Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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I09 article on the new sourcebook and the future of character creation in D&D . Hint: if you think things like "racial ability modifiers" will survive the current environment you are gravely mistaken.


Another upcoming book in sync with this approach is an updated version of the beloved adventure Curse of Strahd featuring updated discussions of the module’s Vistani characters, which were previously criticized for their reliance on outdated Romani stereotypes.
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Anybody who has been a tourist in Rome or Athens can tell you this "stereotype" is well earned.
#GoddamnGriftersAndThieves
 
anti SJW said:
I want to make a hand to hand combat kung fu monk in a wheelchair. I can do that, right?
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Yes! And you would be better than a baseline character in the following ways:
  • The wheelchair is a magical weapon that cannot be disarmed or broken.
  • It's made of invincible wood and is immune to rust monsters, heat metal, and all similar effects.
  • It does not affect your reach or mobility in any way.
  • Assuming you are able to walk (which many people in wheelchairs can, albeit for brief periods) you can stand up, and use it to block off squares to guard your allies (remember, it never takes damage except from critical hits, and even those can't destroy it).
  • You get infinite flight/hovering for free, at first level. You're completely immune to pit traps, pressure-plate traps, and pretty much any obstacle that you normally have to cross on foot, like a raging river or lava.
  • You control the flight/hovering as a free action, which doesn't count as your single concentration effect.
  • You can never be knocked down or thrown out of the wheelchair.
  • Your chair acts a mount that can never take damage, be feared, or suffer any negative effect, and, as noted, you can't be thrown from it.
Game balance!
 
Sobble said:
Yes! And you would be better than a baseline character in the following ways:
  • The wheelchair is a magical weapon that cannot be disarmed or broken.
  • It's made of invincible wood and is immune to rust monsters, heat metal, and all similar effects.
  • It does not affect your reach or mobility in any way.
  • Assuming you are able to walk (which many people in wheelchairs can, albeit for brief periods) you can stand up, and use it to block off squares to guard your allies (remember, it never takes damage except from critical hits, and even those can't destroy it).
  • You get infinite flight/hovering for free, at first level. You're completely immune to pit traps, pressure-plate traps, and pretty much any obstacle that you normally have to cross on foot, like a raging river or lava.
  • You control the flight/hovering as a free action, which doesn't count as your single concentration effect.
  • You can never be knocked down or thrown out of the wheelchair.
  • Your chair acts a mount that can never take damage, be feared, or suffer any negative effect, and, as noted, you can't be thrown from it.
Game balance!
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It'll be great because now people in wheelchairs will NEVER ESCAPE THE REALITY OF THEIR LIVES. Not for one second. Crippy Boy in real life? Sorry, you should really also be a Crippy Boy in our make believe game. But the good news is that we can put magical sparklers and pinwheels on it! Won't that pep you up, son?
 
Starscreams Cape said:
I09 article on the new sourcebook and the future of character creation in D&D . Hint: if you think things like "racial ability modifiers" will survive the current environment you are gravely mistaken.

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I mean, who wants interesting fantastic races to play with when you can just let the munchkins run wild with "freeform" customization, right?

Maybe that's their plan for making humans less boring. When every race is just a re-skinned human with modular bits tacked on, then they can't be boring anymore.
 
Starscreams Cape said:
It'll be great because now people in wheelchairs will NEVER ESCAPE THE REALITY OF THEIR LIVES. Not for one second. Crippy Boy in real life? Sorry, you should really also be a Crippy Boy in our make believe game. But the good news is that we can put magical sparklers and pinwheels on it! Won't that pep you up, son?
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To be totally honest, assuming it wasn't just the player trying to get attention, I think a character in a wheelchair/hoverchair could work and actually be interesting in a lot of settings. Superheros comes to mind (Professor X), an investigation-based Call of Cthulhu game, or any setting where technology is easy to acquire and ubiquitous (Cyberpunk settings, maybe Shadowrun). Hell, even in 40k (Ravenor), absolutely no one gives a fuck if you're disabled, and no one on the Rogue Trader cares if like, the Navigator is flying around the ship in a hoverchair.

The problem is that D&D is not any of these settings, and it runs on the expectation that the players will have similar abilities/an even playing field. The author doesn't really seem to have any grasp of game balance, and 'Disabled people should get all the things and always be better and always feel good and never suffer consequences and have more options than anyone else at the table because my feels!' is just... not a good design mantra. Nevermind that invincible building materials, easy access to 'folding technology', and flying car engine-stones with infinite energy that work via your thoughts, require no concentration, and are totally immune to dispel magic and all antimagic effects would break a lot of D&D settings. However, because it's inclusive, there's no need to consider any of that.
 
anti SJW said:
I want to make a hand to hand combat kung fu monk in a wheelchair. I can do that, right?
Click to expand...

Again that sounds like a cool concept for a Feng Shui character.

Starscreams Cape said:
I09 article on the new sourcebook and the future of character creation in D&D . Hint: if you think things like "racial ability modifiers" will survive the current environment you are gravely mistaken.




Anybody who has been a tourist in Rome or Athens can tell you this "stereotype" is well earned.
#GoddamnGriftersAndThieves
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In Cauldron of Everything, players are given the framework to throw all those mandated traits and benefits out the window and build their own benefits, regardless of the race they want to choose for their character. “We provide a new rules option that allows you to take some of the traits in your character’s race—Elf, Dwarf, Half-Orc, or something else—and modify those traits so that you can better reflect the story you have in mind for your character,” Crawford said of the new process. “We even include in this book a template for creating a lineage for your character that is completely disconnected from any of the race options in the game. It’s basically just us saying ‘fill in the blanks.’”
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It sounds like they're doing Fantasy Flight style lifepaths.

Corn Flakes said:
I mean, who wants interesting fantastic races to play with when you can just let the munchkins run wild with "freeform" customization, right?

Maybe that's their plan for making humans less boring. When every race is just a re-skinned human with modular bits tacked on, then they can't be boring anymore.
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Oh no DND might become an imbalanced mess this has never happened before :(

In completely unrelated news 1d4chan has been down for like a week. No idea why.
 
Sobble said:
To be totally honest, assuming it wasn't just the player trying to get attention, I think a character in a wheelchair/hoverchair could work and actually be interesting in a lot of settings. Superheros comes to mind (Professor X), an investigation-based Call of Cthulhu game, or any setting where technology is easy to acquire and ubiquitous (Cyberpunk settings, maybe Shadowrun). Hell, even in 40k (Ravenor), absolutely no one gives a fuck if you're disabled, and no one on the Rogue Trader cares if like, the Navigator is flying around the ship in a hoverchair.

The problem is that D&D is not any of these settings, and it runs on the expectation that the players will have similar abilities/an even playing field. The author doesn't really seem to have any grasp of game balance, and 'Disabled people should get all the things and always be better and always feel good and never suffer consequences and have more options than anyone else at the table because my feels!' is just... not a good design mantra. Nevermind that invincible building materials, easy access to 'folding technology', and flying car engine-stones with infinite energy that work via your thoughts, require no concentration, and are totally immune to dispel magic and all antimagic effects would break a lot of D&D settings. However, because it's inclusive, there's no need to consider any of that.
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The sane response to anyone whining about a disabled character not being able to work in a fantasy game like D&D is to point them to another game. This tool for giving a disabled person all of the mobility of an able-bodied person (and more) cannot be naturally incorporated into 99% of the worlds that D&D campaigns are set in. It should just be obvious that anyone who actually wants to play D&D (as opposed to just talking about it on Twitter all day) that the game is built around player characters being able to walk, run, jump, etc.
 
Sobble said:
Oh, hey! The wheelchair lady got hired by Pazio to be a disability consultant! Let's see what she thinks of tabletop gamers and fans of the games!

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Clearly, this is going to rake in millions of cash. Loudmouthed dipshits on Twitter always generate massive amounts of revenue by mobilizing the Crybullies of social media, right?

DeagleNationRefugee said:
Anybody wanna play Wheelchairs and Whiners? New ruleset I just made up. The purpose is to reverse munchkin down a character to be as disabled as possible for the most wokenet points.
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Intsead of rolling dice, you have to crytype longwinded diatribes about your struggles with your crippling autism/soyaddiction/self-indulgence in some personal physical detail that you foster into the semblance of a personality... then the GM has to allow you whatever it is you want.
 
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Spergetti said:
The sane response to anyone whining about a disabled character not being able to work in a fantasy game like D&D is to point them to another game. This tool for giving a disabled person all of the mobility of an able-bodied person (and more) cannot be naturally incorporated into 99% of the worlds that D&D campaigns are set in. It should just be obvious that anyone who actually wants to play D&D (as opposed to just talking about it on Twitter all day) that the game is built around player characters being able to walk, run, jump, etc.
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She keeps referencing the Drizzt books as some kind of slam dunk, GOTCHA! on anyone who tries to point these things out. Apparently she ripped this off from them and hovering wheelchairs have always existed in the Realms, assuming that's the default setting. All I can say is that there are definitely no hoverchairs in the first book (don't judge me), and that I haven't read the 10+ others. You would think if it's such an important point of reference, and indeed the whole basis for her writing, she could at least say which book the chair is from.
 
Sobble said:
She keeps referencing the Drizzt books as some kind of slam dunk, GOTCHA! on anyone who tries to point these things out. Apparently she ripped this off from them and hovering wheelchairs have always existed in the Realms, assuming that's the default setting. All I can say is that there are definitely no hoverchairs in the first book (don't judge me), and that I haven't read the 10+ others. You would think if it's such an important point of reference, and indeed the whole basis for her writing, she could at least say which book the chair is from.
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I think she is referring to this character from this book. I've never read it, but that is what comes up when you search for "drizzt wheel chair".
 
WinchesterPremium said:
I think she is referring to this character from this book. I've never read it, but that is what comes up when you search for "drizzt wheel chair".
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That only tells us that wheelchairs can be built in Forgotten Realms... which is not a huge stretch.

Where are the indestructible, flying, ramming, all-singing, all-dancing MechaChairs we were promised?!
 
Bran from A Song of Ice and Fire comes to mind. He dreams of becoming a mighty knight in service to his elder brother, who will be Lord of Winterfell, but then he gets pushed out a window and breaks his back. Large parts of the story, before he realizes that he's a warg (ie: can take over the body of an animal), he deals with being a cripple in a medieval setting. It's an interesting plot.

Having a warrior (or someone who wants to be a warrior) come to terms with being no longer able to walk is an interesting way to tackle the subject... but it makes zero sense for a DnD campaign, full stop. Either it's some gimmicky "he owns a flying wheelchair" type situation that defeats the whole purpose, or it's a situation where a small flight of stairs stalls the group.
What point is there to put someone with a disability into a game, when you alleviate the resulting consequences with some ridiculous bullshit, where you either ignore anything that's inconvenient (ie: the world now no longer has terrain that's impassable for a wheelchair) or you give the character some means to entirely ignore the disability to begin with.

How is this "empowering" to the ones with the disability? All it does is underline how far away they are from healthy people, by making the thing that puts them on equal footing (no pun intended) some divine Sauron's-Ring-level artifact? Isn't that super depressing in a way? To make a person with a disability equal to a person without that disability, you either ignore the consequences of the disability or you make them disappear with some ridiculously far-out magic item.

I think the empowering bit isn't the ability to play a cripple in DnD, the empowering bit is to be the one person on Twitter, that forced a multi-million-dollar company to include ones bullshit demands.
 
Just gonna point out that as @Jet Fuel Johnny mentioned alchemists are a lovely way to have fun, and I currently run a half-elf one in a 5e campaign come from the city that's a hive of scum and villainy to ply her trade in a more upstanding city, and in a sci-fantasy game a buddy homebrewed up in both system and setting that's a lovely mashup of Freelancer, Firefly, Shadowrun, and Assassin's Creed, I run a full-blown physician, who brings all that lovely biochem knowledge they bash into your head at med school to the pharmaceutical table, and as a result is basically Algernop Krieger, TF2's Medic, and Dr. Zed from Borderlands, all shoved together into one psychopathic experimental druggie with T&A as big as her body count and as brilliant as she is blond, and since she's a platinum that is quite blonde indeed. Currently she is on the run after practicing some rather extreme preventative medicine on the gangbangers who were recovering at her hospital in Space California.
 
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