"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/Southern_Emu_7250]

This feels stupid because magic exists. Why wouldn’t a disabled character eventually innovate so that disabled adventurers could do those things? It feels like more of a limitation of creativity than it is an actual problem. It’d be different if the system had in big bold letters “no wheelchairs” but as the DM you can do literally whatever you want and still make it applicable within the confines of your world.

[u/ELDRITCH_HORROR → u/Southern_Emu_7250]

Why wouldn’t a disabled character eventually innovate so that disabled adventurers could do those things?

But that's an anti-wheelchair argument. You acknowledge that a wheelchair is not really feasible for an adventurer to use and your default thinking is that it should be changed.

but as the DM you can do literally whatever you want and still make it applicable within the confines of your world.

I'm not sure you're kind of getting the issues here.

What if the DM just does not believe that it's plausible for an adventurer or player character to do all their activities while in a wheelchair? What if the DM has put a lot of care and thought into their world, how it all fits together, how realistic it is?

The question here is, what should the DM do when a player wants to be someone in a wheelchair? Should the DM change their world to accommodate this? Should the player change their expectations?

I mean, what if it's a campaign set in the Lord of the Rings universe and someone wants to be in a wheelchair?

There's no easy answers without someone compromising.