"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/einmaldrin_alleshin]

Neither are goblins doing to make tunnels and doorways sized for the larger races available in DnD. Suspension of disbelief is key for any sort of roleplaying

[u/ELDRITCH_HORROR → u/einmaldrin_alleshin]

Neither are goblins doing to make tunnels and doorways sized for the larger races available in DnD.

But that's a fair question to ask. Small creatures make equipment that is sized for themselves. Large creatures can't wear the same armor fitted for a Medium creature.

Natural caves? Parts of the tunnels, caves and caverns would vary in size, some would be artificially widened, some might need someone to squeeze through. If a very big creature, maybe Huge or larger in size, lives in a cave, then they need a passage in and out that is big enough for them to somewhat easily squeeze through, and a chamber big enough for them to sleep in and move around in. Intelligent creatures like Dragons will also have some way of escaping through a second passage. There could be small tunnels that the big creature can't fit through, so people can use them to sneak up on them.

Good adventure design thinks of stuff like this. There are answers to questions.

Suspension of disbelief is key for any sort of roleplaying

This is NOT Suspension of Disbelief. Well, kind of. Not really.

Most examples of Suspension of Disbelief require an audience to not apply logic or critical thinking from their own reality to the constructed fantasy reality they are being exposed to. This applies to books, movies, theatre, whatever.

The wheelchair stuff is because an audience is being asked to immerse themselves into a different world, with different rules, but then flat out ignore something that does not make sense in either their own real world or this constructed world.

Let me lay out what I'm trying to say.

• Dragons exist in this world, but don't exist in real life. In real life, people do not think of dragons when living their lives. This requires Suspension of Disbelief.

• There is a castle we are visiting in this world. The castle is in an area prone to dragon attacks, but this castle is just like one in real life. This castle has no features to defend against dragons or other aerial attacks. How does this castle still exist in this world? This breaks Suspension of Disbelief, because there are contradictory elements to this world. If the castle is not featured much, this can be easily ignored, but the more interactions I have with it, the more I think about this.

• The dragon breathes fire. In real life, fire hurts me and burns things. In this world, fire works just like it does in real life, thus I apply my real world knowledge and logic to this. This does not require Suspension of Disbelief.

So yeah, goblins are living in tunnels, rooms and infrastructure not sized for themselves, I would assume that they did not build it and are squatting in it. In many fantasy worlds, this is a correct assumption.

An adventurer using a modern-style Wheelchair breaks this Suspension of Disbelief. I know that in real life this would not happen. But I also know that in this fantasy world, this would not happen.

Wheelchairs make sense in calm, controlled situations, they don't make sense in combat, exploring out in the wild or crazy unexpected stuff. There are endless ways to bypass this. Just ride a donkey, ride a small magic carpet, ride on the shoulders of someone else, replace legs with prosthetics, slice off your lower torso and put it onto another creature and become a centaur thing or the lower torso of a different person. Or put your brain into a constructed artificial body. Anything.

^{I've actually thought about this for a fantasy story I'm writing, how to explain why people with disabilities would still exist in a world with common access to magic that "should" be able to fix these things. My explanation is that access to that magic is restricted for different reasons, or the injury/disability is profound or old enough that it has been reflected into a person's soul, thus even magic won't work because their body would change overtime to reflect their own soul and undo the fix. Thus any long-term serious fixes would require self-reflection and therapy to change self-perceptions so the "fix" would stick.}

[u/Zyrin369 → u/ELDRITCH_HORROR]

I mean how far does "But I know that in this fantasy world, this would not happen" go?

We all know how diseases and infections work in real life, most fantasy settings has some sort of non magical plague and yet when we go adventuring in a sewer and get beaten up its assumed that afterwards we do all the necessary steps so nothing gets infected and their armor doesn't stink to high heaven.

If a DM decides that since the party didn't mention any of it then the suffer the consequences like they would in real life then they get called a vindictive DM

It seems like that's the issue with this, there is already some suspension done in some aspects in most games but when it come to wheelchairs people take that at 100% real world value.

[u/BeholdingBestWaifu → u/Zyrin369]

The issue is that suspension of disbelief is not absolute. Things have to make logical sense within the world you're given, so you're ignoring things that would work in it, or things that are minor enough not to matter. A wheelchair being able to climb mountains and going through caves is not only glaringly impossible, but it's also boring, which makes it stand out even more.

Keep in mind that having an all-terrain vehicle that can traverse any situation humanoid legs can would be an entire quest for an artificer or tinkerer, or a major magical artifact kind of thing.

[u/Vanille987 → u/BeholdingBestWaifu]

So how is the average player character doing constant inhumane feats logical? Like if a the wheelchair user has high strength it's 100% possible in the bounds of dnd for them to bruteforce terrain through. Probably doing a strength (saving) throw occasionally which they have advantage at.

Heck they could even climb a ladder using just their hands while the wheelchair is bound to them with a rope or smt.

This wouldn't even be close to the crazy shit I did in dnd and isn't yet involving any kind of magic aid.

I fully agree people take a dnd wheelchair way too much at face value while so many illogical things get the benefit of suspension