This last week has pretty much sucked balls for me because my cold had lasted for more than a week and a half and then phased into a bad sinus infection. Yeah, yeah boo-hoo, sucks to be me.
I'm mentioning this because part of having a bad sinus infection is that my hearing had been degraded and my tinnitus has gone from a background ringing of the ears to a "who installed this infernal/internal dial-tone in my forehead"?
I know, I know......wtf cares? Give me a hot second here......
....so I had game last night and I did inform my GM that I was having issues. The GM was accommodating but I realized that my (I hope) temporary disability impacted my ability to participate. There were times I missed my name being called, I know I missed some of the banter and at least one attempt at humor. Not that I'm big on trying to take a front-seat role at the virtual table (not the caller or trying to be the alpha player type), but I definitely felt like I more along-for-the-ride and a somewhere between a party member and a henchman. Now this latter bit is clearly just my internalization based on my physicality/emotions (medications a factor) and not how my fellow player were treating me.
I hadn't gamed since January and I enjoyed myself as best as I could even though I was clearly just "off". Now that it's the next day I'm really thinking about my average game, as a GM, probably isn't that inclusive to those with some hearing or vision problems. Now in my home game hasn't been an issue, that I'm aware of, but convention games.......I realize now there are some things that could be done a bit better since you don't know who might be showing up to play.
First off, I think making it easy to rearrange players...GM and/or other player willingness to relocate so someone who needs to be closer to see or hear, not too big of an ask, and I've seen this happen before. What I haven't seen, and this is probably beyond the individual GM's control, is a convention who reserves some smaller rooms for play where players/GM need a quieter room with little-to-no background noise, or where they can alter lighting as needed.
Having the ability to provide large-print format PC sheets, maybe printed as needed at the con, would be useful as well. Honestly it's seeming to me that what really is needed would be gaming conventions having some possible accommodations ready at the convention level. Having it known that players/GMs could put in requests easily.....as in no big deal to ask (I'm willing to bet that not everyone needing accommodations are quick to ask for them), and then being set up to do X, Y, and or Z as needed.
Clearly I'm NOT the person to come up with ideas on what could be done since I'm limited to my, well limited, experiences, but I do think going forward I'll be prepping a little extra to make things easier for certain types of players who want to play in my games.....just in case.
