------------------------------------------------------------------ Playability Podcast Episode 38: Accessible RPG Character Sheets (Alex G. and Keith Ringer) Run time: 16 minutes, 41 seconds Episode recorded by Rebecca Strang. Playability is produced by Mike Risley. Transcript auto-generated by Temi and edited by Lauren Woolsey and Rebecca Strang. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Intro Music: 00:00 Rebecca S.: 00:07 Hello and welcome to Playability where we hold conversations at the crossroads of Gameplay and Accessibility. I'm your host, Rebecca Strang, and I'm joined today by Alex G. and Keith Ringer who have worked together to create a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet that is more accessible to folks with dyslexia. Welcome to the show y'all. Alex G.: 00:27 Hi. Keith R.: 00:28 Hey hey! Rebecca S.: 00:29 Great to have you here. So jumping right into things. Um, let's talk a little bit about what accessibility means overall in gaming to each of you. If we could hear it from Alex first and then Keith. Alex G.: 00:40 Honestly, the easiest way to say is it just lets me be able to play, like I struggle with audio issues as well as dyslexia and other reading disabilities. So when I can't read or hear correctly, I can't play or enjoy things. Rebecca S.: 00:58 Makes a lot of sense [laughs]. And you, Keith? Keith R.: 01:02 Accessibility is, um, D&D is such an all encompassing game and I feel personally like it's really easy for anyone to get a very high amount of value from the game itself. So, um, you know, it, it doesn't matter in my opinion, it doesn't matter what mental, psychological, or physical struggles you might have. It, it's, you should still be able to play. And so that's, that was one of the biggest reasons we, we started making these sheets. Rebecca S.: 01:31 Yeah. And I agree. That's one of the things I love about D&D in general is it's this whole open world and you can create whatever kind of character you want. And there's usually, if you have any accessibility concerns, there's usually some way that you can work with your DM to work around any of those issues. And so how did you all come up with the idea to create character sheets that are easier for people with dyslexia to read? Alex G.: 01:59 Um, honestly, uh, I've never played D&D until I met Keith about half a year ago. And during game I realized that I could barely read the sheets. I was struggling to the point where I almost cried in frustration one day. So we were just chatting and Keith just went, "hey, why don't we just make them?" And I had my laptop on me so we, we made it. Rebecca S.: 02:25 That's awesome. It's great to have DMs that are supportive like that too. Keith R.: 02:30 Well, yeah, I, at this juncture in my life, I eat, sleep and breathe D&D. I've had almost I think a six games a week at one point and so I play obviously with a lot of different people and I've found that actually a lot of them have had issues with dyslexia and it came down to a simple factor of Alex was having this problem and I thought if if they can, yeah, do something with it, there's no reason that that couldn't then also help in my other games so and I just wanna - I don't have dyslexia at all. I I have no issue reading the sheet. It's never been a problem and they're all I use now because as even without it, I find it extremely more concise, organized and overall better. Rebecca S.: 03:11 Yeah. That's one of the things we talk a lot about on this show is that when you look at making something about a game easier for a specific set of people, you generally end up making it easier for everybody overall. So accessibility affects everyone when you think about it upfront. Keith R.: 03:31 Yeah. And when we, when we made them too, there's, there isn't just dyslexic edits, it's actually, there's a bunch of little edits that I requested Alex make that I think make the game a little bit more streamlined and make the sheet more streamlined I should say. Rebecca S.: 03:43 Sure. And so what are some of the specific elements in the sheet that you've created that have been particularly helpful to players at your table? Alex G.: 03:52 Well, one of the biggest things is a lot of people notice is that we made icons for things like strength and abilities and just made it a lot easier to associate a symbol with, with what it's representing. So that way for people like me with attention issues, I'm not scanning the sheet. I can look at the photo, uh, the icon and I recognize what it is right away. Keith R.: 04:15 Should comment. We didn't actually make those that goes to uh, the Reddit user LuckPack. Rebecca S.: 04:21 Awesome. And I recently did a D&D game with some of my nieces and little cousins. And I think that a sheet like this would be super helpful when playing with kids too because character sheets have a lot of information on them. It can be really overwhelming. And I love how in the color version of the sheet you've color-coded all of those skills with the stats that they correspond to so that even if you're not reading the words, you can correlate those icons and the colors together so that you can see where everything goes. Alex G.: 04:59 Yeah, that was actually a request by Keith's partner. Keith R.: 05:03 Yeah. They said that they had difficulty and in that area and correlating them. Rebecca S.: 05:10 Awesome. And so what other feedback have you received since you've publicly released these? Alex G.: 05:18 Um, honestly I, I pay more attention to it cause I have Twitter and everything and I see a lot of positive feedback. There has been some negative, but that's more of people questioning our choice in font, which after explaining why we picked it, they took back their statement and understood. It's a lot of "great for multiple disabilities," "amazing for kids," "great design choice." It's um, it's just been a lot of positive feedback. Rebecca S.: 05:48 That's awesome. And I know, um, I've seen a few offers of people wanting to help with getting these into other languages. Have you been able to take anybody up that yet? Keith R.: 05:58 Actually, yes. I just, before this podcast finally, actually I've had it for probably about a week now and I've just been so busy, updated the Google drive with it. It now has German and Italian as well as a Alex, I think there was what they're putting on site discord server or some such. Alex G.: 06:14 Yeah. Uh, I was sent, I noticed on Twitter that there was a German, uh, there was German talking about the sheets and I looked into it and it was a Critical Roll translation guy who does a lot of their translation stuff for fans and they send it into the discord and more people are probably going to translate in the future. Rebecca S.: 06:34 That's awesome. I love when the community can pitch in and help with things like that. Um, so do you have any plans for making any other sheets that are more accessible or for any other systems or anything? Keith R.: 06:49 Um, I am looking into, I, neither of us have ever, I've, I've always been in D&D, I've never hugely touched on 'em, Pathfinder and whatnot. [Rebecca: Sure.] And I, Oh, I've got a friend who's playing Pathfinder too. I'm trying to see if I can get into their game so that I can potentially learn to see if we could add it to the document. But right now that's, that's really the big hurdle is, you know, you don't know what's important if you don't play the game. Rebecca S.: 07:12 Right. [Keith: so.] Yeah, that'd be great. So how would you guys be willing to share like maybe one of your favorite moments in D&D that you've had? Keith R.: 07:24 [Both guests laugh] You can hear the cat screaming, can't you? Alex G.: 07:26 No, I was just laughing cause I was thinking about several moments including this this past Tuesday. Uh, one of our players is a pixie, I believe we're in Naval combat and she shoved herself into a cannon to be shot into a ship and caused a hole in it. [Rebecca: That's pretty dramatic.] That's just Tuesday for us. Keith R.: 07:51 Okay, good. That was probably the least amount of chaos I've ever seen her throw at my board. So, Rebecca S.: 08:00 um, and Alex, what kind of character do you typically play? Alex G.: 08:05 Both of my characters are Tieflings. I like being a long range character. It gives me time to like think things through and be like, I can plan multiple shots versus worrying about if my sword gets dropped or things like that. Rebecca S.: 08:23 Mm-hmm. And Keith, do you play or only DM at this point? Keith R.: 08:26 I do both. Um, I actually largely play, I dabble in DM-ing, uh, with Alex though it's, it's a very, very laid back game. I, I Monty hall it a little bit if you know what the term means and [Rebecca: laughs] yeah. Uh, it's, it's mostly, you know, I've had so many people who just go, Oh, you know, you need to teach them a lesson. You do this, that, and I'm like, I'm not trying to teach them a lesson. Let 'em have fun. I don't care. Yes, they're, they're stupidly overpowered. It's fine. Rebecca S.: 08:50 What's one of your favorite things about DM-ing and watching your players create these stories? Keith R.: 08:56 Um, I like trying to watch the creativity, uh, the creativity and the characters. By nature, I mean, I love stories. I'm a storyteller. Believe you me, I'm working hard not to talk endlessly on this podcast [Rebecca and Keith laugh] and so I try to focus as a DM on with my group. It works very well in creating an encounter that I, I have no idea how they're going to get out, get out of it or get away with it. That's their job to figure out and let them throw chaos at it until it works. Rebecca S.: 09:25 Yeah. It's, it's always fun to see what the players come up with. I've only DM'd one game and that was the one that I mentioned earlier for my nieces. But I'll be doing my first one shot with my player group later this year and I'm really excited cause I love playing. Um, but I, my husband DMs our games and it's always really fun to see like how he's going to react to the things that we do or what he's going to come up with. So. Um, aside from the sheets that you've already created and shared publicly, are there any other tools that you use that help you with gameplay? Alex G.: 09:59 Yeah, so me personally, I have attention issues so I need physical representations or objects to help me keep track. Uh, Keith here has designed me specifically, uh, Oh, what are they called? Keith R.: 10:14 A decision tree? Alex G.: 10:16 Yes. Decision trees that would help me keep track of what I can do for movements or what I can do for my specific attacks. Keith R.: 10:24 Action, bonus actions, reactions. Alex G.: 10:28 Yeah. Since it's a lot of information for me to process in short, uh, short bursts, we've also created uh, basically an ini- an [Keith: initiative] an initiative, uh, tracker. But instead of having our names, it has attack one, attack two, et cetera. It's very helpful when you play a fighter. Keith R.: 10:50 and it, uh, it really actually as again, as I stated before, I don't have any dyslexia issues. The character sheets that 5e [Fifth Edition] provides, have never caused a problem for me personally. And it was actually somewhat enlightening and eye opening to see when you break down everything that that happens over the course of a full round of D&D it was a little for me, enlightening to see how much my brain personally just kind of goes, yeah, I know that and moves on. But it's a lot of information. It's like, like we said, it's four different sheets of for decision tree. Rebecca S.: 11:25 Yeah. In one round of combat, there's so much going on and especially depending on the number of players you have, you know, if one person's turn represents a six second chunk of that time, if you actually outlined all of that, it would be an immense amount of data for what happens in a combat. Yeah, Keith R.: 11:47 Go ahead. Go ahead Alex. Alex G.: 11:48 Like my character, I have a, on Wednesday I have three to six attacks, maybe even more. Yeah, that's a lot to keep track of. Rebecca S.: 11:57 Definitely. And how many players do y'all typically play with? Keith R.: 12:02 Three to four. [Alex: Yeah, three to four sounds right.] It was three or four other people there if you include the DM. So it's usually not, uh, I, cause yeah, it's one, two, three, four players and a DM on Wednesday and three players and myself on Tuesday. Rebecca S.: 12:19 Awesome. And so do you think the templates for those decision trees are something that you would ever, um, put out there for other people to use? Keith R.: 12:28 I haven't thought of that. Yeah. I hadn't ever considered that. I certainly could. It was easy enough. I was just kind of trying to show, I know uh, Alex follows it. We all, we get a piece, a die, or a washer or something and they follow it down cause it also helps I think with communication because as Alex said, they like doing 'em long range and so they have the sharpshooter feat. So it's declaring whether or not you're using the sharpshooter feat, which changes the numbers around. And so it at least initially very much helped with, Oh wait, were you using sharpshooter feat? Well, the washer was on it? So yes. Rebecca S.: 13:01 Yeah, I would actually, I'd be really curious to see like a write up about how you go about creating a decision tree. Um, even just for their character as an example. I think a lot of people would find that useful in being able to pull that into their own games. Keith R.: 13:17 I certainly could write something up... Rebecca S.: 13:20 Who knew you'd get homework from a podcast interview? [All laugh] Keith R.: 13:25 I never fully consider it cause it was so esoteric to what, uh, to our own game and to Alex. Alex G.: 13:31 Yeah, it was one of those things where it's very nice specific that I didn't really say was super important to like share compared to the DND sheets. Keith R.: 13:41 But a lot of those things are very, very universal. You can make blank spaces for stuff, you know, we've got reactions, they're tieflings so they have hellish rebuke and whatnot. [Rebecca: mm-hmm] yeah, there's a lot of those could be decently blanked. [Alex: yeah!] There we go. We've got a new project. Rebecca S.: 13:56 Awesome, well I will look forward to seeing that then. Alex G.: 13:59 Thanks for the suggestion. Rebecca S.: 14:02 Anytime. [laughs] And so if anybody would like to find the character sheets or reach out to you guys online for more information, where can they find those sheets and how can they get in touch with you? Keith R.: 14:17 The sheets are on Reddit. My, my username I'm decently ashamed of, cause I, I used it for everything since I was like 12. I, I really, I wish that I had changed my username before I posted these. It's Inuyasha rules without the E as I said, I'm usually ashamed of that, but that they can be found online. Uh, Geek Native, I believe, wrote the original article that actually caused these to explode decently. You can, I'm actually not usually afraid. You can contact me at my email: K dot H dot Ringer at hotmail dot com. Um, that, and I know, uh, both Alex and I do YouTube stuff. I don't know if, uh, Alex is all right with their YouTube being out there. Alex G.: 14:58 Uh, yeah, I do Twitch more now. Keith R.: 15:01 Yeah, it's been awhile. It's been pretty busy for me since I, um, uh, since I started a lot of this D&D stuff more. But Sergeant Sarge, S G T S A R G E for my YouTube channel haven't touched in a while. Alex G.: 15:14 If you want to contact me, uh, Axelle Nobody on Twitter spelled A X E L L E and then nobody, you'll see a chickarina icon. Keith R.: 15:25 Totally a reference to kingdom hearts. Right Alex? Alex G.: 15:27 It's not, [Rebecca laughs] I made the user name before I played Kingdom Hearts. Rebecca S.: 15:35 Awesome. And then we'll include links for where folks can find the sheets in the info section for this episode as well. And then it's been great talking about this with you guys. I could talk about this forever probably. [All laugh] So thanks for being on the show and I wish you guys luck with, you know, I hope that these have been super successful. I hope that you guys can continue with doing stuff like this. It's really great and I love all of the community participation that you've had with it too. Keith R.: 16:04 It's been really great and rewarding to see that. Alex G.: 16:06 Yeah, it honestly, to be quite honest, this was one of my very first fully graphic projects that wasn't a stream layout. So seeing all the positive feedback, like just, I haven't stopped smiling. Rebecca S.: 16:17 That's awesome. And if any of our listeners have any questions or comments you'd like to share with us, you can email us at playabilitypod at gmail.com and find us on major social media platforms at @playabilitypod. Thanks again for listening. I hope this episode helps you play with a new perspective.