Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Gaming and disabilities

Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:42 pm Gaming and disabilities

This post is not really Greyhawk specific other than the fact I'll be hopefully restarting my TOEE campaign soon with new players.

Now I've gamed with players on the autism spectrum before. The deal is one of the players is completely blind and brand spanking new to rpgs to boot. She has text to speech software, so I've created a character sheet in excel format for her to use, and I have no problems with her using a computer based die roller for combat.

I know I'll have to be fairly descriptive when it comes to combat and other stuff. But does anyone have any other advice?

Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:19 pm

Is this an online campaign, or face-to-face at a table?

If it's online, I think any software she has should make her experience equal to that of the other players without you having to do much of anything to compensate.

If it's in person, then you'll have to adjust your descriptive narration a bit, depending upon your player's experience. If she was born blind, you'll have to use smell and touch descriptors instead of color and light/darkness. If she became blind more recently, you might not even have to worry about making that kind of change.

SirXaris
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Sat Feb 06, 2016 6:22 pm

It's a in person game and she was born blind. I do tend to use touch, smell, and taste descriptions already. She does have some role-play experience just not the type you get from a rpg.

Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:43 pm

Wow Cyrusalthantas good question!

Certainly got my group here talking and round-tabling ideas.
Certainly someone that has never seen a picture would have a hard time visualizing what a dragon "looks" like...
Some of the things that may help are props as well.

So my bunch came with these ideas for props.

Touch... is a great sense to convey items too.
The have material at most cloth stores that are fake furs, scaled surfaces, or tooled leathers could be touched to feel the subtle "look" of a dragon or werewolf or other creature types or what leather armors might "look like".

Assuming that she has had exposure to some real world elements you can build from also.. ie Dog, cat, horses, could all be leaping off points to Gnolls, displacer beast, or centaurs.

For me, Sound has also been a helpful descriptor even at my own table. My players have come to recognize certain background music dedicated to primary npcs or creature types... in fact the wizard of the party hates the goblins so much that every time she hears drums being pounded she readies a fireball! Razz

http://scenesound.cyclobster.com

Scenesound is a great pay what you want sound managing software. combined with a bit of googling and alittle DM effort it can add flavor to the game as well. Sometimes the emersion of "it sounds like this ahead" is more than any words could describe.

My group has its own challenges but I've been DMing for over 30 years and this is certainly a new one for me, but one certainly in need of visiting.
I've had/have, diabetics, paraplegic, one missing one eye (accident as a child, his only challenge was depth perception and color blindness) and one with chrons.

As a DM I would sit down with the new player and just chat over what animals they have "Seen" and have them describe those real world animals to you to give you a common ground of descriptors.

Combined with sound effects or a collection of sample smells I think this is a manageable challenge that might even enhance the game for all of your players. BUT it will require an investment of prep time on you the DM.

We will give it some more thought and fire back more ideas when my table reconvenes next weekend.

GOOD LUCK and Keep rollin 20s

DLG

Fri Mar 11, 2016 12:28 pm

On our last week gaming session, one of my players brought me this link.
Every little bit helps and we all know how much players love their dice.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/32mm-TACTILE-DICE-KOPLOW-GAMES-BLACK-w-RAISED-WHITE-PIPS-ONE-LARGE-PAIR-/131744279018?hash=item1eac9229ea

Will keep on pressing for more ideas

Sat Mar 12, 2016 10:42 am

I've seen the tactile dice before and my player does have a set since she plays boardgames. Unfortunately they only come in d6s or else we would be getting a complete set of polyhedron ones. As for using smell, her sense of smell isn't adept as her hearing or touch. Luckily she has a very active imagination.

Sun Mar 13, 2016 11:11 am

*Deleted & Clarified below*

Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:29 am

With the advent of 3-d printers the possibilities of tactile dice are doable... the difficulty is the more sides the more difficult it is to discern orientation for the user combined with making the tactile surface large enough to determine top face.

something like this might work
Or This Which Started as a Kickstarter Project

Or alternatively

You could go with a little used feature of excel that allow the PC to emulate results as speech and create formulas for various dice. I can create that fairly simply. see Here for Details

OR

can also create various spinner type results that would have the tactile references your player may be familiar with... these could be stored easily and would not require "finding & orienting them" like tossing dice...

OR

These Bingo Chips
Could be placed in "dice bags" tagged to die type (ie d4, d10, d20, etc) shaken and simply one tile drawn. For us old gurnards this would not be unusual since we can remember the days BEFORE polyhedron dice and "chits" (as they were called) did the same roll.

More as I think on it... Wink

Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:42 pm

Well we played last weekend. Things were pretty much a success. Instead of creating a new character my new player decided to take over a druid/wizard I had been running as a NPC. The only hiccup we ran into was unfamiliarity with how spells worked. We found Siri was a huge help with the rolling of dice. The game ended after the party encountered the giant frogs outside of the moathouse. No player deaths but most were low on HP's with the druid/wizard being swallowed alive.

Sat Mar 26, 2016 4:33 pm

I'm pleased to hear that it went well, Cyrusalthantas. Smile

SirXaris
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