Accessibility Resources for Gaming
This page includes areas of accessibility to consider for tabletop role-playing games, podcasts that address accessibility in tabletop role-playing games, and links to a broad range of gaming accessibility resources, including resources for board games, live action role-play, and game designers.
Decolonizing Games Resource List
As a game designer I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to decolonize my game system, its setting, and the individual games that I play. There are some great resources out there for this, but it is easy to miss things because decolonization has a lot of different parts and there aren’t any comprehensive resources on it (at least, not any that I could find). So I’m making one here.
All of these games are based on Lasers & Feelings, which is is a free, one-page game system by John Harper that creates science fiction stories much like campy Star Trek episodes. The hacks (altered versions of the game) take place in a wide range of different genres, including space garbage collectors, mouse wrestlers, monster hunters, Doctor Who, spy dramas, muppet babies, witches in World War II, Ghostbusters, steampunk adventures, cybernetically–augmented deer with a guns, magical girls, and wizard schools. If you are looking for a free, rules-light game in a specific genre, this list is a great place to start.
Ableist Tropes in Storytelling
This series discusses harmful patterns in the representation of disability. It is designed to be useful to both writers and game masters. One of the unique things about this series is that it doesn’t just describe what the pattern is and why it is a problem, it also focuses on how to know if you are following one of these patterns and what to do differently.
This series aims to identify and address ableism in the core content of tabletop role-playing games, including game mechanics and central setting elements. There will be some discussion on the reasons these game elements are a problem. However the focus will be on identifying tools and options for altering games to remove ableism. While this series focuses on tabletop role-playing games, many of the topics covered are useful for all storytellers.
Universal Disabled Character Creation Guide for TTRPGs
When it is represented at all, most tabletop role-playing games present disability in limited and stereotypical ways. As a result, it is hard to create disabled characters that are realistic and respectful representations. The goal of this guide is to provide a better system for creating disabled player characters that can be used with any tabletop role-playing game. This system is designed to replace preexisting mechanics for creating or representing disability within the game.
Standard advice for creating disabled characters always includes doing research. However, despite the wealth of information about disability that is online, it can still hard to find clear information on what it is like to live with a disability, especially for people creating fictional disabilities. This resource is designed to help by collecting both common experiences of disability and experiences of specific disabilities.
I have been collaborating with the folks at the Mythcreants blog for the past three years and I’m currently acting as their disability consultant. In this role I am giving detailed feedback and suggestions on articles that discuss disability representation and I am answering reader questions about portraying disability. This page is a collection of those articles.
For those situations where it is hard to find all of the steps for doing something in one place, I’ve made my own personal step-by-step guides. I’ve decided to make some of these available here in the hope that they will make it easier for others.
Making RPG Podcasts Accessible
This is an in-progress (some rough sections), detailed list of notes and resources for my “Making RPG Podcasts Accessible” workshop. It covers what accessibility is, what ableism is, different experiences of disability that are important to know about, how to make a podcast accessible to disabled audience members, techniques for including disabled participants, how to deal with game systems that don’t handle disability well, how to create disabled player characters that are respectful representations of disability, and negative patterns of representation to avoid.
Disability Consultants for Geeky Projects
From tabletop role-playing games to comics to board games to twitch channels, there are lot new and exciting geeky projects being produced by creators big and small. However many of these projects aren’t fully accessible to disabled participants and audience members. The best way to change this is to get people with disabilities involved in creating these projects. The Disability Consultants for Geeky Projects List is designed to raise awareness of the many people doing this important work, help people connect with each other, and help creators find disability consultants who are a good fit for their projects.
So often in stories characters struggle with anxiety on their own, without the support of therapists, doctors, or psychiatrists. This makes me think that a lot of people in the real world are struggling on their own, without the kind of support that has made such a difference in my own life. Here I am sharing some of my personal tools for dealing with anxiety in the hope that people will understand the sorts of things that are possible with good quality medical help.
This page has the following sub pages.
- Writing Advice
- Disability Consultants for Geeky Projects Submission Form
- Podcasting How To
- Making RPG Podcasts Accessible
- Addressing Ableism in TTRPGs
- Translations
- Universal Disabled Character Creation Guide for TTRPGs
- Experiences of Disability
- Anxiety Tools
- Decolonizing Games Resource List
- Lasers and Feelings Hacks
- Disability Consultants for Geeky Projects
[…] A big list of accessibility resource lists […]