How can we make tabletop roleplaying games more inclusive for blind players? And why does it matter? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. 

Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons to help you make lives better. We have a huge announcement if you haven't heard already. Alright, one of the great things about roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons is that there are free resources you can literally play without spending any money. There's the Basic Rules from 2014. There's the new free rules that are in development right now. There's lots of other resources out there. But here's the problem. None of it's great. If you've ever taken a look at the free rules that Wizards of the Coast has available, it's a sampling. It's kind of like a drug dealer transaction. First one's free, but then you get addicted. And then you're looking at paying, for just the three core books, about $150 if you want actual hardcover books. And we believe that everyone should be able to enjoy D&D, regardless of their budget, their location, their background. It's only available in a very limited number of languages. There's just all kinds of limitations to keep people from playing. And that is why we are creating Free5e, a fully-free set of unofficial Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition-compatible books. Our mission is to make the three standard core rule books accessible to all, no more choosing between D&D and food or rent. Free5e will offer affordable print-on-demand copies and fully downloadable eBooks in various formats, including dyslexia-friendly PDF, ePub, digital braille, Markdown, Audio, and more. We have a player's guide that has character options, including classes, ancestries, spells, feats, all kinds of stuff. Everything you need to play as a player, and it's all illustrated and just beautifully laid out. We have a GM's guide that has campaign creation information, how to do encounters, magic items, world-building guides, everything you need to be a GM in a 5e game. And then a monster guide that has over 500 monster entries, creatures with stats, descriptions, artwork, encounter guidelines, ways to create your own monsters if 500 is just not enough for you, which I get it, it's not for me either. And so we've got all kinds of instructions, templates, and things that are built in so you can create anything you want. All that content will be free to download with print versions at or near the cost of printing. We're going to fund this project through Kickstarter to cover editing, layout, original artwork, and it's all going to be licensed under the Creative Commons license so that anyone can take it, use it, modify it, make it work for your particular setting, your needs, whatever it is, you can do what you want with it. All you have to do is credit the original creators. Your support of this project will bring D&D to more people and foster accessible tabletop roleplaying games. We want to empower players, game masters, schools, libraries, therapists, nonprofits, anyone who can benefit from it with the tools to bring stories to life without financial barriers. We have manuscripts already available. All three of the manuscripts are already available and are being released for play-testing and feedback. We've gotten a ton of feedback and that grassroots feedback and help with the project is a huge part of what this project is all about. And we're so thankful for everyone who has already helped us out with that. Backer rewards to help fund this include custom game accessories and mementos of this historic project and we're hand-crafting those in-house. So it's really going to be some really unique rewards for backers to help us make this happen. And so join the Free5e movement. Help us spread the word to make D&D accessible to all. Together we can ensure everyone can enjoy D&D forever without any kind of corporations getting ahold of it or anything like that. It'll just be out there free, out in the wild. And so if that sounds really awesome to you, then click on the link in the show notes or you can always just go to Free5e.com. And now let's get on to our interview. 

Today we welcome Blind Temple, an advocate for blind accessibility in tabletop roleplaying games featured in Dragon+ magazine and a Golden TTRPGIFs award recipient. Temple brings unique insights into making TTRPGs more inclusive. Welcome, Temple. 
Oh, thank you. Glad to be here. 
So what would you like us to know about you personally specifically speaking to the tabletop gaming crowd? 
I help with blind accessibility for game companies and DMs and the like. And I help blind gamers find game groups around the world. I run games locally to help the blind and I'm always looking for ways to get more blind people involved in tabletop RPGs because it's one of the few gaming activities where the blind are on an even footing because all it is is imagination and talking. 
Yeah, that's a really fair point. You know, compared to like video games and so many other things. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So what are some common accessibility challenges that blind players face in these games? 
Well, honestly, game masters that don't allow devices at their table because almost all blind like I'm visually impaired. I can see about a foot away from my face and then everything else past that is the blur. But I have to have aids to help me play. I have to use like when I run D&D, I have to use D&D Beyond because I can't see character sheets or any kind of print anymore. I have to have an online source. And the same is when I play it. And there's a lot like the totally blind have to have screen readers to read like character sheets and all the data that's coming at them. And there's a lot for, you know, most games. The just the other thing is transportation. Getting to games. You know, especially when you're joining a new group or something, you don't know anybody. You don't feel comfortable asking for somebody to give you a ride to that group. And you miss out on a lot of stuff. 
Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely. A new group. I mean, you don't know people. And even if they're meeting at like a game store or game cafe or something like that, and and you can get there, then you walk in and well, there's there's all kinds of people everywhere. And you can't just look for the person that said, oh, I'll be wearing the, you know, such and such shirt or something like that. 
And I've had cases where I have gone to like game stores to, you know, sit down and play at the tables that were open to people coming up and playing and been turned away because I was blind. 
Really? 
Yeah, because he told me he didn't have time to slow down his game for me. And I've been told that the table was full. And then I went and sat across the room and listened as two more players walked up and joined the game. It's just, yeah, it's what you have to put up with when you're marginalized in this society. 
You know, so often when I talk about accessibility and, you know, and a lot of times the pushback I get is, "Everyone is always welcome." But, you know, and, and well, not always. 
No, no. Well, I have, I'm running a campaign now for two ladies that are autistic. And one of them has had two or three groups that she joined and started playing with that asked her to leave because her autism was a problem for some of the players. And so I run a game specifically for them that I'm certainly not going to be the one to ask them to step away. So and they're the most wonderful people in the world. That's my favorite game I'm in is the one I run for them. 
You know, as a dad with two autistic kids and and I run a local game down in our library and a lot of the kids there are autistic or some other kind of neurodivergent, I, on the one hand, I recognize people that aren't used to it, how that could be difficult for them. 
Yeah.
At the same time, I also know how much they're missing out on. 
Yeah. Yeah. 
And because just the creativity and everything else just fantastic. 
And just the fact that they don't get to do stuff that other people take for granted. You know, I know how much that hurts. You know, so yeah, I make a special effort. Everybody is welcome for me. 
Yeah. You know, you mentioned D&D beyond and I was curious. I mean, I know, you know, web pages, reading a page out of the Player's Handbook or something like that is one thing. But how easy is it to navigate the character sheets with a screen reader? 
It has some problems. The way they're broken up makes it a little bit more difficult because it doesn't smoothly transition like it would on a page. But it works. You just have to, you know, well, if you're blind, you know nothing's easy. 
Yeah. 
But it's worlds better than, you know, having a character sheet that somebody made for you on Word and having to run a screen reader over that and, you know, trying to figure out because people don't understand that not everybody's brain works the same and how they organize data. And the way somebody makes that sheet for you may confuse the heck out of you to play the game. And it's very difficult to be a spellcaster with the Word program because you look at the countless numbers of spells that there are. And all the information that they throw at you. And even, you know, if you're used to a screen reader, you're running at high speed, you know, regular sightlings can't understand what's being said. And, but that's a lot of information to take in quickly. So you kind of narrow it down on you find the spells that you like to use the best are the most effective for you and you kind of tend to just stick with those and that you don't get the full advantage to branch out in it. But D&D Beyond takes care of a lot of that problem because all of their spells are in a database and you can, you know, look them all up. The search function works good for that. And for people like me that are have partial site, they have I've worked with them and they've got a lot of stuff to make it easier. You can change the background to a darker background so you can have high contrast with like white text and a black background. And it's really handy. It's saved my life in playing it. I started playing D&D again when D&D Beyond came out. And I do not get any kind of royalties for saying I love D&D Beyond. 
It's the reality. There's been a lot of talk just in the industry about trying to kind of to sort of duplicate what they have there. You know, other character creation, trying to make VTTs more accessible and stuff like that. And yeah, it's a challenge. And I appreciate you mentioning that you help work on that because it's one thing to say, OK, well, this is what I think that people need. You know, it's something else to actually have someone that needs it say, yeah, this is good. This, not so much. 
Well, I'm in the Wizards of the Coast, their creators group for influencers. And all the time I'm giving them feedback on, you know, what would make it more accessible. You know, there's a lot of blind people out there. And for me, the worst thing about when I lost my sight was how incredibly boring it was. I was someone I at the time when I went blind, I was reading five books at once, depending upon the location I was in at the time. And then to go from that one day to a week later, you can't read the printed word anymore. It was just devastating. But I mean, D&D helps with all of that. It gives you something to focus on. It gives you something to think about during the week between games. I have one of the ladies that plays in my game that's autistic is also blind. I've been running that campaign and then on July 14th, I had a kidney transplant and which sidelined me for six months as I recovered from that. Well, we had one big reveal right before that incidentally. And then I disappear for six months and she was seriously frustrated. She got all this information and couldn't do anything about it for six months. I got all kinds of information. She did this very intensive background for a character and her family and everything because she wanted to keep working on it. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. And Demiplane is good too. 
Oh, yeah? 
Yeah. I've messed around with that a little. And most virtual tabletops that are out today are worse than inaccessible. Yeah. You know, they make absolutely no effort. 
All right. So what are some, and we've kind of talked about this already, but how can game masters and players make their games more accessible for blind participants? 
The first thing every game master should ask when a blind player comes and sits down at their table is, "How can I help you?" and then listen to them and just do that. Don't assume that you know what's going to help them the most or more than that or just do what they ask you to do. Because, you know, the things you think may help may make it worse and they know what they need. And, you know, and you can talk it over with them and see if, you know, explain something that you would like to try or something ahead of time and then ask their permission. It's important for blind people to have agency and control over their lives. You know, so often, you know, in public people will walk up and grab your arm and start tugging you in a direction because they think you're lost or something. And it's frustrating. So if you the more respect you can show them and and and ask their opinion and ask for their guidance, the better that gets you off on the right foot. And then you can actually do the gaming part of it. As far as the actual nuts and bolts gaming, that comes down to the individuals. I've run games where I had my maps laid out where I'd taken puff paint like you get at the craft store. And I outlined the little squares on the map so that they could count squares by running their finger over the edges of it and even use minis. And their mini had a special thing on it to let them know which one was theirs. And now minis and terrain get knocked over and stuff. But, you know, that's nothing. You just set it back up. When I run my games, my sightling players are the ones that run the minis for me. You know, I can't hardly see them. So but I have an idea of where everything is. It's like it's like I say blind people tend to have a really good memory or they have broken noses. 
I like that. 
Basically, they're just like any other player. And you got to remember for the totally blind and severely impaired it's all going to be role playing by verbal instruction and description. You know, you can't something that's obvious to you because it's laid out on the map in front of you is an obvious to them. And you need to think about using when you you tell a blind person so they can visualize it if they're, you know, haven't been blind their whole life using the direction that their character is facing a clock face as to where something is away from them. And, you know, if they're familiar at all with games, they know what the whatever increments the distance is measured on the maps or the just in the game. And you can give them that and they can, you know, figure it out. Almost everybody that's blind has to have access to some kind of digital dice rolling app either on their phones or I can use the one on D&D Beyond. But we have to have that. There's just I'm to the point where I can't see regular dice anymore. There for a while, I was using double sized D&D dice that were high contrast black dice with white letter or numbers. And I could use those and now my vision's... ever since the transplant my vision's gone downhill quite a bit. So I'm down to using just the app got all kinds of pretty dice that I don't get to use. 
That's a shame. And, you know, people talk about like braille dice and stuff like that. 
Yeah.
But, you know, it's worth mentioning that braille is not the most blind people don't know braille. 
No, I can't read braille because I have serious neuropathy in my hands and all of the bumps on there feel like one bump to me because my nerve damage so bad. And yeah, most it's a there's a serious number of people that never bother to learn it. And plus braille dice the pattern for it to be 3D printed is out there for free. But as you probably can imagine not many blind people go in for 3D printing. 
Yeah. 
And other ones that you buy like in online shops and stuff are quite a bit more expensive than your regular just set of dice. 
Yeah, I was just talking to somebody who was looking for them and and helped them find a set. But it was like 50 bucks for one set. 
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had a set at one time that was given me given to me by DOTS RPG. There's a charity that work on on braille dice and stuff and digitizing all the rules for various games. And I had them for maybe two months before I gave them away to somebody who needed them since I couldn't read. 
Yeah. So how can publishers and creators do better to ensure accessibility from the design stage? 
Everything they do needs to be digitized because most people that are blind have either have a lot of trouble with reading print or can't, you know, read it at all like in my case. And when you the the standard thing that everybody does is put it on the PDFs. And if you don't on PDFs, if you don't set them up before you start to be accessible, they're worse than not having it at all. Because like me, I need it a larger font and I need it the high contrast. Well, if it's not set up from before, you'll change your page to be that for you. And then as soon as you finish with that page and you flip it to the next one, it goes away and you have to reset it all over again. And it's just not worth the hassle of having to go in there and set it up over and over again. The other thing is for books because there's specific reading devices out there for books, for printed books, CCTVs that are, you know, big stand up thing and have a computer monitor. So you can look at it and various ones. It's a company called Ruby that makes them that will actually you can hold it up and it's like a it's like a tablet and it'll read the page for you. But you can't have any artwork behind the text. If you put artwork behind there, it all blends together and you can't turn pages with artwork on them into high contrast because it'll just, you know, it'll usually if it's a darker picture behind it, it'll turn it completely white, which then masks the white letter and text you have. And just the effort to try and do that and asking people like you're doing now is hugely appreciated. You know, it's at best it's an underserved thing. At worst it's just being ignored. And it's like so many other businesses and stuff unless you know somebody with that kind of disability. Usually it doesn't get addressed. 
Yep. Yeah, you see that in I mean when it comes to accessibility when it comes to you just think about the charities that people support or when someone starts a charity, you know, and stuff like that. And your question is always like, oh, well, what, you know, who in your family or whatever motivated you to do stuff like that. It's like, we just care for people in general, you know, 
Exactly. Yeah, it's a it's a battle. It's a it's what working on accessibility and helping people online is what got me through having chronic kidney disease and having to go through six years of dialysis before I got my kidney is I just focused on helping everybody else. And, you know, then my problems were as big. And that's, you know, that's it is the main thing is to care about somebody else. 
It makes your life a lot better. 
Yeah, that's, I always say that, you know, it's been said that you're more blessed to give than receive and, you know, and people think about that like, you know, kind of, oh God's going to smile on you or something like that. And it's like, no, no, like it's just better. But no matter what you think about religion or anything else, like, 
Yeah!
it just makes your life better when you're focused on improving others' lives. 
It's not about receiving a reward or, you know, people thinking highly of you. It's about actually helping somebody else without expecting anything at all. 
Yeah, it just just makes for a more fulfilling life. 
It does. 
It really does. So what are some misconceptions about blindness or accessibility in general in the TTRPG community that you'd like to address? 
For the love of God, our other senses do not turn into superpowers. Okay. 
I bet you do that all the time. 
It's not that, you know, they get better. It's that when you're blind, you notice them more because humans are visual creatures. And when that's taken away from them, they start noticing, they start listening and stuff like I go around with a white cane and I can tap it and I can tell when I'm getting next to a large object because the sound of the tap gets muted when I get closer to a wall or a piece of furniture or something. That's not super a super power. That's just something I ignored when I could see the wall or the furniture. Oh, that you have to slowly explain everything. I cannot count the number of people that slow down their voice, you know, to explain something to me. You know, I have no traumatic head injury. I completely understand how to understand people when they're talking to me normally. I just can't see. You know, you can tell me one time and I'm good to go. 
Well, and in fact, you know, you mentioned before that with screen readers and stuff, you're used to listening to things at high speed. 
Yeah. I do that too, just because I think it's probably part of my ADHD that it's like, okay, let's go, let's go, give me the information, you know, or I'll get distracted or bored or something. And so, so yeah, like, I even if I'm going to be doing like a public presentation of any kind, I actually on the, the, my notes, I have a like a watermark on the page that's like in big letters across the page. It says slow down. 
Yeah, yeah. That's good. Well, it's, it's also odd. When I first started using my screen reader to do stuff, and it was running along at high speed, people ask what the hell that was, you know, because like, and I finally got a little headset that works through the vibration and the bone behind the ear. And so I can put that on and I can hear people normally without, you know, it being like an actual headset. And I can hear what the screen reader is reading. 
Yeah, it's to my advantage as someone who's heard of hearing is that my hearing aids double as 
Yeah
as earbuds. So, well, I do have to, you know, if I'm listening to something, I can't, I mean, I can't divide my attention anyway. But I can, I can listen, I can listen discreetly where people don't realize that I'm listening to something else. Now, normally I wouldn't do that and be rude to somebody, but it's just it's really convenient to have that option. 
But yeah, there's a lot of misconceptions that, you know, too many for me to cite here. And everybody should know that, you know, those of us in the blind community, we talk about y'all and your dumb questions all the time. Yeah, yeah, well, it's like the term sightling that I use, you know, was originally came up with was a way of putting down people with full vision that asked stupid questions. And now it's as with everything in a marginalized group, it's become popular among the mainstream. You know, I've got friends that call each other sightlings. 
Yeah, just thinking about screen readers and especially in a group setting. Something I think about because of the wonderful combination of being hard of hearing and ADHD that when I'm in a crowded setting, I struggle. And my hearing aids have a setting where I can kind of direct them to focus on what's in front of me, but it doesn't completely filter things out. And I'm just imagining, I was talking to somebody at a school for the blind about braille and things like that over the past week. And I was trying to imagine a like a group of blind players playing together all using screen readers. 
Yeah. 
And I mean, does that I suppose if you've got the what you're talking about where you can hear your surroundings and, you know, and still be able to listen to the screen reader. And I suppose that helps. 
Yeah, it's a well, the problem with using braille for role playing games to is that somebody's got to have a braille printer. And that's not as common as you would think that it would be because, you know, we we use voice to text to write stuff. So, you know, that's no problem. And setting up the printer is no problem, especially now with all the AI stuff that's coming in that allows you to voice command your computer to do things. Thank God. But it's it's it's something I wish I could do is read braille because it's an area of the blind experience that I just don't have the information for, you know, it's that's why my personal preference is people that work on accessibility, you know, for the disabled community. I know it sounds harsh, but they need to be disabled. Somebody who's a completely able person isn't capable of understanding it to the same degree as somebody that's disabled. I know that sounds like I'm picking on the able-bodied, but I found it to be extremely true. The number of people that were accessibility people that have tried to help me do stuff that were not disabled, that I had to explain to how I do it and what I do is there's a lot of them. And it doesn't even have to be the same disability. It's just that knowledge of how that disability affects the disabled. You know, there's there's a lot more consideration given to that and a lot more attention paid to what they have to say. You know, it's not just sitting their listing intently to what the person's saying, but it's absorbing that information and then putting it into action, which is harder to do. It tends to be much less likely to actually have it. My best example of this is Jennifer Kretchner. If you know her, she's disabled. And before she ever even knew that she had a problem, she got a degree in helping the disabled. And she's a wonderful person and helps everybody with every disability and is amazing. And the reason I'm on BlueSky because she came over here and she's my friend that I wanted to follow her. 
Yeah. Yeah, no, when I started my work, I didn't realize that I had ADHD. I found that afterward. My wife emphasized to me that, "No, really, you're hard of hearing and you need to go get tested," and stuff like that. Well, yeah. And yeah, that explains a lot. And 
Yeah, I have a nephew who's ADHD that I modified how I run games for them. 
Yeah, so you really, I mean, there's a difference. And I mean, the reality is also in our culture, and most people have never even heard the word ableism. 
Oh, yeah. 
I mean, I find myself defining that for people a lot. All the time. 
Yeah. 
And it's just, yeah, it's this sort of you don't know what you don't know. 
Yeah. 
But then, like, once you realize how little you know, then you realize how important it is to listen and stuff. And also, when you know what it's like to be treated differently, to be sort of talked down to and things like that, yeah, you become more sensitive. Not just to people's feelings, but like how to make sure that you are being respectful. 
Yeah. 
And it's just different from, yeah, it's just knowing the experience and recognizing how prominent ableism is in our culture and just the impact of it. And just the impact that it has on people's lives. 
That's the fastest way somebody can make me angry is to grab my arm and try and drag me someplace. And the really sad thing is it happens among nurses and medical professionals more than any place else. And I said, how did you get to this point in your career and not be taught how to sighted guide? You know, and I have to teach them all over again. You do not grab me and try and move me without my permission. And well, I'm 6'2" and 400 pounds, nobody moves me without my permission. And I ran into that all the time. I've been in the hospital and then medical stuff for a long time now and constantly having to re explain it. And you shouldn't have to. It should just be a matter of respect. 
But that's also something that's worth letting people know that in the medical industry, ableism is a huge problem. 
Yeah. Well, and to the point that it gets some people killed because they, you know, they think they know better than the person. It's really tragic. And education is why I have more patience and explain stuff the way I do. Like a really bad case of etiquette is to walk up to a blind person and ask them how they went blind. Because in a lot of cases it was traumatic, you know, and they don't want to relive that every time somebody is curious about it. But I always tell them how I lost my sight and, you know, all of that and explain it to them. And then at the end of explaining to I said, now I'm okay with you asking me this, but most people aren't going to be. It's going to be an insult. And, you know, and maybe hurt their feelings even. You can't just, you know, go up and ask that. 
And trauma aside, you're asking for someone's medical history. 
Yeah. Yeah. 
I mean, and if you think about that, you know, whatever, whatever anyone's medical history is, it's not the sort of thing that you just like devolved to strangers. 
No, no. I do. But just for the, for the fact that if I, if they, I give them the answer they want to do, they're listening to me. And maybe they won't do it the next time. 
Yeah. I mean, and that's fantastic. But, but yeah, it's, it's, it's one of those things that, oh, with, with so many things like that, it's, it's, "Okay. So this is your business." You know, the other parts of me that I'm willing to sort of openly share, but no one's obligated to. And so, you know, for other people that are listening to this, that, you know, like, don't feel like you have to. 
Right. Well, and I can even kind of understand. I mean, when somebody meets somebody new for the first time, you know, like the first blind person they ever meet, they're curious. And sometimes their curiosity overrides their wisdom. They fail their wisdom check and ask a dumb question. 
Yeah. 
And, you know, everybody has those moments. So, you know, that's the, that's what I encourage blind people to do is try and be understanding. You know, they, they're not in your situation. You know, they consider themselves normal, whatever that is. So they're curious about other people's situations and stuff. And the one that I really don't like though is when they ask me if I lost my sight in the war. No. No, I had late onset type one diabetes that hit me in my 30s and didn't know I had it for 10 years. It's well, usually it's because I have a prosthetic left eye. And some people notice and then they wonder how I lost my eye and, you know, the whole nine yards. 
That's it. I mean, you shared a lot of personal experiences. Any other memorable moments or your, especially your role playing game experiences where accessibility was a big deal? 
Yeah. When I first went blind, I got fired from my job at American Airlines over the phone when I called in saying I needed to go see an eye doctor. Because everything was too blurry for me to feel safe to drive. And they just fired me over the phone. And all the people I worked with came up to me and said, Temple, if there's any, ever anything that you need, just let us know. And I'll be checking in on you, you know, and I'll be there. And then when it was all said and done, there was my family and my two friends from high school. You know, no one else came around, no one else checked in on me. It was just stuff they said at the moment to make them feel better. And those two friends, every week that we can, come over and pick me up and I live a town away from them. And we go out to lunch and then we go play D&D. And I've known one of them since kindergarten and the other one since he was a sophomore in high school. And I was a senior and we've been friends all this time. I was best man at both their weddings. And they make sure I'm taken care of, you know, and other than that family and, you know, close family friends that we have that we've always had. Those are the people I rely on and trust. You know, everybody says, you know, I'll be there for you and everything. But, you know, their lives get in the way and they're, and you're not there every day for them to think about. So, right. 
Yeah, out of sight, out of mind, huh? 
Yeah. Yeah, you find out who your real friends are really quickly when you're, you know, disabled and have problems doing stuff. One of my favorite jokes when I go and play at somebody's house in person is I'll get up and go to the restroom, ask where the restroom is, and I'll go to the restroom and then I come back and they say, did you find it okay? I say, no, not really. I just found a closet and used it. And, you know, there's a thing when you're blind and you have that white cane. People are always on edge about doing the wrong thing or, you know, God forbid knocking you over or something. But they're curious at the same time. And I find that humor gets rid of that. It just evaporates, you know. I'm the greatest blind guy you're ever going to meet. I get around, I handle everything I need to do, and I joke about it as I go. And roleplaying games are, you know, a big part of that. I've got all my nephews and nieces have played in D&D campaigns that I've run that -- because I wanted them to make sure that they had a focus other than just clothes and parties and stuff to go to. They had stuff that used their imaginations. And truthfully, I wanted to create little D&D nerds. And kids' D&D is the best D&D. 
Yep. 
I mean, they're truly invested in it. 
There've been studies on creativity. They -- you can -- you have your creativity tested. And the testing is -- the sort of score that you get is what age your creativity level is at. And the lower the age, the more creative you are. And so, yeah, when you apply that to D&D, yeah, it's fantastic. Man, I never know with the kids that I work with, the stuff they come up with. Okay. Yeah, I find that with kids, I give them more leeway. You know, like they were -- last week, we were playing and there was this sort of a golemish kind of thing. And my daughter wanted to shoot "Ray of Frost," not at it, but at the ground in front of it to freeze the -- it would slip and fall. And I looked at the rules and I'm like, "Rules as Written, you can't do that." No. But like, there'd be like a Greek spell or something like that. But like, "No, we'll allow it," because that was a creative, you know, approach. 
I go by the rule of cool. You know, if it's fun, that's what I'm here for. It's not to follow the rules as written. And I've played every D&D edition there is. I'm 60 years old. So, when I'm running a game, the rules may come from any one of those editions, because I'm an improv DM. I think of it on the spot. I don't write it all down ahead of time. You know, I've got bullet points of where my campaign's going to end up, but everything else I make up on the spot. And we don't go searching through rule books and stop the flow of the game to see what the actual rule is. I make a decision and that's what we go with. And we're -- 
And everyone has fun. 
Yeah. And nobody has a problem with that once they start playing it. It's -- And if they do have a problem with it, I'm -- you know, not every group and DM is for everybody. So
All right. So, you've already given us a whole bunch of suggestions, but is there anything else or that you want to emphasize that a GM can do to help a disabled player? 
Try and make the other players, especially if they're not disabled, comfortable around the person. If you can, get to know who the blind player is that's going to be joining your group. And this goes for any disabled person. Try and get to know them enough that you're comfortable yourself around them. And then, you know, maybe go out to lunch with them or something ahead of time and discuss what they need and everything. So it's not right there at the table in front of everybody and, you know, making some people uncomfortable or not. And then it's easier to make the other people comfortable with them because you've talked to them and understand them a little bit better. You know, and there's all different kinds of players. You know, there's the ones that just want to roll dice and kill stuff. And then there's the ones that want to tell the grand story of the entire universe, you know. And I kind of lean more towards telling the story, but, you know, that's me. But yeah, just the comfort level is very important because blind people, a huge number of blind people shut themselves away from society. They're just around their family members or maybe their neighbors. And they sit in a room all day in the dark listening to music or to the television. And there's no need in the world for that. I mean, even if you're not going to play our kind of games, there's all kinds of stuff they can get out and be doing. They just need somebody to help them get there. 
Yeah. 
And that's what you can do. 
All right. So what one message would you like to give those who are unaware of the need for accessibility in roleplaying games? 
Well, if you're a company, there's a whole lot of disabled people out there. You know, the government estimates 25% of the United States population as one form of disability or the other. If you're not doing stuff to make your game available to everybody, then you're losing out on all that money. From a mercenary point of view and from just a well-being, your own well-being, it'll make your life so much better, not just helping people, but going out of your way to make things more accessible for somebody and seeing the joy that brings to them. That's become my entire mantra in life is when I'm feeling down or worried about something, you know, with my health, I find somebody online to help. And it goes away because I start worrying about their problems more than I worry about mine. And if more people did that, more able-bodied people did that, I think the world would be a lot better place. 
Yeah, absolutely. Are you working on any projects you can talk about? 
I am working on... I've been running all my Dungeons & Dragons stuff in the same game world for the last 10 years with every group. So they go through the exact same thing. And my game world started off with just six city-states marked on the outline of a map. And then as the players adventure through parts of it, then it gets filled in. And now it's fairly well filled in, and I've run a half-dozen different groups through it. It's really coming alive, and I'm working on getting that formatted for a book. And see if I can't publish my campaign world into a book. And amazingly enough, you wouldn't think it'd be this way, but making things accessible when you're blind is difficult. 
Yeah. 
But I'm working on it, you know. But yeah. And when I... When and if I get it done, I'll be crying to the rooftops about it's out there. Go look for it.
Awesome. Looking forward to that. 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? 
On BlueSky. You have my information for that, I believe. And I'm still on Twitter because a lot of the blind community is still there. I refuse to call it that other name. So I still check in on it two or three times a day to see if anyone's tried to contact me for help. So you can still contact me there if you don't have BlueSky. There's none of the other platforms that are really accessible enough for me to use easily. So these are the two I use. And just contact me anytime. I mean, don't worry about I might be doing something or whatever. I'm sitting here most days just waiting for somebody to help. 
Cool. Alright, well temple thank you so much for coming on the show. Everyone check out the links in the show notes. 
I am glad to do it. And I want to thank you for all you've done for accessibility. I've paid attention to you for years now and I really appreciate the effort. 
Thanks. 
Now, before we wrap up, I want to take a moment to thank our incredible Patreon supporters. Your support enables us to create and share our work, making tabletop roleplaying games more inclusive and accessible to everyone. In this month, we have one new patron, Michael Thomas. Thank you so much for your support. You're awesome. In preparation for some of the proposed changes to disability benefits, Medicaid and other supports that many people rely on, we also want to use fantasy to imagine a better world and hopefully make our world better in the process. And so we're restructuring our Patreon tiers to make more community copies available so that those who can't afford to buy them can get them for free. And we use the support from our patrons to finance that program. In 2024, we made over $4,000 worth of community copies available. And if you need stuff and you need to -- and you can't afford it, you can go get it right now. Just go to our website, go to the shop on our website, and you can find those community copies there. So if that sounds great and you'd like to help us out with that and all of the work that we do, join us at patreon.com/WyrmworksPublishing and become a part of our mission to make lives better through tabletop roleplaying games. Thank you so much to all of you who support us so that we can help you change lives. Now, if you find this show helpful, please like it on YouTube, subscribe for more, share it with friends and family, rate it in your favorite podcast directory to help more people find and benefit from it. Thank you for joining us to make lives better with tabletop roleplaying games. [MUSIC]