Intro

Haha. Syke! I said the next episode was on the 20th, but this is going out five days early.

This episode I'm joined by Jennifer Kretchmer. She's worked with all the usual suspects in the TTRPG business, but the MCDM community might know her from the 10 Candles video on Matt's channel, and more recently as the accessibility consultant on Draw Steel. The work she did on Draw Steel, actually broke new ground in the field of art descriptions.

I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.

Interview

Jon de Nor Welcome to Goblin Points, Jennifer Kretchmer.

Jennifer Kretchmer Hello! How are you?

Jon de Nor I'm good. Introduce yourself, and maybe also mention how did you end up working with MCDM? And also maybe Matt Colville?

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah, so I have been working in the tabletop industry for about a decade now, I think? Time is a...time makes no sense anymore, but I've been involved with games for more than 20 years at this point. I've worked in TV and film for most of my life, tabletop for the last decade. I sort of do a bunch of different weird careers, and somehow that has led me to a lot of the work I do in tabletop. I got involved with MCDM...I met Matt. I had been a huge fan of Matt's videos for a long time, because I felt like he was saying the things that I wanted people to know about DMing, and in terms of running tables and how to treat people at your tables and how to approach gaming. I think Matt's philosophy aligns quite similarly to mine. But also, Matt's a huge movie geek, and all of the movie references, made me very happy. So I was a huge fan of his work. And then there was something I was recording an interview for and in-person years ago, and he was the interview before me. And so I actually showed up early so I could meet him in person.

Jon de Nor Oh! (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer And we, you know, I got to geek out a little and tell him how much I appreciated his work. And then he found out, kind of, some of the stuff I was doing, and that got us talking. And from there, I think we had, we stayed in touch. I went down to see the studio when they moved into the into the building, into the office, and were building the, the studio. Years ago, that was. And then they had me do the...when they were doing the Running the Game guest series and having people talk about the games they love, the "games you should play" [Games You Might Like] series. And I immediately staked my claim on Ten Candles, which is one of my all-time favorite games. And you know, if people want to hear me espouse the virtues of it and evangelize that game, you can watch me talk about it for over half an hour on Matt's channel. But, yeah, so that was originally how I got involved with MCDM. And then James reached out! One of the other weird career path things I do is I do a lot of work around disability and disability activism, disability justice work, and disability consulting. And so James reached out to ask about, working on Draw Steel to do image description. And that evolved into art description, as it ended up.

Jon de Nor Yeah. I remember seeing you mentioning on Bluesky that you were involved with Draw Steel in the art descriptions and I was — I looked at your profile picture and I'm like, I think I've seen her before somewhere, but I can't really place her. And then, I think it was, I was looking up how to contact you, I think. And I come across your Linktree and you linked to the Ten Candles video. I'm like, oh yes, that's where I know your face from! (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer Yes! The one who wouldn't stop talking about Ten Candles. And that's been the case for a decade. My cousin sent me Ten Candles or maybe even asked me, have you heard about this game, after, I think, PAX, I don't even know how many years ago, the first time that Steven took Ten Candles out to conventions, I think. And I said no, but it seems really cool. And then bought it and read it and went, okay, this seems really cool. And then the first time I played it, I was like, this is one of the best things I've ever played. This is, like, it has completely changed my philosophy on how to run games and how to GM and...yeah. And how to, you know. And so yeah, Ten Candles is the game I think every GM should play at some point, because of the way it shifts your approach to improvisation, and your flexibility, and the collaboration at a table, and really understanding how much it benefits you to take in players' ideas into your world, how you shape your world. But also, it's a perfect example of mechanics benefiting the storytelling. It's a case where the mechanics are not secondary to the game and the narrative, and the narrative is not secondary to the mechanics. They are perfectly intertwined to reach a final destination of the story, and that's very, very satisfying.

Jon de Nor Wow. Interesting.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. It's a cool one.

Jon de Nor It makes me want to pick it up. I remember watching the video and thinking, oh, this seems interesting, but now, hearing you talk about it again. I'm thinking, I'm missing out. (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah, and the saddest thing is because of lockdown, there was — it's really a game that there's not a virtual way to play that's effective. And it's something I've actually talked with Stephen Dewey, the creator, about, because I've seen a few people attempt it, I've played in a few versions of it, but there's just not a way to get to the same experience because screens glow. You won't end up in a completely dark room at the end. You can't...you just don't get the same kind of visceral experience that you get from playing in person. (laughter) And so that was kind of a very sad, sad thing for me. That you couldn't keep playing that game the way it was meant to be played. And that I couldn't crack it, like, to find a way to make it work in a digital format.

Jon de Nor Right. This is a bit of, a very big tangent, but it's just something — I do a bit of research on all my guests before they come on. So this, this is a bit out of the blue. But the photo on your IMDb page is one of you wearing some massive green hands. They look like Hulk hands.

Jennifer Kretchmer It's Hulk hands, yeah.

Jon de Nor Yeah. And I'm just wondering what's the context, because usually they have like a small text for the image, or like an alt text, but there wasn't one for that photo.

Jennifer Kretchmer I was doing a photoshoot, and we were right at the end of the photoshoot, and I just saw a pair of Hulk hands and I picked them up! And I'm wearing this very formal black dress, and they did this very elaborate dressy makeup and red lipstick and big eyelashes on me. And then I picked up Hulk hands and started laughing. And so the photo is me cracking up, holding...you know, in big Hulk hands in a formal black dress. So that's the story is they just made me happy, and they caught me just laughing, completely thinking it was the funniest thing ever.

Jon de Nor It was just so...it seemed so random, and there was no explanation when clicking into the photos. I'm like, what's this from? What could it possibly be?

Jennifer Kretchmer No, it was just from a photo shoot I was doing.

Jon de Nor (laughter) Alright, alright. That was just my personal curiosity. But moving on to, like, the most recent thing that you might be known for, at least in the Draw Steel community, which is your accessibility consulting and the work you did on the art description in both of the core rulebooks.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yes.

Jon de Nor And I kind of wanted to start a bit, at the, let's call it, beginning of your...how did you first get into accessibility consulting at all?

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. So, I've been working in disability spaces basically my whole life, but, I, you know, I studied disability studies at UC Berkeley. I have been working in advocacy...yeah, really, pretty much my whole life. I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is a connective tissue disorder that — it's very...there's a huge variety of different presentations for different people. For me, it means that I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user, which means sometimes I'm on two legs. I call myself the Riddle of the Sphinx sometimes; sometimes I'm on two legs, sometimes I'm on two legs and a cane, and sometimes I'm on wheels, just depending on how my body is that day. I have a bunch of other weird complications from it, but I'm not necessarily visibly disabled unless I'm using my devices. So I live in a very weird place of people not necessarily recognizing, you know, my disability, from an external perspective. But I have worked and lived in that community for a very long time, and especially with gaming, I was noticing there was almost no representation in gaming around disability. And so my gaming career, in some ways, started when I put out a thing on Twitter, years and years and years ago, asking what people would want to see if I were to put out a book or material around disability. So, you know, did they want to see mechanics? Did they want to see representation of characters? Did they want information about how to make their tables more accessible? And I had such interesting results that I actually reached out to Wizards and said, "You all should know about this!" And that was sort of one of the first things that happened that where I started being in touch with everybody. And then I wrote on Candlekeep Mysteries, and there was a big to-do around the fact that I had an accessible factor to my adventure, which, you know, sloped ground is not something new and novel to the universe. It's existed canonically since first edition, when dwarfs had, you know, detect [grades or slopes]...

Jon de Nor Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. And there were things about that in the rulebooks already, but people got very upset, which kind of just reinforced to me how badly we needed this kind of representation. And the feedback I got from disabled people was really extraordinary and really meaningful. So it sort of progressed from there, really just fitting in wherever they needed education about disability consulting, information about representation, you know, sharing information about, what does a wheelchair look like in a fantasy world? Because the illustrations you get of fantasy wheelchairs and sci-fi wheelchairs are so wrong, most of the time. You know, they make things so big they couldn't get through the door, much less go on an adventure. You're like, this, you couldn't push that thing anywhere! How are you going to adventure with it? The range of roles I've had in regard to that has really been pretty broad. I've always advocated for including image description and also interpretation, you know, sign language interpretation. But image description is now, you know, very standard in social media. And has gotten more and more standardized with digital game books. Which is so wonderful, but with Draw Steel, you know, I started working on it and the art was so good. I think, typically, alt text or image description is about 15 words. And I was looking at this art, and some of it was so detailed that it would have been impossible to adequately convey what was in the image in that length of text, but also, it was doing a disservice to both the artists and to the alt text users to not adequately describe the art that was on the page.

Jon de Nor Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Kretchmer Because it was so nuanced and often had references to other art pieces or architectural movements or, you know...the colors were so specific, or the style was so specific. And so that was when I reached out to James and went, "Hey, so this is really...there's more here, and I think we can do something more complicated and more interesting here." And James was all for it. And also there were images like the demons, which, for those who haven't seen them, are — the demons in Draw Steel are unbelievably complicated. They're incredibly detailed. You know, they'll have trails of slime that are made up of little skulls that you don't notice unless you zoom way, way in on them. And they have, you know, mouths and eyes all over their limbs and bodies, and just, shapes that don't make sense to a normal...like, they defy description when you can look at the image, much less when you can't. And that was when I kind of said, I really need to speak to a blind person about how to describe these. And I think it's really important here to note that more than 80% of blind/low-vision people are not completely blind. There are so many types of blindness. And so I worked with my friend Marilee Talkington, who has done a lot of museum work, and I was already working from art museum descriptive techniques. So I went, well, how do other people describe art? How do people describe scientific diagrams? How do they describe maps? And so I started researching best practices on all of those. But I went to Marilee and we started going over the images. Some of them took hours and hours and hours, but we started working through them, really digging into, what's the best way to approach this particular image? And here's the type of standardized approach I'm thinking about — does this work? I also wanted to think about standardized ways of approaching bodies, skin color...I think we've had a lot of issues in tabletop with how we are assuming certain genders and skin colors and body types to be a default, and then it's anyone who is not that becomes "the other" and the thing that has to be described. So it was really important in this that there were standards, and you always described everyone, across the board, so you never were operating with defaults. And then if you have sentient species, you operate under the same assumptions because you're saying that those are people. And so if you have a person, you're going to approach them, whether they are, you know, draconic in origin or human in origin.

Jon de Nor Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Kretchmer So that sort of was part of the evolution of it as well, was trying to figure out how we avoid a lot of those pitfalls. And then it was, you know, looking at what the best practices are from the Smithsonian, which includes things like...I had to think a lot about what we do around gender. And the Smithsonian's best practices are not including gender unless it's specifically a presentation around gender. So, like, Marilyn Monroe performing gender would be something that you would describe, but otherwise, it's gender neutral. So it was really looking at a bunch of different sources, and that was kind of a common somatic element in a lot of the museums' best practices, so that was what we went with there. Yeah. But it was interesting and tricky to decide what we would take on as our baseline assumptions and rules and what we wouldn't. And then there were, of course, lots of images that, you know, didn't fit those rules, or you would look at and the path your eye would follow was very different than what we would typically use as a structure for the image. So there were certainly exceptions to every idea.

Jon de Nor Sure. Yeah.

Jennifer Kretchmer And the other thing that we did that was very different that, as far as I know, no one else had done, was rather than, every time you see a dwarf, describing what dwarfs look like — which you would have to do in theory — we went, well, what if we did a glossary? And so you just say it's a dwarf with these specific characteristics, rather than saying you know, dwarves are two-thirds the height of humans and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, every single time, you could just say dwarf, and then go to the glossary and get information about the visual description of dwarfs, or the iconic characters. So I could just say their names and not have to describe what they look like every time they show up. I could just say, Khorva, you know, swings her axe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jon de Nor I was looking in the glossary, and for the bredbeddle, it mentions, yeah, they have bodies with proportions in line with their giant kin, but instead of a head, they have the bloody aftermath of a decapitation atop their neck.

Jennifer Kretchmer It's true!

Jon de Nor Which I just thought — yes, it was just such a wonderful description. (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer Thank you! Yeah, bredbeddles are hilarious. They're so funny-looking. Yeah, I got to write some really funny descriptions, you know, and I got to...one of my favorites was, I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it was something about appearing like, both Zeus and breaking through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

Jon de Nor Oh, it's probably...yeah, it's probably the Devil Fury, I think, that breaks through the wall.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah, it's the Fury that's breaking through the wall. It's the 10th level...but yeah, that's what the image is. There's a visual reference to Zeus, and it's also the Kool-Aid Man busting through the wall. And when I got to throw in references like that, it just made me very happy.

Jon de Nor I actually...knowing that all the art was this detailed, had all this detailed description, I ended up looking through a bunch of it, which is not something that I would normally do. And what I actually came to really appreciate is how much stuff in the different art pieces that I missed that the description includes. Everything from small details on Xorannox the Tyract, but also, just like, one of the images that I've seen so many times, which is of a group of players playing Draw Steel. And I hadn't noticed until I read the description that it's actually a point-of-view perspective because there are some hands at the bottom of the art piece.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. Beause you see the hands. Yeah.

Jon de Nor And I hadn't realized until reading the description that you're actually looking through the eyes of a player. And it just blew my mind! How could I possibly not notice that?

Jennifer Kretchmer I mean, that was something that...for me, too, there were images that I would start to work on and realize, I had to sit a whole lot longer with those images than I was expecting. And I think there are probably things — I know there are things I missed, but, and I think for future projects, I will ask if it's okay to contact the artist or get the art orders, because I know there are things that were in these pieces that I'd miss. And James got a few things where I would ask questions about, what is this thing in the corner? Or, who is this person, they keep coming up? Do they need to go in the glossary? But it was really interesting to realize just how detailed these pieces were, because even when I said, hey, we should we should do this more detailed version, I didn't realize how detailed a lot of the pieces were. I mean, there were pieces that took...the map took...both maps, but I think specifically the cosmology map....

Jon de Nor Yeah. Of the timescape. Yeah.

Jennifer Kretchmer ...took 3 or 4 hours at least. Because there's so much detail in the frame.

Jon de Nor That art piece specifically, I was really impressed with the description. Because first of all, you start off by mentioning that it looks like a face, and I hadn't noticed that at all. (laughter) But when it said that, I thought, oh, I see where you're going, I see what you're saying. But then you use the layout of the face to explain where everything is in relation to each other, which was (explosion sound) mind-blowing to me.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. I mean, well, because I kept looking at the image. That one, I remember I wrote that at like, I don't know, 3 or 4 in the morning. It was one of the really late nights where we were coming up to the deadline, and I had been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off because I could not figure out how to get in on that image. Because there was so much material there, and I wanted...I couldn't possibly convey everything in the image. And I asked James, what are the most important things to share from this? Because if I try to get everything in this image across, it's going to be pages of description, and that's too much. And so he gave me a couple of points that he felt were the most important. And then I went, okay, well, now, visually, how do I describe this? Because I can't use the standard format that I would do. And I kind of looked at the image and let my eyes defocus, and went, what are the shapes I see? What are the colors I see and what are the shapes I see? And the first thing that came through was, okay, there's a face, which is something that, you know, texturally, and kinetically, someone who couldn't visually see it can understand. And that's a pathway you can follow, and I can use those locations as key points of what's happening in the image. So I'm actually really, I'm really proud of how that one came out.

Jon de Nor I was really impressed reading it. It just felt like...yeah. I can't even put to put words to it.

Jennifer Kretchmer Thanks! It became really interesting because some of it becomes like a game. You're going, okay, well, what's...I speak a few languages, and I also have been studying sign language for the last couple of years. And so to me, I understand how interpretation...you can't always convey things exactly with language. There are things that are, like...the specific texture of a thing doesn't always translate linguistically. But this felt like doing translation work. It felt like you were doing a translation between words and images. And so there was...there certainly is a degree of interpretation, and trying to get the experience of the thing across. So sometimes it goes into metaphor, it goes into trying to get a visceral experience across in a different way. And that part became fun...sometimes. Sometimes it was...(deep breath)

Jon de Nor (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer There were a few that I was like, I just, I don't know how I'm even...I remember seeing the...they're some of my favorite images, but I remember seeing the illuminated manuscript pages and going, I don't know how I'm even going to start on this. And having to really...those felt like puzzles I had to crack. Which, I love puzzles, so that was a lucky thing. But it also, yeah, there were some that I just went, I don't even know how to do it.

Jon de Nor You mentioned in the guide that's supplied on the Draw Steel Resources page that it sometimes feels like translating from French to English. And I kind of...as a non-native speaker of English, Norwegian has, at least for younger generations, Norwegian borrows a lot of words from English because of cultural influences from, mainly, the US, but also partly from Great Britain. And a lot of the time...let's call them, the "more established" users of Norwegian will complain about the new words being borrowed, saying that well, we already have a word for this in Norwegian, why would you use the English one? But very often, I would probably say almost always, there's like a subtle difference between the English word used in the Norwegian context and the existing Norwegian word for the "same" thing I'm saying. So I can kind of feel that you're trying to translate something that doesn't...there's, there's a word, but it's not it's not the right one! (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer Yes, exactly. And sometimes there would be, you would have, you would go, I know there's a specific word for this thing. And I just can't find the word. And then because of the piece of writing, and the number of entries I would have to get through a day, I would have to keep moving. And sometimes I would be able to go back and change it, and sometimes I wouldn't. And, you know, weeks later I would be like, oh, that was the word I wanted for that, that image or oh, that would have been a better metaphor for it. But, you know, especially with the demons, like, I think about the, the chimeron, and what that did to my brain, and how many hours I spent staring at that image going, I just...I have no idea. There's nothing humanoid about this form that I can even start to approach with what I'm trying to get to. It's such a complex image and it's, you know, all of these different quadrants with completely different color schemes and shapes and textures and styles and reference points. And I just remember going, how do you even begin to translate this or communicate this in any sort of accurate way? But, you know, if people want to try this at home, I recommend taking an image and trying to describe it to someone, without showing them the image, and having them draw out what they think you're describing, and see what happens. Compare your description and their piece of, you know, their illustration of it, because it's pretty wild how off you can be and not realize it.

Jon de Nor Reading through the guide that you provided...it was really illuminating. It was really a great way to kind of understand how to interpret the text. There were a couple of things that I wanted to ask you about specifically, because you mentioned, of course, that there's like the 15-word, 15-ish-word short description that's almost like an alt text that we know from everywhere. But then there's also the long description of about 70 words, according to the guide. But you mentioned specifically that the short text sometimes doesn't have, like, a punctuation at the end. And I was wondering, why...? Is there like a technical reason for that or is it...?

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. So that was a format that came from the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum standards. But the reason behind it is because it's not always a complete sentence. So what you're describing, you may say, "woman in a blue dress". That might be the entirety of the description that you give of an image. Or..."a brass coin with green vines". And that could be an entire alt text description. So it's not a complete sentence all the time, which is why it doesn't always have full punctuation. And that also sort of delineates the alt text from the long description in what we're doing. But in the Cooper Hewitt format, they do the long description first and then the alt text. But to me, it made a lot more sense to do the alt text first so that anyone who's on screen reader could listen to the quick summary of what the image is, and then move on if they didn't want to hear the full description. Because sometimes you're just trying to flip through the book. And other times you really want to do a deep dive.

Jon de Nor Yeah. I really liked — you mentioned that in the guide, too, that...listen for the short thing first and just skip if you don't want all the details. I also want to mention, you link to a article that's called...Writing With Color's

Jennifer Kretchmer Was it the one about describing —?

Jon de Nor Describing white people the...

Jennifer Kretchmer Describing white people the way we describe people of color. (laughter) Yeah. Yes. It's so funny, that article, it's brilliant.

Jon de Nor It made me laugh so much. It's the funniest thing I've read in a while. (laughter) I would argue it's even better than the examples of men writing women.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yes! It's n the same vein.

Jon de Nor Yeah, it's in the same vein, but this was much funnier.

Jennifer Kretchmer I almost put that article in the resources, but I knew...it's very tricky, when you're a marginalized person writing about issues that affect marginalized people, trying to talk to a mainstream or non-marginalized audience. And particularly when you're coming from a company POV. And the people already get...can be very...

Jon de Nor Sensitive? (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer You can tell I'm trying to pick words carefully here! Yeah, sensitive is a good way to put it, delicate about it. And especially now, people can get very upset. I've dealt with a lot of backlash to discussing things...even when you're not really getting into anything that's controversial. Like just going, hey, people should be allowed to access material, or people should not be discriminated against for X, Y, Z, or people should be allowed to put themselves in the stories that they're telling, like, have people like them in their own stories that they're telling at their own table in their own home. And people can get really upset about that. And so I tried to be thoughtful about what resources I put in as points of reference here, and also what I used in terms of my reference material for, you know, setting up the system and the structure of the system. But I also think it's very important that as we're establishing those points, we are recognizing things like, very often, foods have been used to describe people of color. And that's not okay. And that's something that, from the jump, we should be aware of and not do. And so it's something I — well, I mentioned, things like, you know, destigmatizing the word fat. It's used in several of my descriptions, and I made a note in the guide that that is a term that we're using, and it's not stigmatized, ad here's a reference point. You know, here's a sourced article about why that's a term that I use, rather than using euphemisms. I think, especially around disability, people like to use euphemisms. People are very afraid of disability. And to me, disabled is a descriptor the same way tall is a descriptor or, you know, describing someone's eye color is a descriptor. It's not a bad word. It is just a state of being. And I think that, in particular, makes me more sensitive toward trying to be conscious around not using euphemistic language when the preference of the community is not to use euphemistic language. So, I think, that was something I really tried to be aware of as I built out what the standards were that we used for this. And, you know, I ran everything by everybody to make sure that that was the way they wanted to go, because I certainly didn't want to put something out that wasn't something that everybody could be proud of when Draw Steel came out, and I'm very, very proud of it.

Jon de Nor That kind of leans into one of the questions that was submitted by...they're asking how laborious the process was to add these descriptors. And I think you kind of covered that, through your previous answers. But they also ask, more specifically, how many people were involved and how long it took to go through all of the art and make the descriptions, because, as they say, the result is incredible, but it feels like a huge undertaking.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. So I was the only person who wrote the description. So it was just me.

Jon de Nor Wow. Impressive.

Jennifer Kretchmer And we did 450-something...I think. I might have written more than that because I know we cut a bunch, but then we added a bunch in, and so, I don't know the final count. And the descriptions, I would say, on average, took about half an hour, each, to write? A good day, I was zipping through them with less than 15 minutes each, and the tougher ones could take, I don't know, 4 hours, maybe? Maybe even more, depending which pieces we were looking at. There was one day I got closer to the end, where we had a lot that we had to get through very quickly, and the way I would break it down is I would send James estimates and say, I have this many that are easy, and those, we'll assume 15 minutes each. I have this many that are moderate, and let's go ahead and assume half an hour for those. And then I have this many that are difficult, and let's high-end those at an hour and a half each. And hopefully we'll end up with extra time because...and that tended to be the way to accurately estimate. By the end, I was pretty accurate on those estimates. And I wrote the guide and the glossary. So I did all of the writing for this stuff. We had a couple folks who were working on the tech side. Chris [Hopper] and Kit [Flowers] were implementing it on the images on the tech side. And then James was my point of contact for all the things, and, you know, had to deal with all of my random niche questions because that was who I had to go to for all of the questions I had. And we were, you know, figuring out a brand new system. So that was...that's a process. But yeah, it was a big deal, over...like, in total, it was five months of work, but it was in, you know, in waves. And towards the end, it was about two months of a lot of all-nighters. (laughter) A lot of all-nighters. So it was...it was intense. But I think, having figured it out much more now, I would be able to solve things a little bit more smoothly, and plan it out. I also hope that I can, you know, train some people to do it as well. Because the guide helps teach some of it, but I think there are elements of it that, right now, nobody else really knows how to do the same way. And I'd like to be able to maybe run some training sessions or something. For other games, and...

Jon de Nor Yeah. It sounds like a good idea, considering the amount of work it takes!

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah. But also, I think it was a particularly unique fusion of my skill sets. You know, I was an English Lit major in college. So I have a background in writing. I'm an art history nerd, so I love art, and I'm familiar with architectural movements and art, you know, famous pieces of art and things like that, artistic style. So when I saw the Fauvist piece, I was like, oh, we have Fauvism happening. Or, oh, it's an illuminated manuscript. I know the terminology around these things, so I think that's a unique fusion of my skills. And also, being able to look at a game book and go, oh, okay, this is what is being depicted in this image. And, you know, in the beginning, it seemed like I wasn't going to have to know much about how the game worked or much about, you know, the creatures or anything, it was just descriptive. But the reality is I had to get to know the game really well. And constantly was referencing the books. Because the material, the descriptions had to be accurate to what was happening, and for that I had to know what was happening.

Jon de Nor I noticed that the first, if I remember correctly, the first piece of Ajax does not mention him by name. I was just now wondering, was that intentional to kind of...keep the mystery? Because if you're coming into the book fresh, you won't know who Ajax is when you get to that page, just like, leafing through the book. And now I'm wondering, is that intentional on the art description side too, to not kind of spoil who this majestic person is?

Jennifer Kretchmer No, I don't...I mean, I don't think so because I ended up putting Ajax in the glossary, which means I ended up shortcutting Ajax's name somewhere else. It meant that I referred to him just as Ajax...somewhere. So I think it was probably because it was...I know it was the very first piece I wrote up. And so it was probably...just, the decision to use names came much later, when we realized we were going to do the glossary, so...because I figured, at that point, no one was going to know who Ajax was, we were just describing the art. But later, when we realized that the glossary was going to help us, and be this iterative tool that, later on, for future books, they can just add in new creatures, new characters...even now, I'm like, oh, I should have put Pinna in there rather than just describing her every time. There are things like that that, you know, it became this thing that, moving forward, is a really valuable tool. But in the beginning, I didn't know we were going to do that. It took until we got to the demons to realize a lot of what was happening.

Jon de Nor (laughter) Right.

Jennifer Kretchmer I'm completely serious. I didn't realize how complex this was going to get until I hit the demons and went, I don't even know where to start with this.

Jon de Nor Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then having to repeat that every time...yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah.

Jon de Nor Another submitted question is, what are the most easily overlooked aspects of accessibility when it comes to designing a print or digital product, such as TTRPG rules?

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah, that's a really good question. I think one of them is people just don't ever stop to think about their products in different ways. I think it's very easy to think about your product the way you would use it. If you stop and think about, well, if I wanted to use this and didn't see, how would I use it? If I wanted to use this product and play this game and I didn't hear, and I need it to work purely from a visual perspective, how would I do it? If I needed to play this game virtually because I couldn't be in-person, how would I do it? So really just sort of going through sensory experiences, thinking about different ways that people play, whether it's, you know, thinking about attention span or needing to be virtual versus tactile and in-person...I think those are really great places to start. But I really think, ultimately, the best thing you can do is encourage people to ask their players questions and communicate with your table, because creating a place where people can ask for what they need — and feel like those needs are being responded to and met — is the best way to create an accessible space.

Jon de Nor Mm. Makes sense.

Jennifer Kretchmer If you create a place where it's comfortable for someone to say, "Hey, I have ADHD and I need breaks in our game," and they're not going to feel like that's creating a problem for the table, or someone feels safe to say, "Hey, I have a phobia of this thing, and can we not have it happen in the game?" and feel like that's not going to be a problem, and they're still welcome at the table to play the game? That's almost always a really minor change. And this is true of accessibility in general. It's so often minor changes. And usually the earlier you can have those conversations, or the earlier you think about those things in design processes, the easier it is to make those adjustments. And then the last thing I'll say is, the more you can educate yourself about disability, the better. Because I think there are so many misconceptions about what disability is, who disabled people are, what our experience is, what we look like or sounds like...you know, disability can be anything from depression, substance use disorder, pregnancy, aging...and, I mean, if you live long enough, you will become disabled. Period, end of story. And what we've done in our society is set up so much fear around it, and so much dehumanization around it, that we actually have to create euphemisms for aging to distance from it. So I think, when people learn about it, it completely changes how they respond to it. And right now, we are living in a time where there is so much language of eugenics around disability, like, you look at the parallels to history...this is a very, very scary time to be a disabled person. And so, the more people know about disability, the more we can defend against that othering, and that...allowing those things to be accepted. Sorry to make it so heavy, but it's a heavy time!

Jon de Nor (laughter) Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Kretchmer And I think these conversations are super important on that front.

Jon de Nor Yeah. Totally agree. I mean, we can't pretend that we exist in a vacuum.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah.

Jon de Nor Another question I've got here is, what are the high-priority, "absolutely check for this every time" things that should be done when considering product accessibility?

Jennifer Kretchmer Pfwoof.

Jon de Nor (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer I mean, it's so tough because every product is different. Because...yeah, I mean, ideally, you create things where everything has alt text, where everything is compatible with screen readers, where you have PDF formats that allow variable font sizes, and you could play with contrast visually, or where you have different print formats, where you have...I mean, there are just so many different types of accessibility. The best thing you can always do is work with disabled people, learn about accessibility, there are tons and tons of resources out there. If you can afford a consultant, hire a consultant early, and work with them through the process. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's so tough to say what are the must-haves because it depends on your game, it depends on your audience. It depends on...like, if you're talking about a game for kids, it's a very different set of access ideas than it is if you're talking about a very, you know, complex strategic game. You can be talking about things like color blindness testing. You can be talking about, if you're playing with very visual stuff, it can have to do with if you have flashing screens or not, you know. There's such a wide range and I think this is...part of that is, disability is such a broad umbrella, and access needs are such a broad category. And access needs sometimes conflict, which is also tricky. They don't always, you know, align in a way that works super smoothly. So it's a complicated thing, but it's also a simple thing...I know it feels very, that's a really...that was not a great answer.

Jon de Nor (laughter) The thing is, I think the disability is not a universal thing. So a universal solution either, I feel.

Jennifer Kretchmer Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think that the keys are, if you're digital, find out the basics for digital accessibility and try and plan for those, and meet those needs. Your access tools are going to vary with your budget. Some things are free and are not heavily labor-intensive, and some things are more complicated. But most accessibility is not super costly, especially if you think about it from the beginning. And the more you can learn about that, you know, from early in the process, the better. But it is going to be unique to your game. So, I mean, the best thing I can start people off with is thinking about things from as many perspectives as possible and, and doing a little bit of homework. I mean, it sucks to tell people to go do homework, but learning about basic accessibility is the best thing you can do on that front. Find out what people need and, you know, start with the things you can do reasonably, and then go from there. And make your next game more accessible. And just keep moving as much as you can every time, and doing better every time.

Jon de Nor Solid advice, nearing the end of the interview, I think. (laughter) We ended on a bit of a heavy note, but I think, as you said, I think it's an important note also. So it's a bit of a hard transition. I always ask my guests to bring some recommendations. (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer Yes!

Jon de Nor So, now, for something completely different...what recommendations have you brought for our listeners?

Jennifer Kretchmer I'll start with the disability stuff. If I'm saying "Go learn about stuff!" it only makes sense to give some places to learn. I think one of the really great things to check out is...Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's book, The Future Is Disabled, is a collection of everything from poetry to soup recipes, giving a disabled perspective on the world. It's just one of the best books I can recommend to people. To me, it should be just required reading for everybody. It's spectacular. And similarly, Alice Wong's Disability Intimacy, Disability Visibility...and then Alice has a third book coming out soon that's part of that trilogy. And also Alice's biography is amazing, Year of the Tiger. So those are all books I would highly recommend if you want to learn more. And if you want to watch a movie, Crip Camp, which is on Netflix, is a documentary about a summer camp that ended up basically creating, like, fostering what became the modern disability rights movement in the US, which had the longest protest occupation of a federal building in United States history.

Jon de Nor Wow.

Jennifer Kretchmer Yeah, it's pretty badass. And it involved a bunch of different marginalized groups coming together to support it, and things like, they decided that they were going to cut the phones to try and get everybody to leave the building...and they forgot that there were deaf people in the building, and they could just sign out the window to communicate needs. Yeah, it's just a really...it's an amazing story of a really spectacular group of people. So I highly recommend that. It was Oscar-nominated, and it's hilarious, and brilliant, and wonderful. So, Crip Camp. Onto other things that are not disability stories. One of my favorite things on TV is the show Shoresy, which is a spinoff of Letterkenny. It is about a misfit hockey team in a small town in Canada, playing in a hockey league that has four teams in it.

Jon de Nor (laughter)

Jennifer Kretchmer And it's the greatest thing. It's Ted Lasso if they were swearing all the time. It's incredible. So Shoresy is just one of my favorite things ever. Highly recommended. I know there were other things, my brain is just not working. I mean, I'm going to recommend it in advance, even though I haven't seen it yet. But you know, based on everything I've read and the track record of the people involved, del Toro's Frankenstein.

Jon de Nor Okay, yeah!

Jennifer Kretchmer It's very high on my list of exciting things that are coming up. And that's going to be an interesting, interesting film. I can't wait for that. And what else?

Jon de Nor Those are some solid recommendations.

Jennifer Kretchmer But Shoresy is — if you watch Letterkenny first, Shoresy is a small side character who's basically a "your mom" joke.

Jon de Nor O-Okay?

Jennifer Kretchmer They announced they were doing a spinoff of Shoresy, and I had no idea. Like, as a TV producer, I had no idea how they could possibly make that into anything worth watching. And then they turned it into some of the best-written television I have ever seen. It is astonishing what they did with that show. And they've done four seasons, and it's just gotten better and better, which is remarkable. So, yeah, Shoresy is knock-it-out-of-the-park fantastic, if you want comedy.

Jon de Nor Thank you so much, Jennifer, for coming on. It's been really great hearing everything about the process, how this got put together, and the amount of work you've done to make the game so much more accessible. It's been really fantastic having you on.

Jennifer Kretchmer Thank you so much for having me and letting me talk about the random weird idea I had that...(laughter) You know, I'm just so grateful to Matt and to James for letting me run with this idea, and I'm just very, very fortunate that they gave me this opportunity to develop this concept and try it out. That's not something that many places would do. And the fact that they are trying the things they're trying...I think we're so lucky to have companies like MCDM, you know, making the swings they are making. I do want to say one thing before I head out, because I've seen a lot of people knock on other companies in order to try and say, look at the amazing stuff MCDM is doing. And I think...it's really important, from my perspective, as someone who has worked for pretty much every major game company in this industry at this point, and that's the reason I've been able to stay afloat long enough to do the cool stuff that I've been doing for MCDM and for other small indie companies...anything that is keeping the game industry afloat, whether it's big companies or small companies — the game industry is a small industry. Anything that is keeping us moving is good news. Anything that is keeping people paying their bills and fed is a good thing. And anything that is getting people interested in and playing games is a good thing. I think we all love games and it's really easy to dump on other places for whatever reasons, and I am not praising anyone. Like, don't get me wrong, there is certainly terrible behavior out there, but I think pushing down one group of people or company in order to try and boost up another is not how we sustain this industry. It's too small an industry to survive that. Supporting games, playing games, buying games, supporting designers, helping people feed their families — you know, MCDM supports their designers really, really well. But helping other companies, advocating for other companies to pay well, and supporting people who are making these games in any way you can, is the way that you continue to get really great games and get companies that will take chances, the way that Draw Steel took a chance on the stuff I'm doing. You don't get innovation when people can't pay their bills or feed their families. And right now, games, most people don't have health insurance, most people don't have any sort of safety net. And, I think a lot of us, we've been losing people, you know, en masse, from this industry because there isn't a sustainable way to be in it right now. So creating those pathways for folks, I think, is so essential. We have to treat people better than shutting down opportunities for them to stay alive (laughter) and in the industry. Like, we have to, right now. So, yeah, support people who make stuff that you love. And know that not everybody always gets to make the stuff you love. Like, sometimes you have to make the stuff...sometimes, the one-for-you, one-for-me kind of situation like it is in most arts and creative fields. There's a reality to making games that is not what you hope it is when you're coming right out of college. You have to survive. It's not always the ideal. It sometimes is the reality. But also, that reality means that, sometimes, you get really, really great stuff, too. It was a random thought, but it's something that I saw a lot of when Draw Steel happened, and I saw a lot of people saying, look what happens, you know, when you only support indie companies. And I was like, yeah, but I wouldn't be able to do this. I would have had to completely leave the industry if I didn't have the jobs that I've had that kept me even remotely afloat. And I've barely been able to stay that way, you know? So, yeah, keep people afloat and making stuff.

Jon de Nor A good message to end on.

Jennifer Kretchmer End of rant. (laughter)

Jon de Nor (laughter) But thank you, Jennifer, so much for coming on.

Jennifer Kretchmer Thank you so much for having me and letting me rant!

Outro

Thank you so much for coming on Jen. It was a joy to have you on. I feel like I have to reiterate something I said during the interview. Reading the art descriptions, actually made me appreciate the art more. It describes parts that I'd missed, and it brought a different perspective to what I'd already appreciated. Such a great way delve deeper into the art.

I want to thank The Dice Society, and MrMattDollar for submitting questions for Jen.

If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on tips@goblinpoints.com.

Links to everything, including this script can be found in the show notes, and on goblinpoints.com.

If you want to support my work, you can become a Patreon supporter. As a paying member you can submit questions for upcoming guests. You also get access to premium features on Stawl. Stawl is digital tool set for playing and running Draw Steel: digital hero sheets, looking up monsters, or read the core rules. Go to Stawl.app. S-T-A-W-L-dot-app.

Next episode is on the 25th. Yeah, I'm doing something different. Another episode in the same month! Next episode I'm joined by Paul Ligorski, a.k.a. Heart of Arcana, again. He's just now running a crowdfunder on BackerKit for his new adventure, and he's doing incredibly well.

See you next time. Snakkes.

Links

• The Future is Disabled
• Disability Intimacy and Disability Visibility by Alice Wong
• Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong
• Crip Camp
• Shoresey (Letterkenny spin-off)