Learning Life Skills or Just Playing a Game? Why Can’t It Be Both? An Autistic perspective on TTRPGs
Shawna Spain twitter.com/LikeSevenSpoon Photo courtesy the author. [image: Woman with braided hair and purple glasses is bent over a notebook with a character sheet for “Veri Truestone.” There are various dice around her, a rainbow set, a ceramic set, some resin sets and two metal dice in a tiny glass jar. There is a dice vault with rainbow colors, another with wood burning of a map, and then a dice bag with purple fabric.] I didn’t know I was Autistic when I started playing Shadowrun, a table top role playing game. My boyfriend at the time was playing, and I overheard a couple of sessions where they seemed to be telling a collaborative story—and I never heard any arguments or weird pauses, which is how most of my social interactions went at the time. So I asked a lot of questions: Like, you all agree to the same rules? Yes, he…
