Strata Miniatures Create Fantastic Dungeons & Diversity Heroes
August 17, 2020 by brennon
Sara, also known as "@mustangsart" on Twitter, put together some great rules recently for her Combat Wheelchair, giving people another option when it comes to planting themselves within Fantasy worlds like Dungeons & Dragons. The rules went down so well that they inspired Strata Miniatures to bring these miniatures to their webstore and they are pretty awesome...
Everybody Can Be A Hero // Strata Miniatures
The idea is that "everybody can be a hero" and I am all for there being more inclusive miniatures out there which speak to people in different ways. Sara's main goal is to create disability content for those playing their tabletop games and it has rather taken on a life of its own right now on social media.
You can check out more from Sara over on Twitter but also as part of her Patreon. In addition to that, you can also check out the Combat Wheelchair rules completely free right HERE. It's pretty awesome and I think it might introduce a lot of cool ideas into the mix for those who are disabled and looking for representation plus those who want to play a different style of character.
Here is a better look at the first four miniatures Strata have created...
Dwarf Fighter // Strata Miniatures
Elf Rogue // Strata Miniatures
It should also be noted that 25% of your purchase from Strata Miniatures is going to be going to a good cause as well. They are supporting https://www.ehlers-danlos.org/ so you can help out people as well as get your hands on some great miniatures for your roleplaying games.
Human Druid // Strata Miniatures
Tiefling Cleric // Strata Miniatures
With a nice mix of different characters already covering Fighter, Rogue, Druid and Cleric, it would be really fun to see more work done on these to create a good depth of classes and races. I like the idea of seeing a Dragonborn with some way for the wings to work alongside the wheelchair for example.
More choice is never a bad thing and I really like that these now exist in the world...
"More choice is never a bad thing..."
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The dwarf needs rotating blades… a lot of them!
That would be very fitting
Very nice stuff. Not just the sentiment, they are lovely sculpts. Loads of character.
This is a tremendous idea, and the minis (ok the renders) are superb.
Interesting figures hard to see them working in DnD I’ve never seen a disabled friendly dungeon.
You should check out the rules @zorg as they address all of that.
Oo I think I will then Ben thanks.
The wheelchairs are minor magic items that effectively give them the same abilities as a ‘normal’ bidedal creature.
The author of these magic items does feel the need to aggressivly defend the capabilities, but the overall concept shouldn’t hurt the average high magic campaign world.
It does require your campaign to feature healing/restoration magic that is significantly more expensive than whatever these items are worth …
I hope that someone picks up these sculpts and makes them available for those of us who don’t have a 3D printer. Ideally they should be part of the official D&D miniatures ranges, and the rules published in Unearthed Arcana to make them official and tournament legal.
I think this is kind of the point – no so much to tell players “you don’t belong here, it’s not suitable for you” but to encourage DMs to think “how do I make the dungeon suitable to accommodate these players?”. If players choose these minis, we’ll start to see more disabled “friendly” dungeons (or at the very least, players becoming aware of the struggles others face when the world around them isn’t disability-friendly).
> I’ve never seen a disabled friendly dungeon. Modern day world is still not all that disabled-friendly either. Medieval cities and towns don’t have paving, so would be wheelchair unfriendly, as well. Unfortunately, when you do see someone missing a leg or blind in an RPG setting, it’s usually a beggar or the like. Occasionally, you’ll find a retired adventurer missing an eye as a business owner in a city. Then there are pirates, who obviously overcame their disabilities. I guess in a low-fantasy world, folks can’t resort to magic or constructs. But then you’d run into the issue of… Read more »
Wheelchairs and medieval are two word’s that normally don’t go together in a conversation. I’ve never considered how disabled people who get around basic crutches I would imagine.
This a cool little story. However, it is far from anything new. It’s not even that original or creative. Ive been in dnd games going back 20+ years and have been in several games with disabled PC characters. None of them needed a wheel chair, or even thought of wanting to use a wheel chair outside of narrow city situations. Also I have some experience playing one campaign with a disabled girl back in college, and the last thing she would have wanted to do was play her character in a wheel chair. Lol, she was very much pro physically… Read more »
That is very interesting idea and those renders look really good.
Reminds me of Cohen the Barbarian from Discworld.
Really cool concept.
Really cracking idea well designed and sculpted love the Dwarf and Druid ?
CMON’s take. Personally, I prefer this version. I’d go with a four-wheel design to minimize tipping, though.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/massive-darkness-2-hellscape/posts/2930403
I get it and people are free to do what they want in their D&D games but I’m not a fan of “bad design made to work through magic” I’ve pushed a lot of wheelchairs in my time. They aren’t great in modern cities, they’d be a nightmare on dirt/cobble roads, in the forest or in a dungeon. It’s all we have in the real world of course so we gotta make due but in a fantasy world, where we can imagine completely unrealistic and outlandish things, I find “wheelchair but none of the drawbacks of a wheelchair” pretty lazy,… Read more »
There’s GIzmondo inverview with 4 more minis here https://io9.gizmodo.com/creators-of-combat-wheelchair-miniatures-on-the-challen-1845051141