Dungeons and Dragons – The Radically Social Response to Autism

I wrote ‘Dungeon Master’ as the position description on an employee contract just recently. It wasn’t a joke. The official position is dungeon master and yes, it is a real job. Once a week for the local community centre, I’m running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign for a group of young people with autism. It’s awesome.

If you’re not familiar with D&D, then shame on you. Many a glorious geek career began with paper, dice, vivid imaginations, and six malodourous young men (and if you were lucky, one woman) eating chips, arguing, and slaying orcs with extreme prejudice all through the night. Created by two Americans – Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson – in the 70s, it’s a role-playing game governed by detailed rules, and decided by dice rolls and the narrative whim of the dungeon master. Each player plays one character – the heroes in the story – while the DM creates the storyline.

For a writer, it’s the equivalent of having six main characters that literally have their own minds, who can do and say anything they want at any time, no matter the best laid plans of your plot and story arc.

Way back when – in the 70s and 80s –D&D was considered antisocial, and was even the subject of moral panic by religious groups. In the 90s, when I started, basically no-one played other than the most irredeemably nerdish. I still remember my favourite character – a female Elvin warrior named Fian Windwalker – being beaten into a dead bloody pulp by a hill giant after another Elf in the party, Kaldorf, secretly rubbed Oil of Disenchantment on her Cloak of Displacement. FUCK YOU SEAN.

Twenty years later, it still burns. I miss you, Fian.

Today D&D has a new respectability. In part, because shows like Stranger Things have shown kids playing and loving Dungeons and Dragons, but mainly – though in a related way – because geeks now rule the world. The biggest movies, books, and television shows in the world are science fiction or fantasy. Whether the Marvel or Star Wars universes on screen, Harry Potter or twinkle twinkle vampires in print, or the pop cultural phenomenon that is Game of Thrones on television, geeks rule.

Autism and D&D

The campaign I’m running – classic module The Temple of Elemental Evil – is a trial partly funded by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), in light of the growing body of evidence that suggests role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons can have a positive impact on people on the spectrum.

Role-play, as I understand it, has been used for decades by therapists as a tool to engage with patients and help them, in turn, engage with the world. The problem (which is purely my opinion, which may not be scientifically sound) is that is BORING. Compare it if you will, to role-playing adventurers performing heroic feats: warriors slaying dragons, wizards casting a fireball at a charging band of orcs, clerics curing the blind and the lame, and thieves mercilessly robbing the first three of gold and magic items while they are distracted.

Once a social pariah, Dungeons and Dragons is today a radically social game in an age of internet forums, online gaming communities, and rolling campaigns of outrage on twitter. It’s quaint, almost, to think of six or seven humans sitting down face-to-face for two hours, to problem solve, communicate and compromise, and jointly imagine a fantastical world together. Yet, this old-school in-game experience can help people on the spectrum navigate the outside world. Yevonne Le Lacheur, the program director with Autism Nova Scotia, argues: “As they’re playing, they’re working on collaboration skills and communication skills and team-building skills, in a safe environment.” D&D can also help these young people form friendships, learn flexibility, and even empathy.

With the onset of my career as an aid worker, then the birth of my first child, and now a PhD, another child, writing, and working to support myself while writing, it’s been many years since I’ve played. I wasn’t sure whether I would again. But now, in a room at the local community centre, I’m back where I belong. Behind a screen, rolling dice, preparing the best-laid plans of heroic adventure.

Plans that inevitably go awry when the party decides a frontal assault on the red dragon, rather than say, casting invisibility spells and sneaking away with some of its hoard, as I strongly hinted. But hey, it’s all in the game.