Dungeons and Dragons is a hugely popular roleplaying game enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, both in person and online, every day.
However, new research has found it could be particularly beneficial for people with autism, giving them a safe space to engage in social interactions away from some of the challenges they face in their daily lives.
The study, published in the journal Autism, was led by researchers from the University of Plymouth's School of Psychology along with colleagues at Edge Hill University and Dalarna University in Sweden.
It saw researchers working with a group of autistic adults and aimed to explore whether finding a social situation where people felt comfortable could help them to excel.
After some initial familiarisation with Dungeons and Dragons, the participants – under the guidance of a games master – played out scenarios within small groups over the space of six weeks.
They were then interviewed individually by the researchers about the ways they felt their autism might have interacted with their experiences and, in turn, whether taking part in the game impacted their lives.
In those interviews, the participants spoke at length about their social desires and motivations, but how this came with challenges such as a lack of confidence in their communication with others, and insecurities about how other people would perceive them. This, they said, often resulted in them masking, or hiding, autistic traits.
Playing Dungeons and Dragons, they said, provided them with a friendly environment in which they very quickly felt a sense of innate kinship with others taking part.
Understanding common issues linked to activities inside and outside of the game allowed them to relax without feeling pressure to act in a certain way, and as a result they felt included in – and able to better contribute to – the group's interactions.
The participants also felt able to take some of the traits from their new character outside of the game, where it enabled them to feel differently about themselves.
[...] Another recently published study showed that those with autism enjoy board games because they took the pressure off the uncertainty around meeting and interacting with people, removing the need for small talk.
Journal Reference: Atherton et al.: A critical hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a buff for autistic people – is published in Autism, DOI: 10.1177/13623613241275260
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 03, @11:26PM (4 children)
Any place ANYONE feels welcome and comfortable and 'a part' of something makes ANYONE feel better (at least for a while... see 'Cults')
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday September 04, @01:54AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 04, @05:12PM (1 child)
See also the university experience. Also, being in the Army or other military service.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday September 05, @11:30AM
Ah but in D&D you had the devil-worshipping and human sacrifice to draw you together, something you'd never get at University. Plus, you could declare anyone you didn't like in the game dead [gnwcdn.com] and then they'd die in real life!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday September 04, @01:54AM
I remember a story about a child on the spectrum asking David Bowie about how he could possibly perform in public. Bowie gestured pulling a mask off his face, he told the child that he can go out in public because he's wearing his invisible mask. Then he gave it to him! Now I think I mangled the story a bit, I half-expect I attributed the wrong person, but I mention it because it put me down a line of thought of someone putting on a persona like a scuba suit in order to spend time with these strange beings. (I can kind of relate....) Is it possible D&D can help one develop that sort of invisible mask?
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday September 03, @11:34PM (5 children)
Anyone who has visited a gaming convention could probably have saved the researchers many hours on this one.
Having a couple of relatives on the Autism spectrum, I can see the value in being able to provide a structured and safe way to experiment with social interactions. Players can try out different approaches to NPCs and the GM can provide non-judgmental feedback via the NPC response or even in modifying the difficulty rating of success based on what the player said. While there are some stakes for the players to 'get it right', those stakes aren't huge and don't create ongoing problems for them outside of the game.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 03, @11:45PM (2 children)
TBH, I thought that most D&D players were autistic or something. I was introduced to D&D while in the Navy. All the players were oddball people with strange quirks. We didn't have AD&D or autism back then, but everyone was an oddball of some sort. Nerds and geeks, all of them. And, all of them were pretty damned good at their jobs too.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Freeman on Wednesday September 04, @02:39PM (1 child)
"Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons [wikipedia.org]
Okay, sure you probably meant "ADHD", but how do you typo ADHD with an &.
Also, I enjoyed the creating the character bit. I always thought it was weird to be "getting together with a bunch of dudes" to play actor. I had my chance to get in on that and even created my own character. But, the whole "lets talk about playing a game, acting in character, etc" just felt odd. It's quite possible that one needed to be drunk to get it. Having never chosen to do that, that could be the missing bit that would help me understand the draw. Definitely not going to start now, though. I've got enough problems without adding all that into the mess.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 04, @03:17PM
You're right, I meant attention deficit disorder, where I typed AD&D. Brain fart - ADD has morphed into ADHD, and somehow I stuck in a & instead of an H.
As for getting involved in the game, I'll try to paint a picture for you. You're in the middle of an ocean, nowhere to go, nothing to do on your off time. Activities available in the evening include playing poker, playing cribbage, reading a book for the third time, or watching a movie for the fifth time. There's drill team practice from time to time, but you can't do that every evening. You're not part of the pothead crowd, you're tired of talking about hunting and fishing. You're waiting for another correspondence course to come in the mail, so you're at loose ends. The nerds and geeks invite you to a game. The playacting turned out to be more interesting than another game of poker, so you stick to it long enough to understand the game, at least. Then the established dungeon master ships out for another duty station, and the potential new dungeon masters turn out to be incapable of keeping the game going. Basically, you've got to have the right combination of personalities to make it work.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Wednesday September 04, @01:26AM (1 child)
Anyone visiting a gaming convention would have a great opportunity to confirm and expand on that research.
Your point is very well taken -- where social interaction can feel like going into a dangerous venture that you don't feel naturally equipped for, putting in some simulator hours before trying actual flight time can build familiarity with the interpersonal environment and avoid some rookie mistakes. Even more so when the simulation is in a group setting.
Depending on how much the dungeon master wants to include of it, you also get an opportunity through "alignment" to see how you behave, what you feel, and provides an arena to mentally return to when confronted with ethical [youtu.be] and moral considerations during gameplay and afterwards. Both of these would be like a kind of simulated 'orienteering' in the interpersonal realm.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday September 04, @02:20AM
It also challenges you to understand how other people think either by roleplaying a different personality or by dealing with your fellow players who often are roleplaying particularly challenging personalities.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 04, @05:22PM (1 child)
Here's some handwaving BS I haven't entirely thought thru but I'm in a different TZ tonight and its time for dinner so here's as far as I got so far on my theory plus or minus several beers after work
Compare and contrast the experience of DND folks "playing as" their characters vs Friday Night Magic M:TG nights where they play "with" their cards rather than as their cards. I mean it's pretty much the same people in my experience, the guys at the weekly public library Wednesday DnD night are the same guys at Friday Night Magic two days later at the FLGS.
I would argue that "perhaps" M:TG forces more direct human social interaction than pretend character interaction in DND. Or maybe not; I'm not an expert on autism so its entirely possible it works differently in the NT vs the community peeps.
I just think it's interesting to slosh those two games around in my head in the context of the story.
Where does Catan or other abstract games fit in? Hard to say. How about old fashioned grognard arm chair general games I used to be into? Plenty of grognards on the spectrum that's for sure, and they're really good at wargaming in my experience.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday September 05, @12:01AM
You're right about the overlap between Table Top Roleplaying Games (TTRPGs) and Wargaming, though I think that people get different things out of them. Wargaming is about exercising your strategic thinking and competing against other players, while TTRPGs are about teamwork and co-operation, epic stories and thinking outside of the box sometimes.
I put Catan etc into another category altogether as the gameplay is much lighter than most Wargames such as Warhammer 40k etc. The stakes are way lower and (in Catan's case) it's far more down to luck.