Showing posts with label Gaming While Blind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaming While Blind. Show all posts

4.7.15

Visibility

Keeping track of stuff on the table can be a major challenge. The following work for me. 

Buy bright accessories. 
With the option of fluorescent plastics, orange is the new black. I can see the templates and markers, and they are all glowy around the edges. If they don't come bright, paint them, mark them, or otherwise make them stand out.

Count things. 
I brought 10 figures in this box, 8 dice, etc. it may seem neurotic, but I have left Farseers, Swamp Gobbers, snipers, and servo-skulls to the hands of the fates, so I can't help it. I try to label my boxes and containers so I know I have everything, then sweep the table clean of scenery. This often shakes loose the odd figure. Also, check with the folks you are playing with, asking them if you have everything 

Put things down in one place. 
Not a good color scheme for the visually impaired...
Then put them there again after you use them. I am not so good at this, especially with my tape measure, which contrary to the bright accessory advice above, is still matte black, and which I put down in the oddest of places, like right in front of me, and then I can't find it. I also have been known to look for something which is in my hand, though this is probably not due to vision...

22.6.15

I am not sure how many others are out there, but I know there are a few, and definitely more as time goes on and we begin to inhabit gaming themed nursing homes. Over the past 40 years I defined myself as a gamer; over the past 15, I became a blind gamer. Not totally, completely blind, but rather no driving, walking into obstacles, talking to mannequins, cane using blind. I have about 4% of my vision remaining, and it ticks away steadily.

I can no longer see the tips of my brushes most of the time, except the really large, terrain painting ones, nor all the details on the amazing new figures, nor the fine points of the gaming table (where did I put that tape measure?).The transition has been slow, but inexorable, and I thought I would share a few changes in my own gaming that others in similar positions might find helpful:

The first centers on shifting perspective. If painting figures is as big a part of your hobby as playing, as it is with me, try to make the transition in your painting goals from realism to metaphor. I can no longer make figures look real (Some would say I never could), so I now am playing with tints, dry brushing, and shading, and learning to ignore the finer details I can barely discern. The figures hang together as units in terms of palette, and they are bright enough so I can spot them on the tabletop. They are slowly looking more like the game pieces others would say they really are, a perspective I am grudgingly accepting.