Wyrmworks Publishing Let's talk about disability representation in gaming, and how cool it can be. Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better. So, if you've been following things around here, Limitless Heroics: including characters with disabilities, mental illness and neurodivergence in fifth edition is being published really shortly. In fact, we have removed the preorders so that we can get everything all set for everyone who has preordered, everyone who backed the Kickstarter, and we are ready to move forward with that. And so if you missed out, then go to our website, links in the show notes, to sign up for our emails, and you will get notified as soon as it is publicly available. Also, coming up, looks like end of November, still nailing down an exact date. But we will be starting another Kickstarter. We want to make sure we get all the Limitless Heroics stuff done. Loose ends tied up, all the different formats and things, but the new one, once we're ready for it is called Limitless Champions. And it will feature at least 20 disabled miniatures, and we're featuring all kinds of conditions and experiences that are not usually represented in fantasy miniatures. Such as Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, different mental illnesses represented by comfort animals or focus devices. We've got a kobold with a fidget and different things like that. And so I'm so excited I've had a chance to talk to lots of different people who are being represented through this and or whose experiences at least are and and just the feedback I've gotten from them and things that I've learned and been able to to communicate in the game, I'm just super excited we're gonna have besides the the miniatures, which will be available as an STL so you can print your own and make copies for your friends or the as a standard gray miniature or as a pre-colored miniature if you, like me, don't know even which end of the paintbrush to use. Then those are for you so that you can have nice pre colored miniatures, all depends on your budget too. So we're gonna have different options available for different people with some extra stretch goals and other things like that. But with these characters, we're going to have fifth edition statblocks and adventures that the characters are featured in so you can see how to use characters like this in a respectful way. And we'll have extra help and tips and stuff in the book that goes along with the adventures and the character descriptions. Wyrmworks Publishing If you like modular formats, like D&D Beyond where you have everything in one place, all linked together, we're doing that with all of our publications. We're in the process of getting Limitless Heroics posted there. We've got adventures there, and characters, new monsters, all kinds of things that we're just getting started. We've got a bunch of it ready there. And we'll have very soon, we'll have even more. If you want to go check that out, you can access all of it for only $3 a month, and the signup is through our Patreon. There's all kinds of exclusive extras. It's also a way to just support the work that we're doing here at Wyrmworks Publishing to improve inclusivity throughout the tabletop gaming sphere. And so you sign up to that for that for access. And also, if you can support a little bit more, for $9 a month, you also get the PDFs of all of our products. So that can actually be a real savings. When you look at the multiple things that we're going to be releasing that you can get them that way cheaper than the retail price and you also get the Lair access that way too. And so again, links in the show notes more information you can go and check that out. And so now with that said let's get right on to our interview. Wyrmworks Publishing Roleplaying games make anything possible, and since anything's possible anything can be represented. But while anything can be represented, not everything is today we welcome Rachel Voss and Wesley Magee-Saxton from Forge Ahead: A Party To Access to discuss representation and accessibility in tabletop gaming. Welcome, Rachel and Wes. Wesley Magee-Saxton Hi. It's great to be here. Thank you for having us. Rachel Voss Thank you so much. Hi. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what would you like us to know about each of you personally? Specifically, talking to the tabletop RPG crowd? Unknown Speaker Okay, so I guess hello to the RPG crowd tuning into the show today. My name is Wesley or Wes. I'm a nonbinary person living in so called Toronto. I just graduated from an acting school here in Toronto. I graduated from York University and that's sort of also where I fell in love with tabletop gaming, because it combines two of my favorite things, that being acting and roleplay with fantasy and sometimes sci fi. So the second I picked up my first dice set, I kind of never put it down and that's where RPG started for me, I suppose. Rachel Voss Hi, I'm Rachel Voss. I am a manual wheelchair user that has been since I was 12. And then I started adaptive athletics and was on made it to Team USA a few times for basketball, track and field, weightlifting and swimming once but I also am just a shop kid at heart. I grew up in Collinsville, Illinois. So dizzy dugout, it was also my family. within the family, I basically just stayed all the time at the shop. So I that's where I first got introduced to roleplaying games and tabletop in particular, but my roommate sat me down in college and said that if I lived with her I was going to have to play a character and that's really where I first started. Wyrmworks Publishing You know what a great roommate. Rachel Voss Exactly. She's still my DM. We're playing tonight. Wyrmworks Publishing Cool, so tell me about Forge Ahead and the work that you do. Rachel Voss So as forge ahead, we are tapping into our lived experiences as well as those in our community and our friends to design accurate representation of disability in tabletop role playing games and in fantasy. Currently, we are focusing a lot on character development and tackling negative perspectives of disability and fantasy. And within that character development, we are also designing custom items for the characters and different mechanics depending on the character because we are also designing a lot of our characters after real people who have disabilities that are our friends in our community. And Wes? Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, futher to jump in and add on that we're also doing our best to act as a platform to showcase different creators and people in the community whether that would be working with other disabled creators to turn them into characters or have them work with us on class rewrites to make things more accessible or you know different ways of accessing the rule systems for 5e, incorporating different mobility devices as magical items, things like that. We are also working directly to sort of gain a bit of a foothold in the tabletop industry, working to coordinate with vendor partners and stuff like that, hopefully getting some funding for bigger projects that we're going to be talking about later in the interview. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that's always helpful. It's people kind of take it for granted that just do real simple homebrew kind of things at home and but yeah, the stuff it costs money to produce, especially when it comes to you know, artwork and editing, sensitivity reading all that kind of stuff. It adds up real quick. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, for sure. I know, Rachel and I are definitely experiencing that firsthand, trying to get things started. It was it was a little rough in the first few months of the organization sort of outlining what we wanted to do and then out figuring out what the costs would be, and even where to begin. Just knowing both of our situations and living in different countries to was that was tough in and of itself. Wyrmworks Publishing Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So how have you seen lives changed because of your work? Rachel Voss We are seeing that people are less apprehensive to add disability into their campaign, which that also which is great, is amazing. We love seeing that that people are more open to adding disability. But the what we're even more excited about is that if you're less apprehensive to add disability to your campaign, that means it's going to translate off the table and you're going to be more open to engaging with individuals with disabilities in your community. And so ultimately, that's the goal. We want to bring disability representation to your lives into your communities. And so by following us and being more willing to add disability in your campaign, you are also adding more disability in your life. Wes? Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah. Further to that just with the with some folks in the community that we have worked with to turn them into characters, some of the folks we've worked with, have been very familiar with tabletop and very familiar with D&D and other systems, and some have not on both counts, people that we've worked with, to turn them into characters have had wonderful brilliantly emotional responses when we hand them the final artwork. Saying that, you know, it's a dream that they never knew they had. A dear friend of mine that we worked with, burst into tears when we handed him the artwork and just said this, this was absolutely amazing and blew it up all over the place and it just goes to show you what an impact like proper grounded representation can have in a field where there wasn't much to begin with. And that's really what we're trying to do is essentially get people with disabilities in the writers room behind the scenes grounding this representation, so that when it comes to the forefront, it's fully fleshed out and 3d instead of just you know, we're going to throw a character in a wheelchair just because we can you know, so that's sort of the big impact we've seen. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, Boy, I've seen that so much people that just just simply don't experience representation, whether it's in tabletop games in you know, I'm sure Wes with your acting background you've seen how it is in TV and movies and all that. Yeah. So but yeah, tabletop seems like one of the most difficult places to break in with that. Wesley Magee-Saxton That is partially the reason that Forge Ahead was formed in the first place was Rachel and I have both seen the individually both seen the comments and reaction to Sarah Thompson's combat wheelchair. The majority of them being, you know, vastly negative and that sense of like, why would you want to have a wheelchair? It's D&D, you can do whatever you want. And the way Forge Ahead kind of got going was in some random D&D group. I don't really remember what it was. Rachel shared her individual homebrew for a set of chairsmith tools. And I was just scrolling through Facebook. And I saw it and I commented on it was like, can we collaborate on something please? And it just kind of evolved into collaborating from one thing to we need to do something about this. So we're going to do something about it. And now like a year and a half later, we're here so Rachel Voss and just to kind of talk about the Hollywood thing, I firmly believe that a lot of the ableism we're seeing in tabletop in the tabletop community is directly related to the representation we're seeing in Hollywood. I recently did a discussion regarding the comparison between avatar, the James Cameron's Avatar and Avatar The Last Airbender, and James Cameron's Avatar is the number one grossing film of all time so that is, everyone's like any like, that's the number one disability representation that our the world has received. Is that perspective that like, you can't be happy unless you're going to your your chairs a jail cell, you can't you can't be free. So that is what people are seeing and what they're bringing to tabletop. However, what I feel very deeply is that this in tabletop, this conversation is so new, like it's like within the last less than five years old, right, this conversation, if we're able to really dive into it now. And just really change those negative perspectives of disability. And like I said, it'll translate off the table, but it's going to be so much easier than doing it IRL, because we've been talking for generations on how we need disability representation. And so it's it's the perfect place to start. Trying to bridge that gap into Hollywood is lots of things start with tabletop and role playing things. And that's how a lot of things are being created. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah. And I sometimes wonder, you know, when do you when you mentioned that, I think about how many because it's there's such a close connection, how many actors in Hollywood play tabletop games? Yeah. And, you know, their exposure to some of these things. How is that going to affect the way that you know what they learn and bring to the screen and insist on in movie writing and things like that? So yeah, absolutely. All right, so you just rescued a djinni from the hands of an efreeti and it offers you three wishes to achieve your goals to make the world better. What do you wish for? Rachel Voss Number one, equity for all groups that are seeking it. Equity is a core need is not just a buzzword. It is vital to our health. There's lots of studies that suggest that it shows that equity is really important. And that's really what we're all striving for, is to be able to remove those barriers and things that you need. That no matter what intersectionality you have. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah. Number two is that everything that is designed in the world from this point forward, is designed with accessibility first, and that will trigger what is called the curb cut effect. It will benefit everybody I don't know if Rachel and you wanted to go into the curb cut Rachel Voss I'll go into the curb cut a little bit later. So, Wesley Magee-Saxton okay, Rachel Voss you'll have to keep listening! Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, you'll have to keep listening to the interview for that bit. And if I can jump into number three, if that's okay. We wanted to see a greater sense of interdependence and community in general. And what that means for people with disabilities and frankly, minority groups in general, is the fact that that is how a lot of us survive, in systems that were not designed for us and how we've historically survived is by senses of community, mutual aid groups. That type of thing of mutual aid has always been a common factor of disability. As it intersects with other groups as well. Even looking from a historical perspective, from my research. That is how people in the middle ages for example, in Europe survived with disabilities. They had communities that were just ready and willing to support them, design special mobility devices are referenced in certain texts and they are listed as specially crafted and that is a big, like nomenclature for that time. It's something is specially crafted. I found in just researching, both for creating tabletop characters and also just my playwriting in general, that people with disabilities acted and still do act for that matter as sort of glue to hold their communities together. So just sort of what we bring to that sense of interdependence. And community is something that we can teach a lot of non disabled and dominant groups in general, and we just really want to see more of that sense of community become more commonplace, so we don't have to look so hard to find it. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, it's the it's the balanced party. Yeah, you know, it's so often I when I see these comments about, oh, well, that person in the wheelchair or you know, whatever their disability is, oh, they would you know, they would never make it as an adventure. Well, actually, most adventures no matter what their status is, wouldn't make it by themselves. But that's the point that we all have different things to contribute, and we all need each other. Rachel Voss Exactly. We all have strengths, and we all have limitations, and we all need to recognize them and former community to be able to build the best group possible, which is the whole point of tabletop role playing games. Wesley Magee-Saxton Exactly 100% Wyrmworks Publishing Which sort of seems so obvious, isn't it? Rachel Voss Yeah, it's just what happens when ableism blinds your perspective of what should be? Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, absolutely. Wyrmworks Publishing Right. So what what message would you like to give disabled gamers Wesley Magee-Saxton My message for disabled gamers specifically, is just it is possible. Do you want you want to be a badass monk that can punch people really hard and a power chair user at the same time? Yes, it's possible. You want to go Dungeoneering in a wheelchair that, you know, isn't some cyberpunk wheelchair that can go down stairs. Yes. It's absolutely possible, homebrew and conceptualizing of, you know, different methodologies of completing things. I don't know what Rachel's gonna go into how we are adaptive in the real world. Now imagine if that adaptation ability was taken into a context where there's magic. We can do a lot of stuff. Anything you can dream up in an RPG context in terms of being disabled. It can definitely happen. Rachel Voss Yeah, we are amazing problem solvers. We're the best problem solvers in the world. Because we have to out of necessity, we have to be able to be like, Oh, how am I gonna get that I really need that and I'm gonna reach it really high or I'm gonna get it off the ground or I'm gonna get this heavy thing into my car. Like, every single day, there are decisions and problems that we are solving. And that makes us amazing roleplay like role players, like the people who can adapt and shift and think on their feet and just be able to pivot at a moment's notice are people with disabilities are gamers with disabilities? And so we are the perfect roleplay gamers. If because we are creative, we think outside the box we do all check all those those interview things, but it's it's really true that we are problem solvers. And that's what you need. And in a good, adequate table is just a crew of problem solvers. So you are what we need. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, like even even a super, super mundane real world example that I experienced yesterday was the TV remote was in a location that I could not reach in the chair that I was currently sitting in. And I had to look around for what I could reach within my periphery of what my arms could reach to potentially get that remote and I ended up using like the most wackiest assortment of household objects that I have at my disposal to create like a little chain to get the remote over to me because no one else was in the house. And in those moments, it almost feels like you're doing parkour of some kind because if you mess up once while you're trying this problem solving solution, and the remote falls to the ground, then you might not have the ability to get it so you got to make sure the try you're going for is the try that's going to get it in certain situations and as Rachel was saying, that translates really well to both at the table and away from the table situations. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. I've seen that so often, and like I said, when you're when you're already used to as a as a player, that your whole life is those kinds of how do I do having to think outside the box constantly. When you get into an outside the box situation, which is common in roleplaying games, then you're already used to it. I've seen this so often where a problem comes up and and I see people whatever the situation is, in my case is parenting and just what I'm used to as a as a parent with disabled kids and and the, you know, we're just constantly solving problems and or, you know, helping our kids figure out how to navigate things or whatever. And so when something comes up and there was one time we had a situation and and someone said, oh well we've got the situation there's this kid and they're kind of acting up or whatever and we're not sure what to do and stuff and oh it really this is so minor. This is easy, and they said, no it's easy for you because you daily handle so much more than this and yeah, I guess you're right. But yeah, when it's when it's yourself, you know even more as the point because it's every moment Yeah, for sure. Alright, so what what message would you like to get to non disabled gamers Rachel Voss So we kind of touched base on it earlier, designing with accessibility first and everyone benefits. So it's time to learn about the curb cut effect. The curb cut effect essentially started as a form of advocacy. There are stories that pop up all over the US that talk about some some people say started in Berkeley, some people say that started in Champaign, Illinois, some in at in Michigan. So basically someone had a business and at some point in history, there were no ramps, at intersections, on curbs, it was just curbs. And so when there was construction going on in front of a business, the owner of the business stepped out and was like, hey, construction crew. I have a friend that uses a wheelchair and just like can I give you some money to make a ramp right here so my friend could get in instead of having to pop up the curb every time. And so they did they, you know, slipped them a 20 or whatever it was and they made a curb cut. They found out that that intersection was the most turned into the most frequented intersection because of the curb cut because people who were making deliveries could access the sidewalk easier, people who could walk but had like it hurt their knees to go up a step or their hips or whatever would go out of their way to use that intersection instead of trying to fight the curbs or whatever. So we designed something for people with disabilities, but it benefited everyone. So designing with accessibility first means that literally everyone will be able to benefit. I like to talk about that there are three types of disability. There's another social model of disability there are three types of disability there's your permanent disability that we have, and then you're temporary, which is like breaking your bone or whatever, but a situational disability. So it's completely depends on the circumstances, but I'll give you a really good example of you have a screaming feverish baby in one hand and you are trying to get the phone number of your doctor with the other. Right then you have to be able to access your doctor so number with one hand, you if you can't, then that's an issue that's a barrier that's a disability. And that's why if you didn't know that the touch point on touch like touched objects like iPads and phones is nine millimeters wide. That is what it has to be because the average touch point is eight to 10 millimeters. And so you are benefiting you are you accessing that curb cut effect to be able to use your phone with one hand. And that was designed that's an ADA feature that's designed for people with disabilities that you are still benefiting from. So again, design that's really long example but design, fourth, accessibility first and everyone benefits Wesley Magee-Saxton And we had one more thing to say to non disabled gamers, which is that the concept of magic and disability can exist at the same time for a number of reasons. The first being not everyone wants to be fixed. There seems to be a societal expectation that if we were given the option to just poof our impairments away that everyone would do that. But it has become a core part of a lot of us and that would just be like taking away your ability to, you know, be who you are fundamentally or taking away one of your intersections. The disability community of course, is not a monolith. There are varying degrees of this. There are people who would take the immediate poofing away of their impairments and we do have to respect that but not everyone wants that and pretty much the majority of non disabled people expect us to want that. And then on top of that, like even in you know, official D&D content for an example, like that type of metric that would fix those kinds of issues that would poof away the impairments is ridiculously high level magic. There would be barriers to accessing that not everybody would have access to it. So therefore, communities and people that are further away from those centers of magic would require different adaptable means of surviving. Um, is there any other aspect that we have in the notes that I'm missing, Rachel, just make sure. The only thing I can think of is that we technically have some forms of magic in a way for healing in the world, which is healthcare. And there are plenty of people who aren't being able to get access IRL for health care, which is our Worlds of Magic for healing. And you know why? Yeah, exactly. Right. Like the even if you look at, you know, officially published content for the, quote, societal systems end quotes, they're not perfect. They are absolutely not perfect. And even for an example to our real world magic, there are suits that are designed by bionic companies that are supposed to help people walk, there are wheelchairs that you can stand up in, that are supposed to allow people to, you know, drive around from a standing position. Those would immensely improve quality of life for a lot of us, but are they commercially available? Absolutely not. Because they're not. And yeah, they're not accessible at all. Like those those stand up wheelchairs can cost upwards of like, hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And unless you're like, extremely wealthy, because you're not going to get government coverage for you know, $150,000 wheelchair, the, the, at least in my experience, the government tries to give you like the minimum amount of coverage it possibly can, and you have to fight tooth and claw to get what you actually need. So getting the luxury of a, you know, military technology bionic suit, or some sort of Iron Man replacement or a wheelchair that can stand up is not something that's gonna happen unless you're in the 1%. So the same would apply to like a ninth level spell. You're not just going to find a ninth level spellcaster out on the street, you know? So that also exists and people conveniently forget that because it shatters their image of, you know, fantasy being very monochrome in a way and that's what we're trying to change is we're trying to showcase that like, different intersectionalities and abilities and ways of being and backgrounds exist anywhere. And honestly, it would make your fantasy setting more realistic if we weren't because we are. War leaves disability in its wake. And that is literally what everyone is doing. It's combat combat, right. Even if you're roleplaying there's combat. And so that causes disability. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. And and even that high level magic if you look at the, what they've what it can actually do, short of a wish spell. Even things like greater restoration. If you look closely at it, you can heal the blinded condition, which is different from actual blindness, it's more the sort of temporary condition. And so when you if you kind of really drill down into those even that it's really unless there's someone handing out wishes on the street corners. It's really not happening or it's extremely rare. And it's like it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago, that you know, people say, Well, how can you have disabled people when there's clerics? And it occurred to me that, well, how can you have farmers when there's create food and water? Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah. That's a much lower level spell. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. Wesley Magee-Saxton Because if you think about it, like the stuff you get from creating food and water is often purported to, you know, not be the best tasting stuff. So if everyone was just like, we're just gonna create food and water and that's gonna be fine. Like people are still gonna want farmers or hero's feast. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. But yeah, like, it's so silly, because it's really again, it's just the ableism making people not understand like, or that our experiences would be genuine. Hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. Wyrmworks Publishing Like someone handing out goodberries everywhere. I'm just gonna make a character now. That's an NPC that just handing out goodberries. Like Johnny Goodberry goes around. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yes, I love that. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. So what projects are you working on now that you can talk about? Rachel Voss Let's talk about your mini series. Wesley Magee-Saxton Okay. So I am in the beginning stages of sort of putting together a miniseries that starting as one that is more focused around disability representation in the media both in front of the camera and behind it. I'm hopefully going to be talking to my work contacts and people from my artists community, and how, you know, getting people with disabilities in writers rooms as I mentioned earlier in the interview, and in front of the camera, the combination of those two, and in production and in costume design, all in throughout film and theatre is going to change the caliber of stories that we receive the number and caliber of genuine stories that we receive in terms of people with disabilities, and I'm going to talk about how that will translate to the table. That's sort of my main first mini series that I'm trying to chase down contacts for right now. It's very hard to get a hold of artists. Let me tell you that but you know, that's that's the first of hopefully a few miniseries. Rachel Voss characters, coloring is a great way to stay focused especially for as ADHD folks whenever it's not your turn just to color so we're trying to increase the representation in coloring itself. But then we also have our Patreon page that we have started this year and we have a few goals that we're really excited about creating access cards like actual physical cards with our characters with disabilities that have matching little mini standees so that you there's you're removing that barrier of what many to use, it would come with that access card and then accessible locations as well. And we are talking about that being a Kickstarter eventually, if we're slow, slow on our patron goals, but I'm also designing a fantasy sport that is accessible. It's called the it's called Access ball and it's my baby it's, I'm a sportsball person. And so I've really wanted an accessible sport where there's no classification system, you can just have pick up people that have typically developed people with disabilities be on the same team and play a game. So I'm designing that Wesley Magee-Saxton it's so cool. I'm so excited for everyone to see and just to clarify, access cards themselves are a system I believe, thing designed by Matt Coville correct originally for them, was it Matt Colville? Rachel Voss No, well, Matt Colville were basically he created retainers, right and so it's like a shortened NPC that's easier to throw into your games and accessible our access cards are actually designed by Shana … so we just like looked at what other people are doing to try to streamline the NPCs so that it's so much easier just to throw them into your game and it's not It's not a barrier to put a new NPC in. Yeah, and then the last thing is, we are working on the disability scene which is our podcast that we would like to create which is our 500 patrons stretch goal where we pay Game Masters and players specifically with disabilities to come and play characters one scene at a time. So the goal is to be able to get this big archive of easy obtainable representation of disability, you don't have to listen to an entire campaign to get snippets of disability representation. You could just come to the disability scene and pick the scene and you know exactly where that you're gonna get representation. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah. To expand on that a little bit like we're going to be doing a mix of combat roleplay and everything in between. Because, you know, if you set up a combat scene, sometimes it can turn into roleplay and, you know, vice versa, and we just wanted to give folks, you know, snapshots of what it's like to actually have disabled players at your table and disabled characters in your campaign in combat in roleplay. And how that influences as Rachel said, without listening through a Critical Role sized campaign to find those snippets and that is a huge part of one of our other just general goal throughout all of our content is just combating DM burnout, especially where D&D 5e is concerned, because 5e is a wonderfully detailed system. It's amazing. I love it. I love the level of detail, but so many people playing 5e get so burned out so quickly, because there's so many things to keep track of. And the access cards that Shana designed are designed to as Rachel said, make it really easy to just pick up a card and say okay, this is the NPC. This is a stat block that I need. And here's a mini okay, I can throw them into tonight's session. I don't have to worry about it. And a lot of the disability scenes stuff is designed to be easily accessible and not intimidating because when you're teaching someone D&D for the first time, and you slam down a bunch of like textbooks in front of them and say, read this, that can be an accessibility barrier to introducing people to tabletop games. So that is a huge proponent of our work is just like streamlining and simplifying things. So you still get all the good juicy bits and awesome parts of the details. But it's easier to play the games that we love to play, because we want to see more people join the game. Rachel Voss DM burnout is absolutely an accessibility issue. If you look at the accessibility like just like how the guides are laid out, they were not designed with accessibility first. They were just designed to put as much information into the book as possible. And so disability is absolutely an accessibility issue that we were trying to tackle. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, that is definitely for sure. I really appreciate that. And this is yet another example of something where you create something to be more accessible to certain number of people and it's just makes it better for everyone. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, exactly. Wyrmworks Publishing So yeah, no, absolutely. You had kind of need a… I've talked to a lot of people that just can't use the core books. You know, thankfully D&D Beyond is, is pretty, they've really kind of made a point of being accessible and plus browser based, you can use whatever kinds of browser plugins are just increasing font sizes, or you know, or whatever you need screen readers and things to make that accessible. So, in fact, I hear people talk about, oh, you know, I really wish they'd make PDFs available. And while that would help some people, PDFs are terrible for screen readers, no matter what you do. Wesley Magee-Saxton I have lots of experience that in terms of trying to make PDFs work, but suffice it to say I cannot play D&D without D&D Beyond So shout out to D&D Beyond for being the reason I can play and just trying to read source books is hell, like I will have to go find a YouTube video of someone who broke down the source book and get material from from that and thank you to all the wonderful people that do that. But you are right. Even the way it's laid out right now, even with browser plugins can be incredibly challenging to read. And you know that that might be something we work on in the future is how to how to, you know, fix source books, how to make source books accessible to different styles of reading different people taking in information differently. Rachel Voss Yeah, absolutely. That is something that we've been talking about because we're we want to make our own book in the future. And we're building this huge, really big storyline, but that's what we talked about is that Wes loves to dive into that. Give him the 40 pages of trees, give them all all the information is like the bullet point highlights, or I'm not gonna get it. So understanding that people digest information different is really important. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, and, and this really brings home the idea that even if, you know, Wizards of the Coast, they're they're gradually making you know, improvements and things like that and and I hope that that continues and I fully expect it will. Alright, but even you know, they go just completely in on accessibility. There's always going to be more things that need to be done. I mean, they can't do it all themselves either. It's we're still as a gaming community. We still need the whole party, and not just the you know, the one big paladin or whatever. Rachel Voss The conversation is never done. I'm glad that the conversation is starting and a lot of tables, but the conversation has to continue, so that everyone can grow. Yeah, and like I know, I have a lot of things I need to learn specifically on other people's disabilities. And but I do find myself like, trying to learn as much as I possibly can. Acknowledging that I don't know everything. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, I mean, Thank you, Rachel, for sharing just even like our microcosm of working on this sort of grand storyline we want to eventually include because Rachel's right I'm, I am the person that would read the entire Silmarillion and enjoy every page of the Silmarillion learning about everything I can, you know, diving into the Lord of the Rings wiki for hours at a time, and then looking up and realizing it's dark outside. And, you know, as Rachel said, she processes information differently than that, and that's been, you know, the subject of quite a few conversations is how do we not lose any of the essence of the 40 pages of trees? Well, turning the 40 pages of trees into something that like, is more readable and like where do you make concessions? Where do you keep things and, you know, we we would love to work on existing source books in that way like that edits. One of our future goals is yes, creating our own stuff, with accessibility at the forefront, but also, just taking what is there and sort of restructuring it from the ground up and making it more accessible than it is making everything more available than it is. Rachel Voss Utilizing QR codes is something we want to do right because then that could just link straight to a webpage that has those accessibility plugins and all those other like language accessibility. There is right now the source source books, a lot of source books are only in English. We don't have a lot of source books other than English. So being able to have that information directly onto a website that could be Google translated, which isn't perfect, but it is a step right. So that can that conversation would have to be continued after that. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah. A lot of the times. I see this in the performance world that I'm sure you see it in sports, Rachel ,is people love to make a big show of doing one thing for accessibility. And then being like, Yep, we've done the accessibility. Everything is available for everybody. Look at how great we are. Yet the disability community is like Hello, like you gave one time funding donation. Do you know how quickly that money is going to be used for one problem and how many problems we're facing. So you know, and that's not even speaking about the like, privilege that comes with like, for example, I'm a white masculine presenting non binary person with a disability, which would be entirely different from a disabled person of color as experience. So, you know, I would just caution folks who are, you know, trying to support us and be allies. If you do one thing to help the disabled community, that's great, but it needs to be more than just like, a one time thing to solve all disability issues. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, there's more than one box to check. Wesley Magee-Saxton Yeah, absolutely. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, and the more the world changes, and things are changing so quickly, in so many ways, that presents new challenges too. And so it's an ongoing, you know, even if we could solve all the problems right now. Tomorrow, there'll be a million new ones. Rachel Voss Yeah, COVID is a perfect example of that. 1.2 million people are estimated to have this like lifelong disabilities now after having COVID That's something we didn't expect years ago. Wyrmworks Publishing Yep. In our house. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so we will have all your contact information. In our show notes, but where is the one best place that you'd like people to start to learn more about or contact you? Rachel Voss Our website would be the best place. You can contact us there. Um, it has all of our contact information and you'd be able to access our characters that we have right now. coloring sheets, and other just blog posts that we have created to help you experience disability through our lens. And that lens is of our community. Wesley Magee-Saxton And we also have your standard Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, which is linked on the website, so we do have socials to follow and be great if you did to stay up to date with the stuff we've got going on. Yeah, it was our general contact places for sure. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. Well, Rachel, Wes, thank you so much for coming on the show. Everyone, check out those links in the show notes. Wesley Magee-Saxton Thank you. Rachel Voss Thank you. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Playing the Other, how to play a disabled, mentally ill, or neurodivergent character, whether PC or NPC, that properly represents traits so as to represent those real life people in your game and give them depth as characters while avoiding harmful stereotypes and tropes. Today to help us with that, we're joined by Alexander Grinton. Welcome, Alexander. Alexander Grinton Howdy how you doing. Wyrmworks Publishing So, what would you like us to know about you as a person and as a gamer? Alexander Grinton All right, well, coming in here. I've been a gamer for a long, long time. Can't even remember how long but at this point, I am also a advocate for diversity and inclusion. I actually do that as one of my side duties with work for that resulting in or coming from that is that my gaming group is largely extremely diverse as well. That's where I wanted to … from is that we got together because we found so much of what we were looking for in the gaming world was not always inclusive for us. So we ended up just finding each other, much more like minded. And so when I mentioned that I am neurodivergent, I am I have autism, high functioning, that really matters, ADHD. I have now COVID Anxiety although don't know if that has yet to diagnoseable and it was depression. Wyrmworks Publishing The whole question of what's diagnosed or even diagnoseable and I you know that that's an important just side thing that, that people's experiences are one thing whether there's a correct label for it and labels change over time and things like that. Wyrmworks Publishing so absolutely. I remember when I was diagnosed for autism, originally, it was called Asperger's back then. And of course, we learn that we can avoid that, of course, because Hans Asperger has kind of ruined that for everybody. And rightfully so. But yeah, exactly. The labels improve and mature over time as we learn what is a better way of defining or rather, moving on defining but describing one another. Alexander Grinton My gaming group largely has a lot of people who are also neurodivergent. And I ended up working a lot as well, DMing volunteering with Autism Nova Scotia, here in Halifax. So we deal a great deal with autistic gamers, especially deal with a lot of people who are just to get work because it is a large area of misunderstanding and adaptation. I see a lot of diversity and inclusion practices in various other areas of minority such as to LGBTQIA+, as well as persons of color and those are fantastic and key. But it can be very, very hard to describe somebody or adapt to games to people who are mentally or physically divergent. Wyrmworks Publishing So what would you like people to know about your specific traits, your experiences how you experience them, how you adapt to them and what is and isn't helpful. Alexander Grinton Okay, so the biggest thing to understand is, especially in regards to ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, is the I mean, most people are aware of the difficulties that we can have with socializing, social cues, various, those interpersonal communications and interactions. You see a great deal of improvement in the gaming experience nowadays with things like discord various other online methods, especially when you're not dealing with somebody in face to face. It makes it easier for me right now, just because of the fact that I'm not using video with you. I'm using just voice and I'm not worried about whether or not I'm expressing my feelings on my face properly, using air quotes there, on whether or not I'm attributing yours properly as well. And that is a huge factor for anybody with ASD is removing that barrier and that challenge of trying to process all of the aspects of the game, while also being able to process the challenges that come with social interactions. I mean this is largely we're dealing with social games, but you're you were using it as an escapism. We are not when I'm playing I'm not playing as Alex I am playing as my PC. My NPC was the DM so I don't want to be me. I don't want to be me working on figuring out what people saying. I can hopefully rely on other people to tell me how they're expressing how they're looking. And that is just further amplified when we … when we do it online. But you have discord or or Roll20 And you can add avatars. And honestly, the biggest thing that has been to help me with a lot of this online ones actually has been a emojis or emoticons. You know, we often just ignore them, but the fact that I can add at the end of a message a happy face smiley face winky face, somebody that effect to instantly convey a feeling that is easily interpreted is absolutely fantastic. And other things you do like that is things like /S for sarcasm at the end of the message, and stuff like that. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, that's a really good point, then something that I haven't really thought of, if just as far as being able to both communicate you're from yourself and reading other people. I'm someone that has a pretty dry sense of humor, and I'm often misinterpreted, because I don't always use emojis when I post something and, you know, sarcastic or something like that. And then people get offended and it's like, oh, it's like in my brain. I'm going, what you couldn't pick up on the sarcasm? But no, they couldn't. Alexander Grinton Yeah, and it's usually different depending on your setting and my gaming group. We don't we won't use the sarcasm tags or emojis as much because we understand each other. We've been playing together for years. But if you're playing at a convention, or people you met just on Discord, it's hugely different. And all these extra safety tools and communication tools need to be added and are really ways of bringing more people in the same way as image descriptions are for screen readers. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So um, as far as, as other people that you're playing with, are there things that they can do that can help improve your experience? Alexander Grinton The biggest thing that has been for our group is taking routine and scheduled breaks and actually sticking to them, the number of times that you get to a fight, and you go, Alright, well just I know break's coming up in five minutes. Let's just let's finish this fight. And the fight will take 35–40 minutes. And if you're somebody who's who's waiting for that is your social battery's getting drained. Now you need that and it might be that you then need to take more intense notes prior to the break, but so be it. It's those breaks that are hugely key. The other one that was big for us was properly addressing the soundscape. People who are with ASD, we have a huge variety of symptoms and effects and everything. But one of the common ones is sound sensitivity. Because I've talked to my more neurotypical friends only recently learned that people who are neurotypical typically don't actually hear the electricity through the walls. I had no idea I thought that was normal. So controlling the soundscape is, you know, is a huge difference. And entering a soundtrack is fantastic. It's a great way to create an environment and the atmosphere of the game the narrative you're trying to portray. But making sure that it's appropriate and not distracting is absolutely huge. And then not just the actual controlled soundscape, but the the uncontrolled soundscape. I have a lot of friends who rely on their phones being on loud because they've got important things coming up. Work, babysitters and stuff like that might just be that they don't like vibration but they need to be able to read have their phone, but they also are hugely distracting for some people. Especially you know i said earlier i have ADHD as well, that those distractions I will zero in on that and it can be hard to come back to my original point as to what I'm dealing with in the game. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that's an area where my hearing aids come in real handy. I can have the volume as loud as I want since it Bluetooths with my phone and so I can have notifications. I've had some notifications coming in just as we've been talking and nobody hears them except for me. So that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. I love my hearing aids. You know you talk about people that the whole question of if you you know, well, if you live in a magic world, why didn't you why wouldn't you just you know, get rid of whatever your those disabilities or whatever. i As long as I have my hearing aids, my being hard of hearing doesn't bother me at all. Even though it doesn't 100% correct for things, the advantages that I have from them. It's like, okay, fine, I'll gladly deal with being hard of hearing. As long as I have these awesome hearing aids. So Alexander Grinton totally agree. It's, I have I've had that same question before and I would not fix my ADHD or my autism if I if I had the chance. There have been so many downsides to them. But I they're long as you learn to use them as they can be like superpowers in a lot of ways. Not negating people who have more significant impacts from those medical concern. Mind you, but you know, I I don't think I mentioned earlier but I'm in the Navy and using ADHD on the bridge in terms of combat. Preparation, WarGames is fantastic. It's a been able to not take my Ritalin then sit there and see all the fleets coming in. And it just feels so zen. It's, it's wonderful. Wyrmworks Publishing So that brings up a point for if someone wants to play a character that has your experiences, what would what do they need to know? Alexander Grinton That's a hard one. Because the easy answer to that is what they should not do. Which is you know, pretty much the same answer for most times that you're gonna be dealing talking with people on your podcast, which is don't rely on tropes and exaggeration. There are plenty of people in the media with portray autism, especially in broad tropes, we'll just see this as the Caleb Caleb character on oh, now I'm blanking on the the show. Well, that's yeah. Anyways, the point is, is you see a lot of these groups these stereotypes and sure that they, they might be entertaining especially when you're watching it on TV, but that is a different medium. Whereas if you are portraying somebody with autism or ADHD and you are therefore, you know, I have ADHD so I'm bouncing around I can't focus on squirrel like, those are things that you're when you're sitting at the table across from me, you're you're mocking me, openly. And if if we're friends, if we've been playing together for 20 years, that's a different mentality. I would I support my friends doing that as long as it's all the people we know, in that room safe. But if you ever do that convention I'd be arguing should be kicked out because for that kind of that kind of discrimination. Now to talk about how you would actually play that character somebody with ASD, somebody with ADHD. It would be it would be hard, but I would say the biggest thing would be look at what some of the symptoms or aspects might be, and recognize that those two mental illnesses are very much it's the rarely an all or nothing. It's usually one or two traits that you have. You don't get this one you do get that one. So easy ones are sound, smell, sound sensitivities, and you can definitely portray them both as strengths and weaknesses. Fate is fantastic for this. So I believe they covered in as well actually in the accessibility guide that they produced. Also one of the best books to my opinion. But they they talked about how with that, like sound sensitivity that I was talking with earlier, your character might be better at picking up the sounds of enemies and tracking words. But it also means that if you're dealing with a modern combat situation, a flashbang would be debilitating for most people; it'd be crippling for your character. So it's it's understanding them and rather than making them the focus, making them minor aspects, or minor details in tweaking a couple points, so that they're not exaggerated. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay. So then, anything else that you'd like to add about your experiences? I also wanted to just say I appreciate your comment about soundtracks and things like that. Because I know I use I play online and I use with the we use Foiundry as our tabletop, virtual tabletop and and I like to use background noise: you're in the city. You hear the crowd noise and you know and things like that. And nice thing about Foundry and I'm not sure about other systems, each person can individually adjust the volumes of ambient sounds and things like that. And so, so that's really nice. And, and I noticed that you know, some people they just turn it off, and you know, and others leave it on and things like that. And so I think that's it's valuable if you don't have that option to include those kinds of you know, sensory questions in your session zero if if it's a new group that you're used to playing with. I mean, that's that's just a really good thing to be aware of that you might not think to ask otherwise. Alexander Grinton Oh, absolutely. I didn't know Foundry did that. But that is a amazing tool. And to add to the other tool that we love, same reason is subtitles. Most people think of using subtitles for people who might have difficulty hearing but it's also for people who have difficulty focusing or people who just prefer to read. It's it's absolute game changer. Especially when you've people who love accents and stuff. Now accents are really cool. But they also make it hard to you know, understand a lot of times Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And recognize that when they're done on the fly, they're not always accurate. Alexander Grinton Yeah. Oh, yes, of course. Sorry. Anyways, to get back to the question you had asked. The one thing I wanted to share as a as a lesson I learned, unfortunately, far, far too late. But more recently is that you know, I was always aware recently where I am, uh, you obviously can't see me but I'm a cisgendered white guy. So I wasn't aware of how much important how important representation was in games. And it wasn't until I started seeing positive input that would, that included me and my aspects of, of a marginalized group, which are relatively minor. I'm literally dripping in privilege here. But just seeing people in games and movies and books that weren't tropes or punch lines that were actually just included because that's who they are. It was absolutely massive. It I was stunned, because it had never been something that crossed my mind. I had understood that my friends who were people of color, you know, they were talking about that representation's important I could said yeah, of course that just just makes sense. But I didn't get it until I saw it myself. And I wish I had taken more time to understand that better when I was younger. So if I if I could pass on one final thing to everybody gets. Learn from my mistake there and think about what inclusion and representation actually can be and can mean to the others. Because if you're like me, you are surrounded by privilege and it's just really hard to get and how much it can help people feel like they they belong. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. And, and just about everybody, even no matter how intersectional your life is there's probably some area of privilege you know, I'm sure there's exceptions to that. And that there's probably you know, three people right now that are just like screaming going. Hello, no, not me. But but but everybody else that you know this probably that that one area at least, are probably more but it's, you know, you mentioned you know, when you were younger that you wish you had, and um and sometimes it can it can feel like oh, you know how, how did I get this far and and not know this or not realize this? And um, you know, and I find myself asking myself that question so often and it's important to realize you don't know what you don't know. And, and so if you you know if you didn't know these things before, that's okay. Don't beat yourself up about it. But now you know, and you can do something about it, and you can start thinking about it and learning and and just start listening and, and paying attention to what's going on. And the other thing is that when when you when you add you start adding representation to to your game or anything else that wasn't there before it may seem even forced at times and just because you're not used to it being there. But yeah, but that's okay. Push through and keep going. Because you think about you talk about, you know, how not seeing the representation before and then sort of gradually seeing it at first when we saw different demographics and marginalized groups being represented on TV or in movies and things like that, when you first see it. And when you weren't seeing it before, you know, there's sometimes it's tokenism and things like that, but But you you may, you know, at first it may be a little jarring or feel like oh, well, there's the, you know, they had to make a point of including this or you know, or something like that, but over time, you just get used to it and, and it's just, you know, you just expect it to the point where it's like, wait a minute, why is this missing? You know, when it's not there. And, um, and so, it's important to realize that when you're adding it in and even if it feels a little strange or you know, or forced or something like that. That, that you're just keep going and eventually, you get used to it the people at your table get used to it. I know you know, for me, I in the past did not include disabled characters. Until I started working on this project and realize how, how completely lacking they were and and so I just started including them in my games and it really, for me, it was you know, it was a very deliberate thing to do. And after my players it was just like, okay, you know, it was it was just it was just another character in you know, in the game and it didn't. It didn't matter if it, it felt like a bigger deal to me than it did to them. They just rolled with it. And it was just, it was just yet another interesting character. Alexander Grinton Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely. And just again to build on what you said to as I started putting it in, I realized I made a lot of mistakes and doing it. And people corrected me, and that's okay, because it means that I'm learning and the end of the day, you're you're trying and that's, that's what matters. I find too many people get caught up on being too politically correct. And it's not about saying the right thing. It's about trying. And when you mess up, it's about learning and trying harder doing better the next time, Wyrmworks Publishing Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's so important. And I really, it seems to me I've run into this so often, where people are afraid to include it because they're afraid they're gonna do it wrong. And but, like, that's not better. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So yeah, yeah, include, but learn, you know, and if you're gonna include a character with a particular condition or trait, you know, do some research on it. If you can talk to people or something like that, or listen to show like this. And but, but then, you know, recognize that it's all the point is, is not just to teach your players but to learn yourself, and we learn best through our mistakes. Yep. So, so that's okay. Most importantly, ask questions. Okay, so do you have any projects or social media profiles you'd like to share? Alexander Grinton I, I would, I would like to, but unfortunately, it's not as far along as I'd hoped. So I'm afraid I'll have to decline on that on that part of your offer. I appreciate it. But instead, I will like to push Fate and Evil Hat's production for your accessibility because I think that is probably the best book on that that I've read recently, and not just in the gaming community. But the amount of the way they address inclusion and diversity is absolutely fantastic. And if more companies did that, well, actually honestly, if if a ton of companies did that, your podcasts wouldn't have much use. Because it's be standard. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Alright, so everyone's experience is different. And so note that what you heard today doesn't represent everyone with similar traits or diagnoses. This is just one example. And we already talked about that a bit. So if you'd like to come on the show and help people understand your symptoms or experiences so that they can have more accurate representation their games, just go to Wyrmworkspublishing.com/contact and contact me there. Alex, thanks so much for sharing yourself with us so that we can bring reality into fantasy and thus make that fantasy world a reality. Alexander Grinton Thank you for having me and thank you for what you're doing. It's an important thing. Wyrmworks Publishing So thanks again for watching, and a big shout out especially to our patrons and a big Patreon shout out to our new patrons Rachel and Kaz. Thank you so much for your support. You are 37 flavors of awesome, and I appreciate you. And also the thing with our Patreon is you can come hang out in our Discord. It's just a chance to connect on a little more informal level a little easier than email and I just love getting to know everyone better there. So by all means jump in and and post your questions and the offer your thoughts and let's talk. Wyrmworks Publishing So if you see this being helpful, hit the like button if you're watching this on YouTube, and if you'd like to see more, subscribe to this using whatever you're using to subscribe to it. If you know people that need to hear this, please pass it on to them. Share the link. If you, like me, think everyone needs to hear this, put it out there on your social media. And don't forget those podcasts ratings. That really makes a difference when it comes to pushing the algorithm. So thank you so much for joining us to make lives better with D&D. Wyrmworks Publishing And we close with this question: How do you welcome diverse people at your table?