Accessible Games

Celebrating World Braille Day

January 4th of each year is World Braille Day. It’s a great time to reflect on this nearly 200-year-old tactile writing system that continues to improve literacy and access to this day.

To celebrate, I’m going to post the full text of an article I wrote for Accessible Gaming Quarterly Issue 13. It’s all about how to include tactile writing systems, inspired by Braille, in your fantasy campaigns.

Tactile Writing in your Fantasy Games

Disclaimer: I learned basic Braille at the Oregon Commission for the Blind, but I am not proficient in its use.

An interesting concept keeps sneaking its way into different fantasy games and stories. Some of them I’ve written, but other people keep toying around with this idea too.

What if Braille, or a similar system of tactile writing, existed in a fantasy world?

The first thing that springs to mind is Braille spellbooks. Blind wizards could manage their own books …
Continue Reading Celebrating World Braille Day

30% Off for Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Thursday, May 15th, 2025, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).
If you’ve been following us for any length of time, you’ll know how important accessibility is to us. Heck, it’s even in our name. So even if you haven’t been following us for long, it’s probably pretty obvious.
We’re celebrating GAAD by offering a 30% discount on every issue of Accessible Gaming Quarterly, Accessible Guide to RPG Layout, and on every version of Survival of the Able.
That’s 13 issues of our quarterly zine, one book about creating more accessible PDFs, and three different versions of our favorite survival horror game. Not a bad haul.

* Accessible Gaming Quarterly is a zine about disabilities and accessibility in tabletop games.
Did you know that about one billion people on this planet have a disability? The other seven billion are likely to be temporarily or situationally disabled at some point in …
Continue Reading 30% Off for Global Accessibility Awareness Day

An Overdue Update

Well, that was an unexpected hiatus.

One day, you’re chugging along with a successful new Kickstarter for the next year of Accessible Gaming Quarterly. The next thing you know, you haven’t posted anything new to the blog in over two years.

There have been a lot of unexpected ups and downs over the last 26 months or so. Some of them personal, some of them business. Some of them have to do with world events. All of them have impacted my work on Accessible Games in one way or another.

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ll know that I tend to be extremely transparent with how I talk to my audience. I try to give you an inside look at all the ups and downs of game publishing, share precise numbers about my expenses and profits on certain projects, and talk openly about disabilities including how they …
Continue Reading An Overdue Update

AGQ Year 4 is Live on Kickstarter

It’s #ZineQuest time at Kickstarter, and that means Accessible Gaming Quarterly is back to fund another year.

AGQ was first launched in 2020 as a way to amplify the voices of disabled gamers and our allies. Since then, we’ve produced 11 issues of the zine (with a 12th on the way). Now we’re ready to create four more.

We …
Continue Reading AGQ Year 4 is Live on Kickstarter

Coming Soon – AGQ Year 4 Kickstarter

Coming soon to Kickstarter for #ZineQuest – Accessible Gaming Quarterly, Year 4.

The seminal zine from Accessible Games is coming back to Kickstarter this February. We’re raising money to release four more issues.

Can you believe that over the last three years, we’ve already published…

• 11 issues
• Over 120,000 words
• 85 articles
• 32 illustrations
• 624 pages

…and we’re not even done with Year 3 yet?

You can be the first to find out when we launch by following this link and clicking “Notify me on launch.”

Accessible Gaming Quarterly Year 4 Promo Page

Accessible Games and the OGL

OGL Controversy

Like many publishers in the tabletop RPG business, I’ve recently been stunned by the controversy surrounding the Open Gaming License (OGL). If you’re not familiar, the OGL is a license, originally created by Wizards of the Coast, that allows RPG publishers to use certain content in their games without seeking special permission first.

Many games use the OGL, including Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition (the game for which the OGL was originally designed), D&D 5e, Pathfinder 1st and 2nd edition, Fudge, Fate, and more.

Publishers big and small rely on the OGL to know what is safe to borrow for their own games and what’s off-limits.

If you’re not familiar with the controversy, here’s the short version. Wizards of the Coast is planning to revise the OGL and de-authorize the original license (version 1.0a) that publishers have been using for over 20 years now. Their aim is to restrict the OGL (making …
Continue Reading Accessible Games and the OGL

Survival of the Able Now Available

After a couple Kickstarter attempts and a few short delays, Survival of the Able is now officially available. It’s the game that just won’t die.

What is Survival of the Able?

In case you’ve been hiding away from society (and after the last few years, we wouldn’t blame you), Survival of the Able is a survival horror RPG built using the Fudge™ System. You’ll play as someone with a disability living in the Middle Ages, a time when people like you were cast aside and destined to live off the charity of the …
Continue Reading Survival of the Able Now Available

Survival of the Able at Everyone Games 2022

Friday, September 30th, 2022

Survival of the Able is going to be back at Everyone Games this year, and we’d like you to tune in.

On Friday, September 30th, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, we’ll be streaming the game via the Everyone Games Twitch channel. It’ll be a three hour event, so it’s perfectly bite-sized (that’s a little zombie humor).

Everyone Games is an awareness and charity fundraising event. We’ll be raising money for two charities: Stack Up (a US-based charity helping disabled vets) and Everyone Can (a UK-based charity serving disabled gamers). If you have the means, we would love for you to donate.

Visit http://www.everyone-games.com for more information about the event and to find links to the channel.

Also at Everyone Games

I’ll be in two other events, in addition to Survival of the …
Continue Reading Survival of the Able at Everyone Games 2022

AGQ Issue 9 and Year 2 Anthology Now Available

Continue Reading AGQ Issue 9 and Year 2 Anthology Now Available

Accessible Gaming Quarterly Year 2 Financials

The final issue of Accessible Gaming Quarterly, Year 2 has shipped. Now that issues 5 through 8 have been released, it’s time to take a look back at the year and see how we did.

Like last year, we started with a budget of $4,000 USD, which translated to $1,000 per issue. This time around, we added ePub as an additional file format for digital editions of the zine. We also hit a +$500 stretch goal to add ePub to previous issues (1 through 4), but since that applied toward last year’s issues I’m not going to include the stretch goal funding in my budget analysis.

For reference, our Kickstarter campaign raised $5131 from 166 backers (an average of $30.90 per backer).

If you would like to compare our numbers to last year’s, check out our previous post in this series: Accessible Gaming Quarterly by the Numbers.

Costs Per Issue

Let’s begin by looking at the …
Continue Reading Accessible Gaming Quarterly Year 2 Financials