When you think of accessible games you might think of recent inclusion efforts on Twitch, the team at AbleGamers, or pieces of tech like adapted controllers. While these are all great examples of how games can be made better for disabled players, there is one area that gets a little less shine: the tabletop community.
Whether you're meeting at a game shop for a round of Pathfinder or huddling around the living room for family game night, tabletop games have been around for decades and continue to bring joy to millions of players. With accessibility challenges that have theoretically been addressed in similar settings, why is accessibility becoming such a popular topic in the tabletop gaming community?
Tabletop gamers take the initiative
Players with disabilities facing barriers in tabletop gaming isn't new, now creators in the industry are working to build more space for disabled fans. Rachel Voss and Wesley Magee-Saxton are two of those creatives.
They founded Forge Ahead: A Party to Access in 2021 after meeting during the pandemic through a Facebook thread. Voss had shared her "Chair Smith Tools," a resource for D&D players who were using Sara Thompson’s combat wheelchair sheet. The real push for that work, Voss says, was some of the backlash that came from the release of wheelchair miniatures -- a set from Strata Miniatures’ Dungeons and Diversity collection that players can use to represent their character during a campaign. She was tired of hearing from people complaining that disability should be represented in-game, ultimately concluding, “it's not our fault your imagination’s disabled.”
Magee-Saxton says that the people running tabletop role-playing games need to be thinking about physical accessibility and ensuring that they communicate with their players.
“A lot of tabletop gaming does involve really tiny figurines and stuff. So just making sure that supports are in place for manipulating the more difficult physical aspects of tabletop games, and just having an understanding in regards to whatever your access needs may be.”
He says using digital character sheets, supporting the movement of miniatures on the table, and using digital dice, can all be ways to support those with physical disabilities who want in on the action. There’s also a wider societal aspect of this, both Voss and Magee-Sexton believe that when you start with inclusive representation at the table, more can be built once the game has ended.
“If we can nip this in the bud in role-playing, it's going to translate off the table,” says Voss.
Tabletop gaming resources
Jennifer Kretchmer is a writer, performer, producer, and streamer − her various gigs have become so intertwined that she calls herself a "slasher of Gordian knots." She published the Accessibility in Gaming Resource Guide (links to a document) in August 2020, because she says she was fielding a lot of the same inquiries in her time as an advocate and consultant. Her work is focused on going beyond basic accessibility in the worlds of players’ imaginations.
“I like to say, ‘make your fantasy better than our reality,’ because, so often, people don't even consider marginalized groups when they are imagining fantastic worlds.”
Kretchmer says she and other creators have had to deal with harassment from some in the community who didn’t want to see disability represented. There have been bright spots, of course, including EH’s 2019 Fate Accessibility Tool Kit that sparked her emotions. “The first time I read this . . . and I only got a preview initially, it was 40 pages and I was so overwhelmed with the idea that they would give us 40 pages because no one ever did that before.” The final version is 120 pages and a print run is set for October 2021. It’s a tool that she says is “fundamental” as she tells stories within worlds where elevators and ramps are commonplace, even when her fellow players may not be disabled.
Tools and armor
Another tool that is fundamental to many disabled players is their wheelchair − miniature or not. Kretchmer says that it was her experiences on convention floors that led her to consider getting a wheelchair and Voss believes that how we refer to them − both on and off the tabletop playing surface − is important to society as a whole.
“We hear 'you're bound to your chair, you're confined to your chair,' it's all these things that make a wheelchair seem like it's a bad thing when really a wheelchair is a tool. It's something we use for independence and freedom. It’s a tool, just like a wrench, just like your armor, or your shield, or your sword in fantasy stuff.”
Where does the industry go from here?
Forge Ahead regularly posts character builds and resources so that those running campaigns can introduce disabilities within their worlds. Magee-Saxton says that their goal is “the start of our MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe)”
Meanwhile, in the last month, Kretchmer released a call for people to submit to a "Disabled Professionals in Tabletop" directory. Having only put out the call a few weeks ago, 180 people have since responded. That level of inclusion, with disabled people represented throughout the community and industry − including at the publisher of D&D, Wizards of the Coast -- is what drives her now.
“It's hard sometimes, but the days you get messages from people who say, ‘I never thought I had a place in this game,’ or ‘I didn't ever think I was going to be able to sit at a table and play a character like me,’ or, ‘my partner or family member or child started playing because they saw your panel or your conversation . . .those are the days that you go, ‘Okay, I can't stop now.”
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