Accessible Games

Accessibility Tools for Your Characters

By: Jacob Wood, January 1, 2021 News

Introduction

It’s now 2021, and while other bloggers are kicking off the year with Top 10 lists and retrospectives, I’ve decided to just dive into delivering new content.

I have started looking ahead toward the Kickstarter launch for Accessible Gaming Quarterly Year 2. Over the next year of the zine, I would like to feature more creative content to help spark your imagination and give you ideas for how to incorporate disabled characters and heroes into your games.

Here’s a sneak preview of what that might look like. This content was originally developed for Super Able, a game we’ve been working on around here for far too long. It uses the Pip System by Third Eye Games.

The following tools appear in this illustration by Austin Vanderwilt, which was featured in AGQ Issue 3.

Rocket Wheelchair

AR 0, 4 Hits, Speedy, NOS

Sometimes you need a little get-up-and-go, and some times you need a lot. With your rocket wheelchair, you’ll never lose a race. Simply engage the nitrous oxide system (NOS) to give your chair a super boost.

Once per scene, you may use your NOS to gain +2W on rolls made to outrace a person or other vehicle, instead of the normal +1W you get for the Speedy Quality.

Helmet

AR 0, Headgear

Helmets come in a wide variety of styles: sports, motorcycle, military, firefighter, construction worker, and archaic helmets, to name a few. All helmets grant AR 1 against called shots to the head. They may also possess additional Qualities unique to helmets.

Helmet Qualities

• Heads-Up Display: Provides tactical information about your environment, including the distance to nearby creatures, the material composition of objects, etc. This Quality may only be added to helmets with appropriate face masks, such as military helmets.
• Audio Enhancer: Speakers within the helmet amplify outside sounds so you can hear them with better clarity. Small, omnidirectional microphones on the exterior of the helmet can pick up noises from a hundred yards away as if they were right next to you. This Quality can only be applied to helmets which cover your ears.
• Head Cannon: More of a pistol than a cannon, this helmet has a small barrel which can be raised or lowered from the top of the helmet. It can be rotated 360 degrees and fired at up to a 90 degree angle. The pistol may be controlled by blowing into a tube, making it completely accessible to people without the use of their arms or legs. The pistol has a Weapon Rating of 1 (WR 1), but that can be improved by spending additional BP like other weapons.