A few weeks ago, a listener reached out and asked how we manage players with special circumstances. She was DMing for her brother, who’s on the autism spectrum, and hit a trigger that made him feel like his character was ruined. And even though she’s a therapist, that reaction surprised her.
None of the 3 Wise DMs have DMed a player diagnosed with autism before, but we have had many players with special circumstances. We’ve learned a lot from playing with them — sometimes from our mistakes. In this episode, we talk about those experiences, D&D’s impact on players with all types of personal issues, and how we try to handle communication challenges at our tables.
And, for the first time on 3 Wise DMs, we have a special guest! Bonnie is in our game groups and she’s a therapist who uses D&D to reach teens going through special circumstances. She joins us to talk about her experiences there and how her charges react to the game.
2:00 Reader Question: DMing players with special circumstances that impact how they view the game and unexpected challenges
7:00 Revisiting miscommunication with cognitive challenges: Everyone brings something to the table
11:00 Using D&D to connect with teens in a therapy setting
16:00 Unexpected player reactions may be more about personal issues than the game
19:00 D&D helps explore issues that aren’t easy to express and gets players excited to discuss them
27:00 How therapists can use scenarios that gently push triggers to create room to talk
34:00 Don’t take mental health issues lightly or use triggers to terrorize your friends! (And an aside on giant spiders)
38:00 Mental flexibility and feeling like something “ruined” the game
42:00 Characters as the players’ ideal selves and its impact on their perception of the game
47:00 Communicating when something isn’t fun for the players or the DM
49:00 How hard table communication can be for people who struggle with social queues
52:00 Empowering, and not overpowering, your players’ voices
59:00 Is murder hoboing a risk in using D&D for therapy, and how does a therapist handle that?
63:00 We all want to be the hero in our own story … don’t we?
70:00 The soft skills at the heart of D&D — and the extra weight they can put on DMs
77:00 Final thoughts
Related Links:
“How Dungeons & Dragons Saved My Autistic Son” — Salon
“Tips for Managing an Autistic Player” — Reddit
“Dungeons, Dragons and Autism” — Altogether Autism
The word you’re looking for is “neuro typical”.
Not “normal”, not “undiagnosed crazies”.
Autistic people, and other neurologically atypical people, such as those with ADD or ADHD, are not mentally ill, or “crazy”, like someone with schizophrenia, personality disorders, bipolar, or even depression.
Mental illnesses can sometimes also be an issue for people with neurological processing disorders, but they are not the same thing and should not be conflated, or you will only confuse the audience you’re aiming to inform.
Did any of you do research on the topic to prepare before the show?
I feel like all this would have come up in a Google search, but “neurotypical” for sure should have been the First Thing out of the therapist’s mouth, when discussing the appropriate alternative to “normal” when discussing autism… not “we’re all a little crazy” or “undiagnosed crazies”!
I couldn’t listen past the first few minutes, which is disappointing because this sounded like a great topic and I was really looking forward to hearing an informed discussion.
Not everybody is going to know the proper terms for everything. I know I didn’t know until my two kids were diagnosed with ASD. I didn’t even know all the terms involving narcolepsy either till my oldest was diagnosed with that. In the very first few breaths of this podcast they SAID they weren’t doctors and weren’t professionals who deal with mental illness. Stop witch hunting and learn to relax. It is a great topic and if you bothered to stick around you might have learned something.
For anybody still reading this, we use terms like normal and crazy in my ever day house hold life with 3 kids, 2 of which have ASD. They love not being normal (neurotypical) and love saying that they are weird or crazy because it is fun and my son even says his ASD gives him super hearing and other super powers. If you turn everything into scientific terms you make things sound scary and depressing and nobody wants or needs that.
I’m a late diagnosed autistic adult with ADHD, Depression, Anxiety, etc; and I had never heard “Neurotypical” or “Neurodivergent” before last year (stumbled across this podcast while educating myself). Hell, for most of my life I didn’t even know what Autism really was (embarrassingly, I thought it was akin to Down-Syndrome—spoilers: It’s very much not 😅)
I don’t blame these guys for their terminology. I have referred to myself, and continue to refer to myself as “crazy” all the time. Personally, I feel that in doing so I’m taking it’s power away and replacing it with humor (albeit self-depreciative humor, but humor nonetheless).
That said, I agree it’s important to educate yourself before speaking publicly on sensitive subjects like mental health and really believe in listening to/respecting how individuals want to be addressed. If I refer to myself as “crazy” and a fellow mentally ill &/or neurodivergent person asks me not to around them (for any reason) I make a point to acknowledge & respect that 🤷
Oh! I’m looking forward to listening to this one. Maybe the drive to work tomorrow? I teach middle school in inclusive classrooms and have been thinking about role-playing for one of my students. As such I’m keen to find out more! 🙂
This makes my, late-diagnosed, neurodivergent heart happy to read 😁
If you’re comfortable discussing, did you ever go through with using role-play for your student? If so, how did it go? I’m super interested in the concept of using RPG’s in educational/therapeutic settings, so any information on such experiences is awesome to find/hear.