Disability & TTRPG's @ EF Funeral Camp

looking back at the Exalted Funeral convention a week or so ago, one of the highlights was the open discussion about disability in TTRPGs. A couple folks stopped by and the conversation was wide-ranging and dug deep.

One question was: what does disability even mean in a fantasy or fantastic setting? Many people would describe a lack of accessibility as a hallmark of a disability, whether the accessibility is to social status, physical space, wealth etc. So, we know that the definition of a disability can shift from culture to culture and from period of history to period of history. I also know that I identify my disability as such generally in the context of not being able to access something other folks are able to access. What constitutes a disability in a particular setting? What constitutes accessibility in that setting?

We also dug into the large amount of creative work done around disability and TTRPGs in the last few years, from super wheelchairs to entire kickstarted volumes of tables and conditions of disability. My main impression is that many of these are taking contemporary, North America and/or Western European ideas about disability and transposing them on fantasy worlds. The consensus deemed to be that, while these are good steps,we can be more creative.

Finally, we talked a lot about our own experiences entering into non-disabled gaming spaces, and then dug into the accessibility, or lack thereof, for us as gamers in particular settings. Related to this were particular problems and particular solutions that we, or others, could bring to bear to make various gaming spaces more welcoming and accessible. The explosion of virtual play over the last few years has, in many ways, really expanded accessibility, and we wondered how these varied interfaces with gaming might evolve going forward, and what that might mean for folks with disabilities.