Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
Another player who was at the table during the incident sent me this meme after the problem player in question (they had a history) left the group chat.
Felt like sharing it here because I'm sure more people should keep this kind of thing in mind.
I'll echo the words of my friend, who is a permanent wheelchair user:
"Yes, I identify with my disability as part of who I am, but I would still take a cure without hesitation"
Yes, people with disabilities identify with their disability, so even in a fantasy setting I can see how their disability would be part of their character.
But every disabled person I know would figuratively leap at the opportunity to reverse their disability with magic. It is also basically impossible to use a wheelchair while holding something like a wand or a staff or a fireball in one hand, so if there's enough magic around to push a wheelchair, there's probably enough to make your legs work. That's why somebody has a good reason not to expect a wheelchair in a fantasy world. I can see how somebody who doesn't really know any disabled people would panic at the idea of a wheelchair being part of the narrative or something like that, and I can sympathize with it.
The only people I have ever seen claim that disabilities aren't so bad and you can live completely normal etc. are people with no disabilities at all. I'm not disabled, my eyesight is just shit and I don't know what I'd be willing to do to get normal eyesight. Just to get rid of a pair of glasses. I can't imagine the lengths someone actually disabled would go to in order to get a cure.
Why would that even be a problem? Plenty of blind people in ancient stories, myths and legends. Probably better off without this person.
I mean on one side you'd have the magic to heal many if not all disabilities.
On the other hand in reality we have wheel chairs and stuff to heal and prevent many diseases, too, but still not everyone can get those...
As a fun saying goes "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed"
The same could easily apply to magics of many kinds
I mean that really depends on the world you are set in: if magic is everywhere/can heal anything someone who is blind could break immersion IF there is no good reason (he doesn't want to see for personal reasons, it's a curse and can't be removed etc.)
However if magic treatment is rare/expensive of course there would be lots of disabled people (monster attacks, accidents, diseases, etc.)
Obviously thats not the problem here(the guys just a dick) but it's something i run into a lot when designing worlds/characters: a lot of our real world problems fall apart if introduced into a magical setting.
What I won't accept is that for some reason, all the illustrations that depict this use the hospital wheelchair design. If you are an adventurer who goes into dungeons, you should be getting something that can handle that terrain better than a squeaky shopping cart. Go for the fantasy version of Professor X' flying chair. Or at least get something with all-terrain wheels, and have them angled like the ones in the wheelchairs athletes use.
This wheel chair looks out of place for the setting. I love what Psychonauts 2 did: there is a disabled character that uses psychic levitation for his "wheel" chair.
We see almost nothing about "the setting". Not everything is LOTR, Harry Potter or D&D.
Ok but a wheelchair would be dumb when you could just get some enchanted armor.
This is my issue.
Its a fantasy world. Dont copy paste non magic human solutions to disability. Create fantasy ones.
Enchanted pants that give you mild telekenesis while wearing them, but only on the pants. You can walk with your mind now, but you need the pants to do so.
Youre still disabled, but now your disability is more akin to glasses. An aide that is required, but in most cases completely masks your disability and lets you go about your day to day mostly unhindered, all while maintaining the worlds flavor without the weird clash of having a piece of tech that doesnt match the world around it.
Dont want your disability fully masked? Give them a familiar to ride. Or keep the telekenesis, but make it a chair whose legs can walk.
Its fantasy so we can ignore reality for a lil while. You dont need real solutions to problems, you need fantasy solutions.
I don't have a problem with having disabled people in a TTRPG setting, but I hate the "it's fantasy, stop whining about realism" argument.
You hate it but it's still true, it's a genre set entirely in fictional worlds.
Something being fiction is no reason to throw expectations and consistency out the window.
It’s not that there is a wheelchair in a fantasy setting. It’s that the setting is typical high fantasy that may have magic but is otherwise very low tech. But then you have this out of place modern wheelchair made from a steel tube frame.
It’s like if the bard and the paladin disagree any some fact, then the paladin put down his shield and mace just to pull out his fucking iPhone to show that he was right all along.
"How dare someone's fantasy not meet my expectations of how fantasy should be"
In the United States, millions and millions of people walk around with conditions we can treat with our own kind of magic: modern medicine. So why don't they get that prosthetic arm, treat that chronic pain, get that surgery, or take those pills? They can't afford it. Why don't they get that vaccine? They don't believe in it. If magic exists to eliminate all disabilities, then there should be no smart, rich people with disabilities in your world building, certainly. Plenty to go around otherwise though.
If magic exists to eliminate all disabilities, then there should be no smart, rich people with disabilities in your world
I disagree. I know plenty of smart people with disabilities who wouldn't take a cure if it was possible. Most of them are autistic. Autism is a disability in a world that doesn't accommodate it, but it doesn't have to be. It's a disability politically, not intrinsically. And deafness is pretty undeniably a disability, but I've read about deaf people not wanting to join in on hearing society because they think the deaf community is better.
This might sound hard for you to understand if you're fully abled, so I'll put it in terms you can understand. Imagine if tomorrow scientists invented a cheap, painless procedure to install a third arm in your chest. Everyone's getting them because they're so useful, and clothing stores are quickly switching to shirts with three arm holes. It's getting hard to find shirts with only two arm holes, in fact. Even if everyone you knew said they preferred having three arms, would you get one?
I am disabled. I would take a magic cure in a second, as would the vast majority of disabled people.
I'm disabled and I wouldn't. I don't think I'd be me if I wasn't autistic.
I think if you do not want or need a cure, it's not a disability. Doesn't make sense to call it a disability then.
Autism is a disability mostly for social reasons, not for intrinsic reasons. I guess you could say that I do want a cure, if the cure is society becoming more tolerant. But I don't want a cure that changes my intrinsic nature, because there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being autistic.
What is a disability "for intrinsic reasons" or that is "intrinsically wrong"? Only disabilities that cause direct pain?
Per definition, a disability is something that gives you a handicap for living in how the world is.
A disability for intrinsic reasons would be something like paraplegia or deafness. There is no social relativity to whether people with these conditions can do less things. But whether something is intrinsically wrong with that person is up to their own judgement. They are free to set their own standard in that case, and determine whether they really should be able to walk or hear, just as I'm free to determine whether I really should be able to make eye contact or process speech. (It is my opinion that the loudness of public spaces is unnatural and unjust, and that people need to fucking speak clearly instead of being lazy and making me do the work of listening closely)
But I think you've ignored my point. Which is that I don't want to be cured of my mind's nature, but I do want to be free of a society that disables autistic people. My question to you is, do I want to be cured? Is social acceptance and accommodation a cure?
I don't care. The definition of what a disability is, is clear. When all people would be deaf, would deafness be a disability? No.
It doesn't matter whether you personally want to be cured or not. If someone has no legs and they like it, it's still a disability because the person has a clear handicap in the current world. It doesn't matter that, in a hypothetical world where heaving legs doesn't matter, it wouldn't be seen as a handicap.
I think if you do not want or need a cure, it's not a disability. Doesn't make sense to call it a disability then.
I was having a conversation about this thing you said. Did you change your mind and decide you don't agree with it anymore?
No, it's something else than (instead of autism). Perhaps it a-symptomatic or someone has overcome it.
Imagine someone has a broken leg. It would not make sense to say they still have a broken leg but it's not a disability because society could just change and make it a non-problem. It's irrelevant whether it wouldn't be seen as a problem when everyone had a broken leg or no one would care about it.
I disagree. Michael Phelps is double jointed. He's the best swimmer in the world because he has a mutation that makes his feet more effective flippers. You said a flaw is still a disability even when everyone has it. Nearly everyone is single jointed, and that makes us worse at swimming than Phelps. Your argument would imply that single jointed people are all disabled.
You can't define disability in absolute terms, or you'll run into problems like that. You have to define disability in socially constructed terms.
You said a flaw is still a disability even when everyone has it.
Where did I wrote that?! I wrote that the hypothetical situation where everyone has a broken leg and therefore then it would be considered normal, doesn't invalidate that a broken leg is a handicap in our (non-hypothetical) real life.
Also, being double jointed is not considered a disability.
And further, the word is clearly defined (this is translated from my language to English):
Physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which prevent a person from participating equally in society for longer than six months.
And what we categorise as a disability is grounded on the definition above. Since autism is categorized as a disability, it wouldn't make sense to diagnose someone with autism if the above is not true.
I don't see how this can not make sense. It seems so obvious that you do not have a disability when nothing is disabling you. When someone says "I have disability X but it's not disabling" then congratulations, you are cured.
Also, being double jointed is not considered a disability.
Nobody thinks being double jointed is a disability. You misunderstood the point I was making. So I'll make it in clearer terms:
I can understand complex hypotheticals and you can't. Does that make you disabled, because you can't participate in this conversation as my equal? Or does the fact you're not much worse at it than the average person make you normal, and therefore not disabled? Are we measuring disability against the average person, or against the most capable person in the room? Or the most capable person in the world, for that matter? Are you intellectually disabled by the fact that someone better at reasoning than you exists?
I wanted to ask this question using Michael Phelps as an example instead of myself, but you didn't understand, so it's clear I need to make the situation more relatable for your benefit. That's why I ask a more personal version of the question. Are you disabled because of my existence?
I think you have trouble understanding the difference between definitions for words or the context of general terms and your own personal experience.
You're not even pretending to have a conversation anymore, are you?
You didn't answer my question ("Where did I wrote that") and your answer doesn't make it clear to me if you even understood my point. So I am not sure why you think it's me who isn't having a conversation.
You didn't answer my question first. I'm still waiting.
Do you mean the question where you tried to paint me as dumber than you because I do not agree with your reasoning?
Yeah, I won't answer to your narcissistic ramblings because your premise is wrong. I have no trouble understanding your reasoning, I just think it's wrong.
What is and isn't categorized as a disability isn't subjectively decided randomly. It's a decision based on our current real life situation. Not your head cannon.
Autism is considered a disability because of the definition of what makes a disability I provided above. While you personally can say that you feel not disabled, a claim that "autism is not a disability because when people were different it wouldn't matter" isn't rational reasoning.
No, I mean the question where I asked if you changed your mind because you directly contradicted yourself
Also the reason you're dumber than me is that you think I think being double jointed is a disability and you think I think I'm not disabled. You don't understand what I'm talking about at all.
Couldn't a cleric heal partial paralysis tho?
How do you know clerics exists in that world?
Why are people in the comments arguing about what is or isn't possible in D&S or Star Trek or whatever? As far as I can see it, there is no description about what kind of universe this plays in.
It doesn't make sense to argue whether or not a wheelchair like that "makes sense" in a D&D universe?!
I don't see why anyone would take issue with it, but one of the coolest things about powerful magic is that nobody needs to be disabled. You can heal them with magic! I know I'd love to get a fantasy healer to heal some of my old wounds. But even in D&D magic comes with a price, and more powerful spells consume very expensive reagents. So it's understandable that there would still be injured and crippled people.