The new Barbie with Down syndrome and her impact

Mattel, the toy company behind Barbie, recently announced a new doll in their Barbie line with Down syndrome, added to a line that includes dolls with wheelchairs and one with a hearing aid.

As we see this gradual shift in representation in toys, we normalize disabilities in the lives of children. That way, we transform a “plastic” toy into a subtle tool to normalize people with disabilities in their lives, preventing othering and expanding their awareness and acceptance.

This new doll allows children with Down syndrome to play with toys that look like them and represent their experience, just as toys have added more racial and cultural representation in recent decades.

But this toy is for other kids, too, so the fantasy worlds they create in their pretend play includes disabled people as much as any others. And the more we get accurate and respectful portrayals in multiple forms of media, the more understanding, empathy, and acceptance will be mirrored in children’s play and their subsequent real-world interactions and relationships.

I’ve seen this impact in my own children. Because my work and passion lead to many conversations at home about disabilities and inclusion, and they love the service animals in Limitless Heroics, when we met a student at their school with a service dog, they reacted as they would to someone’s cool new backpack—they thought it was cool but not strange. When they encounter people in their lives with disabilities, they notice the differences and are sensitive to them, but they don’t think of them as “those people.” They are “my friends.”

What can we learn from Barbie about inclusivity in TTRPGs?

The new Barbie doll with Down syndrome has something to teach us about the importance of representation in TTRPGs. By demonstrating the importance of accuracy and inclusion of disabilities and other characteristics in our characters, Barbie provides an opportunity to continue a much-needed conversation about inclusivity within the realm of gaming.

• How can featuring characters with disabilities, such as Down syndrome, in a respectful and dignified manner enhance inclusivity in TTRPGs?
• What steps can game developers take to accurately reflect people with disabilities in stories and characters in TTRPGs?
• How can TTRPG players create diverse and inclusive gaming environments that accommodate everyone, including those with disabilities?
• How can we better listen to and consider feedback from players with disabilities in order to ensure inclusivity in all aspects of the game?

By learning from Barbie and paying attention to the importance of including diverse and accurate representations of disabilities, we can help create and foster more inclusive and respectful TTRPG communities.

3. Steps Ramps to Improvements in Representation in TTRPGs

Although Barbie has taught us about the importance of representation in TTRPGs, there is still much work to be done when it comes to improving the game’s representation of those with disabilities. Here are some helpful movements to consider when trying to ensure that people with disabilities are properly represented in TTRPGs:

• Creating characters with disabilities that are complex and multi-dimensional.
• Making sure characters’ disabilities do not define them and limit them in any negative way.
• Ongoing conversations with willing players who have disabilities to help shape that representation in game rules and worldbuilding.
• Consider what accessibility looks like in your game world.
• Making sure players with disabilities have the resources and support they need, both physical and social.
• Considering how any special features, skills, equipment, or backstory related to a character’s disability impacts both the game and the players.
• Use artwork, props, and miniatures with disability representation.

What does a better future look like?

“You’re playing D&D? Who’s winning?” Has anyone ever asked you that? TTRPGs are uniquely cooperative. Properly played, everyone wins, because the success is more than loot or levels—it’s a welcoming environment and enjoyment for everyone. So imagine this box text describing the real world:

As you enter the room, you see a diverse group of adventurers gathered around a table, each with their own unique character sheets. One player, with a character that has a physical disability, shares their backstory with the group. The other players listen attentively and ask questions to better understand the character’s experience.

As they start to create their characters, the players encourage each other to consider incorporating diverse backgrounds and experiences. They work together to ensure that each character is balanced and equal in strength and credibility, regardless of any disabilities they may have.

As the quest unfolds, the players encounter a wide variety of NPCs, and some have disabilities as part of their larger descriptions and interactions.

Throughout their game, the players celebrate each other’s successes and work together to create solutions that benefit everyone. They make sure that all players, including those with disabilities, feel included and supported both in and out of the game.

As you watch, you realize that this group of adventurers has truly embraced the importance of inclusivity and diversity in TTRPGs. They have created a safe and welcoming environment where everyone can enjoy their adventures together.

By its use as a universal symbol of disability in the real world and its use throughout literature as the definitive representation of disability, it’s no wonder that, when people think of disability representation in TTRPG, wheelchairs roll into our minds immediately, so today (March 1) being International Wheelchair Day, let’s examine the role of wheelchairs in tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons.

Wheelchairs first appeared in Wizards of the Coast products with Banak Brawnanvil in the 2010 novel, Gauntlgrym and in fifth edition sources in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft (2021) with Alanik Ray, though none have yet included usage rules, but the most well known is Sarah Thompson’s Combat Wheelchair (2020). Meanwhile, Pathfinder 2e’s Pathfinder Lost Omens: The Grand Bazaar (2021) includes wheelchair options, and more creators continue to add them to their supplements such as this current 5e Kickstarter. And of course, we’ve included several options in Limitless Heroics, listed below.

But what does a wheelchair cost in-game, both in gold and other expenses?

What is its purpose?

Some wish to include wheelchairs to make their game worlds more interesting or to give a real world minority representation in the game world. Following the lead of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, which added prosthetic limbs as a magic item that perfectly replicates a missing limb without requiring attunement, a wheelchair, magic or not, may be gifted to players with only narrative mechanics. Pathfinder 2e likewise offers a basic wheelchair free as part of a character’s backstory or 5 sp or 5 gp, depending on the model, plus upgrades.

The Combat Wheelchair offers its most basic model for 20 gp with multiple upgrade options and associated costs and no mechanical penalties associated with the corresponding disabilities.

The cost, both in gold and other associated effects such as attunement or mechanics may be higher in your game. While understandable to want to give easy access to players, some groups may want to reflect the real world challenge of acquiring proper mobility aids, both in equipment and maintenance costs. You may want to reflect the difficulty of acquiring an expensive specialized device in a world with little or no medical insurance (which is the real world for many). The standard wheelchair in Limitless Heroics is 50 gp.

Do you require attunement slots for magic wheelchairs? How well can they navigate difficult terrain? Do they have limited levitation to more easily navigate obstacles like stairs? Do they follow the cost guidelines in chapter two of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, or do assistive items get a discount?

Ultimately, these decisions depend on the nature of your game, but even more, the desires of your group. While many dismiss any kind of disability or assistive representation in the name of verisimilitude (even though wheelchairs predate rapiers in the real world), it’s just as easy to explain why the wheelchair is there as why not.

But remember: you don’t owe the game anything. TTRPGs are all about the players. If including wheelchairs in your game, either PC’s, NPC’s, or other creatures (like the Goblin Wheelchair Cavalry!) communicates a more welcoming, “We’re open to all,” environment to your players, include them. If your players struggle to get the assistive care they need and want to forget about red tape for a few hours, let the local temple or artificer give them out for free. Maybe some gnomes like making them with minor added features that aren’t always reliable. Or maybe you want to represent the challenges of acquiring accessibility in the real world and explore ways in the game world that will spark ideas for the real world.

Magic Mobility

In your game world, the type of wheelchairs, especially magic wheelchairs, can vary according to the level of magic and technology.

In a magical steampunk world like Eberron, it may be powered by a bound elemental or clockwork. A dark fantasy world may have chairs made from arcane metals and spikes; in other worlds, a fiendish chair resembling a torture rack or a fey chair of braided crystal or wrapped in vines. And again, the costs would be dictated first by their role among your players and second by your world’s economy.

The Final Cost

Ultimately, the cost of wheelchairs comes not in their expense, but in their value, partly to in-game characters, but mostly to your players.

However you incorporate them, you communicate the value of disabled people. It communicates acceptance instead of begrudging toleration. It makes your game accessible. It invites more people into the hobby.

It makes the real world a little more fantastic.

Last week, I wrote letters to Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro, Dan Rawson, VP of D&D at Wizards of the Coast, and via the Wizards of the Coast support form.

After taking some time to process and listen to others about their announcement Friday, I wrote this follow-up message via the support form.

Hello. Please send this message to the extent of your ability to those in charge of making decisions regarding the future of the OGL, and thank-you for the extra work you have to do because of all this:

Hi, I’m a dad and a commercial OGL content creator dedicated to using TTRPGs (usually 5e so far) to help you make lives better.

This weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the OGL and our company’s ability to continue our work to improve disability inclusion and accessibility at the tabletop and the rest of the world. And I worried about what it meant for my ability to continue to feed my disabled children.

As our family was cleaning the house over the weekend, I was having trouble keeping my kids on task, and the combined stress eventually led to me yelling at my kids. Especially given my wife’s sensitivity to loud noises, yelling only made things worse.

So I sat down, had a cup of tea and a cookie, and apologized to my family. I could’ve made excuses and claimed I wasn’t really yelling or justified my behavior, but none of those would make things better. My family already knew how I was acting and that it was hurting our relationship. The only way to reconcile was for me to apologize.

I’ve been happily married for 28 years, so I can assure you that a sincere apology goes a lot further than excuses to restore relationships, especially when I demonstrate sincere contrition and change my behavior.

You have hurt the D&D community worse than any past action in its history.

Lies won’t fix things. Don’t say you were looking for community feedback by sending OGL 1.1 to 20 people under NDA. Don’t say you’re concerned about D&D NFTs when the OGL already prohibited that, but you’ve announced Power Rangers NFTs. Don’t say you’re trying to keep people from producing harmful D&D content after the Hadozee incident and an updated OGL that forbids producing content with accessibility technology. Don’t say we all won when truly, we all lost. The whole world, including your company’s future, is worse off due to your actions.

But speaking of the Hadozee incident, pay attention to what happened. You apologized sincerely. You changed the offensive content. You implemented policies to keep it from happening again. And while you broke our trust, we’re quick to forgive when we believe that you realize the harm you’ve caused. Forgiveness isn’t saying you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s specifically acknowledging that harm was done but allowing the relationship to continue in spite of that harm.

While this is worse, if you follow the same pattern you did last time, while thousands are understandably too hurt to come back, many of us will. But you need to admit the harm you caused if you want that to happen, nothing like Friday’s announcement.

You need to keep the promise you made in the OGL FAQ that was on your website and leave it alone or improve it to show you care about your fan base — add to the SRD, but the only change added to the OGL should be the word, “Irrevocable,” to show us you mean it and learned from this. That would be the policy change to keep this from happening again.

That would show that you care about our relationship even if only as customer and creator.

We as a community have a deep connection to our relationship with D&D, and we hope you want to be a part of that. But you need to show us that you actually care about D&D if you expect to be part of this relationship. We’re trying to make it the best it can be. We hope you will too.

Hopefully but skeptically,

Dale Critchley

Wyrmworks Publishing

If you’re willing to communicate your concerns to Hasbro/WotC, you can use the same feedback form.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to sign the OpenDnD Petition. While you’re at it, Ryan Dancey, the crafter of the original OGL, has written a petition of his own that’s worthy of consideration. You can read and sign it here.

Tabletop Roleplaying Games like Dungeons & Dragons are great equalizers: people of all ages and abilities can play together, cooperatively. What else can do that? Coloring books! So we used the amazing art from Limitless Heroics to create a coloring book for all ages!

48 images include fantasy characters, assistive devices, and service animals.

How does a coloring book make lives better?

• People like me with ADHD may benefit from coloring to help keep focused during games and other times, and D&D-related coloring books are rare.
• Put this in a child’s hands, and you instantly normalize disabled heroes in their lives.
• D&D is for everyone, and so is artistic expression!
• The pages include quotes from disabled, neurodiverse, and mentally & chronically ill people to teach about their experiences and accessibility.
• 🎒Service Owlbears🦉 are adorable.

The book also includes a local site license for copying, so schools, clinics, local game groups, and FLGSs can print or copy coloring pages for their local events, clients, and fellow players.

Disabled people are among the most resourceful on the planet. They have to be. We welcome kindred spirits, Rachel Voss & Wesley Magee-Saxton at Forge Ahead: A Party To Access, who are creating amazing D&D 5e resources for disability inclusion. Next, we welcome Alexander Grinton on our Playing the Other segment to talk about his experience with Autism and ADHD, and how it connects with tabletop gaming.

• 0:00 Introduction
• 4:19 Interview: Rachel Voss & Wesley Magee-Saxton at Forge Ahead: A Party To Access
• 48:55 Playing the Other: Alexander Grinton
• 1:12:58 Wrap-up

Manually captioned. Transcript available at our website.

Forge Ahead: A Party To Access Links

• Forge Ahead Website

Wyrmworks Publishing

• Limitless Heroics: http://inclusiverpg.com 
• The Lair: https://cutt.ly/LairYT 
• Limitless Champions: http://mini.inclusiverpg.com 
• Wyrmworks Publishing: http://wyrmworkspublishing.com 
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/wyrmworkspublishing 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wyrmworksdale 

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.

Roleplaying games change lives. But what happens when you intentionally turn that dial to 11? We welcome Peter Jung from Roll for Kindness to explain how that happens and how you can do it.

0:00 Introduction
04:04 Interview: Peter Jung
32:57 Wrap-up

Manually captioned. Transcript available at our website.

Roll for Kindness Links

• Using RPGs for Good: https://rollforkindness.com/pathways-for-using-rpgs-for-good/
• Caravan Endures: https://rollforkindness.com/new-caravan-endures-build/ 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/RollForKindness

Wyrmworks Publishing

• Limitless Heroics: http://inclusiverpg.com 
• The Lair: https://lair.WyrmworksPublishing.com 
• Minis: http://mini.inclusiverpg.com 
• Wyrmworks Publishing: http://wyrmworkspublishing.com 
• Patreon: https://Patreon.com/wyrmworkspublishing 
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/wyrmworkspublishing 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wyrmworksdale 

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.”

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