Hi {name}!

In this update:

• Mermaid Mobility: A New Approach
• More Community Copies Available
• 11+ Exclusive New PC Ancestries
• Support M.T. Black's Latest Adventures

Mermaid in a wheelchair is a common trope used to assist aquatic people with mobility on land. It’s also sometimes used to demonstrate that many disabilities are more an issue of an inaccessible environment. 

But at the same time, this also shows the need for representation during the design process, one reason that we have built a team of disabled, neurodivergent, and mentally ill creators. Look at typical merfolk posture:

Notice that their typical posture is the “cobra” position. While they can curve their bodies in other directions, their muscles are probably used to working this way, and sitting like a biped in a wheelchair would likely leave them sore.

So while designing our next supplement, Stoneharbor, the first of what I hope to be in an ongoing Andovir Atlas series, I wanted to include accessibility for aquatic visitors to this port city. I designed an aqueduct system to move quickly to different districts in the city with wheelchairs to get to specific locations:

Merfolk Wheelchair Design

Designed by Gu'atu, a merfolk engineer, these wheelchairs feature:

·       Forward-Leaning Design. Merfolk lean forward with their hips and abdomen resting on the chair, and their tails supported horizontally behind them.

·       Flexible Tail Support. The tail support mechanism is flexible, allowing it to curve upward or sideways to navigate corners. A lever controls the movement for comfort and maneuverability.

·       Self-Propulsion. Two large front wheels enable self-propulsion, while two smaller pivoting wheels at the back provide stability and easy turning.

·       Seamless Transition. The design allows for easy transitioning between swimming and using the chair, promoting independence and ease of movement.

But merfolk aren’t real!

Yeah, sadly, the merfolk designer is as fictional as the rest of his people, so we didn’t have direct input on this design, nor does anyone need us to build one. But I used to work in an orthotics shop, where we repaired wheelchairs and built padding and supports in all kinds of shapes and sizes for the specific body shapes and muscular needs of the riders. And that’s just one example of designing from experience instead of inexperienced intuition. Accessibility technology is full of ideas that might have had potential had they talked to disabled people early in the process.

Now apply it to your table…and your life

Disabled or not, player or GM, how can you make the gaming experience better for everyone at your table? Our home group meets at a game café, and it can get noisy, so some players try to arrive early to grab a table where my hard-of-hearing ears can hear better. Maybe it’s Safety Tools. Ask what helps everyone instead of assuming. 

And then think about the other people you’d like to help. Ask. If you want to make suggestions, great, but also ask for feedback on those suggestions so you can truly be of help. And always get consent before you attempt to help!

Maybe the merfolk are real and just waiting to reveal themselves to us until we figure out how to listen to each other better. Let’s work on that, just in case!

Community Copies

Thanks to our Patreon members and other donations, we were able to make 10 copies of the Limitless Heroics Coloring Book and 23 copies of Limitless Heroics to our Community Copies program, a total of $515 worth of products!

If you would like a copy and can't afford one, or if you can support this program, follow the appropriate link below!

While working on Stoneharbor, I had to do some groundwork that will show up in future projects, but meanwhile, that means a lot of new content for our patrons, including eleven new PC ancestries! And many of those have additional variants, like the amphibious Anurian that has frog/toad, salamander, and axolotl variants, or Lizardfolk with chameleon and dinosaur variants, or the clockwork Tinkerlings with a chaos variant reminiscent of the Wild Magic Sorcerer!

If you’re not already a patron, this is a great time to add your support!

If you haven't heard of M.T. Black before, he's one of the most respected names in 5e adventure design. He literally wrote the book on it! (And as someone I'm honored to call my friend, I can tell you that he's a person who cares and makes the world better every day, the kind of person you can feel good about supporting.)

He's running a Kickstarter right now for a collection of new adventures: Iskandar Adventures, Vol 1.

These five adventures for levels 1–4 will be some of the best adventures you've ever sent your players through, and you can play them in his World of Iskandar (included with your pledge!) or in whatever world you run!

At the end of a session, I love hearing, "That was really fun." There's nothing like an M.T. Black adventure to produce that response.

Thanks for your support!

Dale