Sandy's Soapbox
First, about the spectrum. Autism has been culturally defined as a Spectrum Disorder, which is to say, people run the gamut from 'neurotypicals' who are comfortable and able to deal with mainstream social culture, and autistics who are withdrawn from the conventional social world and interact minimally and often poorly with everyday interactions.
The spectrum definition means it is not an either/or. You are not either 'perfectly able to deal with our complex social world' or 'locked in your own head', but somewhere along that stretch. People with Asperger's Syndrome are often called high-functioning autistic and tend to be bright but more 'Spock like' logical, resulting in difficulty learning social nuance.
Put another way, neurotypicals find physics hard to learn and conversation at a party easy, while someone with Aspergers finds conversation cues hard but physics easy. Bear in mind that's a quip-- not all 'Aspies' are physicists, for example. But the comparison is sound: learning cultural norms is often more difficult if you have a logical bent that emphasizes fairness and rules sets over nuance and social norms.
In designing a game, I discovered some issues that conventional gaming maximizes-- in-party competition and loudest-gets-most-attention-- that, put simply, really suck the fun out if you're deep along the spectrum. On the other hand, people with a neurotypical bent often would get frustrated with the alternatives: focus on co-operative play and turn-taking. How to balance these needs?
The game used a two-part challenge structure. Initially, each game started with a 'race' as the players vie in a contest, then they get the call to team up to solve the big problem of the day.
The race (being player-vs-player, PvP) was really popular with some of the kids, but really bothered one of the spectrum kids if he lost or was the target of a PvP attack. The second part (player-vs-environment, PvE) worked really well, being conventional RPG territory.
Even for PvE, though, I have to make sure that the 'spotlight' kept moving so each player would get a say, else everyone fights to say what is happening and it descends into arguing. So handling queuing of actions (not just in combat, but in 'what shall we plan next') turns out to be critical.
Others have suggested tokens that let a player take over the plot, 'get out of jail free', or otherwise take control of their destiny. Problem I run into with tokens and fate points and, heck, even 3E spell slots when is most people (kids or adults) are one of two types: Hoarders or Spenders.
Spenders burn the tokens/points/items/slots early (and frequently, if they renew), and lament not having them when a crux situation arises.
Hoarders save them no matter what, even if they know they can get more, even if on death's door, fearing that they'll really need them right after they spend them.
With kids, this means I have to be more of a coach, hinting "might be a good time to save/use that invisibility spell". As that takes away story control from the players, though, adults often dislike that sort of intervention.
So I shy away from 'burnables' and tend towards immediately-on finite power-ups (you get an extra ability for the next ten minutes, your next 3 rolls get +1, you were just so awesome you get to tell me what the panicky bad guy does next, etc), or narrative power-ups (the next time you die you will rise again, you will have +1 versus vampires which will become coincidentally handy later in the game).
What I've learned with running mixed spectrum/NT so far are: use a clearly defined ruleset that has a strong way to let each player take a turn being in charge, minimize PvP, and make scenarios that are more like parkour, treasure hunts, clue finding, and chase scenes than 'fight the big bad'.
Until next month,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net, freelance, ghostlibrary.com
