As Donald Trump prepares to retake the oath of office on January 20, 2025—a day ironically shared with Martin Luther King Jr. Day—the TTRPG community braces for what lies ahead. Based on his previous term, campaign promises, and those he has appointed since the election, how will this impact the tabletop roleplaying game industry and hobby?

Import Tariffs & the TTRPG Supply Chain

High tariffs on imported goods could hit the TTRPG industry hard, especially for printed books. The US has limited options for hardcover offset printing, meaning many publishers rely on international printers to make high-quality books affordable. If Trump reinstates tariffs, TTRPG publishers could be forced to raise prices or shift to print-on-demand only, making it harder to produce affordable, high-quality products. If domestic printers need supplies imported, that will raise book prices further. These cost increases will make it nearly impossible for most TTRPG publishers to offer wholesale prices to Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS), which will limit the variety in those stores, the backbone of our hobby, and the players who depend on them for public game spaces and new TTRPG options.

Tip for Publishers: If you’re looking for a US-based printer that can print hardcover offset books, contact yearbook companies. I have learned of two that will print TTRPG books, although I’m not listing them here since I haven’t tried them and don’t know whether they have openings. As domestic printing demand increases, their availability may change.

Affirmative Action: Inclusivity Under Threat

We founded Wyrmworks Publishing on the principle of amplifying silenced voices and giving opportunities to the oppressed. We prioritize hiring disabled, neurodivergent, and mentally ill creators to ensure our products authentically reflect all voices and experiences. But with Trump’s Project 2025, affirmative action policies could be dismantled, penalizing companies that prioritize diversity, potentially forcing us out of business.

Regardless of governmental threats or penalties, Wyrmworks Publishing will fight with every resource we have to keep creating and hiring in line with our values. We’ll continue amplifying marginalized voices, standing with those who’ve been ignored or silenced, and showing that diversity isn’t just a checkbox—it’s the heart of what makes TTRPGs truly immersive and transformative.

Benefit Cuts: Hurting Players and Publishers Alike

The Trump administration has a history of trying to cut Medicaid, SNAP, and disability benefits—resources that many in our TTRPG community rely on. Losing these essential services would hurt countless players, especially those who turn to TTRPGs for mental health support and community connection. We know how much these games mean to so many.

So, we’re taking action. Wyrmworks Publishing is working on accessible options to ensure TTRPGs remain within reach, regardless of someone’s financial situation. Sign up for The Dragon’s Hoard or support us on Patreon to get updates on our initiatives and help us keep this community strong.

Meanwhile, we’re encouraging everyone to use #DefiantKindness with whatever resources you have to help those who are struggling in your community, especially those directly impacted by these forthcoming changes, like those struggling financially and of tenuous housing or immigration status. The way to Make America Great Again is through empathy, compassion, and working together to improve the lives of the disadvantaged.

And of course, contact your representatives to tell them how these changes do not put “America First,” but rather hurt American small businesses.

And thanks to our patrons, if you’re already struggling financially, you can grab some free Community Copies now. We will be restructuring this program to add more copies and a wider variety in the near future.

Roll initiative, and leave a comment below with your thoughts, ideas, or suggestions to help struggling gamers!

How exciting! Take a look at that screenshot from the preview video for the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Players Handbook (PHB)! They’re showing a picture of a character in a wheelchair and talking about new ways to customize your character!

I told my family and friends. I said, when we launched Limitless Heroics, that this is a movement, that we’re showing the industry that people care about disability, neurodiversity, and mental illness representation. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) hired a fantastic consultant to talk to them about the importance of authentic representation. They showed us what was coming in that video. Even if our work wasn’t an impetus for this change, it’s a Divine Smite against ableism!

So I talked to some of my friends who got advance copies and asked them how the 2024 PHB handled disability inclusion! “There’s nothing there.” Is there maybe a wheelchair in the equipment section?! “No, nothing like that.”

Really?

Today, I looked for myself to see whether they missed something. I searched the D&D Beyond version for anything that might reveal an overlooked section. Nothing. That video was poorly planned at best and completely misleading at worst.

Roll for Racism

But it doesn’t stop there. Because WotC (admirably) wanted to remove terms like half-elf and half-orc due to problematic racist connotations, they removed all rules for creating any character of mixed ancestry. They could have included an adapted variation of the custom lineages from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything as a paragraph or two instead, but they didn’t, so the 2024 core rules allow only pureblood people groups, effectively gamifying miscegenation laws.

Then, by refusing to follow the distinction between biology and culture as begun with the excellent Ancestry and Culture that nearly every 5e variant since has emulated, they doubled down on the bioessentialism that they attempted to avoid. Contrast that with PJ Coffey’s excellent Homebrew and Hacking: Crafting Heritages and Cultures, which not only offers an infinite variety while distinguishing between biology and culture but also offers a Creative Commons licensed SRD including a digital braille version for accessibility!

GM: “A Hadozee and Tanis Pureblood-Elven walk into the tavern….”

OK, but what about neurodivergence?

Neurodiversity gets even less authentic representation than physical disabilities in games and other media, but WotC showed their (one-time) commitment to this by introducing Asteria in the Book of Many Things, their first autistic character. But sadly, their ADHD representation wasn’t as accurate.

With ability scores, the PHB suggests, “Once you’ve assigned your ability scores, give some thought to what those scores might say about your character’s appearance and personality.” It includes suggestions for high and low scores, but the only remotely neurodivergent trait included, “Fidgety,” is listed under High Dexterity. I can tell you as a fidgety guy with ADHD, Dexterity is my dump stat. Clumsiness is a common trait for ADHD, so if that was an attempt at subtle inclusion, they did not hit the necessary DC for a success.

But not a critical fail

That said, they did make some improvements.

The artwork includes a vast range of demographics, showing far more diversity than ever, although still no body differences like face differences, body proportion differences, or pigmentation varieties such as vitiligo. The inclusion of disabled characters in the artwork is commendable, even if it’s a picture that lacks 1000 words that should explain them.

Common Sign Language has been added to the common languages list.

The physical version has a larger font for better readability than before but still no braille, not even electronic braille, even though WotC promised this back in 2020.

The Best Improvement

But if I could get them to include one subtle change, one Limited Wish, it would be the inclusion of this sentence, which does appear in the 2024 PHB:

Many effects impose a condition, a temporary state that alters the recipient’s capabilities.

Conditions like Blinded, Deafened, and Paralyzed have often been used to represent the permanent experiences of blindness, deafness, and paralysis, but we have argued that conditions in 5e, in spite of the problematic images in the 2014 PHB (Thanks for removing those!), are designed to represent temporary circumstances, not the permanent disabilities we encounter and experience in the real world. WotC finally codified that.

This is a critical inclusion. This clarifies that disabilities are more complex than rolling with disadvantage. It hints that disabilities are nonbinary spectrums. It removes the insinuation that people can’t learn to adapt to their disabilities and even thrive with them.

Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into that, but we’ll take our victories where we can get them and use them to ascend yet another step in an inaccessible world.

We are still in Initiative, and it’s our turn.

Discover New Realms with Our Limited-Time Bundle!

Elevate your Dungeons & Dragons 5E campaigns with a treasure trove of new content! This limited-time bundle on DriveThruRPG brings together exciting titles from multiple publishers. Get incredible value and fresh adventures for your table. For a limited time, you can get this amazing collection at a significant discount.

• Total Value: $32.37
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Included Titles:

1. Maze of Mezeria for 5e by Earl of Fife Games

   • A thrilling 53-page adventure filled with labyrinthine secrets and survival challenges, best for 1st or 2nd level characters.
   • Features new adversaries, a fully keyed map, and fatigue mechanics to test your players.

2. Stoneharbor (Andovir Atlas) by Wyrmworks Publishing

   • A vibrant port city that integrates accessibility and diverse cultures, perfect for any campaign world.
   • Includes adventure hooks, new ancestries, backgrounds, and NPCs to enrich your stories.

3. Cavern Crawl #047 – Vein Vengeance (5e) by Grim Press

   • A 4th-level adventure featuring new monsters, magic items, and detailed battle maps.
   • Perfect for a party of four to six players.

4. Asger Earthsculptor — People of the Vale by T.M. van Dalen RPG

   • Focuses on a wizard obsessed with earth magic, including a unique encounter and exploration-focused mini-boss battle.

5. Into the Paper World: Ashcan Edition by Echidna Design

   • A whimsical and dark setting inspired by forgotten creative works, featuring new monsters, magic items, and adventure hooks.

6. Siege of the Silver Stag (5e) by Scoundrel Game Labs

   • A horror survival one-shot where players must withstand waves of zombies while managing NPC interactions.

Don’t Miss Out!

This bundle is an unbeatable way to inject fresh life into your campaigns with diverse adventures and rich settings. Whether you’re exploring the depths of a maze, navigating a bustling port city, or surviving a siege, this collection has something for every D&D 5E fan. Grab it now before it’s gone and bring new excitement to your gaming table!

AI chatbots are immensely popular tools, and many have speculated about how to use them to improve D&D and other TTRPG games. Here’s a list of prompts that you can use to improve your game.

Add Variety to Your Game

Give me some recommendations for great D&D 5e books and resources from third party publishers

If you ask a chatbot for these resources directly, it can create suggested resources from adventures to stat blocks, but because AI uses an average of everything, you’ll only get average results. It can be helpful to get you past Blank Page Syndrome (AKA Writers Block), but everything gets repetitive quickly, and don’t expect any ideas that will blow away your players.

But by suggesting products made by actual design professionals, it might show you some of the more popular books by creative designers who know and love the game and have invested themselves in making your game better. Or you can check out the most popular titles at the DMs Guild.

It will hallucinate though, suggesting books that don’t exist, so you’re probably better off asking people about their favorite resources or going to the suggested companies’ websites.

Get Advice to Improve Your Game

Give me a list of D&D 5e blogs that give Dungeon Masters great advice, and give me directions how to subscribe to them

Because you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s hard to get general advice from a chatbot that’s helpful beyond the most generic suggestions. But thankfully, the hobby boasts many amazing blogs full of great tips that will answer questions you didn’t know you had and give you tips you’d never think to ask for. Or you can follow the RPG Blogroll to get a steady feed of insights and suggestions from people who know the game and write from extensive experience.

Get Feedback to Improve Your Ideas

Give me a list of online communities where Dungeon Masters give each other advice

While you could feed your latest adventure idea into a chatbot and ask for feedback, even minimal experience playing the game as a human will give you more insight than a chatbot. The problem is that chatbots don’t have insights. A black pudding has more insight than a chatbot.

Instead, find online places with other players and GMs. All of the major social media platforms have them. Personally, to avoid chasing algorithms, I prefer oldschool forums like EN World.

Make a Game Your Players Will Love

Give me a few questions I can ask my players to make sure they’re all enjoying the D&D 5e game that I’m running as Dungeon Master

You can’t ask a chatbot what your players value most in a game. It has no values. You have to ask the players. But a few pointed questions can be helpful.

Impress your players with amazing art for your encounters

Give me a list of sources to find low cost or public domain non-AI fantasy artwork that would work for my D&D game

Instead of exploiting talented artists by using their work without their permission, find some interesting art & use that for inspiration. It’s the reverse of how most DMs design their encounters, but perusing the Smithsonian collection, Wikimedia Commons, or other sources can give you many adventure, monster, or treasure ideas. Sadly, most public stock art sites have become nearly useless as they’ve been flooded with AI images. If you’re looking for something specific, DriveThruRPG is the only fantasy art site I know of that forbids AI images to be added as stock art (although they still allow it to be used in other products with a content flag and haven’t removed the hundreds of AI-generated images currently in their library), support actual artists so they can keep creating original pieces by purchasing stock art from DriveThruRPG.

Notice the Pattern?

OK, this article is a but tongue-in-cheek, but I hope you recognize the point. What makes tabletop roleplaying games great is the people. For all the amazement over AI tools, human creativity can ponder an idea, consider it, and imagine it. AI takes a Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder of words and mindlessly puts them into a mold, the opposite of what makes analog games so great.

Talk to people — local and online communities. Support creators, both the homebrew community and professional designers and artists. Get advice from people who care about their players and want everyone at your table to have a great time.

At Wyrmworks Publishing, our mission is to help you make lives better through tabletop roleplaying games. That mission inherently depends on you — we can’t do this ourselves. We — our team, our patrons, and our subscribers — the Dragon’s Hoard — worked together as a party of thousands of heroes to make lives better last year.

Here’s what we did together in a year (in roughly chronological order):

Changing the TTRPG Industry

We were the only public voice speaking to the effect of the OGL debacle on accessibility (that I could find, and I looked). In the short time Hasbro posted its final OGL survey, that page got 27,000 visitors. I hope that some of the readers who subsequently filled out the survey form, including the hundreds who clicked through to the survey from that page, included those accessibility insights in their responses. And I hope that it in some small way added to the influence of so many others who fought for our community. More than that, I hope that it raised representation and accessibility awareness at Hasbro for future designs across their product lines. We’ll never know whether they heard us, but we’ll keep talking about it regardless.

I was asked to design a character for Azrael’s Guide to the Apocalypse, the sequel to The Adventurer’s Guide to the Bible. They included this sidebar with my character, Rodney Watts, and another disabled character who was also included:

Disability in the Afterlife
In 1 Corinthians 15:42-49, Paul briefly ponders what bodies will look like when we awaken in the spiritual realm, saying “there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another.” Basically, no one knows what our bodies will look like in the world to come, but it is reasonable to assume they will be an “idealized version of ourselves,” whatever that means to the individual. For many people, this likely means an end to their physical and mental disabilities.
However, our minds and bodies have a way of shaping our identity – our sense of who we are. For example, one person may feel that their reliance on a prosthetic is a hindrance, another person may feel that their prosthetic is an extension of their own body, and an integral part of their physical identity. As a result, the diversity of human bodies in the afterlife is likely to be diverse as it is in the Physical Realm, with some people choosing to be freed from aspects of their physical form that they did not like, and others choosing to embrace their disability as an eternal part of who they are. This is why some people (like Rodney or Rodriguez) may appear in this adventure with a disability, even though they have already entered the afterlife.

– Heroes of the Heavenly Host, p. 41

We worked with DriveThruRPG to add “Ableist” to their CCP non-discrimination template, and seven companies followed that suggestion in their agreements so far besides the one who already had.

Limitless Champions: Making Disabled Fantasy Heroes a Physical Reality

We crowdfunded Limitless Champions. We created the largest, most diverse collection of disabled fantasy minis ever made. Like stock art, very few miniatures include disability representation, and those available are mostly limited to representation through wheelchairs and canes. We expanded that range significantly, including miniatures and printable STL files, cards, accessible condition markers, and more. If you missed the campaign, you can find the collection in our shop.

In 2024, we will crowdfund Limitless Champions Adventures, a collection of adventures featuring these NPCs. To supplement those adventures, we created Limitless Champions Adventures Bonus Encounters with STLs and animated maps. They were each available free for a week or more, and they’re currently available through our Patreon.

Interviews

I love meeting the amazing people using TTRPGs to make lives better on our Gaining Advantage show. (We posted 11 episodes last year.) I also had the honor of being interviewed last year (including here a few from late 2022):

• Accessible Games
• ADHD20
• Alexandria RPG (October 2022)
• ComicBook.com
• Disabled & Dragons
• Everyone-Games Gaming and Mental Health Panel
• Invisible Not Broken
• Randomworlds
• Red Panda Publishing
• Tufts University Tabletop Club & neurodiverse students (October 2022)
• Wired.com

Community Copies

We want to make our resources available to everyone, but poverty prevents a lot of people from accessing many TTRPG resources. So to allow us to both pay our team and make our content as available as possible, we include full previews of our content on the product pages in our store. But that preview isn’t accessible or convenient for many people, so we also partner with you to make Community Copies of some of our products available. Thanks to individual Community Copy purchases, crowdfunding add-ons, and Patreon rewards, you helped us make the following free copies available:

• Limitless Heroics Coloring Book: 250
• Limitless Heroics, Full Edition: 110
• Limitless Heroics, Players Edition: 1
• Total: $5,678

We still have plenty of copies available, so go get one or more of them if you’d benefit, and please share that link with anyone else who needs one.

Specific Awareness

We released the Heart of Ice adventure for Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week.

And for Porphyria Awareness Week, we produced a new magic item shop and raised $390 for the American Porphyria Foundation.

The Dragon’s Lair

We launched the Dragon’s Lair, a modular database of all of our publications, maps, and lots of exclusive content. It is the most affordable, accessible way to use our content. As of this writing, it has 1,704 entries.

We also launched the Wyrm’s Workshop, an opportunity for you to get your ideas published in our books! This also gave us the opportunity to hire more disabled, neurodivergent, and mentally ill freelancers. And because it costs money to pay those freelancers fairly, we developed a credits system via our Patreon to enable those without the financial means to contribute their ideas to the Wyrm’s Workshop.

Fighting for Online Accessibility

We participated in the Reddit blackout to protest for improved accessibility and helped spread the word about their discriminatory policies. When they didn’t back down, we launched an alternative to r/disabled_dungeons.

#AccessPunk

We created a new literary genre, accesspunk, with the development of the Andovir campaign world, currently in its early stages and available to patrons. Andovir was selected among 70 out of over 600 entries for Kobold Press’s Labyrinth. We created two new languages (the first of many) for Andovir to model improved cultural accessibility in a campaign world.

And we emailed 49 notes of encouragement to the Dragon’s Hoard. (A big thanks to those of you who expressed your appreciation for the encouragement. That becomes ammunition to fight my inner critic.)

I’ve also had conversations with other publishers and content creators almost every day about accessibility and representation in their products.

What’s coming in 2024?

Here’s a sampling of what we’re already working on

• We have at least two, hopefully three Kickstarters coming in 2024. The first two are currently in the playtesting and editing stages:

  • Ready-to-Roll: Last minute, no prep adventures: The first in a series, get the full digital adventure for just $1! Get notified when the project launches!
  • Limitless Champions Adventures: A collection of adventures featuring the characters from Limitless Champions! Get notified when the project launches!

• Expanding Andovir and explaining accesspunk in more detail
• Adding audio to existing and forthcoming projects
• VTT Adaptations (Foundry and Roll20 conversions of Limitless Heroics are nearly complete and in the bug-fixing stage), others are in the works
• Braille adaptations
• Making our products available free in Bookshare, a global library of accessible books

We have more plans in the works, which we share with our patrons.

How can you support this work?

• Sign up for the Dragon’s Hoard weekly emails. Get weekly updates, free gifts, discounts, opportunities to make a difference, and encouragement.
• Support us via Patreon. We get a chance to know each other better, you get access to all of our work, and we give away more Community Copies!
• Rate our products (and write reviews) on DriveThruRPG, your favorite podcast directory (Apple, Google, etc.), and our store.
• Rate our company on Google and Facebook.
• Leave a comment below or on any of our products or posts.
• Send us a note to share how our work has made a difference to you or people you care about.

Finally, a heartfelt thank-you. When we started this, we wondered whether anyone would agree with our intentions and resonate with our work. We wondered whether this ridiculous idea of changing the world by rolling dice and pretending together could change lives and make the world better. Hundreds of people told me it wouldn’t work, and that I should quit before I started.

And the truth is, it couldn’t. Not without you. But here you are. And here’s how far we’ve come. And we’re just getting started. And we’re not going to stop.

Here at Wyrmworks Publishing, we don’t want the corner on inclusion and accessibility. We want these concepts to become so ubiquitous in the TTRPG industry that our work becomes redundant, at which point, we’ll turn our focus to one of the other countless struggles in our society that keep people from knowing how loved and valued they are.

We have a long way to go, but we’re making steps in the right direction.

In May 2023, I emailed DriveThruRPG to add “ableism” to the nondiscrimination template for their Content Guidelines for Community Content Programs.

What are Community Content Programs?

A Community Content Program (CCP) allows third-party creators (like us) to create supplemental content for existing TTRPGs, like adventures, character expansions, and more, making more resources available for that game without breaking copyright and trademark laws. They often include artwork, style guides, and other resources to help creators make their publications capture the feel of the core game. DMs Guild, which allows the use of Dungeons & Dragons IP, is the most popular, but DriveThruRPG partners with about three dozen other companies to offer similar programs for other games.

So what’s up with the Content Guidelines?

When a publisher sets up a CCP with DriveThruRPG, they include Content Guidelines that tell creators what they can and can’t do with the game content. DriveThruRPG provides new CCP partners with a sample Content Guidelines template, which the partner can use as much or little as they want. Those guidelines usually include a nondiscrimination clause, and many use DriveThruRPG’s template for this as well:

Neither your products nor any promotional material, including blog/social media posts or press releases, may contain racist, homophobic, discriminatory, or other repugnant views; overt political agendas or views; depictions or descriptions of criminal violence against children; rape or other acts of criminal perversion; or other obscene material. We reserve the right to remove any materials that we determine do not conform to our guidelines for this program.

Nobody wants their game to be used to promote nazis. (OK, nobody that DriveThruRPG would be willing to partner with.)

In May 2023, I looked through the guidelines for all of the CCPs, and I noticed that only one company, Onyx Path Publishing, included a reference to specific ableism in their guidelines.

I contacted DriveThruRPG:

Given that the template words it, “racist, homophobic, discriminatory, or other repugnant views,” after checking every agreement, I found that only Onyx Path’s specifically mentions “ableist.” I note it especially since ableism is so widely accepted in our culture, unlike most other forms of discrimination, and while it’s certainly covered under, “discriminatory” and “repugnant” in my view, not everyone would agree, especially in the TTRPG space, but I’d like to suggest that you consider clarifying and adding “ableist” to that clause in the template for future CCPs and possibly suggest it for current ones.

A mere ninety minutes later, they replied to let me know that they were changing the template and contacting all CCP partners with the suggestion and would update any change requests immediately. (Again, each CCP decides on their own guidelines wording, so this change is 100% optional.) Considering that this is a change to legal documentation, these are weighty decisions, so I was astonished at the speed of the response!

So like Teos Abadía’s recent article about changes in D&D Beyond’s content, this is old news that you didn’t know about. I waited to write this to allow time for companies to make changes so we could celebrate as many as possible.

What changed?

As of this writing six months later, the following CCPs now specifically forbid ableist content (Remember that Onyx Path Publishing included it already):

• Canis Minor by Onyx Path Publishing (Pugmire or Monarchies of Mau)
• Storypath Nexus by Onyx Path Publishing (Storypath)
• Hero Kids Creator’s Guild by Hero Forge Games (Hero Kids & Super Kids)
• Tiny Trove by Gallant Knight Games (Tiny Dungeon: Second Edition, Tiny Frontiers: Revised, Tiny Wastelands, Tiny Frontiers: Mecha & Monsters, Tiny Cthulhu, Beach Patrol, Tiny Gunslingers, Tiny Living Dead, Tiny Pirates)
• Chronicle System Guild by Green Ronin Publishing (Sword Chronicle)
• Coyote and Crow Fireside by Coyote & Crow LLC (Coyote & Crow)
• Starforger’s Guild by Alligator Alley Entertainment (Esper Genesis)
• 2d20 World Builders by Modiphius Entertainment (Achtung! Cthulhu & Titanic Triumph)
• Entromancy Cryptographers Guild by (Entromancy: A Cyberpunk Fantasy RPG and Entromancy: Hacker Battles)

I have every expectation that the rest consider their existing “other repugnant views” umbrella clause sufficient. If someone reported CCP content to them that discriminated against people based on ability, they would respond accordingly. Some CCP partners not listed here have personally assured me of this.

If you are a CCP owner and change your agreement, let me know, and I’ll be thrilled to add you to the list!

Why is this important?

While our culture has taken great strides to reduce discrimination against marginalized demographics over the past several decades, it’s a slow process. In every case, we still have a long way to go. However, ableism remains the most widely accepted form of discrimination.

To use a mainstream example, we recently watched the Peacock TV show, Baking It, and in the Season 1 Finale, the hosts, Andy Samberg and Maya Rudolph, did a bit called, “Nut Roast,” a parody of celebrity roasts. Here’s an excerpt:

Hey, look who it is, it’s walnut. Hey, walnut, you lumpy son of a nut, you’re the Elephant Man of the nuts. “I am not a good snack!”…

Uh-oh, it’s peanut…Look at him, he’s just sitting there. Somebody get him an epi-pen, I think he’s in shock!

Baking It, s01,e06

In December 2021, they mocked people with facial differences and with life-threatening allergies in rapid succession. My family cringed, and I searched online for an apology by NBC or anyone from the cast or crew. Nothing. I searched for blog posts or news articles about the obvious ableist jokes. Nothing. Not even a Reddit post or tweet. In two years, nobody on earth with Internet access even noticed and cared enough to mention it until this post. And this is just one example.

We have a long way to go. We’re counting on the gaming community to roll initiative with us. And we deeply appreciate DriveThruRPG and the eight TTRPG producers who quietly but publicly entered this particular fray. They deserve recognition for leading the industry along with many others who have helped raise awareness through other efforts.

Has this changed the TTRPG industry?

Has this changed the content made available via these CCPs? I hope not. I hope that all of those who create CCP content already consciously avoided ableist content. I have friends who create CCP content, and I know that they don’t need a clause in a legal agreement to make sure their products are welcoming and inclusive to all people. I expect that those who changed their agreements did so because they already found ableism repugnant and would not want their brand associated with it.

But I also hope that the inclusion of one extra word causes everyone who sees it to experience a subtle influence. Maybe they subconsciously tweak the language in their projects to avoid microaggressions. Maybe they consider adding a disabled character and discussing it with someone whose lived experience is represented by that character. I regularly encounter compassionate people who don’t realize ableism exists. Sometimes simply learning the word makes them more sensitive to it when they encounter it.

Finally, thank you to our Patrons and everyone who supports our work and raises a sword with us or other TTRPG parties to welcome everyone to the table. Rule systems don’t make this hobby great — you do.

Ever wished you could bring your character to life in exciting new ways? Wyrmworks Publishing is unlocking new possibilities to make your tabletop RPG experience more immersive and inclusive than ever before.

Through our Patreon, you can now:

• Go behind the scenes, and hang out with our team on our Discord server
• Get a peek at our upcoming plans, and offer your input
• Explore Limitless Heroics and all of our other titles in an online modular format
• Get exclusive patron-only resources to use in your games
• Get full copies of all of our Foundry VTT content
• Get full downloadable copies of all of our published products
• Donate Community Copies of our products to those who can’t afford them
• Create canon content and shape our worlds through Wyrm’s Workshop credits
• Receive monthly handcrafted gifts and accessories for your game nights
• Have me personally run customized games just for you and your group

We’ve also added a new $2 tier so everyone can join our inclusive community. (Check it out with a 7-day free trial!)

All patrons support our mission of creating disability, mental health, and neurodiversity supplements for tabletop RPGs.

Tier	Pseudodragon	Dragon Egg	Wyrmling	Young Dragon	Adult Dragon	Ancient Dragon	Dracolich
Tier Pledge	$2	$5	$15	$30	$75	$125	$250
Discord, Show ?s & Thanks, Trello	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Wyrm's Workshop Credits		1	2	3	8	13	20
Foundry VTT		🖥️	🖥️	🖥️	🖥️	🖥️	🖥️
Lair Access		🐉	🐉	🐉	🐉	🐉	🐉
Community Copies Donated: Wyrm's Workshop Credit			1	2	4	7	10
Community Copies Donated: Coloring			1	1	1	2	5
Full Versions			📜	📜	📜	📜	📜
Community Copies Donated: Limitless Heroics Players			1		1	2	3
Wyrm's Workshop Sidequest Credits				15	40	75	150
Community Copies Donated: Limitless Heroics Full				1	3	5	10
Community Copies Donated: Limitless Champions Adventures				1	1	2	3
PBP Game					🛜
Gift Box						🎁	🎁
I DM a game for you							🎲

With your support, we can keep making the hobby more welcoming and help you play the character you imagine.

Welcome to inclusion.

I’m excited to announce that Teresa and I will be attending Gamehole Con in Madison, WI on Friday, October 20th! It’s been quite a while since my last con experience, back in the 80s at Gen Con in Milwaukee when I was in high school. We’re looking forward to checking it out.

We’re thrilled at the prospect of meeting lots of fellow gamers, creators, and fans. Gamehole Con is known for its welcoming community, and we can’t wait to be a part of it.

Our plan for the day is to wander around the convention, exploring the various vendors, and, most importantly, connecting with fellow attendees. From mid-morning until around 5 p.m., we’ll be soaking in the atmosphere, checking out all the fantastic offerings, hopefully catching a seminar, and getting to know some of the incredible people who make the TTRPG world so awesome.

If you’re at Gamehole Con too, please do come and say hello. We’d love to get to know you!

Reddit is preparing to go public, which means they need to demonstrate profit to potential stockholders. But profit and control comes at a cost, as we in the TTRPG community know all too well. Their recent API pricing changes have ignited a battle for equal access. It’s time to roll initiative once again.

Impact on the TTRPG Community

The TTRPG community thrives on collaboration, creativity, and diverse perspectives. Reddit has been a vital platform for building real-world adventuring parties of every kind. With the API pricing changes, the TTRPG community faces significant challenges:

• Limited Customization: Third-party apps, like Apollo and Dystopia, have allowed TTRPG fans to personalize their Reddit experience like a homebrew fantasy world. These tools have facilitated streamlined access to TTRPG-specific subreddits, making it easier to find relevant discussions, game advice, and homebrew content.
• Community Engagement: Third-party apps offer advanced features for interacting with Reddit, including real-time notifications, improved search functions, and intuitive interfaces. This gives TTRPG fans Advantage to engage in discussions, seek advice, and collaborate on projects.
• Accessibility Barriers: Many TTRPG players with disabilities rely on third-party apps to overcome the accessibility Wall of Force in the official Reddit apps and interfaces. The loss of these apps will limit their ability to participate fully in TTRPG communities and access valuable resources.

Broader Impact on Disabled Individuals

While the TTRPG community is directly affected, it is essential to recognize that the API changes have an even greater impact on various disabled individuals:

• Visually Impaired Community: Blind and visually impaired individuals heavily rely on third-party apps to access Reddit content through assistive technologies. These apps provide the necessary features for screen readers, alternative text, and other accessibility enhancements that enable equal participation.
• Transcribers and Describers: Reddit is home to numerous volunteer groups dedicated to transcribing and describing images for alt text, making visual content accessible to individuals with visual impairments. The loss of third-party apps may hinder the crucial work of these groups, resulting in a significant loss of accessibility for the broader Reddit community.
• Other Disability Communities: The API changes resonate beyond the visually impaired community. Individuals with motor disabilities, cognitive impairments, or other disabilities may also rely on third-party apps (or hope for new ones that give them better access) to navigate Reddit more efficiently and effectively. The loss of these apps would create additional barriers to access and participation for these individuals.

Unifying for Accessibility and Inclusion

To ensure that the TTRPG community and disabled individuals continue to thrive on Reddit, collective action is vital. By joining forces and advocating for accessibility, we can make a difference:

• Amplify Voices: Share the stories and experiences of TTRPG players and disabled individuals affected by these API changes. Spread the word through your social circles like chain lightning.
• Join the Blackout: Join and follow r/Save3rdPartyApps to learn more, or, if you moderate a subreddit, its sister sub r/ModCoord. Read about the upcoming Blackout on June 12–14, and plan to participate. (And find more suggestions)
• Message Your Mods: Encourage the mods of your favorite subreddits to join the Blackout.
• Seek Media Attention: This change comes on the heels of Reddit’s IPO announcement like a sycophantic imp chasing an arch-devil. Will potential stockholders want to support a company that has received media attention for knowingly making recent discriminatory choices?

It’s time to stand together to ensure that Reddit remains an inclusive platform for all, fostering creativity, collaboration, and accessibility within the TTRPG community and beyond.

Disabilities and chronic conditions are isolating. For us, any kind of social life is a unicorn. As Briana describes at The Daily Disability,

The more my health problems grew, the harder it was to find a community that I felt like I fit in to. I joined group after group in hopes of finding a few that would help how I was feeling. I ended up not even being able to join discussions in one of the groups, because I didn’t have close relationships with anyone in the group. It was very disheartening.

Even when we have a free block of time that could be spent with friends,

• My ADHD and hearing loss make parties, conventions, crowded restaurants, and anywhere else with a lot of noise nearly impossible to navigate, as I can’t filter one voice from another.
• Other neurodivergent traits and mental illness in my family lead to disdainful looks and disparaging comments from the public.
• Potential friends ghost us when they get a taste of the chaos that is our life, unable to handle the stress.
• Neighbors avoid us.

You might be experiencing stress just reading this list.

But aside from our church, the one environment I’ve found welcoming is the tabletop roleplaying game community, at least the ones I’ve facilitated. Here’s how that magic works:

Enchanting Communities

While the enchantment school of magic tends to focus more on manipulating people, there’s power in making a roleplaying game community charming. An accessible environment communicates a welcoming atmosphere. Proactively designing an environment considers a wide range of access needs.

• Consider diverse mobility needs. Do people have space to move?
• How does your environment affect those with sensory needs, such as sensitivity to noise?
• Do you allow electronic character sheets and other assistive technology? 
• Do you meet in a place that’s financially prohibitive to people on limited budgets, like a restaurant or a FLGS with a cover charge?
• Do you exclude people like us from your game world? (Check out Limitless Champions as a way to add that representation.)

Evoking Trust

You can say you’re welcoming, but we’ve been targets of Vicious Mockery before, so you’ll need more than one successful Charisma check to gain our trust. So be patient with us if we seem reserved or aloof. It’s not arrogance. It’s caution. If you want people to feel like they can relax and truly have fun at your table, allow time for that to happen.

• We may ask for less than we need, worried about how willing you are to coexist with us and being used to settling for less.
• We want to be treated like any other member of the party, but don’t ignore our traits and degrees of ability, either. That is, we want to be accepted as we are, neither expecting us to be someone else nor treating us as inspirations.
• When things get inconvenient for you, but you roll with it like you would any other friend’s needs, then we start to trust, but we all move at a different rate on that scale.

Conjuring Community

So you have a welcoming and inclusive environment, but we’re still sitting at home, reluctant to put ourselves out there. We may never know about you, and we’re probably not looking, because you’re a unicorn.

• Join local online communities, and mention inclusion and representation. Demonstrate that you’re an ally.
• If you play at an FLGS, put a copy of Limitless Heroics on the corner of the table.
• Post flyers on LFG boards at your FLGS. Include a note that you’re accessible.

Friendship Necromancy

We may believe that the idea of social connections or even friendships is dead, that it would truly take some magic to change that. But by creating inclusive and welcoming spaces, we can create environments that truly communicate that D&D is for everyone.