Wyrmworks Publishing What would accessibility look like in a fantasy world? Maybe not so different from the real world. Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We're using role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons to help you make lives better. If you haven't heard or backed it yet, there's just a few more days as this is getting posted. Maybe in your case, by the time you're hearing this a few more minutes to get in on Limitless Heroics: Including characters with disabilities, mental illness, and neurodivergence in fifth edition. It ends Thursday morning, my time which is Central United States. So if you want to get in there before that, you need to go right now. Limitless Heroics will include D&D Fifth Edition game mechanics for over 450 traits, over 100 new assistive magic items, real world examples of each one of those so that players can learn more and better represent the symptoms, all kinds of extra help and information about accessibility. I've been talking to therapists and accessibility advocates from different countries getting their perspectives. This whole thing is getting bigger and better throughout the campaign. It's really amazing. It's been such an amazing experience to go through this. I've learned so much just during the campaign from talking to people, and that's what it's all about. And I want to share that with you. So we hit the service animal stretch goal, which I know a lot of people are excited about so you can jump over to inclusiveRPG.com and that'll give you all the details. We just hired two more sensitivity consultants. They're psychologists from the Geek Therapeutics network who are really excited about this project too. If you go to the Kickstarter page, make sure that you scroll down and read through the staff bios because we have an amazing team, and everyone that was hired for this project is disabled, neurodivergent, mentally ill, or a combination of those. And when the main manuscript is ready, we just announced this to our backers: We're sending it out to our backers to get feedback from people's real world experiences and their playtest thoughts. And so we started this by talking to dozens of people about their experiences, but now it'll be potentially 1000s! I am so excited about connecting with our backers, and that are represented by this project and then hearing their experiences and then communicating that through the role playing experience. So make sure you don't miss it. Go to inclusiveRPG.com right now. And now let's get to our interview. Wyrmworks Publishing Whether you're writing a novel or a role playing game, it helps to get an outside perspective to make sure that what you're writing isn't harmful. Today, we welcome someone who provides that extra perspective accessibility advocate bionics, welcome Fay. Fay Onyx Hi, thanks for having me here. I'm really excited to talk about disability today. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright. So tell us a little bit about yourself, especially your work with tabletop role playing games. Fay Onyx Yeah, so I'm a disability advocate and consultant who specializes in tabletop role playing games and speculative fiction storytelling. Also, I kind of wear a lot of hats so I'm a game designer. I'm a podcaster with my podcasts doing tabletop role playing game actual play. I'm artist, writer. I'm probably forgetting some other stuff that I do too. Because it's a lot of stuff that's kind of all tied together. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright. So, in your work as an accessibility advocate, you've written quite a few articles about disability representation. So how did that start and has it grown over time? Fay Onyx Yeah, well, it actually started with tabletop role playing games. And then also my writing so at the time, I was doing a lot of writing fantasy, well, fairy tale stories with diverse representation. So and I was putting that on my podcast, Writing Alchemy, and reading them, sound effects and all that. And so I had in this one area of my life where I was working on disability representation, and then in this other area of my life, tabletop role playing games, where I really enjoy playing tabletop role playing games, but I was realizing I wasn't making any disabled characters, or very few disabled characters in my games, and I was wondering why in one area of my life, I was really enjoying making diverse representation and why I wasn't in tabletop role playing games, and I realized it was kind of this combination of how the game systems themselves handle disability, kind of combined with the sorts of the sorts of stories that a lot of game systems are designed to tell which tend to be very combat heavy. And if I'm thinking about especially about making a character that's based on me, so like, you know, someone with anxiety, someone with a chronic back condition, things like that. A character especially a character that have both of those would probably be very unlikely to get into combat situations or at least would do their best to stay out of them. So there's kind of that combination of the focus on combat. And then also, you know, there's this issue that although we're seeing increasing numbers of disabled characters being represented, still the vast majority of the disabled characters have at least one negative storytelling pattern happening, even in situations where overall the representation is pretty good, there's still at least one or two negative patterns that are usually still happening, because very few disabled characters are actually written by disabled creators. So that whole combination was happening and so then I decided to start doing actual plays on my podcast, where I have disabled participants, so both Game Masters and storytellers and also participants, all of whom are disabled, and playing disabled characters as a way of kind of creating more diverse, authentic disability representation than I could do just myself. And that sort of really took off, but I wanted to create some supporting, you know, documents of like, some information for new participants, and I just couldn't find the sort of articles I wanted. And there was just like, or, you know, like either there wasn't an article on a topic, but I'd sort of heard disabled people talking about it, but there was no one who'd written it up for everybody to like understand the issue, or there were articles, but the articles were really focused on what's the negative pattern, but there wasn't a what to do instead component. And so I started writing my own so that started with the Trope of the Week series, which has now been renamed Ableist Tropes and Storytelling. And I kind of went from there. I started a series of articles about disability representation specifically in tabletop role playing games. Because that is something I'm very passionate about. I got one of my more popular articles from that. I got connected to the folks at Mythcreants, which do a blog about speculative fiction writing, who I've been collaborating with, and they do amazing amounts of editing and refining for the articles. And so I wrote my "ridding your monsters of ableism" article, which is apparently their number one article for last year, and their blog gets a lot of traffic. So I'm like, wow, Wyrmworks Publishing it's a great article. Fay Onyx I'm really excited. Thank you, and I'm really excited, you know, that like you know, I'm seeing these gaps and I'm filling them, and there's a need out there like the fact that it's the number one article shows, like, you know, you get disabled people commenting here and there about ableist monsters, but no one had, that I could find in English anyway, you know, written up an article on here's what, what happens when people create monsters for things like role playing games, and you get the hunchback monster or you get the low intelligence monster and no one really thinks about how ableist that is, and so it kind of just grew from there. I now have a once a week, sorry, not once a week, once a month q&a that I do on the Mythcreant blog about disability specifically, so it kind of just kept growing and every time I find a gap, I kind of just try to make a resource. I think the most recent one that was a big gap I noticed was collecting resources on a list, a decolonizing games resource list is what I think titled it, and that's basically like, you know, a year and a half ago, there was a lot of talk about, you know, anti blackness and all that stuff. And I was just like, I realized that you couldn't find articles about this even though I'd run across all these articles, but you couldn't find them by searching decolonizing games or not find very many, and I'm like, oh, yeah, and I guess if you don't really know what decolonizing games is, you don't know to search for anti blackness and appropriation and, you know, violence and, you know, all of these different pieces and so I started pulling that resource together. So it's just, I guess it kind of keeps growing. But I've got more articles in the works with Mythcreants that…it's a slow process, but I'm really excited to keep keep going with this. Wyrmworks Publishing That's great. I know when I first got started in all this, your stuff was some of the first stuff I came across. And, and, and, and part of that, like you said was because there really wasn't much out there. So you filled a huge gap and and and also it's funny, you mentioned that that monsters article. I know I've read that article at least twice because I've read it and then there was I was looking for something and and that showed up in the in the search or whatever and I read it gaain and, "This sounds familiar. Oh, yeah," you know, but it was something that was it was worth reading a few times. And I kind of keep referring back to it. So um, yeah, no, absolutely Fay Onyx Well that's great to hear. Wyrmworks Publishing Well it's just, I mean, there's such a need, like you said, and I've talked to so many people that that and really that's that's in so many ways how I got started in all this is that, that I looked around and there was just so little out there it just I couldn't believe what a huge gap there was. Fay Onyx Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing And I thought, man, what year is it? Because it was 2020 at the time, so you know, everything's out the window then but no, it was, you know, there there still is a huge gap. But I think you know, your work and the work of others are it's starting to happen, and it's gaining momentum. Fay Onyx Yeah Wyrmworks Publishing So it's exciting. Fay Onyx It is very exciting to see it growing. Absolutely. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what are some common problems with disability representation in role playing games that you've frequently come across? Fay Onyx So yeah, so one of the big problems that I come across a lot that I'm hoping to write an article about at some point, though I do have a lot of articles in sort of working on already, is what I call the accommodations fail. And so that's something that comes up basically, I noticed it a lot in actual plays. Like especially if I'm listening to like an actual play podcast. I'll notice this come up if someone has a disabled character and a lot of times what happens is that you have this disabled character, let's say they have a mobility disability, and a situation comes up where they're not able to participate in something. So let's say the group goes off and does a chase scene after some mysterious villain that's been following them or something. And this character with mobility disability basically is like, well, I can't keep up with this chase scene, and they basically just chill there doing nothing while the rest of the group goes off. And, you know, so there's clearly an accessibility barrier there. Right? But afterwards, it's just like everyone kind of just seems like they think that's what disability is. You have this situation where someone can't participate and that's disability and it's like, I want to pull my hair out. I'm like, that's an accessibility barrier. You, you know, they come up sometimes when you don't expect them. That's life, but you don't just shrug your shoulders and say that's disability. You say, Okay, let's talk about accommodations. Let's talk about tools. Let's talk about group behaviors. Let's talk about, you know, getting something to increase this person's mobility. Let's talk about assistive devices. This is you know, we've identified the barrier. Now, we should do something about it, not just shrug our shoulders and be like, I guess that's what disability is. And it just, it just feels like this fundamental. Like, this is what disability activism is all about is identifying like, we have these barriers and it's not just the person's fault and they're the disabled person, and that's how what disability means. Like, there's social things that could be done if this person had a mount, you know, if it's more of a fantasy setting, or a chariot, or like, you know, or if the group behaved differently, right, so they, you know, spend some time researching magical tracking methods. So now we don't have to chase after the person but we can tag them, go to their hideout later as a group, and do an infiltration mission that doesn't require running around or whatever the thing is, there's so many options, but it just, it just makes my heart ache because that's exactly in real life. It's not just oh, I guess disabled people can't do this thing. It's like, no, there's a barrier. And that barrier is partially created by the social structure that's happening. And we can change that. So that's a big one that I run across a lot. And in terms of game systems, that's also like, if there are exists, you know, if the rules don't have assistive devices in it, if they don't have discussions of these issues, people don't know. Right? And I think the other big one I'd really like to talk about at this point is also what I call the unintentionally disabled character, which I think people are becoming more aware of disability and wanting to represent that respectfully. And I think this is one area where we get really terrible representation, because it's unintentional. And so this usually comes up in role playing games, where you have especially like character stats that are taken to extremes, and usually it's taken low. So the classic one is low intelligence. This is where we get some profoundly ableist stuff coming up and people don't know they're being ableist. Right? This may be someone who wants to represent disabled people well and respectfully, but for some reason, you know, they're just taking their character's intelligence and you know, and then they're playing an unintelligent character and not realizing that, you know, anytime you take a stat to a low extreme, where it's altering how they live their life and interfering with daily tasks and their ability to fully participate in things, you've created a disability. And probably it's very similar to real world disabilities. So what would be identified as a low intelligence character is a character with a cognitive disability, a learning disability, something in that family of disabilities. And if you don't know you've created a disabled character, the unconscious ableism that we've all been taught comes out and so people start portraying profoundly negative stereotypes of what it means to have a learning developmental, cognitive disability. And that all just comes out and people have no idea they're even doing it. So this is something I'm working on an article on. So hopefully, eventually I'll be able to publish this, but I don't want to wait till the article comes out to talk about it. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah Fay Onyx Because I think it's a big area that I have identified, where people who want to make respectful representation aren't so Wyrmworks Publishing No, absolutely and that's, that's that is in in every form of media. It's everywhere and and it's so accepted. Fay Onyx Right, right. And it's not just low intelligence, I mean, intelligence itself you could pick apart — that itself is an ableist concept. Not that there aren't specific cognitive skills that people can be brilliant at or struggle with. But lumping them all together in some we don't even think of his cognitive abilities, even though they are and we don't really value them. And then some we value and we create this idea of intelligence, and there's class in that and there's race in that and there's, you know, gender all up in there. So, but also, like, if you have a character that's super low strength, at a certain point, again, you've created someone with some sort of physical disability. If you have someone who's extremely clumsy, at a certain point, that becomes some sort of motor coordination disability, right? So you take anything to an extremely low point, people play really low charisma characters often as very socially awkward. And at a certain point, it starts representing stereotypes, often stereotypes about autism. You know, so you take pretty much anything to an extreme, and you get that. Wyrmworks Publishing So what are some positive impacts you've seen come out of your work? Fay Onyx Yeah, so I definitely have heard people say that my articles have helped them. And I've even had some folks are starting to translate some of them into French which is incredibly flattering, and also very exciting. And so you know, I hear some feedback about that, but I don't necessarily always hear about all of the ways it kind of trickles out to other people's lives. But I get the most feedback I think about my podcast, because that's like representation of disabled characters by disabled people. Which is still sadly rare. And people really say how much it means to them. And I think it really speaks to how important representation is, and even just in a fantasy world, doing accessibility right. You know, or as right as we can get, it's always a growing process. You know, there's always gonna be mistakes and places to learn, but doing it right in the sense of, we're centering it, we're being respectful, if we make a mistake, we address it honestly and openly. Doing all of that makes such a difference. It creates a place of I think, rest and recuperation for our minds and hearts. And and I think it also helps strengthen us and also helps like art is where new ideas come from, even if it's in a very fantastical setting. We can just thinking about and experiencing a fantasy worlds where there's accessibility built into the worlds. That all on its own changes how we think about things, and I think one of the most absolutely flattering things someone has ever said to me was that if they could get into the Adventurers' Academy by burning their Hogwarts letter, they'd do it or something to that effect. It was like, "I'd burn my Hogwarts letter to get into the Adventurers' Academy." And and the Aventurers' Academy is something out of my podcast, where it's basically a healthy learning environment that's a magical school. And I did take into more of a college level sort of school, because then you can have risk because you know, in college, you do chemistry lab, right. There's real risks in college, but their safety procedures are taught to people. But hey, if you're teaching someone to be an adventurer, the risks might be higher. So you and so the goal is to make the academy itself very exciting and magical and make the education the challenges and not have bullying and not have casually unsafe learning environments where risks that really should be eliminated are there or aren't addressed effectively. But also especially that sort of toxicity of all the drama around bullies, and that sort of stuff. And and also it's a school that really like the creators of the school were disabled people, so they really centered disability and the education and how they're training disabled people to be adventurers. And so I think it just speaks to how important even imagining an environment like that is. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, you know, we were actually just having I'm so glad you brought this up. We were having a conversation about this on our company Discord, and, and we're talking about Okay, so if you had a magical setting you talk about, about accessibility, and you know, and like what you could do with magic and stuff and, and, and so, like, imagine how much better the world would be and at first it was like, Well, okay, but would it really because look at the technology that we have today and and how little is often done when they could do something but they don't. But then but at the same time, this is a fantasy setting. And so how about we take those ideas and go okay, how could it be better, and then use that to imagine a better real world to to model it, "Well if you could do this in this setting, you know, there's a there's a modern analog to that that we could implement." You know. Fay Onyx Right. And some of the things are things we can do, which is like, you know, for example, thinking about, you know, being inclusive of deaf people, you know, that just shapes how you arrange tables, you know, and of course, there's actually like a whole deaf space architectural movement as well that has a lot more to it in terms of design, but they're all things that like, or the vast majority of them are things that benefit everyone, and are things that would increase accessibility for other people as well. You know, and having, you know, spaces that are more you know, where everyone can see everyone. Like that creates a better environment for everyone you know, to have that space like in a classroom, for example, as opposed to the one person at the front and everyone's backs to each other. You know? So I think there's there's a lot of that which has been interesting and researching for building the academy. But I really think that is the thing is like, I think a lot of people just don't even think about it or it's an afterthought, they they create their design, and then they try to tack on disability stuff later. But if even we start imagining, oh, hey, you know, what would this be like? But one of the things I think is really interesting is just thinking about like a fantasy world where you have the body diversity that's there, just in the fantasy species. And thinking about that, and what accessibility needs does that just inherently create? And it's like, you know, if you have people ranging from one foot tall to eight feet, tall, stairs are not the best option. You know, how do you create a set of stairs that's gonna match everyone's physical needs and at that point, the ramp really is the best option but of course, you also are going to want to have like your elevators too for folks where a ramp might be harder to walk on and also you know, for folks you know, who have limited capacity and and such, but also like you got your mermaids in wheelchairs, because how are they going to get around on land if their legs don't, if their tail doesn't magically turn into legs when they it dries? You know? You know, so it's, it's, it's kind of interesting to kind of notice that that body diversity just in a fantasy world, and how often in fantasy and sci fi you get a staircase when you really do have all these people of different sizes moving around. And it's like what, does this building have like a dozen different staircases in front of it all different like numbers of stairs? And and how it easily it's forgotten. Just that that body diversity in the fantasy world would demand different accessibility options. And a regular door might be really dangerous for someone one foot tall because like if someone else is just coming through from the other way, that door just like hit them and like just thinking about those options. You know, some of it matches stuff that real disabled people have and some of it maybe is different accessibility needs that go beyond what is in the real world. But just thinking about that is something that I found absolutely fascinating and something that I think a lot of able bodied, like creators completely miss, that this is even an issue that would exist and that the people that they're imagining in the buildings they're imagining would not be it would not be good environment for a lot of the people Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. Alright, so what one message would you like to give to disabled people? Fay Onyx Well, I think for that, I guess I'm kind of thinking a lot about disabled people wanting to play disabled characters. And I think for that is just if the game system has roles that don't work for your character's disability, you know, change them, modify them, you know, like don't don't just don't feel like you have to just accept that because, you know, for example, you know, Dungeons and Dragons, there's a lot of line of sight rules for magic. And those were probably created for certain game purposes. There's nothing about magic that inherently needs a line of sight, but they're trying to limit limit the scope of the magic in a way that is technically interesting for people who like more technical play. And so they're, they're trying to create some of these things so that Stealth is meaningful in the game, for example. But if you have a blind character who's casting magic, like that kind of creates this weird situation where it's like, oh, there's all these spells they couldn't theoretically use it all if you know, and it's like, well, that's, that's silly. You know, this rule isn't part of reality, this rule, or anything that's inherent to the magic it was created for, just this technical aspects of game balance. And, you know, if you want to take that and change it and make it, like hearing instead of sight, or make it into a line of effects sort of thing like you might have to do some thinking but like, it's more important to have a character that is an authentic representation than it is to stick to rules that people made when they weren't even thinking about disability representation. And to not let those messages that oh, this is just what it means to be disabled is, you know, if you have a blind character, they just can't do most of the magic and it's just like, that's, that's not real. That's, that's ableism not realizing that accommodations are needed, or, you know that sort of thing. Wyrmworks Publishing So in your consulting work with non disabled people, what is something important that you want them to know? Fay Onyx Yeah, so I think one of the main things I usually start with with a lot of people, I mean a lot of my consulting work is with disabled people who are kind of looking to broaden out their understanding, but when I when I am working with folks who are non disabled or you know, doing lectures or teaching in various forms, one of the big things I'd like to start with is just disability is diverse. And not just that there are a lot of different disabilities that all affect people in different ways, but that each individual disability is diverse. So, you know, just because two people are blind doesn't mean they're having the same experience. A lot of blind people can see to some extent, you know, there's there's a lot of stereotypes out there, but also just within each disability, a wide range of experiences, symptoms, triggers for those disabilities that have triggers, different, you know, like, from migraine triggers to PTSD triggers, people will have different triggers, like different life experiences, which make the disability have different impacts on their lives. It's right there. Whether someone has access to health care will have a huge impact on the way the disability operates in their life. And there's just this great deal of a diversity and also diversity of how we experience and think about our disabilities. And whenever you're trying to represent disability, especially like in a game system, or help a disabled player portray a character with a disability will be like particularly significant for this. It's important to have space for that, that diversity, and to not like dictate what this is the one mechanic all blind characters should use. You know, it's important, it can be really helpful to have mechanics to start from, but it's it shouldn't be a one size fits all because disability, real disability isn't one size fits all. And so it's important to make space for individual people's experiences, and so that they can have an authentic experience with disability representation within the game. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's a question that's come up with me a lot where, you know, people said well, okay, you know, you're talking about, you know, how to represent that and stuff like that, but different people have different experiences. Okay. Yeah. And, and so we're making a big point of saying, Okay, so we're offering suggestions how you could do that. But, but this is not, this is not Rules As Written, you know, handed down from Chris Perkins or something, and, and even he says, do it whatever works at your table. Fay Onyx Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I guess the one other thing I'd like to add, which is, don't always focus on the disabled character, when you're dealing with disability, right. So we talked a bit about environments right ramps versus stairs. Why does the ancient city need to have stairs everywhere? Why couldn't it have ramps, right? And then all of a sudden, if you have a character in a wheelchair, now that there's ramps everywhere that changes their access, and maybe we also have some elevators and some are working in some aren't and maybe you have to repair some of them and it becomes this extra layer to the challenge, right. And that is a different accessibility thing for people for whom stairs would actually be better than a ramp, right? And so there's no reason why the ancient city can't have ramps like question whether the environment needs to be as inaccessible as it is, you know, think about accessibility for that environment because disability isn't just about the person. It's also about the social structure and environment. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, maybe. Maybe those ancient cultures were a bit wiser when it came to architecture than you know, say the Romans like we think we have to do everything like the Romans like they're the be all end all of ancient architecture. Fay Onyx Absolutely. I'm sure plenty of ancient Romans would have appreciated some alternatives to stairs. Wyrmworks Publishing Right?! Wyrmworks Publishing So what projects you planning for the future that you can talk about? Fay Onyx Oh, yes. So the one that I'm super excited about right now is a podcast project. So unfortunately, my podcast has been going kind of slow the past two years, mostly coinciding with COVID. And the as someone with anxiety, living in the times of COVID has been very hard for me and my capacity have gone down unfortunately. But I am currently releasing on my podcast the most recently recorded game, which is several years past when I was originally planning to release it that it's being released but the next game is one I've actually been working on and planning for years. And it's it takes place in the Adventurers' Academy. So the first game that had the Adventures' Academy in it is called the Owlbear Reintroduction Program. So that was me really working into kind of leaning into what does a story that's not centered on violence focus on and how can we make interesting challenges and people really love that and responded to it. And the Adventurers' Academy was the starting location, sending people out on their first internship to relocate some owlbears and, and basically what I'm planning is a longer running game that really focuses on the Adventurers' Academy, and what education is like there and what the environment is like there and really trying to make the education itself the fun, exciting thing that's at the center of the game. And also the people in relationships. It's going to be a pretty light game in but with a lot of heart and there's it's gonna touch on stuff like trauma, and there's gonna be some definite serious stuff in there, but it's going to be overall very light, very fun, very humorous. And I'm gearing up for that, but it's a very long process of populating the Academy with a bunch of really awesome, carefully thought out teachers and staff people and creating the physical environment and kind of doing several rounds of like, different types of accessibility, what changes do we need to make to make it as accessible as possible? But I'm super excited about that. And I honestly can't wait to get it started and I've been working lately on the actual like, here's the different things they're going to be doing in class, and I'm so excited for it. So it's kind of a big thing. I'm also working on as I said, there's some articles and there's some some other behind the scenes thing, but that's kind of the big thing I'm gearing up for that's actually going to be using my own game system, Magic Goes Awry, that I've created and have been working on and it's used in the Owlbear Reintroduction Program and it's basically a game system that's got a rules-light core mechanic, but very detailed character creation. So the idea is to have character creation with lots and lots of options, and each choice gives a lot of distinct quality to the character and really helps make them distinct and unique. But then the mechanic is rules light so there's less to keep track have a much less math than D&D, so kind of has that detailed character stuff that people like out of D&D, but trying to strip down to a really rules light mechanic that there's you don't have to remember five different bonuses your character has. And so that kind of goes along with the academy adventure because we will be using that game system. Wyrmworks Publishing Cool. That sounds great. You know, even as a longtime D&D player, I still like relying on tools like D&D Beyond to do the math for me. Because yeah, it can be you know, even for me, and I'm pretty good at math. You know, it can be a challenge and so for people for whom math is a challenge, or just even, you know, remembering all of those various details and no, you forgot that bonus or whatever, it can be pretty, pretty frustrating. So it's great to have that alternative. Fay Onyx Yeah, I'm good at keeping track of things. I'm good at math. And I still forget things when I'm playing D&D or Pathfinder and I'm like, "if I'm not remembering all of the stuff, oh my goodness. What is happening to people who have like discalculia?" Like, Oh, geez. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you that's, that's one of the challenges that we're still working on in our book is, is how do we because we had to use math to create that, that that granular disability is a spectrum thing. Yeah, that, especially when you get to dicalculia, all of a sudden, we're using a math mechanic for like, "Oh! Well, how do we do…?" We still haven't figured that one out. I don't know. But I don't know. We'll figure it out. But it but it's this challenge. Alright, Fay Onyx It's a challenge for sure. Wyrmworks Publishing So we'll have all your contact information in our show notes, but where's the one best place that you'd like people to start to learn more about you or to contact you? Fay Onyx Yeah, absolutely. And I also just realized that I don't know how many times I've said the name of my podcast. So my podcast is called Writing Alchemy. So you can find that in podcast catchers. But yeah, so the number one place you can find me is my website, which is writingalchemy.net. And there's a Resources tab which has, it's getting so long because I just keep making things, but there's a really long list in the Resources tab. So you can find all sorts of things there. But also it has information about my podcasts and you can play episodes off the website. It has a current version of my game system Magic Goes Awry. And I post announcements there, links to all my social media, all the good stuff. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright. And so thanks for coming on the show. And everyone check out those links in the show notes. Fay Onyx Thank you so much for having me. It's been great conversation. Wyrmworks Publishing Also, when we have people available, we include a segment on the show called Playing the Other where people with disabilities, neurodiversity, and mental illness come and talk about their experiences and how that relates to their gaming experiences and how they'd like to see that represented in the gaming world. And so this is a chance for creators to tell us about some of the cool stuff they've made. And so if you'd like to be a guest on that segment, whether you're a creator or not & just want to share your experiences, we'd love to have you on. If you go to WyrmworksPublishing.com/contact. You can just fill out the form there and let us know and I'll be in touch with you. So one of the other things I want to tell you about our Kickstarter, is that one of the backer tiers you get to assign your name to one of the magic items, you know, like Heawrd's Handy Haversack, but it's your name instead or the name of someone who you have permission from to include. And so I've had people doing that to, you know, have their name immortalized in the book and like parents doing it for their kids, so their kid's name can show up in the book and how cool would that be for the kids? It's been really exciting to hear from people about that. Now if you want to make sure that an item that's corresponding to your specific experience is available. Now there's only so many items over 100 and and possibly more depending how many people back us at that level. But if you want to make sure that an item that specifically connects with your experience is included in the book with your name on it, what you can also do is choose one of our Create a Character options. And then as you work with us to create a character, then you can design an item for that character and name it and then that'll go in the book too in addition to the the item that you get to name, even if that one doesn't correspond to your experience. So again, if you're interested in that, jump over to inclusiverpg.com and just go there right now so you don't miss it. And if you haven't signed up for our newsletter yet, you can go do that. We have dozens & dozens of 4k combat maps that are free, a subclass, also free, discounts, other specials, the latest news, blog posts, stuff that we can't include in the book because of licensing. Then just the way that all this licensing stuff works but we can do as blog posts and articles. Also news about future projects, just jump over to WyrmworksPublishing.com and sign up for our newsletter there. And then also we have a Patreon and you can support our ongoing work because we have a lot more plans after this project. And that link for Patreon is in the show notes. Or if you jump on our newsletter, we'll we'll make sure to get that information to you. So if you see this being helpful, hit that like button if you're watching this on YouTube or somewhere else where you can do that. If you'd like to see more, please subscribe wherever is most convenient for you to to subscribe. If you know people that need to hear this please pass it on to them. And if you, like me, think everyone needs to hear this because we get awesome guests on here, please pass it on your social media friends. Don't forget those podcasts ratings — it makes a huge difference to spread the word by increasing rankings in the algorithms. So please jump over to your favorite podcast area and leave a rating and possibly a review there too. So thanks everybody for your support. Thanks for watching and listening and I close out with this question: How have role playing games helped you learn more about experiences of people that are different from you?