Ableism in RPGs

What is Ableism you wonder?

That's fine I can give you a quick run down on it. Basically, much like the -isms it follows, ableism is the act of discriminating against someone because of a disability. This disability may be physical, it may be mental but it is not what is treated as "normal."

Why do a post on this you ask?

Well, it just hit me when I was reading the description of a free RPG on the free rpg blog. It was titled "Glorious Multiple Personality Disorder with Joe in Ten Persons." Now, the game itself has nothing to do with DID (the actual correct way to say what was called in the 80s MPD but is still alive and kicking thanks to television and movies) and it looks pretty cool. However, the tag line got me thinking of all the crap that's been put into roleplaying games when dealing with mental disability it's not even funny.

Much like sexism and racism and all those -isms that try to shock us out of our privilege, able-ism is right up there. We have to understand that when making a game that there are people who are going to be playing in it. People who may, just may, have the disorders that are listed as "character flaws" in a game. If we want to be inclusive then maybe taking that crap out is worth looking at, even when we review things.

This isn't really a huge in depth post in regards to something. Just something that set me off on a late night working on other projects.