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Message: <blockquote data-quote="touc" data-source="post: 8062071" data-attributes="member: 19270">That's good point #1. We tend to make characters that have abilities far beyond our own and don't reflect our own bodies. I've got a gamer in my group with recurring cancerous tumors. He's not clamoring for me to permit his character to have cancerous tumors and make them into a benefit in some way. They're just a part of his life and he doesn't pretend we could convert them into an asset.My own point, #2, is drawn from when I used to work with persons who had severe mental and physical disabilities. One of our life goals was to get out in public as much as possible, whether it be eating out, shopping, or simply enjoying a movie. If you want to do justice for persons with disabilities in a fantasy game, rather than making the disability into a superpower or having a deux ex machina allowing it to be overcome, just include those persons as part of the social fabric of the game. Let them be seen as parts of their community.Point #3, people tend to underestimate what persons with a perceived disability can do. One of my favorite villains was from a Dungeon Magazine adventure where a rich old lady in a wheelchair was behind a series of murders. The story played on most people's stereotypes: that someone who was elderly and/or in a wheelchair couldn't be dangerous. Players underestimated her. In the end, she didn't have a jet-powered wheelchair or superpowers, and she wasn't even brilliant. She just had a vendetta, a twisted relationship with a serial killer, and a wand of magic missiles.</blockquote>

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