Limitless Heroics Acknowledgements

October 31, 2022
aquatic humanoid making the sign for, "thank-you"

This project is an act of love and dedication by so many people. I will be thankful to each of you for the rest of my life, and you will always hold a special place in my heart for putting yours into this project to make it a reality. You each make lives better, starting with mine.

Wordsmiths

Dale Critchley (Owner, Wyrmworks Publishing)

Primary author of Limitless Heroics, Dale Critchley is the owner, lead writer, and chief tea drinker at Wyrmworks Publishing. He’s been playing tabletop roleplaying games since 1982 and launched Wyrmworks Publishing as a hobby in 2000 to share his homebrew resources with the world. In 2021, after seeing the power that a TTRPG group can have to change participants’ lives for the better, he rededicated Wyrmworks Publishing to focus on using TTRPGs as a tool for change and turned a hobby into a full-time pursuit. 

Beth the Bard, Layout Editor

Beth the Bard is the author of “She is the Ancient: A Genderbent Curse of Strahd” guidebook, now a Platinum best-seller on DMs Guild. She’s also a general TTRPG writer, graphic designer, and professional dungeon master.

Joie Martin, Cover Layout and Consultation

Joie Martin owns Drowning Moon Studios, a roleplaying-game publisher that has produced over a dozen titles and two anthologies since being founded in 2017. They have been writing, developing, editing, and doing layout and graphic design for tabletop and live action roleplaying games since 1996. Beyond roleplaying games, Joie has produced content for a variety of markets, including ARGs, interactive theater, and immersive experiences. They have been a key speaker on panels about roleplaying game design at events such as DragonCon, MomoCon, and Metatopia, and was Head Judge for the 2020 IDGN Indie Groundbreaker Awards.

Melissa Critchley, Sensitivity Consultant

Melissa Critchley, MA, lives with multiple disabilities. She has worked in the disability field for over 15 years and holds a graduate level certificate in Disability Policy and Services from the University of Minnesota in addition to her interdisciplinary master’s degree. She also recently completed an advanced certificate in Equity and Diversity and is an advocate for social justice and equitable societal change.

Melissa has played quite a few tabletop RPG games through the decades which include Shadowrun, BESM, D20 Modern, Mutants and Masterminds, and Star Wars. However, until we were confined to our homes during Covid quarantines, Melissa hated D&D. A good friend invited her to play over Discord, and despite her objections, convinced her that she “never had him as a DM.” It didn’t take long before she changed her mind about D&D, and it’s now her favorite game.

Naomi Hazlett, Sensitivity Consultant & Copy Editor

Naomi Hazlett, Bsc., MScOT, OT Reg. (Ont.) is a writer, editor, and occupational therapist with chronic pain. She is neurodivergent, queer, and lives with chronic pain and mental illness. Her work has most recently focused on social accountability, diversity, and inclusion in occupational therapy and gaming, including the adoption of a critical disability lens. Naomi has played and run TRPGs for over 20 years; she has worked with organizations including Level Up Gaming, BALANCE for Blind Adults, and LOFT Community Services to run accessible TRPGs, and consults for D&DBeyond. Naomi has multiple publications in academic journals, magazines, blogs, and poetry collections, and is currently the Managing Editor of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists’ national magazine, Occupational Therapy Now. She can be found online at @naomi_hazlett or can be reached at [email protected]. 

Simone Arnold, Sensitivity Consultant & Character Creator

Simone Arnold, MA, Certified Geek Therapist, is a neurodivergent, queer clinical mental health counselor in the state of Vermont. They have been working in the mental health field since 2013 across a variety of settings including as a crisis clinician and currently as a counselor at a designated agency. Through this they’ve had the opportunity to work with people across the disability spectrum. They are also establishing their own private practice that is queer friendly with a special focus on ADHD and Autism. Simone has been gaming since 2012 and has had the opportunity to play across an array of systems including D&D fifth edition, Pathfinder, Dread, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Call of Cthulhu and more.

Matthew Rickmon, Sensitivity Consultant & Character Creator

Matthew Rickmon, Certified Therapeutic Game Master, owns Tabletop For Growth (IG, Twitter), a business dedicated to helping people learn interpersonal skills and develop core values through interactive tabletop games. Matthew has a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a Master of Divinity with a focus in pastoral counseling. He is a Certified Therapeutic Game Master and Certified Geek Specialist through Geek Therapeutics. He lives with multiple chronic illnesses: Crohn’s Disease, Irritable Bowel, and Psoriasis. He also strongly suspects he is neurodivergent. Matthew has been writing stories and running in-person and live-streamed tabletop roleplaying games from his home in California since 2019. Beyond running roleplaying games, he maintains a strong partnership with The Erika Legacy Foundation, a mental health awareness and suicide prevention non-profit in Canada. Painting and writing tend to take up his free time when he’s not being yelled at by his cat, Mr. Fox, for more pets.

Theo Kogod, Adventure Writer

Theo Kogod is a genderfluid writer, editor, educator, and activist. Diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, Theo learned to read at the age of ten, then attempted writing their first novel a year later. They have written for numerous publications, including the websites CBR, Screen Rant, The Gamer, and The Comics Vault, as well as the podcast Enter the Fanboy. In 2014, Theo helped found the magazine 3 Feet Left as its Resident Writer. Their fiction has been published in Diabolical Plots, Starward Shadows, and the cli-fi anthology A Flash of Silver Green: Stories of the Nature of Cities 2099, among other places. They are a lifelong storyteller and nerd who has been running D&D and other tabletop RPGs for over 15 years. You can find them at @TKogod.

Brittney Hay, Service Animals Writer

Brittney Hay is a non-binary ENNIE-nominated bestselling TTRPG writer and creator. They are a full-time geeky nerd mom who enjoys reading, cooking and all things nerdy.

Amy Weisner

Amy Weisner is a second year occupational therapy student at the University of Toronto. She has been playing TTRPGs for the past five years, including D&D 5e, Call of Cthulhu, and most recently the Avatar TTRPG. She has a degree in Child and Youth Care, and has worked in many settings and roles including community outreach and within the school systems. Through her experience, she has worked with individuals from all walks of life, including people from across the spectrum of disability and mental health. Amy is a passionate advocate, with experience presenting on social justice issues and advocating for clients. She has most recently begun a fieldwork placement with OT Naomi Hazlett at Level Up Gaming, assisting with running therapeutic TTRPGs for neurodiverse young adults and working on projects to make TTRPGs more accessible.

Artists

Kalman Andrasofszky, Deluxe Character Artist

Kalman Andrasofszky (Insta) is a freelance illustrator, comic book artist, writer, and educator in Toronto, a longtime member of the R.A.I.D. Studio, and newly diagnosed with ADHD.

In 20+ years as a creative professional, Kalman has worked with many clients such as Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics, Wizards of the Coast, Shaftesbury Films, UNESCO, Portfolio Entertainment, and TekSavvy, among others, creating content for such brands as X-Men, Avengers, Batman, Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Murdoch Mysteries, and PG: Psycho Goreman.

Kalman reinvigorated the classic Canadian superhero property Captain Canuck by both rebooting and adding many new concepts and characters to significantly expand the scope of the brand into a dynamic sci-fi shared universe.

When not writing and drawing too many things at once, Kalman can be found retro-gaming on his vintage SEGA Genesis system.

Additional Artists

We also used some stock art as follows:

  • Some artwork © Grim Press, used with permission. All rights reserved. Stock art by Bob Greyvenstein.
  • Some artwork copyright Kii W – https://twitter.com/kiichan – used with permission.

Content Consultants

Only so much research can be done on this topic via medical documentation. Disabled people are people, and disability is a personal experience. So, I have to thank those who shared a personal part of them with me so I could share their experiences with you so that we all may understand each other better. Exceeding thanks to my disability consultants, some of whom are listed below. I’m also thankful to over 900 backers who looked at the manuscript draft to check it against their experiences. (Many of those who contributed to this book are not listed either by request or due to the informality of their involvement, casual conversations that weren’t as involved as those listed here but were invaluable nonetheless even when the feedback was as simple as, “Yes! This is exactly my experience!”)

  • Blind Temple [Footnote/Sidebar: Blind Temple https://twitter.com/BlindTemple needs a kidney. Since you’re reading this, take a moment, reach around and check your lower back for a “Hero Scar.” If you don’t have one yet, you probably have 2 kidneys. You only need 1. Whoever donates a kidney to Blind Temple gets adapted into a major hero in one of our future products, because the real world needs heroes, too! 
  • AgentA1cr
  • Anna Pz
  • Arkylie Killingstad
  • Arla Meru Nijenhuis
  • Candace Hoeckley
  • Casse Redus
  • Dorian Clark
  • Ethan Spence
  • Faywilds System
  • Gary Zarbock
  • Heather Thomas
  • Hope Grant
  • Jade Baurley
  • Jadis Antonia Smith
  • Jeffery Wright
  • Jeremy Patrick
  • Jerome van Leeuwen
  • Jess Butt
  • LordReverend TonyNewton
  • Marja Erwin
  • Marya Clare Predko Brown
  • MicroBioDM
  • Niles McCrystal
  • Oliver J. Lees
  • puck glass
  • RK McGinnis
  • Roan Shaffer
  • Ryza Wood
  • Sarah French
  • Sarah R. Gaines
  • Sarah Stanton
  • Sebastian Yūe
  • Tom Howey
  • Xzan

Prosthetics Consultant

Ash Marxhausen

Service Animal Consultants

  • Forge Ahead: A Party To Access
  • Rina Amaranthine

For more personal Disability & RPG stories or to share yours, check out our Gaining Advantage Show. The show is available as an audio podcast and manually captioned YouTube series.

More Thanks

  • To my wife, Teresa, & our kids for supporting this project and believing in me. You show me the power of love every day.
  • To my home game players — you wouldn’t know rails if you tripped over them, but you help me remember why I do this.
  • To our patrons. When I felt like giving up, your support assured me that this project was needed.
  • To everyone who subscribed to the Dragon’s Hoard Email Group, backed the project, told their friends, plugged on their shows & websites, retweeted, cross-promoted, interviewed, and shared. You helped us make this the best resource we possibly could so we can all make others’ lives better.
  • To the pioneers of disability representation in TTRPG who inspired this work, including (but by no means limited to) Jennifer Kretchmer, Sara Thompson, Elsa Sjunneson, Fay Onyx, and the DnD Disability team. Your work showed me that now is the time for this work to be done.



Other Resources

We have a growing list of other disability, neurodiversity, and mental health related TTRPG resources at wyrmworkspublishing.com/resources/