I played a couple of games with a blind guy at a con in the past. He was using a laptop for his character (I suppose it used braille?). He did well and was having fun. Everything flowed smoothly.
I'm sure it could be dome. The great thing about this game is your imagination.
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Yup, I've played with a nearly blind player several times locally. He can read his character sheet if he holds it right up to his eyes, and he has extra large dice and a bin to roll them in, so he can make sure they don't get too far from him. With just a little help from other players, he has no problem playing.
It wouldn't be a big deal for the GM or another player to roll your dice for you or get some large dice with good contrast. And like Waltero said it's a game of imagination and being attentive to what the GM is saying. Getting a good description of the combat map would help. "Ok it's your turn, you have a troll 25' north of you attacking the party fighter and 2 goblins flanking you with dogslicers, what do you want to do?"
A friend of mine was actually developing a system for visually impaired roleplayers involving specialized tiles and a smartphone app. The system essentially acted as a radar, allowing the player to feel the layout of the map and positions of participants through tactile pulses as they passed the phone over the map. Not sure how far along the project got, but it's nice to know that there are people working to make games more accessible.
With Pathfinder and DnD 3.5, the most visual element is obviously the battlemap. Other players can read your dice for you, but it's harder (though certainly possible) to keep track of all participants in a combat with description alone. You could always try using a larger map scale (2 inch squares instead of 1 inch), and using simple tokens with high-contrast icons or symbols to mark friend/foe.
That said, the importance of the map is going to vary based on your GM and the type of game you're playing. I've run games without a map, describing the combat in narrative terms, which makes it slightly more abstract. 1st and 2nd edition DnD didn't use map and miniature based combat at all (not until Combat and Tactics, anyways), and I've yet to see a World of Darkness group use a gridded map.
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A friend, and LFR / LG / PFS player named Jamie uses a laptop with a braille readout, and he does quite well for himself with it. He has better map mastery, than ninety percent of the people who can see - it's amazing how good he is at overcoming limitations.
I unfortunately don't have any contact information to give you, but if you troll the lfr board's he may pop up.
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A friend, and LFR / LG / PFS player named Jamie uses a laptop with a braille readout, and he does quite well for himself with it. He has better map mastery, than ninety percent of the people who can see - it's amazing how good he is at overcoming limitations.
I unfortunately don't have any contact information to give you, but if you troll the lfr board's he may pop up.
I have played with Jamie at cons several times over the years. I don't know what software he uses on his laptop but he is sufficiently proficient with it that I sometimes forget he is even disabled. He is a good player, fun to play with and gracious. So I would say that you should be able to adapt quite well.
There was a guy for whom I GMed a PFS session at Northern Illinois University last summer (he was a friend of Mike Bramnik's). He wasn't completely blind, but was extremely limited visually. He had a special high-contrast reader which he had his character sheet and rules loaded onto. As the GM, it required giving him a little more information about the map and tactical situation, but I didn't find it disruptive, and he was very enjoyable to play with.
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You might find something useful at Accessible Games; maybe the post Dungeons and Dragons and Disabilities or the other accessibility articles. The site owner is blind himself, and is a regular at RPG Geek.
Although it's not got a lot of content, The Blind GM might be a good read too.
And best of luck for the surgery.
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Brian - did you play with us (pfrpg.com.au) a while ago?
I was either playing with you or someone in a very similar position to you - I remember making a point to try and accommodate you (or that person), but you (they) seemed to be doing as well as any other player at that time.
Hopefully all will go well with you, and you won't need any adjustment, but when I went to Origins this year, the DM I had for D&D Next was (mostly) blind. Things went smoothly.
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Due to an injury, I was blind for a while. I still played and loved it all the more. It was one of the few modes of entertainment that were, for the better part, unchanged. At the time, we played a lot of games that didn't make much use of miniatures, though.
I suppose I'd have gotten even better at it vut, for those sessions, friends put the appropriate dice for me to roll and read the resukts. Other than that , it was gaming as usual.
The miniatures. Aspect would toss in a new wrinkle but it may actually enhance things as the gm (or a player) would have tomdescribe the scene. That's good for everyone's immersion. Too often, the minis end up making a game within the gsme.
Regardless of all that, I wish you the best of luck for your surgery.
I would find a friend who is also playing in any game you may be interested in to act as your spotter to help you with things like dice rolls and miniature placement. That's all you really need if it gets right down to it. It's called "theater of the mind" for a good reason.
I personally would make any adjustment I had to as a DM to make a visually impared person feel comfortable at my table. From the looks of it so far, there are many others who feel the same way.
Best of luck to you sir.
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I was legally blind for a while, and still played.
Here's what I learned...
Other people will help, gamers are nice.
Minis don't need to be fancy, a Sorry token will work.
You can change the character sheet, large print or high contrast if you need.
People will read dice for you, they also come in bigger sizes and easier colors.