Thanks to Dungeons & Dragons, the famous fantasy tabletop role-playing game created in 1974 and now in its fifth edition, you can be practically anything. An elf living for centuries, a barbarian who can take down a dragon with an axe, a wizard who bends the laws of reality.
So why would anyone want to play a character with a sensory, physical, or intellectual disability?
The question might sound provocative, but in recent years it has become part of a much broader debate about disability representation in role-playing games. And it is precisely fantasy, a genre where apparently anything is possible, that brings an interesting contradiction into focus: imagining worlds without limits doesn't necessarily mean imagining worlds without disability.
One of the best-known examples dates back to 2020, when game designer Sara Thompson, drawing on her own disability, created the Combat Wheelchair, a homebrew content – not an official Dungeons & Dragons rule, but usable by players nonetheless – that introduces a wheelchair designed for adventurers. Inspired by the wheelchairs used in sports like basketball and rugby, it can handle situations that an ordinary wheelchair would struggle to overcome.
The idea behind it is simple: a character with a disability should be able to set off on adventures alongside everyone else and become a hero. This is where a wheelchair in a world of dragons takes on a meaning that goes beyond the object itself. It implicitly states that this character can be a hero without having to be "cured" first, however narratively possible magic might make that.
The Combat Wheelchair has also drawn criticism, though not all of it can be traced back to a simple rejection of inclusivity. Within the D&D community, a subtler question has also emerged: if a fantasy wheelchair lets you overcome any obstacle and erases every consequence of disability, are we still representing a disabled person, or have we simply turned disability into a decorative feature of the character? The discussion has also involved players with disabilities, whose views are far from unanimous. And that's probably how it should be.
There is no single "correct" way to bring disability to the gaming table. One player might want their character to face difficulties similar to those they know in everyday life. Another might want to play a disabled hero without having to constantly simulate barriers, fatigue, and discrimination. For some, the wheelchair can be a key part of the character's identity; for others, it's simply a means of getting around.
And there's another possibility, often overlooked when talking about representation: a person with a disability might have no interest at all in playing a disabled character. That, too, is freedom. Role-playing games let us recognize ourselves in someone who resembles us, but they also let us become someone completely different. Perhaps this is the most interesting contribution role-playing games can make to the representation of disability. Not deciding what the right way to tell that story is, but multiplying the possibilities. Because a truly free fantasy world isn't necessarily one where magic has eliminated every disability. It's one where even a different body doesn't need to be fixed before it can become the protagonist.