Gaming with Autism

Touhoufag please go.

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I am a DM with Autism. I hope my players don't suffer too much

>>44423662
I'm on the spectrum. I was pretty bad as a child, but throughout my teens learned to be high functioning. The other players (D&D) just thought my retard breakdowns were RP. Everyone is autistic when they play games. Socializing is hard, but if you know the DM it's easier. You can mainly ignore the players, but if you are unfamiliar with the game master, it's hard to communicate.

>>44424566
what kind of Autism do you have?

>>44424950
Asperger syndrome.

>>44425065
That seems to be a fairly sized portion of tabletop players I've met. I live in a small town and I've met at least four and know friends who have family members with a similar diagnosis. And most of those people I've met have been high functioning. I'm sure there are many more with much harder times coping with it that you never meet.

>>44425065
NLD here

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>>44423662

Does it annoy any other autistic folks as much as it does me that calling someone an autist is /tg/s go-to insult?

Autistic DM D&D 5e (started with 4e RedBox). PDD-NOS, diagnosed since I was 15.

Just now, I planned a holiday adventure in 5e since end september. It got stalled and stalled until 30 december, then back to 27 december, then back again to 30 december because someone didn't read his E-mails for 6 days. Making me shift planning for 3 people back to 2 people (re-calculating xp with the co-efficient) and back to 3 people again. It drove me absolutely NUTS. I tolerated everything up until that last E-mail. Good thing it's all planned now, but with poor executive functions it's tough to learn how to plan these ahead.

Players easily fool me with details that I can't grasp like bartering quickly or understanding medieval politics better than I do. They criticize things I explain from the character's perspective as if I made a direct mistake and think that I didn't knew what I was talking about. Plus, new players are used to using subtle bodylanguage for roleplaying, which isn't that bad, but not even an Insight check will properly pick that up.

Mixing people with autism in the same group isn't a good idea. One might be loud while the other can't stand that. Or they don't understand eachother's sarcasm and make things worse. One might think the older rules apply while the other never heard of those and they can't figure out why the other guy doesn't get it.

I played a D&D Encounters once. It was promised as 'in a quiet and comfy room'. It was not, they played with two loud groups at the same, fucking time! My group had either newbies or murderhobos so I'm better off as perma DM. At least I learn a few things per session.

>>44425371
>Waah stop hurting my feelings!

Even with the fact that you're autistic please fuck off.

>>44425371
Yeah, I know they mean it in the way most people mean the word fsggot these days but I can't help but be irritated by it. Most autistic kids struggle their whole lives to get away from those stereotyped behaviors and here they are casually assigning more and more undesirable characteristic to a stigma none of these kids ever asked for.

>>44425371
Yes. But it seems it's just slang for 'socially inept person who invests in the wrong priorities of the game'.

It's something that's tolerated here like the word 'fag'.

>>44425371
Not at all. I use that insult myself kek

>>44425488
Fuck off thought police, this isn't your personal hugbox.

>>44425371
No. I'm autistic and I call other people autistic all the time.

>>44423662
I had bigger problems with socialization in the past and when it comes to people I don't know I still do have some trouble, but I think (and others think too) that I've more or less gotten over my socialization issue when it comes to friends. So RP is just another fun game to be played with friends.

Incidentally, I prefer for the subject of my autism to not be brought up, and so rarely mention it.

>>44425371
As an autistic person- no.

>>44425470
He may be autistic but you sir are just an ass lol

Op here

Was just googling Autism Speaks and holy shit, what a terrible organization. It seems to me they are trying to solve autism problems in the way the nazis were trying to solve Jewish problems.
>The cure for autism?
>Abort all autistic babies

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>>44425703
They are the worst. I have autism and my family supports them. I try to talk them out of it

>>44425703
They are truly awful.

Don't support them.

>>44425371

Not /tg/. Like, here there's an understanding. You can just casually use any insult you like here. There's an expectation that if you can't handle the double faggotry, you should get out of the rainbow. PC censorship doesn't exist here.

Now, it does annoy me that the rest of the internet does the same thing. It's not that I want to police them and make them all PC or anything like that. I just don't think they've earned the right, if that makes any sense. They're like kids who see older kids doing something and imitating it without really understanding. But on the scale of booty-bothered to rectal ragnarok, I'm only a little bit tushie troubled, not full scale butt blasted.

I think we're going off-topic here. Did RPG's help anyone with their disfunction in any way?

>>44425933
Alliteration and funny choice of words. You sir, are a bard.

>>44425933
I was diagnosed when it was pretty new. We were called weirdos or retarded when I was at school. People used to fling it around and I've never given a shit. It might be part of my condition, but I always assumed that the kids at my school were too stupid to understand the concept. Just like with gay people, slurs were used without meaning. I expect nearly everyone who has been on /tg/ a while is a little autistic. When people on facebook and twitter use it though, it just seems like they are assholes. Nowadays people have access to the internet, they can research it, so using it today is just fucking wrong; outside of very autist hobbies.

>>44423662
Formally diagnosed around August last year, at age 34. My primary autism diagnosis is more focussed on data processing than anything else. Not a formal syndrome as such.

My brain simply needs more time than a normal person to process input, but I am rather high functioning otherwise.
I compensate for it fairly well in a social setting. I may be slow, but I am very thorough as a result, that does help sometimes.

I'm quite the introvert, so social environments are exhausting to me, but that's not just because I am autistic to a degree.

As for Roleplay, I find it quite hard to do, my imagination is pretty good at thinking up things, but I have trouble placing myself inside it, something that probably relates to how I process data.

>>44425933
Something a lot of people misunderstand is when you say their opinions are hurtful or damaging to reasonable discussion, you're not necessarily saying they shouldn't be allowed to say those things.

Censorship is a terrible thing and if an authority figure a-la-clockwork orange forces you to hold the "correct" opinions you're not really holding those opinions at all

Rather, it should be okay to try to appeal to an individual as to why they personally should change their beliefs without using force. Better to allow them to come to those conclusions on their own.

But I'll get off of my soapbox and quit baiting /pol/ now.

>>44425611
>lol

You're not on facebook here.

>>44426113
Give him a break. He's clearly autistic.

Is it somehow " cool" to have autism now? Look at these fucks claiming to have it.

My step brother has it. He has no concept of social norms. He'll interrupt others. Stand too close. Stare. Stand in one spot rocking back and firth while mumbling to himself. He will (every evening) go to his room and fill a notebook up, with sloppy written details of the days events.
>breakfast I ate toast and eggs
>mom made me put my plate in the sink
Page after page of that shit...

I call bullshit on you little fags claiming autism. If you had it, you wouldn't be here.

>>44426264
>go to his room and fill a notebook up, with sloppy written details of the days events.
>>breakfast I ate toast and eggs
>>mom made me put my plate in the sink
>Page after page of that shit...

That's called a journal anon.

>>44426006
>did RPGs help

No anon. Because anyone with autism is unable to play RPGs. Their minds wouldn't grasp the concept.

>>44426264
You... Know there are different levels and forms of autism right? I'm sorry your brother has such a hard time with it and genuinely hope he overcomes his own challenges though.

>>44426264
Autism manifests to a wide variety of degrees.
Granted in DSM IV the definition was broader than it should be, and in the new DSM V it is much tighter, however those of us who actually have been formally diagnosed are obviously fairly high functioning autistics.
Your brother is as much someone with Autism as I am, however I am a very high functioning autistic, your brother suffers its effects more severely than I do.

That changes literally nothing about the fact that both him and I both have a formal diagnosis of autism. It's mainly the degree to which we are affected.

>>44425371
I have the autisms. I call other people scumfuck mongoloid autists. This isn't tumblr, you can insult people for anything, whenever, and however you please.

>>44426294
No bro...
Literally 75 pages of the days details.
>I walked to the kitchen
>I stood in the kitchen
>I walked to the hallway

75 pages of that...

>>44426343
Still a journal. A very autistic journal, but still a journal.

>>44426329
Sure. I am aware.

>>44426336
Step brother. And after his last "panic" attack, they put him in a home. (Which IMO should have happened years ago)
. in less than 2 months he is already seeming "better". Calmer. More concerned with hygiene. Eating more.

I don't know the " types" of autism, honestly. I think the name is tossed around loosely. Like someone with blood sugar a point low says " omg I am diabetic!! "

>>44426343
That is his way of processing the days events, a mechanism to cope with the massive data overload his brain probably undergoes during the day. People who don't suffer from autism can do that on the fly, he does not. By writing it down he can process his impressions of the day.

I'm a person with data processing difficulty myself, not nearly to that degree, but I can't take decisions on the fly, it can take hours for me to process the relevant information and make up my mind. Depending on the amount of info presented. Sometimes it's only a few minutes, but I literally can not do decisions on the fly without feeling I just "guessed" afterwards and feeling awkward the whole time.

>>44426343
Ugh, look. Autism has four main aspects:

1. Poor central coherence: The person has trouble comprehending subjects as a whole. Instead, he understands details. So you know what a forest is, he doesn't but he can point out a range of 525 trees and a lake.

2. Poor executive functions: Planning, scheduling, waking up on time, that sort of stuff is more difficult for him.

3. Poor Theory of Mind: He doesn't understand his own or other people's feelings and thoughts or the consequences of his actions in social situations.

4. Poor sensory integration: all incentives are picked up at once, without any filtering. It's like all the five senses in mono become one, big noise. Some people with autism have the opposite, they don't notice the oversensitization. But all this causes little bits of stress to him until he bursts in frustration.

He needs that journal to collect and calm his thoughts. It's detailed but incomprehensive because of points 1 and 2. Yes, it's weird. It's not like he's having a blast, either.

>>44425371
On 4chan? Nah, it's to be expected and thrived here.
Anywhere else? Yeah, it's frustrating when people automatically assume the worst in you because of a single word.

>>44426434
His counselor in school started him on it. He wasn't diagnosed as having anything wrong until his senior year.
He has over 200 boxes of those journals....

You know I've heard a lot of people have autism, more than people might assume, but it almost feels like it's a male-only thing. How often is there female instances of autism, and is there anything different about it compared to when men have it?

>>44426503
Stories like your step-brothers' sadden me. A lot of the hardest struggles with autism can be mitigated by early detection. But there just aren't good enough diagnostic tools for it right now. They're getting better but false positives have been damaging to progress as a whole. That and a glut of undereducated psych majors fresh out of college.

>>44426568
From what I've seen it's a vastly undiagnosed thing. Some say the levels may be pretty equal between genders but the data just isn't gathered yet.

>>44426568
I've got plenty of female neighbours in the spectrum, but it's more common with men. When it's subtle with women, it's hardly noticable because women are generally more socially intelligent. Men, however, are not.

But when it's less subtle, women can really have trouble finding friends. As other women reject anyone who isn't up to social standarts and men only approach you when you look good (and don't want to be friends, either).

>>44426568
It is a male dominated disorder. There are about 4 autistic men for every 1 autistic woman.

>>44426264
It's a spectrum. On the high-functioning end, you've got people who either have learned to mask their differences to the point where they become socially acceptable or just aren't all that different to begin with - just a little "quirky" from our perspective. On the low-functioning end, you've got screaming, drooling retards who will try to tear your face off for breaking their pattern.

There's a minority of tumblrfags who like to make up bullshit (fuck you I'm a dragon) and/or appropriate non-traditional identities and disorders because oh my god you gotta be a special snowflake with as little privilege as possible and not just another middle-class white guy/gal, and Asperger's Syndrome tends to be fairly popular among them. Absolutely true. Wouldn't take that as a reason to call bullshit on everybody who says they've been diagnosed but aren't acting like a total retard, though.

>>44426568
As I understand it it is diagnosed far more commonly for boys then girls, even though it may be an even split in truth.

I've known two autistic girls: a former girlfriend and her sister. Both were high functioning by the time I met them but it seemed to hit them in weird ways at times. Less of the emotional disconnect and more of anxiety issues stemming from integration problems. And my girlfriend was actually very aware of others' feelings but had difficulty understanding her own. Her sister was more slow to articulate and couldn't talk until the age of 8.

But that's only a small sample. I'm sure you get just as much variety of symptoms among women as you do men.

>>44426568
>>44426683

I'm actually wondering now if there's a biological reason for autism to be more commonly diagnosed in men than women or a social one. Or maybe both.

There's a fair amount of psychiatric conditions that are horribly overdiagnosed - ADHD (nevermind his parents are just doing a shitty job) and clinical depression (nevermind her life genuinely sucks, she has no money and can't do much to improve her circumstances in the immediate future) come to mind. I could definitely see high-functioning autism being similar here - and men tend to be statistically more likely to draw the shit end of the stick when it comes to developing social skills.

What do you guys think?

>>44426850
certainly possible. I imagine women's naturally higher social intelligence allows them to blend in much better. Men are weaker socially to begin with most of the time, so if it's even worse it stands out much more.

>>44425371
>casual insults annoy me

This is a blue board and all, it's even more fundamentally polite than a lot of forums but...well...you ARE on 4chan.

>>44426850
Social.
The female will just suck a cock or two and behold.. She is normal and all quirks are dismissed.

>>44426569
From what the "experts" at the hone say...he could have been better integrated with the world if he had had better help. Not that my step mom abused him or neglected him, she just didn't understand what he needed.

>>44427026
Dude, no. Autism is just stereotyped as a boy disease.

>>44425371
shut up autist

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>>44427153
you in pic

it's statistically a dominantly male disorder which can be presumed to be because autism is essentially the ramping up of the masculine part of the brain to the detriment of the female part

>>44427339

I don't think the problem is that you're too manly for your own good. You would probably have a successful job and a wife if that were the case.

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>>44427430

>>44427506
That's a myth.

>>44427525
source?

>>44427534
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/a/left-brain-right-brain.htm

>>44425371
Yes, I find it particularly annoying when people use it for things that an autistic person wouldn't do like talking about a problem with their group but the most annoying thing is when someanon is showing autism like behaviour (arguing over the meaning of a word, the truth about some historical or fictional person and insisting that they be acknowledged as right instead of taking the point as it was meant).

>>44427339
So you're agreeing with him? Just because a stereotype exists doesn't mean it's false.

>>44423662
Aspie here.Was diagnosed in high school. I swear that my dad has it also.
My group is well aware of my tendencies at this point, and we get along just fine. The thing that comes up the most as a source of annoyance is when people don't give a hard yes or no when planning game nights. I can't plan around probably, dammit.
I'm really not all that bad though.The most autistic behavior I exhibit is to get really anal about words being used correctly.


>>44425371
Not really, it seems like an appropriate insult for this particular board.

I have an Autistic guy in my group and its not bad. He gets pretty in character and we sometimes have to remind him to not let the lines blur but its good roleplay and hes a good friend.