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[boutonniered-blog]

(( this isn’t really here or there, ive just got cowboy dnd on the mind and ruminating over dming again. its about accessibility and why its humm important!!!

but anyways- accessibility is like, really important to me? i struggle immensely with dyscalculia- i struggle to make sense of graphs, clocks, use my damn calculator, rudimentary math for even adding or subtracting rolls is kind of beyond me or else it takes far too long to comfortably fit into the span of time of a turn, counting the number of days until or past something, etc: it stinks, because im often looked down on for being Not Really Smart or being Lazy And Not Applying Myself because while i am academically gifted in language arts and those soft skills easily transfer to other subjects, i have always struggled with math- i didnt know how to rearrange basic equations until the year before senior year of highschool. 

and while i can cope and muddle my way through things (i used to memorize equation variants all the way up until i hit the wall with academic physics and broke down, for example) its like. tiring, and embarrassing, to be the person who can’t do the seemingly simple basic mental math to calculate how much older an older siblings is or whatever else.

and like for the longest time i have wanted to play dnd, only i was immensely intimidated because of how much math is involved with debuffs and buffs and rolling for stats and saving throws and all that and- i was really sad because i wanted to play, but i felt like i couldnt because I Just Wasnt Smart Enough To, even though i was confident in my improv and general writing abilities having done roleplay and ran my own arg before. and it SUCKED missing out on this hobby that i really, ardently wanted to join in on, but felt ashamed and stupid and incapable of playing because... brain broke on main! and it was really, really embarrassing. 

anyways! fast forward to my dnd group over the summer- although i had butchered and cribbed the stats layout and mangled google sheets into making very rudimentary, basic scores, of 1-5 and short explanations of what each did to contextualize these linguistically for myself, and a consensus to basically just one One Fucking Die (d20) for Everything and then a d6 for damage because the general health was ~25 or so to make it easier on me, and was basically just a combination of para and script rp, i was getting like. really overwhelmed with tracking damage, especially with the confusion of having Many Characters At Once and also, healers, so i often lost track and would get flustered as hell while playing dm and very. upset on main about it because i felt like Ohghgh. Elle Being Dumb Baby Again

but! one of my friends, hes in school for compsci and programs stuff, he made me!! a little discord bot!! and “courtney” as she was dubbed after one of the npc healers, like, could do the math on peoples healing and damage and also reset it at the end of matches. i like legitimately cried when he showed me her and the little guide on how to use her too with Examples... because i struggle a lot with parsing through how to operate discord bots and frequently have to summon up their to do commands list thing Pretty much every time, and, like, bro

like it seems like a little thing Maybe in terms of her use in game but it Really made it so much fucking easier for me to manage what was going on. especially because if i had trouble reading the numbers or figuring out the damage, other people were able to use the command prefix to like Do It For Me and usually what would happen is we would designate it as Someone’s Job For The Night To and like... it was so much more fun and engaging and i didnt have to like, stress out or be upset over not being able to do math and like? Bro. I Got Emotional, same as how when i figured out that i could use our rollbot for basic math and i still use that little guy in fucking every day conversation when it comes to ages or months or stuff but like

the point being? i was really upset and sad over being excluded or Struggling with something that was supposed to be fun because of stuff i couldnt help, and it really made me so fucking Happy to be able to participate just like everyone else but also that my friend recognized a need that he could fill and Went Ahead And Did That like. wow. im emotionally squishy. the fact that my friends were patient and accommodated my Whack ass “baby dnd” or loose approach to letting them choose their own stats rather than rolling and discussing how many turns should something last and keeping track of it, didnt mind me fucking running to the rollbot for like five times three or something, were cool with helping with courtney like.... Uhm.... MY HEART?

and so tl;dr: adjusting stuff so that Everyone can have fun is like... really important... and i appreciate it SO much because i wanna have fun! just like everyone else, yknow? Thasnk i love to talk