Wyrmworks Publishing Do you ever feel like things are bad, and they're not going to get better? Do you know someone who feels like that? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons to make other people's lives better. And if you haven't yet, you can go right now to go get the Accessible Adventure Of The Week and Disabled NPC of the Week that we have available on DMs Guild. Just go there a search for Wyrmworks Publishing or search for either those terms, and you'll find them. Or you can go to our website. And then we have 4k…Those are free, and then we have 4k combat maps now available for purchase on DriveThruRPG if that's easy, easier for you. And, and so all of the adventures, and the NPCs are free. The maps, there's a small fee for those. But that is also the last ones we're going to be making for a little while because… Limitless Heroics: including characters with disabilities, mental illness and neurodivergence in fifth edition is coming soon. All right, the table edition, which has all the tables for creating or rolling up disabilities for your character is available now. It's at DriveThruRPG, the links in the show notes, you can pause this right now and go get it. Wyrmworks Publishing The Kickstarter campaign for the full book that's gonna have game mechanics, magic items, all kinds of stuff with it, will run in January. But if you sign up for our newsletter, then you don't have to worry about missing it, and we're gonna have some really big announcements very soon about that: collaborators on the project that I'm very excited about. And so stay tuned for that, go sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss it. And so, so grab that and and follow the links in the show notes to get to that while you listen to this interview. Also, there is a giveaway coming up. It's celebrating us gaining 500 Twitter followers. And so, to celebrate that we have a little gift for the holidays, a little something we want to send out from our favorite Etsy store. And so just go sign up for our newsletter, and you'll find out about it as soon as it's available. And so now, while you do that, let's get to our interview. Wyrmworks Publishing Before we begin the next section, here's a Content Trigger Warning: we're going to be talking about suicide. And so if that's problematic for you, thank you so much for your interest. Skip ahead to the next section. (The times are in the show notes.) For everyone else, back in the 80s, the Satanic Panic was catalyzed partly by the claim the D&D caused suicide. Not only was that not true, but it was quite the opposite. We've already had guests on the show who use it therapeutically, but you don't have to be a medical professional to fight this battle. Every 12 minutes in the United States, someone loses someone they care about to suicide. But gamers, this is a monster that we can defeat if we know how, but we have to work together on it, all of us. And so today we welcome Josh Simons, who is helping to lead the charge through Jasper's Game Day. Welcome Josh. Josh Simons Hey, thanks for having me. Wyrmworks Publishing So what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically speaking to the role playing game crowd? Unknown Speaker Yeah, sure, I do a lot of things, and I wear a bunch of hats in the tabletop gaming world. I do write and publish some of my own stuff, and I do some, some streaming as well, but what many people know me for is my role with Jasper's Game Day where I am the Assistant Director of Ambassadors. And so if you're not familiar with Jasper's Game Day, it was founded by Fenway, Fenway Jones, aka the Teen DM, on, on social media and on Twitter and whatnot, who's just phenomenal. And Jasper's was founded after Fenway, one of her gaming friends who kind of played tabletop games with her, passed away from suicide, and so they named Jasper's Game Day in Jasper's honor after they did this big fundraising event at a local convention, choosing to raise money and then donate it to local suicide prevention organizations. So that's kind of how Jasper's got started, and I joined the team last year. So getting, getting, gosh, close to maybe a full year ago now, and have the privilege of leading up our ambassador program, which is great. We've got, I think 16 current Jasper's Game Day ambassadors who are streamers and folks in the tabletop gaming space who really help not just raise money for suicide awareness and prevention, which is a big piece of what Jasper's does, but I think more importantly than that we seek to just have conversations about how we handle mental health topics in gaming and really seek to be representatives of the kind of conversations that we hope to see handling mental health topics with care, and more than anything else I think really just trying to create a community environment where people feel safe to admit that they're not okay and then go on to get the help that they need. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright so you know when you hear a name like Jasper's Game Day, kind of sounds like, Well which day of the year is that?" And so, tell us a little bit more about how does Jasper's Game Day work? Josh Simons Absolutely. So I mentioned it a moment ago. It started initially with a live play event at a local convention. Since, COVID-19 has pushed us all home, we have been doing online fundraisers. And while we have a convention presence at in-person conventions that we are able to attend now that there are vaccines and whatnot, our big thing, our huge kind of primary focus is called Jasper's Game Week. It happens every year kind of right at the start of summer and is a week, or in this most recent case, a couple more days than just a full week, I think, I think it was maybe nine or 10 days of fundraising with charity games run by very well known people in the tabletop game space so you've got folks like B Dave Walters. folks like Sateen Phoenix, all these wonderful people from the tabletop gaming community who are considered celebrities and in many circumstances. They've, you know, got a big reputation for really putting out quality content. You get to play games with Wizards of the Coast staff, or you could play, non D&D games with folks from Paizo, folks from World of Darkness, etc, etc. But what's really cool about it is we auction off seats at every table. At every table, usually there's almost half of the players are auction winners who said, "Hey, I would like a chance to support this cause, and also raise money for something that that is meaningful," and you get to roll dice as a little side benefit. It's a great time—we stream it all. Although there are offline games that take place and our Discord server as well, that's part of just our phenomenal community that we have. But yeah, so we do these big fundraising events, things like that, and we'll occasionally do additional events through our ambassadors, or through some of our partner channels. This year we've been doing monthly charity games with the D&D Beyond Twitch channel among some other cool things that we've had opportunities to partner with really just trying to get the word out as much as possible and and make sure that we're encouraging people in how they handle mental health. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so how can people who run games help out? Josh Simons Well, I just hinted at it a little bit. We do have a Discord server. And we run both Adventurers League and non-Adventurers League games in our Discord server as well as some other game systems every now and then. And we're always looking for more folks to come and get involved, either by running a game or playing in games with our community. Our goal there is really to just create a place where where gamers can feel safe to come and play with others who kind of have similar values, and can feel supported in their own mental health journeys. So that's one way that folks can get involved. But, as we are, you know, getting ready for our big charity events, we are oftentimes looking for players, and sometimes looking for additional GMs who could come and join us. And while many of our games are run by our quote unquote celebrity Dms folks who, you know, kind of have a big following in the community, that doesn't mean that you couldn't do something on your Twitch channel or your YouTube channel or your platform of choice. That's actually something that is involved with our ambassador program is doing a little bit of fundraising on your channel, but we love seeing community members, do something to support Jasper's Game Day. And so if, if this is something that you're passionate about, and you want to put on a charity stream or do some kind of charitable drive to support Jasper's Game Day, and sell tickets or raise money while you're doing it, you can go ahead and reach out, and we'd be happy to lend some social media support to that. And, yeah, we're always looking to kind of keep getting the word out, and if that's something you're passionate about, we would love to collaborate with you. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so how have you seen lives changed because of your work? Josh Simons Yeah, so I'm still relatively new to Jasper's as an organization as it's been going for a number of years now. But even in just my short time, we've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think I think between last year and this year, we've we've I think topped over $200,000. I'd have to double check exact numbers on that. So, nobody quote me okay you've heard it here but don't quote me. We raised a fair bit of money, and all that goes towards local organizations, folks who're doing the work, where it's needed most. We're not licensed professionals. We're not out there actively doing doing therapy or crisis counseling, but we are supporting the organizations that do, because ultimately that's what they're good at and we do what we're good at, which is using tabletop gaming to get the word out. But personally, I actually have seen a massive effect in my own like stream community and in the circles that I run in where Jasper's has really just kind of created this atmosphere where folks are willing to talk about mental health, and so I've had conversations with friends who are struggling, and I've been able to encourage them to go get the help that they need, point them to resources that we have available on our website, and had opportunities to just lend support to people who needed it. And you know that's kind of a tough thing to see someone in the midst of a crisis, but part of what Jasper's does really well is they make it okay not to be okay. That's kind of one of our slogans. And when you know that you don't have to go through something like that alone, it is so much easier to take that next step and reach out to someone, and start moving forward. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that's so important. I've done some work in that area, working in with, people going through difficult times and things like that and yeah, the, there's a lot of stigma when it comes to mental health. And so just want to emphasize to anyone who's watching this or listening, that you know, if you're struggling don't don't worry about the stigma, okay, because you you're loved. You're valued. And, and, the, the people that would stigmatize that are not the people you want to be listening to anyway. Alright, even if there are people that are close to you, which can make it really hard, but, you know, it's you're you're more valuable than that. Josh Simons Absolutely. Wyrmworks Publishing And, and, and you know what, something else that I've learned in all the work that I've done when it comes to mental health and and just kind of disabilities in general is that everything's a spectrum, like everybody struggles. Alright? And, and so some people struggle more some days than others, and, you know, there's all kinds of things and that's okay and there's nothing wrong with that. And, and, yeah, there's people there that care about you, you know, even, even if it's a volunteer on a hotline or something like that, alright, the reason they're doing that is because they care about you, even if they don't know you. You know, I, I've heard it said, "If you can hate somebody without knowing who they are, you can love somebody without knowing who they are too." And, and so yeah, you are loved. That's why Josh is doing this. This is why Wyrmworks Publishing exists, because you're loved, and, and you can know that. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so you have just rescued a djinn from the hands of an efreet, and it offers you three wishes to achieve Jasper's Game Day's goals. What do you wish for? Josh Simons That's a good question. I would just like to take a second to recognize that we've gone from spitting out some really great mental health advice, and just hey, like go take care of yourself, it's important to fantasy and I love it. But just, yeah, I want to as by way of transition as I answer this question say, hey, you know, I second everything that Dale has just shared here. I think that's important. One of the things that I would wish for would be for people to feel supported and encouraged on a day to day basis, because I think a lot of the time those feelings of depression, of feeling like you're all alone and it's not worth it to continue come from feeling isolated. And I think especially right now with the current state of the world, that is an even bigger thing. So, my first wish would just legitimately be for people to have support groups that they could rely on and a social circle that they could rely on. Because I think that in and of itself would make a massive difference. I think my second wish would be for Jasper's fundraising goals one to not be needed, but if they are needed, it would be two that we could just raise phenomenal amounts of money as the community just just mobilizes to really support those of us who do deal with mental health issues, because it's tough, right, and, and it's something that everyone deals with to some extent, like you said, some folks more than others, but especially for those who are struggling. I think just seeing that people care about it is huge, right, just seeing that that support and seeing people that they maybe look up to, or have played games with before, talk about something like that on stream is huge, because then it's not just some random person, it's, "I know this person. I watch them every week on stream," or, "I interact with them on Twitter on a daily basis, and they are saying that this is important, so it must be important." And I think the third wish… Honestly, honestly, the third wish is to have more opportunities like this, where more folks in the community say, "Hey, we want to talk about Jasper's. We want to do something with you to just share this message, because it's important to us too, right? Because I've been talking about community. It's so great to see support from brands who say, "Hey, we want to raise money for Jasper's." It's so great to see support from streamers and YouTubers and podcasters who say, "Hey this is important for us. I'm willing to sacrifice some of my valuable time as I am making content to dedicate it to this cause that I think is important," because it's something that we really appreciate, and it means a lot, not just us but I think, to the folks at home who then are listening or watching or consuming that content to know that this is important, not just, to, you know the handful of people who who do it for a job, but you know to everyday folks, to the folks who decided, "Hey, I'm gonna start a podcast in my basement," and then it's gone and done cool things. You know, so that's, that's, those are my three wishes. And then I would wish the djinn nice day, because I hope he has a good day, or they, they can have a good day. That's my fourth, it's my fourth one, but it's a freebie. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what one message would you like to give gamers who are struggling with mental illness or contemplating suicide. Josh Simons First I just want to say, I get it, right? I've been there. And while I don't know exactly what it is that you're feeling in this moment, I know that it feels like a lot, it feels like it's overwhelming, and it's never ending. And that feeling is entirely valid, but that does not mean that you are alone. It does not mean that your current perception of your situation is entirely accurate. And what it really doesn't mean is that you have to take a drastic action when you could pick up the phone and call someone on a hotline, or reach out to a counselor, and sit down and chat. Because when you think about like responses to situations, sometimes it's… sometimes it's best just to like take a baby step in the right direction. And so if today, all the baby steps that you take if the only thing you do is to make one small, small forward step, just to admitting to yourself, "Hey I need help," and take that first first step to, to seek out help. That's enough and that's a huge, huge step that we should celebrate and we should really support. If you are struggling with, with your mental health in any way whatsoever, you are welcome to come and join us in our Jasper's Game Day discord. We've got a bunch of folks who get it. We've got a bunch of resources that we can share that are shared in our Discord, that are shared on our website, but come hang out with folks who to one extent or another know what you're going through, because it is so much easier when you're not trying to row a boat upstream alone. So, come let us let us pick up the slack and help you along. Wyrmworks Publishing You know a lot of times when people say, "Well you don't know what I'm going through," and you know and that's true, like, only you even even the people that are closest to you don't know exactly what you're going through, alright? At the same time, the feelings that you're feeling, Those, a lot of people have felt those feelings. Maybe the situation was different. Alright, but the feelings that are that they experience, you know, our brains are only capable of producing a finite number of distinct different feelings, alright and just kind of mixes and combinations of that, and so so what it comes down to is, there's other people that can, that might not know your circumstances, but they know your feelings. They know how it feels, and they're there for you, and, and they'll empathize with you, and, and they care, and, and they, they will believe, even if you can't believe it yourself, they will believe for you that you have a future. Josh Simons Oh yeah, yeah. Look, that I like that. I liked that bit that you added there, and I'm just going to tag on one last thing, which is to say this. Sometimes you need to know that it's not all your fault. Sometimes you need to know that someone out there cares about you. And if that someone isn't in your life right now, we have someone who is willing to be that someone for you in our Discord server, so come hang out with us. I promise you it will get better. If you keep fighting. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what one message would you like to give gamers who are not struggling with mental illness or contemplating suicide? Josh Simons Look, this is serious, you know, this is a thing that that people deal with. You shared the statistics earlier. I don't need to say them again. This is a thing that is an increasingly bigger and bigger issue in our day and age. If you are personally not struggling with mental health right now, I'm so glad to hear that. That is great news, and I am excited for you. Man, I would appreciate it if you would come and join us as we try to help those who are struggling. If you've got a little bit of time, a little bit of mental energy, a little bit of emotional energy to just take this seriously. If you've got the resources to put something together, whether that be a charity stream, or send some resources to friends who are struggling, or even just check in on friends who may be struggling, that means so much. It's little things like a quick message in the middle of the night when you can't sleep, or a quick, "Hey, here's a joke. I heard it, and I thought you might like it." That can make a whole lot of difference. And while you may not necessarily know what someone's going through, it never hurts to reach out and say hey to someone. Ask how their day is going, and just offer an ear for support if there's something that they need to talk about and you have the ability to do it. Now it's important, right not to offer things that you cannot or do not want to follow through on, so don't say, "Hey, I'm here to listen to you," if you have no intention of listening to them, but if you've got any capacity whatsoever to just be a support to someone, I promise you, 15 minutes of your life—I sound like I'm in a GEICO commercial—15 minutes of your life listening to someone sending them a message could literally be the difference between life and death for someone else. And I would spend 15 minutes of my life to save another life in a heartbeat. And I hope that you maybe would consider the same thing. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, just piggybacking, you know, you said, like, even sending a joke or something like that, you know, I can tell you, there have been times where, where somebody sent me a meme. All right, all of a sudden, I got this meme out of the blue, and, and, like, and all of a sudden it was like, "Hey, somebody cares. Somebody thought of me," you know, "Somebody knows that I exist and, and saw something, and they care about me enough that they, that it reminded them of me, and, and they sent that to me." You know it can be something that's simple. And, you know, and for that matter if sometimes when people, you know might send you something, you know, kind of pay attention, and because it might be that they're going, "Is anybody out there?" And, you know, and so to pay attention to that and of course, you know. There's definitely times where, you know, people send me a note and I can't get back to him right away because I'm in the middle of something and that's okay. Um, you know, the other thing is that I've also seen where people have have felt guilty because they weren't able to get back to someone who was in the middle of a crisis and and understand that, you know, if you're on that end of things that you are finite, and, and you cannot be everything to everyone and and and so that's important to remember, and so you do what you can, and you recognize that, that that's all you can do, you can't be more than who you are. And so, so yeah, know that too, but, you know, but Josh Simons Absolutely. Wyrmworks Publishing be aware. Josh Simons Yeah, that hey that you make a good point there. And I think it's important, right, I'm not a licensed counselor. I'm not a professional. I don't have a degree, but I've got a list of resources. If you don't have a list of resources, you're welcome to go grab them from the Jasper's Game Day website. I can't give mental health advice, because I'm not trained to do that, but I can listen, and I can encourage someone to get help, and I can send them the resources that they need. And sometimes that's enough. And if you're not able to touch base with someone, if you're not able to keep up with them, that's okay too. Right. I really like the new feature that is available in a lot of messaging applications where you can just react to a message with a thumbs up or a heart, even if you don't have the time to reply and say, "Oh hey, I saw this thank you I appreciate it. I'll get back to you," whatever. I like to drop a little reaction, just affirm that I read it. Sometimes I'll even like just text back, "Thanks busy right now, but I'll get back to you soon." And that's enough too sometimes just to acknowledge that you're there, and you're invested in what they have to say and want to give it the time necessary. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. All right, so what projects, whether it's for Jasper's or you personally, are you working on right now? Josh Simons Yeah, so right now, we are wrapping up on the Jasper side of things, we are wrapping up our ambassador interview application process. So we will hopefully have at the time of recording, hopefully have some announcements about who our new ambassadors are going to be for the 2022 calendar year in the next couple of weeks as we kind of work through the final details there. Personally, I, like I said, I am a tabletop game designer, and I am trying to get something out in time for Halloween, so we'll see if I can do that in my free time. But I also stream on Twitch. I've got a pretty phenomenal D&D stream that I do on Fridays, using the Islands of Sina Una supplement, which is like literally just now shipping out in hardcovers, but it's a pre-colonial Filipino setting, written by an entirely Filipino team. It is so cool. And the director and co-director of that book are both on our stream and kind of guiding us. It's like a guided tour through their culture. It's so cool. And that game happens at 7pm, Eastern Time at Twitch.tv/rockpunchATL. There's no spaces there's no fancy characters, it's the word rock, the word punch and then the letters ATL, and it is, honestly such a fun game. It's such a cool world. And if you're interested in picking up a new D&D show to watch, you should come and join us for that. We are currently working towards the end of season two, and you can catch all of season one on YouTube. Wyrmworks Publishing Cool. And we will have all of those links in the show notes, including contact information if you are struggling and where to go with that. Alright, so but where is, Josh, the one best place that you would like people to start to learn more about you or to contact you? Josh Simons the best thing for me is, is Twitter. I am pretty active on Twitter. Some days I'm a little too active on Twitter. You can follow me @JoshuaMSimons. That is my name. So hopefully, you know, you can you can find it pretty easily, but I'll spell it out just just to be extra, extra sure it's JOSHUAMSIMONS. That's my Twitter channel. I talk about a whole bunch of random nonsense, talk a lot about tabletop gaming, talk a lot about streaming and Twitch and also talk about mental health, because that's an important part of who I am. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright Josh, thank you so much for coming on the show. Everyone check out those links in the show notes, and go jump on the Jasper's Discord. Josh Simons Thanks. Wyrmworks Publishing Before we begin the next section here is a Content Trigger Warning. We're going to be talking about body shape, and we get into some discussions about body horror, and also mental illness, phobias and things like that. So, if that's problematic for you, thank you so much for sticking with us and being part of the solution, hit the like button, subscribe, share buttons. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, please post a review or at least give us some stars, and we will see you next episode. For everyone else, Welcome to Playing the Other: How to play a disabled, mentally ill, or neurodivergent character, whether PC or NPC, that properly represents symptoms so as to represent those real life people in your game and give them depth as characters while avoiding harmful stereotypes & tropes. Today to help us with that, we are joined by Matt Weber. Welcome Matt! Matt Weber Hi. Wyrmworks Publishing So what would you like us to know about you as a person and as a gamer? Matt Weber Yeah, so, um, I am disabled. I was born with six missing bones: 2 in my legs and four in my arms, so I have no forearms. My hands are sort of attached right at the elbow, And I have various issues in terms of walking, joint issues, I've had a lot of surgeries on my legs. And I'll talk in a minute about how that sort of intersects with gaming directly but I think that's the first thing I wanted to just mention, you know, as I've been disabled all my life, it's obviously changed over time as I've gotten older and some surgeries have gone well and some have not gone so well, things like that. I became interested in role playing, about 30 years ago, but, um, you know, like many people when I was in middle school, high school, I couldn't really find a group to be with you know to play with regularly or even at all in many cases, so it wasn't really till college that I got into gaming. But over time, one thing that I realized is that almost all of my interests outside of gaming, really intersect with role playing. I'm an educator. I do math. I've studied literature. I've studied foreign languages. I am a musician. I play the piano and I sing and I write my own songs and pieces of music, and all of those things all those things I've learned about other fields, but especially teaching really informed my practice of game mastering, of how to create a table that is as inclusive and welcoming as possible, as diverse as possible. And where we have stories that are compelling, that are challenging that don't shy away from difficult issues, but at the same time you know trying as much as possible not to shut anyone down, or, you know make anyone feel like the content is like too heavy or something they can't handle. And I've been on both sides of that. Um, one of the biggest things that I've realized in the last couple of years, is that I had, and probably still have a lot of internalized ableism, um, you know that I sort of shied away from the idea of playing disabled characters for a long time or physically disabled characters anyway like the way that I am. You know, I sort of thought of it just automatically well you know someone with a physical disability couldn't adventure, couldn't participate in combat. You know that kind of thing. And I've also realized that, you know that it doesn't have to be that way, that we can incorporate disability into how we create characters. Um, probably the number one thing I would say is that if a character has a disability, it shouldn't be the only important thing about them. And I would say for a PC, that's probably less of a risk. But you know for a one off NPC who you're only meeting briefly, um, you know there is a risk of that, I think more so if you know it's a character the GM is creating. Um, and the reason that's important is because it's too easy in real life in spaces where there are very few disabled people which is many spaces because so few physical spaces are accessible, and even many online spaces aren't as accessible as they could be. If you're in a space where there are very, very few disabled people, it can easily become sort of the one thing about you that people know. So that's kind of my, my overall big picture 1000 foot view which is that we we just all need to—and I definitely include myself in this—we all need to start thinking about how to incorporate characters with different types of ability and disability into our game worlds, just as you know we wouldn't want to have a game world that is universally all one gender, or all you know one real world ethnic group. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. So, so you've, you've talked about your experiences, your, your symptoms. So, what do you find for you, Number one, how do you how do you adapt to them, what do you need to do as far as adaptation and also when it comes to other people and how they interact with you. What is helpful and what is not helpful? Matt Weber Yeah fantastic question. So as far as role playing specifically goes, you know tabletop role playing games I will say, you know the I don't have any particular accessibility issues. You know, I can see, I can read print, I can roll dice, um, you know, there are definitely gamers who, you know that's not the case for and I definitely hope you are talking to some of those folks and have them interviewed as well, because they'll have a lot more insight than me into for example, how to make gaming texts, more, more accessible for you know, visually impaired, but I have done a lot of LARPing and live action role playing, you know, is obviously just a much more physical activity. And for me, while I can walk around, I can't really stand around, and a lot of LARPing, so a lot of non combat LARPing is sort of standing around. Um, and I just need to I need for there to be more of a norm of, like, you walk to a place great that's fine we're you know, the whole point of a LARP is that you're embodying your character, but that when we get to a place, we're having an extended conversation that we, we need to be able to sit while we're doing that. And I have in the last couple of years—I haven't been doing much LARPing in the last couple of years not primarily for accessibility reasons, but just sort of logistical ones and life stuff, but I have, you know the last few times I LARPed, I have encountered some sort of cultures of play that I felt were beginning to be a little more aware of this fact that not everyone can just stand in one place for a long period of time having an in depth conversation. You know if you're in pain, it inhibits your ability to embody your character. If you're in a situation where your character would not realistically be in a lot of pain, but you the player are. But how do you stay in your character's headspace? You know, so that's why it's so important to make sure that people are physically comfortable when they're either, you know tabletop or LARP right that it helps you get into the game more. So LARPing, I would say that's probably one of the biggest things for me is just the idea that we need to not assume everybody can just stand indefinitely. Um, we need to have, you know seating throughout the play space, so that people can take a seat and have a conversation at, you know at any time. Um, and then combat LARPing is sort of a whole nother can of worms I actually did do quite a bit of combat LARPing when I was younger, um, and before some issues with my legs got more severe. I found ways of making it work for me. I can't, I don't really have a strong grip my hands but I usually would fight with a two handed sword and that worked actually pretty well for me. Um, but, you know, in some ways, it's weird in some ways combat LARPing was almost easier because like you fight it for a while you get knocked down, you get to lie on the ground for a while and you don't stay on your feet, you know, or you go sit after the battle is over and the battle itself might only be a couple of minutes, you know, so in some ways, again at certain points in my life actually combat LARPing was easier for me physically than the non combat LARPing, which is such a weird thing, but that gets to the whole idea of assumptions right and I would say that's the most important thing is just do not make assumptions about what people can and can't do, or what's reasonable to ask people, so you asked a minute ago and I realized I never directly answered, "What's helpful what's not helpful," right, so what's helpful is asking people what they need, whether that be, you know directly or ideally in like any sort of pregame setup that you're doing a lot of LARPs use like surveys and things like that, you know, give people a chance to express what their needs are. And that also ties in to say things like content warnings, um, you know, give people a chance to express, if they, you know if there's a particular phobia or something like that that they really don't want to see in the game, or need to be sort of shielded from if it's already baked into the game. Um, whereas I think I've definitely encountered a lot of situations where, like, just to give a really weird mundane example, people will like scramble to get doors for me sometimes. And it's like well if I couldn't open doors for myself, like I would need to be out with like some sort of assistant to help me right but if I'm just walking out in public alone, like, of course I can open doors for myself. That just happens to be a thing that isn't actually particularly hard for me. You know, so that's an example of people making assumptions. I've heard from disabled people who are for example blind that you know people will like grab them as they're trying to cross the street with their with their dog, and like try to you know quote unquote guide them across the street when it's actually completely unwelcome, um, you know that's an extreme example but it does happen. Um, so I think that's probably the number one thing is just don't assume like there are a lot of things that someone might be able to do that just glancing at them you might not think and vice versa many disabilities are invisible and I want to stick up for, you know, my brethren who are disabled in ways that are not apparent to the eye when you first meet someone. And I think that's more and more common as we're, as we're gaming more and more online, you know, so we're only seeing maybe someone's you know head and a little box on the screen. So that's probably the number one thing, and then I would actually say though, there's a deeper, there's a deeper structural thing though that I've encountered a lot. And as I was thinking about and preparing for coming on this podcast I've been thinking about how I want to try to explain this. There is a deep strain of authoritarianism baked into the RPG hobby. Because of the attitudes of some of the early gamers most, most particularly Gary Gygax. Um, I know it's sort of a cliche to complain about this at this point but it's it's this is just something that's really important to me and again this has affected my actual experiences, um, you know, the idea of sort of the GM as God. You know, the idea of there not really being any rules except what the GM says the rules are. If you really think about it, setting aside any sort of, you know, game design theory or abstract arguments about that topic, having a unitary executive like that is at odds with inclusivity, any sort of inclusivity. Because the thing is we all screw up. We all do things—doesn't matter what our own identities are—I've done things that made other disabled gamers, you know feel excluded or uncomfortable in games I was running completely by accident. Even though I myself am disabled, um, you know, there are you know examples of, you know, female GMs who've accidentally made other female players feel uncomfortable with some issue relating to sexism. You know, nobody, nobody is immune from making these mistakes. And so to me the essence of inclusivity is about recognizing that we're all fallible and that we all need to be able to make adjustments to make each other feel comfortable. And so if you have this, you know first edition, AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide attitude, that the players are sort of there to like serve you or, you know, they sort of play at your pleasure, you know, and that the rules are sort of really at your whim. I have always found universally, that that also applies to social safety that somebody who has that attitude about purely even if it's purely in game things, that always spills over to their attitude about being respectful to sort of concerns in general. And so that's a lot, a lot of why I've worked so hard to set a different example. I am primarily a GM in most groups that I'm in. Um, and I have been for I would say probably the last 15 or 16 years as I've learned to run a variety of indie RPGs, and just a lot of things that are sort of off the beaten path, and even when I run more mainstream games I tend to incorporate ideas from indie RPGs to make myself more accountable as a GM and to try to make things more transparent. For example, when I run D&D fifth edition as I did just last night I have an ongoing campaign, but I I've adapted the experience point rules from Dungeon World, because I find them to be much more, much more egalitarian and much less violence focused than 5e's rules, and it's not that I have a problem with violence, I mean I'm playing D&D, like there's going to be combat, that's fine. Um, but I but I do think the whole sort of you know, hit it, and it gives XP like like monsters or like a piñata. You know, again, there's a lot of attitudes. Wyrmworks Publishing Experience point piñata — I have not heard that expression, but it's so accurate. Matt Weber I didn't come up with it so I can't take credit for, I don't remember where I first read it. Um, and, you know, and then and then speaking of monsters that brings up one other thing that did really is just come into my consciousness in the last maybe two to three years is how much ableism is baked into a lot of descriptions of monsters. Um, you know how often have you read a description in a bestiary for an RPG, about, you know, some monster that has you know twisted misshapen limbs. Oh well. Hi, you know, or, you know monsters that have, you know, sort of a, you know, "primitive way of relating to the world." And, you know only act on their baser instincts or whatever, right? I mean that's that's shading into some racial stereotypes and there's been a lot of discussion about that in the last couple of years say regarding orcs, in many fantasy settings and I think those conversations are very important, but I think it's also worth recognizing that some of that kind of stereotyping is really about ableism as well as racism and colonialism. Um, and you know even some of my very favorite games you know when I really look at them. A great example is Kevin Crawford's Godbound, which I listed as my favorite game of the last decade in 2020 like between 2010 and 2020, all the new games I learned that decade, Godbound was my favorite. It's an amazing game and I do highly recommend it. But when you delve into the descriptions of the monsters, there is a whole lot of the exactly that kind of language, about you know misshapen, you know, result you know horrific results of, you know, Arcane experiments, um, a whole lot of that is in there and I haven't yet quite figured out how to excise those things so that I can enjoy this game which in every other way is completely brilliant, but I haven't quite figured out how I want to engage with those elements next time I run or play Godbound. So I've been going on for quite a while, um, it would help me if you could like ask me some more directed questions or you know tell me kind of what your thoughts are about all these things I've been rambling on about. Wyrmworks Publishing No, absolutely. And the way this records anybody that's watching this you only see one person at a time and it's just the way Google Meet handles it. So what you haven't seen is me nodding my head constantly, and my neck's getting sore because I'm nodding my head so much. I just really resonated with what you said, thinking about ableism in monsters is something else that I've encountered. Because I crank out a new adventure every week and especially as we're getting into Halloween and wanting to do some more kind of horror or at least like more kind of fiends and undead and stuff like that. Mental illness is. It just D&D doesn't handle it well. Call of Cthulhu, does a really difficult job with it. But, you know, when you look at the the monsters in D&D, and the way that you know they throw long round terms like madness and and it's, it's not, you know, number one, it just kind of, it's got a very kind of the the view of madness is the, sort of, or, I mean really that's the term that is typically used or something like it. And, but what you're, you know what you're really talking about there is mental illness but what the way that it is expressed in the game through the various monster abilities is there's, I mean there's like there's no clinical analogue to that. And, and, and so it creates this false depiction of mental illness, and then you know you get into the whole question of okay, how do you deal with mental illness in you know in game, especially, you know you just think about depression, anxiety, how common are those? I mean, there's a really good chance that one of your players, or someone who's very close to one of your players, deals with that in a big way. And, and, and I mean that's just one example. And, and so, you know, How are you stigmatizing your, your player, by, by using those and man, it is hard to find sort of stock monsters, especially in when you're talking, anytime you get outside of sort of basic zombies and, you know, and stuff like that. When you start looking at at abilities. It very quickly gets into that kind of mental mental illness area, and it's just like, eh, I like this monster but need to recreate them, you know to use them and then, and then the whole question of how do you how do you implement it, and you know you already mentioned, you know safety tools and talking to your, to your players about what they're comfortable with and stuff like that and I think there are ways to do it but it's a challenge and and I think that we are, as just kind of in the hobby, or in the industry, we're just starting to figure this stuff out of how to do this. And, and I don't think we haven't totally figured out yet. Matt Weber No, definitely not. Although, I want to respond to everything you said which I agree with strongly in a couple of ways. First of all, I do want to mention you know I don't really experience mental illness, you know, very, very large percentage of my friends do, family members, but I do try to be particularly sensitive about that because that's the thing where I really don't have that same like internalized experience of it as I do with say bodily othering. Um, but I do want to give some some credit to Wizards of the Coast for their recent publication Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft Wyrmworks Publishing yep Matt Weber I haven't fully delved into the whole book yet, but one thing that I do know is they have a whole chapter on how to do horror gaming sort of right, meaning how to get the tone that you want. And it's not just about social safety, it's also about how there are different types of horror like body horror versus psychological horror, and, you know, having that conversation with your group about, "All right we're playing a horror game, but that could mean so many different things. Let's, let's do a better job getting on the same page as a group about what type of horror we're aiming for." That alone can eliminate a lot of problems, but WotC brought on board for the writing of that book, some really important people in the movement to make RPGs more inclusive. Um, and the book does talk about the X Card, which was created by John Stavropoulos who I am very happy to say I do know somewhat. He's a friend. We used to live in New York, and I would see him at Nerd NYC events, and I got to play in some games that he ran, and you know he really is just about the absolute best GM I've ever played with, and you know I, you know, I've gotten fairly good and running so so much you know I probably average a game or two every week for the last 15 or 16 years across many many different systems, but I don't hold a candle to him. And the way that he gets the group on board and enthused about the game, while still incorporating everyone's ideas and still, you know, making everyone feel welcome, but he created the X Card. He wrote large sections of that portion of the Van Richten's Guide, a number of other very diverse gamers were brought onboard for writing the Van Richten's Guide. And that was largely an attempt to try to minimize, not just ableism, but also say colonialism, you know, the section of Ravenloft that's inspired by India was you know, written by an actual person from India, um, you know like, amazing. Who would have thought, um, you know, but they're sort of finally beginning to wake up to that. The one other thing that I want to say is, and this gets back to my theme of surrendering control, I think rather than having a mechanic that dictates what you do when you're met you know your sanity meter drops or when a condition is inflicted upon you like madness, it's so helpful and this comes straight out of the Powered by the Apocalypse games, and some earlier indie RPGs that inspired that one like the Mountain Witch. But this idea of the GM just asking questions. "Alright, your character has been inflicted with the madness trait. What does that look like," you know, or you know the okay you rolled on the table, you know, and it says that your character reacts as if their greatest fear was now here in the room with them. You don't as the GM get to say, "Oh, well that means you run away or you scream or or or whatever." I think the way to do it, that's most likely to produce a good outcome is, ask the player, what does that mean to you that your character now feels as if their greatest fear is here in the room, maybe they say, "Oh I fight back even harder." That could be a really defining character moment, but if, but if the control is taken away from not just the character but the control is taken away from the player, I think unless you have very specific kinds of social contract going on, you know, that's always something you want to be very careful about. So I definitely agree with you that you know the way mental illness is handled, particularly in the horror genre has, you know historically been problematic in RPGs, again I'm not like the best person to speak on that at all. And I'm sure you'll have other guests who are much, much more expert on that topic than I am. But I'm really glad you brought it up because it is all sort of tied together with the whole idea of, you know, making assumptions, and with the idea that you know the GM is always right. And you know we just we don't live in that world anymore and and the hobby just isn't, you know, the hobby isn't going to continue to grow. It's not going to be grown by people who cling to that attitude. They're still out there, you know, um, but, fortunately, I think, you know, as we start to be able to have conventions again or as we're doing online conventions, you know, you see the people out there really running games regularly and inviting new people into the hobby, who aren't of the majority demographic in every single way. You know, they're the ones who've I think embrace this principle of RPGs as a truly collaborative endeavor. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, absolutely and just in my experience, mostly on Twitter. I've, I've seen, just that sort of the big names, you know that everybody knows that are working with the big companies and everything, they all embrace that concept. And, and you're just, you're just not going to go very far in the industry if you don't. And Matt Weber Yeah, yes and no. I mean, the only thing is of course there is that there's always the problem of, you know, capitalism sort of absorbing every critique against it right that you know, companies can sort of a give lip service to a certain idea without necessarily, you know, doing the hard work of actually living up to those ideals, again I give WotC credit for what they did for example in the Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but you know we'll have to see how they continue to act in coming years. Wyrmworks Publishing are absolutely no, no, absolutely and it's definitely an issue. It's, there's, there's news coming out that I'm not going to get into here because it'll be old by the time this posted, but stuff going on at Paizo. Matt Weber Oh yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing And, you know, and we've heard, you know, previous things at WotC and, you know, and other companies aren't immune to it either. And it's you know it's something that we always have to be in check with. I was, I had to laugh and you use the expression the GM as God. Back in the 90s, I created a, it was it was basically my own homebrew version of of D&D and, and it was the the the dungeon master's guide in that game was the Dungeon Master was called the Game Overlord Dude. And you know it it was it was tongue in cheek, but at the same time, it was a reflection of you know of that attitude, and that, that's just so common and so yeah it's definitely important to know it and you know I've seen a lot of really great ideas about, you know, things like, "Okay, you know, you, you walk into an inn and and you, you know the bartender's there at the at the bar. What do they look like?" you know and and given the players opportunity to, to, you know, think about what are they picturing you know just at this moment, and to kind of help write the story, and, and it just, it can, you know, see you, sometimes you can do that and sometimes you can't because it'll totally throw your, your adventure out the window because things have gone off the rails completely and if you're not ready for that, you know that caused problems but there's, there's lots of opportunities to do that. And, and, and so, you know, just to say, the sky's the limit. You know there or, what do you want to do and it just gives so many opportunities and allows for so much more creativity, and a much more memorable game, you know, ultimately, because when you have when you when you're combining more than one person's creativity, you just get a more creative outcome at the end. Matt Weber Yeah, absolutely. So if I remember correctly I think we're just about out of time if I read my calendar correctly. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright so, is there anything else you'd like to talk about as far as if someone were playing a character that had your symptoms, how would you like to see, not just, you know, I mean, you think in terms of game mechanics but you can also think in terms of sort of what, what should they think about if they're playing a character like you. And, is there other things that they should avoid or that are the things that you know that they should lean into and and how can the other party members help out? Matt Weber I'm gonna choose probably the one thing that I think is most salient, while also recognizing that this is only one potential answer and there are many potential answers. When it comes to disability, another issue is that we tend to think in very binary terms. Well, I can lift 30 pounds, I can't drive a car, or vice versa. Right. But I think the more realistic way to think about things is not I can't do this, versus I can do these things easily. There are some things that someone might do all the time but that it was really painful and difficult but they do it because they have to. There are other things that they don't do habitually but that they, they might be able to do in a crisis. And so, it's probably better to think about how the character's body functions in a general way, rather than us ahead of time, slapping labels on too many things, you know can use a two handed sword, can't use a shield whatever well like, you know, some to some extent you're gonna have to work out some of those things just to be able to play the game. Um, but don't think too far ahead, you know, be prepared to just get a real sense of what the character is like, physically, and depending on what obstacles you encounter in the game. You may need to improvise different solutions, but don't be too quick to assume something is either easy or impossible, there's a lot of gray between those two extremes. Wyrmworks Publishing No, it's a really good point and, you know, even as I'm literally working on a book to figure out, you know game mechanics for all these things that in any situation regardless what game mechanics you're using or kind of even assumptions that you go into with when, when you find different situations, it's always seems to be understood that whether it's official game mechanics, whether it's homebrew mechanics that you're using, or whatever, that, that you always need to be ready to adapt and recognize that those are suggestions. And there are no hard and fast rules, you know, you mentioned fear before, and you know you look at the, the official rules that you have the frightened condition. You have to run away, you know, I mean it completely takes control of your character, and, and you completely lose agency. And, and so to be able to say okay, you know, while you're standing from this dragon you're terrified. You know, and and you are you are completely shaken to the core. So, how do you, you know, how are you responding to that, you know, and so, so the same thing goes, you know with physical situation where there may be a mechanic for a particular physical condition. But that is not always I know as I've been trying to write the mechanics, you know I think there's, there's a million different possibilities, or situations where, like, well, this might work, you know this, this, we might just need to completely toss this mechanic and adapt you know, to the situation and and and not make assumptions about what a person can do. You know the difference between in what would you normally do, or, or what you said about being in a crisis. It reminds me of the old TSR Marvel Superheroes game that it had when you roll for success on something you'd get either a green yellow or red result. And sometimes, you're trying to accomplish something that's basically impossible. Well, if you can roll high enough, you can go beyond what your normal capabilities, would be. And and you could supplement those roles if you needed to so that, so you could actually accomplish those things that you couldn't do on all the time, but every once in a while. You could do that and and yeah there's, you know there's something to be said for real life, you know that that's kind of how things are, you know in reality as well. Yeah. Anything else you'd like to add? Matt Weber No, thank you very much for for inviting me to be on this is my first time getting to be on a podcast, and it was really exciting. And I look forward to any listener responses. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright and so speaking of that, are there, what is the what is the one best place to get ahold of you? Matt Weber probably read it actually at this point, um, you're gonna put my username you said in the link I sent it to you, it's u/DeliveratorMatt. And, yeah cuz oh I see messages on there pretty frequently and I'll respond. I'm not a huge redditor but I am on there, you know, reasonably frequently and if anyone is interested in responding to what I said here I'll definitely get back to them. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright and so Everyone’s experience is different, so note that what you heard today doesn’t represent everyone with similar symptoms or diagnoses. This is just one example. If you’d like to come on the show and help people understand your symptoms so they can have more accurate representation in their games, go to wyrmworkspublishing.com & contact me there. Matt, thank-you for sharing yourself with us so we can bring reality into fantasy and thus make that fantasy world a reality. Matt Weber Thank you Dale. Take care. Wyrmworks Publishing So remember if you're not signed up for our newsletter yet, go right now. Alright, we have some big news over the next month or so it might be a little bit lighter than usual because we don't have the adventures and NPCs coming out every week, but we have some huge announcements coming, and if you don't sign up you're going to forget to check back later. Well okay, I'd forget. I don't know about you. Maybe you're better at remembering things that I am, but is that a chance you want to take? I think not. If you see this show being helpful, and I bet you there are people in your lives that could benefit from this, hit the like button. If you'd like to see more of it, Subscribe. If you know people who'd like to hear this, pass it on to them. And if you, like me, think that, "Wow everyone needs to hear this," and boy do I feel like that after this episode, pass it on to your social media friends, and don't forget those podcast ratings. That really makes a difference in getting this out to as many people as possible. Just go and, and even if you don't type out a review, which we would love, just clicking on that five star makes a huge difference. Wyrmworks Publishing And so we close with this question, and we'd love to have your feedback — you can respond to this on Twitter; you can respond to this in the YouTube comments, or send us an email. How have tabletop role playing games helped you not feel alone?