One-to-One 11: RPG writer and disability consultant Sara Thompson

Eurogamer Podcasts

It was during a lecture they probably should have been listening to that Sara Thompson doodled the Dungeons & Dragons Combat Wheelchair on the back of a textbook. They'd been talking about it for a while, the wheelchair, irked by a game that offered players limitless freedom to be whoever they wanted but still struggled to fully represent them. So they did something about it.

A few years later, that Combat Wheelchair add-on for Dungeons & Dragons is on a third edition and has reached right around the world. It got the attention of writers working for D&D maker Wizards of the Coast, inspired bespoke miniature models and was featured by mega-popular Critical Role host Matt Mercer.

That's not all Thompson is known for, though. Thompson is a Witcher encyclopaedia, having been employed to work on the tabletop RPG for R. Talsorian Games. And it was this knowledge which led to a discussion about Geralt of Rivia having a disability, and the discussion went viral, eventually attracting the attention of Witcher Netflix showrunner Lauren Hissrich herself.

These two events propelled Thompson into the public eye, but in between, they've been hard at work on a number of tabletop role-playing games, including Pathfinder, Starfinder, Cyberpunk and many more. They're someone on the stormy cusp of progress, pushing disabled representation in games forward. And this is their story.

Here's a link to the article on Geralt's disability that we talk about: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-11-24-geralt-of-rivia-a-disabled-protagonist

Here's a link to Sara's Combat Wheelchair D&D add-on: https://twitter.com/mustangsart/status/1441390363298570243

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