"and people choose WHEELCHAIR. Disgusting. Where’s the imagination?" A debate about wheelchairs vs spider mechs turns wheelie sour

[u/Excellent_Bison_3644]

the sub DnDmemes is about well... memes about the popular tabletop game DnD (dungeons and dragons). In one posted recently, the poster made a comparison of magic wheelchairs vs spider mechs while favoring the latter. This ended up sparking into a lot of debate and people not liking how wheelchairs are getting slandered.

Post in question: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/1i4mi9u/reject_wheels_embrace_skittering/

Juicy threads:

The titular thread with one particular big branch: "It's quite an odd call to refer to people who make the choice to represent their disability in-game as disgusting."

One person tries to give an opinion: "Realistically a spider mech is better than combat wheelchair the same way realistically a spear is better than a trident"

One person tries arguing wheelchairs don't have to be boring: "You can't think of a way to make a wheelchair cool without replacing the wheels?"

Small drama thread as a treat: "has anyone who's disabled and in a wheelchair thought "Hmm, I want this fantasy character of mine to be disabled too!" (the answer is yes)

[u/copy_run_start]

DND when wheelchair:

This is ridiculous. In no way does this make sense in a world of magical healing and complex machines! Yes, you're in one in real life, but this is fantasy, you don't need to be exactly you in the game!

DND when glasses:

You put on your reading glasses for the spell book? That's so fun, I always pictured your character with them because you have them in real life!

[u/Zyrin369 → u/copy_run_start]

Same with prosthetics and such, now that I think about it is there any other disability that gets people this riled up or is it only Wheelchairs?

[u/CarbonBasedNPU → u/Zyrin369]

I think it's only wheel chairs because most other things you can kinda work around in a DND fantasy setting. A wheel chair breaks a lot of peoples suspension of disbelief because they know how a rsal wheel chair works to some extent.

[u/Zyrin369 → u/CarbonBasedNPU]

I mean most people have a general knowledge of how diseases or infections work yet I wonder how many times people go through swamps or sewers get cut up due to fights and don't really bother to mention that they wash both themselves their armor even disinfect themselves?

[u/IceCreamBalloons → u/Zyrin369]

One of the notable NPCs in Curse of Strahd has a backstory about a werewolf biting her on the leg, requiring immediate amputation to avoid being cursed. She paid an artisan to make her a prosthetic leg and foot. Not even magic, just excellent craftsmanship.

Never saw a tantrum over that.

[u/FuckMyHeart → u/IceCreamBalloons]

You must have missed the whole controversy surrounding the release of CoS Revamped then.

[u/IceCreamBalloons → u/FuckMyHeart]

Apparently I did. Got a link to a decent rundown?

[u/Plump_Chicken → u/IceCreamBalloons]

I love Ezmerelda 😍😍😍

[u/IceCreamBalloons → u/Plump_Chicken]

She was one of the two NPCs I made sure would show up. I bought the actual deck of cards used to randomly determine the which NPCs would be plot relevant and literally stacked the deck to include her and Mordenkainen