Especially When So Many Of Us Use Ttrpgs As An Escape Mechanism And A Tool Of Fantasy - Blog Posts

dnd dungeons and dragons d&d ttrpg zines ttrpgs zine making for anyone who is interested it's truly so random but here goes the tags rambles we're being brave today and sharing our opinions so I saw a tiktok (it was actually a reel but we move) of someone joking that as the barbarian in the party they seem to know their party members' abilities more than they do like they'll help out the wizard with what spells they have or have a statblock ready for the druid's wildshape and I was like huh this is cute and funny we love players supporting each other at the table and then people in the comments were mentioning that they use timers in their home games?? so like people have two minutes to figure out what they're going to do and do it otherwise they lose their turn and the round moves on and loads of people were going like “omg this is genius haha gonna do this myself” and like I cannot express how humiliating it would be for me if I was thinking and someone whips out a literal stopwatch and is like “go faster grr!!” I'm chronically ill and neurodivergent and mentally ill and all of my disabilities can affect my cognitive abilities meaning I can take longer to figure things out than other people or forget what I was doing or how to speak or whatever and it just got me thinking more generally as well about the obsession with efficiency in our current culture and how sad it made me that so many people are implementing such a humiliating tool of efficiency in their home games? with their friends? and like sure if everyone is consenting and happy with it fine but I just hate the idea of punishing disabled people for being disabled especially when so many of us use ttrpgs as an escape mechanism and a tool of fantasy like I do not want my high int wizard to have debilitating brain fog that's not part of the dream for me yk? anyway this is very random but I have been getting really into zine making this year it's a very fun creative outlet and I find it doesn't have as much as the pressure that other creative hobbies have had for me in the past we're sharing our opinions woo!! exposure is important in getting over fears and I hate that because it feels so icky!!