent years with the potential to challenge WotC on their home turf. While Marvel’s past TTRPG offerings haven’t challenged D&D for dominance, that’s not necessary even now to see more inclusion. (No, I have no illusions that Limitless Heroics influenced this decision.)

As more publishers, especially media companies whose reach extends beyond the TTRPG sphere, implement disability inclusion in their game systems and campaign worlds, the more it becomes expected. Imagine how odd a campaign world of all white characters would seem today thanks to the civil rights movements and the ongoing work of millions to demand racial representation. In the same way, games and other media without a broad range of orientations and gender expressions are becoming increasingly expected.

The more we see accurate and positive disability representation throughout different forms of media, the more it becomes a standard. I look forward to the day when the lack of disability representation becomes noticeable.

Our fans are actively dedicated to joining us in our mission to make lives better through tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPG).

We provide what you’d expect from a weekly publisher email: discounts, freebies, and news, but we also provide personal encouragement and opportunities to improve lives by working together. This is also the place for playtest announcements of upcoming products.

Our fans make the world a better place, and we truly treasure them, which is why we call them the Dragon’s Hoard, and we invite you to become a part of this treasure trove by signing up today and immediately getting your own free collection of treasure as soon as you confirm your subscription!

Hi, wonderful patrons! I know I’ve been quiet lately here on Patreon, and before that, I’ve been talking a lot about the Limitless Heroics Kickstarter, and now that it’s done, what’s next?

Of course, first of all, it’s far from done! If you’ve been watching the conversations in the Discord (Feel free to jump into the conversations!), everyone is busy creating characters, making artwork, writing additional pieces — over 200 magic items and so much more! We set July as the target date and are on track for that, and here’s a Patreon-exclusive teaser draft just for you that I just finished based on a backer submission! (Note: it hasn’t gone through our extensive editorial process yet, so expect it to change.)

GleamForth Wayfinder

Wondrous Item, Legendary

Follow the Gleam, and find your way. Hold me leftward lest you stumble. Let the third eye guide your path. Look to your heart to find your Truths. Center me, and I will bring you home though the darkness envelop you.

This labyrinthine eye provides protection and direction to those who would be lost without it. Unlike most prosthetic eyes, you hold this one instead of inserting it. When held in the left hand, it provides 5′ blindsight. When so held, you cannot use that hand for any other purpose. As an action, you can hold it mid-forehead and cast the find the path spell once per day. Once per day, as your action, you touch the heart of a creature you can reach that is charmed, frightened, or possessed by a celestial, an elemental, a fey, a fiend, or an undead. The creature you touch is no longer charmed, frightened, or possessed by such creatures. When held at the solar plexus, once every seven days, you can cast either plane shift or teleportation circle to your home. Your home need not have a teleportation circle inscribed, but when you acquire this eye, you must declare your home location as the destination of this function.

Pre-Orders Open

If anyone missed the Kickstarter (or knows someone who did — feel free to pass on this link), you can get the pre-order here, and use the coupon code LHPATREON to get $2 off! (Yes, you can share this coupon code along with the link!)

But then what?

We have a long to-do list that keeps getting longer, but picture this: imagine the city version of Limitless Heroics: a campaign city that explores concepts of accessibility where characters can have all the typical urban adventures while encountering what accessibility in its various forms would look like in a high fantasy setting! I’ve already received interested notes from accessibility advocates and universal design firms interested in helping with this and several writers and artists eager to work on future Wyrmworks Publishing projects, and if it’s well received, we can keep adding pieces to create a campaign world with different locations that explore and teach about all kinds of issues, all while having grand 5e adventures! Add in some miniatures based on some of the 50+ characters being designed for Limitless Heroics, and you have something truly unique that helps you improve others’ lives!

Tied to that big project, I have a collaborative project in the works that I can’t discuss yet, but it’s a partnership with at least one well known figure in the D&D space whose name is attached to some official D&D adventures. That one is just in the idea stage right now (We’re both pretty busy at the moment but hoping to get started on it later this year), but when I can say more, you’ll be the first to know! (OK, besides my wife. She hears these things first.)

And, I have some great guests lined up for future Gaining Advantage episodes, so expect more of those soon!

Thanks so much for your support! You’re helping make all this happen!

All the best!

Dale