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.
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’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.
In our world we do have the magic to push a wheelchair around, and it’s not even hard to do this. Tinkerers can cast the spell of self-propelling wheelchair in their garages.
But magicing someone’s legs to work is still a far way off.
(Remember, when magic is well explained and documented, and people get used to it, they tend to call it technology.)
If by “not even hard” you mean “costs as much as a car”, then sure. My friend also let me know just how costly power chairs are.
It’s expensive for sure, but that’s mostly because powered chairs are made by medical companies and in comparatively low numbers.
A mobility scooter has almost all components a powered chair has, and these can be had for as little as €1000.
The technology behind a powered chair isn’t hard.
And even if we use the high price of a power scooter: How much does it cost to make a paraplegic person walk?
“Not even hard” and “costs as much as a car” aren’t mutually exclusive when it comes to the field of medicine, especially in the US. Many drugs cost pharmaceutical companies pennies to manufacture, but they still sell them for hundreds per pill simply because they can. Medical equipment often employs similar price gouging for no other reason than to profit as much as possible from people who have little choice but to pay.
My friend talked a lot about the forces at work. Not all of it was simple capitalism. Disabled people are notoriously hard to design for because each disabled person is different and has different needs. This kind of business is not scalable and disabled people are already a minority. Even proper hand wheelchairs are fucking expensive cuz only a couple companies make them.
That does make sense. But still, making a powered chair is not at all technologically difficult. You need the chair, two motors and an input system that works for the user.
Sure, if there’s a lot of bespoke parts and manual labour, coupled with basically no economy of scale, it’s going to be expensive. But it’s not difficult.
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.
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 looks to be a wizard being ambushed along a well paved path. I don’t think they needed an all terrain wheelchair. They were just going about their day.
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.
it could lead to really cool story/character stuff though like jjk: people born with broken bodies but incredible magical powers
Never miss an opportunity for unique challenges/stories.
It could be a hook like fullmetal alchemist or a realization for characters later: they are fine the way they are they don’t need to be fixed kind of stuff. simply discounting disabilities takes so much potential out of worlds/stories.
In most magic systems (RPG and books/films) using magic costs the magic user something (decades of studying, exhaustion, life force, mana potions/crystals, …). So it would be natural that they want to be compensated for their work.
So depending on how difficult regrowing an eye is for the magic user that could be quite pricey.
Some magic systems also require the magic user to exactly picture what they want to cast. Not sure if anyone can actually picture all the connections of an optical nerve.
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.
Another reason the chair looks out of place is because it’s a transfer chair, not a self propel chair. These chairs are designed to push someone, they aren’t designed for independent mobility.
These chairs are commonly represented in media because they are cheap and often the “first chair” a disabled person will get because of their affordability and needing something quick. But they are bog standard and you can’t really get around by yourself in one without more pain or fatigue. You’ll then start the process of getting a measured for a chair that will fit your needs.
Some people only have a transfer chair because they are semi-ambulant/part time chair user, so that’s all they need. But most people who use a wheelchair will not use a transfer chair long term. It’s temporary because it’s shit.
So it doesn’t make sense that someone with an active lifestyle, like a DnD character, would use this style chair as their main aid. Unless there’s something in the campaign, like their main chair was damaged, or the disability is recently acquired, the character is poor, etc.
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?
Rysn
Interesting point. In Dawnshard, we learn that she did :::ask the Radiants to heal her condition, but it was too late by then.:::
But… That depends on the magic, doesn’t it? I’d argue you could easily use magic to fix disabilities. Or do healers not exist in your world?
The exist, they’re not everywhere though. And are typically very cagey about teaching others.
And often times their prices for using their services is pretty bad for the typical person.
One of the PCs though (who joined after the other guy left) is an artificer who was born without legs (currently has prosthetics they made) and the reason he’s out adventuring is to bring legs to those who lack them. Like his mentor did for him.
The next town they’re getting too will have an NPC without a leg and the artificer should have the components to make a magical prosthetic for them if they want to.
I’ve always wanted to have a DND character that’s an armless monk and all they do is kick bad guys to death.
i mean to some degree it’s funnier if they just ardently refuse to use their hands, constantly keeping them behind their back
That’s just Sanji from One Piece.
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”
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.
It also means that people may have disabilities but won’t be held back by them without removing that aspect of their life. And it could be ruled that the differently-abled aspect is something not even magic can take away because it’s so intrinsic to the character
I can absolutely see magic not being able to correct genetic or congenital conditions. It can make sense for developmental delays aswell. But something like missing a limb from a traumatic injurie or blindness due to macular degeneration… There is no reason a mid level adventurer or powerfull character would not just use magic to heal or fix it.
Maybe an injurie by a powerful lich, or since kinda of cursed weapon that makes it impossible to fully heal with anything short of a wish spell…
Poor people on the other hand, should absolutely have debilitating injuries and disabilities that will never be fully fixed due to magic being expensive.
Why do you assume there is only one kind of magic?
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?!
Couldn’t a cleric heal partial paralysis tho?
How do you know clerics exists in that world?
I’ve seen them somewhat often in RPGs and related material. There’s those who are blind, frail, deaf, weak or lacking a skill to do something necessary. Even Basic D&D had notable penalties for rolling INT 3-5, being illiterate to start with.
NPCs in fantasy settings still have hinderances, and they’re expected. Maybe they can be neutralized by healing magic in D&D, or there may be equipment that works around them. The wrong part is shutting down the concept, as that’s contempt for the weak (technically a symptom of fascism.)
While Nazi-Germany was infamous for ‘euthananizing’ disabled people, it is sadly not a principle reserved for the right extreme.
Luckily most don’t go as far as right out killing the weak. But sadly there is almost always a splinter group in any political or ideological orientation that shows contempt for the weak.
Why people downvote you I don’t know.
I just got here, but I’d guess it’s because their comment reads like they are saying “no, facists aren’t the bad guys, both sides show contempt for the weak sometimes!” It’s a false balance fallacy.
I’m not sure if that was the intention, or it was just unfortunately worded.
It is - in your strawman argument. Because they’ve just said that evil is not limited to fascists and described how.
I agree with every word and the tone too. There are plenty of people with “contempt for the weak” who for whatever reason disagree that they are dirt.
It’s an attack at dishonorable people, and if you have the need to resort to strawman arguments, then maybe it has something to do with you.
You asked why the comment was getting downvoted. I responded with how the comment could be interpreted in a way that warrants downvotes.
You seem to have taken that proposed explanation very personally for some reason.
How would you have worded the comment?
