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The thing about the objections people are throwing up to the combat wheelchair is that almost all of them (and I'll get to the exceptions) fall into the pattern I describe here:
Objections that make no sense, accepted as rationalizations for a purely bigoted "I don't like it." https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1296493202288017410
Objections that make no sense, accepted as rationalizations for a purely bigoted "I don't like it." https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1296493202288017410
There's a bunch of people leaving comments on places it's discussed that are to the effect of "I want to shake these people and scream at them that D&D is a fictional game where you're supposed to make up a hero and go have adventures with them."
Which is what the chair is for?
Which is what the chair is for?
Every character you create will have *some* things in common with your real-world experience and if you think you've created one who doesn't, you're still playing them based on those experiences. You can't get away from them.
A wheelchair user who plays a hero who uses a wheelchair to go on adventures is no more failing to use their imagination to create an original character than a person who walks everywhere is failing when they make a walking character.
And then there's the people who say it breaks immersion because of being incongruous and thus ruining the verisimilitude. Of a made-up world that has owlbears, portable holes, mechanical lobsters, monsters from every mythology and many modern fictional mythoi.
There are derro, underground dwellers from a mid-20th century aluminum foil hat conspiracy theory, in Dungeons & Dragons. They definitely don't need to be there as they occupy almost identical creative space to the duergar, the deep dwarves or red dwarves.
I've seen multiple people declaring they wouldn't allow it at their table because they personally created and curated their own world setting and they know it doesn't fit.
But... it's an invention. Only one person needs to have invented it, once. Could be recently.
But... it's an invention. Only one person needs to have invented it, once. Could be recently.
You don't have to change the whole history of the world to account for a device's existence. Most people don't have access to it? Most people don't have ability modifiers that average out to positive and access to feats and magic, either. PCs are *specific* people.
It was the same thing I was talking about yesterday regarding other forms of fiction: it doesn't matter how rare or unlikely something is, it only has to happen once for it to be in a story.
And then there's this one, where some people are acting viscerally affronted and giving every impression that they expect to be forced to play characters in wheelchairs. https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1296804902723698688
Some of them are or are speaking forcefully on behalf of possibly hypothetical wheelchair users, saying they would want to play out a fantasy and if they showed up to a table and someone told them they had to play a character in a wheelchair, they'd quit.
I think on one level the people making this objection are telling you something about how they themselves treat their friends with visible differences, along the lines of "No, you can't be a good guy with us, none of the heroes are _____." on the playground.
But also, it's just an objection that doesn't make sense to anyone who knows tabletop, as these people do. It's Jack Chick level "Your character died in D&D so you're dead to us and we will never speak to or of you again." nonsense in terms of how far removed it is from reality.
All of these objections that operate under complete and total troll logic, all to disguise the fact that the people don't like the wheelchair because they *don't like wheelchairs* and are uncomfortable with the idea of someone capable and heroic using one capably and heroically.
And then there's the guy, the self-described "RPG pundit" (translation: "I decided the easiest way to have a career in or adjacent to tabletop was to manufacture reactionary outrage") who said the item is fine but its existence smacks of agenda and virtue-signaling.
This is the case where something else is going on, and it's something I've talked about before and will again: the people who don't care about something can never understand the people who do.
This RPG pundit guy is saying, "I can't imagine caring about being able to play as a wheelchair user, so I can't imagine caring about anyone else being able to do so, so I can't imagine that your intentions are pure or as stated in this case, as I know mine wouldn't be."
He calls it virtue signaling because that's just what his crowd does. It's the words they say to send up a signal to others in the same crowd that they are righteous people who don't engage in this kind of deception, only caring about the things that are correct, politi... oh.
You will never find a crowd more obsessed with being politically correct or afraid to put one toe out of line with the prevailing politics of the group, nor a crowd more eager to do and say things purely to signal their virtues than the people who cry "virtue signaling" and "PC"
For that matter, the people who talk derisively about "wokeness" and "wokescolds" sure want everybody around them to know they're awake, alert, and aware of what's *really* going on, and they sure do a lot of scolding of people they perceive as not being so, don't they?
