Running a game for three autistic children

[EKal]

I'm a teacher at a special education outplacement school. A few of the more difficult middle school students (I teach at the high school) were "building D&D characters" without a book or anything and were just playing pretend but due to their particular nature they were unable to keep from fighting and what not. So I agreed to step up and run "a real game" and teach them "the rules." I've never run more than a few throw away single shot games for friends but have played for many years.

The students: All three of them are very high functioning (diagnosed pre-DSM V with Asperger's and either ADHD or OCD). All three of them have genius level IQs (three standard deviations or more away from mean, 145+ but most likely far higher than that). Trouble is their emotional and social skills are the equivalent of a first grader at best.

So my question is... Does anyone have any tips for me?

A couple of my preliminary thoughts:
1) I will be rewarding EXP based upon their social IEP goals instead of encounters defeated.
2) I will have a list of rules posted on a whiteboard that helps them remember what gets them EXP. What rules should be on the list? I'm thinking right now to go with "Be moral in character," "The DM makes the rules," "Work collaboratively" "No Cheating" any other suggestions? I don't have the kids personally in class so I'll go pull their IEPs later today to flush the rules out for their particular needs but what about things that apply to games that I've just taken for granted in the past?
3) What would an ideal adventure be for their first ever game? Does someone have an encounter where they HAVE to work together in some particular way for them to succeed?

I'll give this some more thought and come back and say more later but I'd appreciate any input i could get. I'm nervous that this will backfire and my outing myself as a giant D&D nerd to my coworkers will be for naught.

 

[Janx]

hmm. I am not an expert on kids or kids with complications, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Since the kids are really smart, rules comprehension may not be a problem for them. Still, I would keep the rule-set simple. less to argue about and you can always expand it later.

I'm not as sure about the idea of making the focus be on their "issue", namely social. It would feel smoother to me, to make D&D focus on what it does well (fun combat, being heroic), and let the socialization benefits slide in, without having to hammer it home. kind of like how D&D makes kids practice their math to calculate to-hits and XP, but it doesn't go out and say "the objective of this game is to work on your math skills".

Throw in social situations, advise the kids up front that they need to be nice to the king, if they want to get what they want. Maybe even give them retries.

I'm not advocating doing away with social scenes. Merely not putting any more weight on them than a normal D&D group would. The fact that they exist is how the kids will learn to navigate them and do better in the real world presumably.

If you make the game "all about social skill improvement", you may be destroying the tool the kids have chosen.

But bear in mind, I don't know what I'm talking about...

 

[EKal]

Yeah I understand we want to keep it fun and that is clearly the goal but two things. First I have to be able to sell this to the administration as a good use of our "Social Skills" class block and that means occasional diversions into that curriculum and the use of our vocabulary/jargon as often as possible to reinforce our attempt to advance their social and emotional abilities. Second I'm just going to reward xp for their ability to socialize with each other and adhere to expected social norms (in and out of character) not turn the whole game into a setting for our normal social skills classes.

Think of the kids as lawful-neutral extremists with absolutely no empathy for others, who think the entire world revolves around them.

 

[Cam Banks]

I'm a parent of a kid on the spectrum. He loves RPGs and other games, and I think the key with him is to ensure that you set the rules down ahead of time in a fairly engaging manner and don't stray randomly from them. Kids like these notice and exploit patterns as often as they can, and breaking that without warning can lead them to get overwhelmed. For this reason, "on the fly" isn't always as helpful as you'd think, rules-wise. That said, I've had great success with asking a lot of questions, even leading questions. If this is about social skills learning, then you may want to offer up some character relationship questions in advance. Dungeon World does this with Bonds and it's really engaging. For example, ask them to turn to the player to their left and ask them, "How did my character save you that one time?" or "How did your character introduce me to the group, and what was the bad guy we were fighting?" Stuff like that creates cool backstory and requires them to think about each other as part of a team, even if it's eventually just going to become context for fighting goblins and looting treasure chests.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Ahnehnois]

I am not a special ed teacher, but I do have a B.S. in psychology and grew up with similar disorders in some relatives.

A few thoughts:

People don't like being manipulated or railroaded, and intelligent but insecure people really don't like it. I don't think that the idea of rewarding XP for social goals is going to work. I see it as being very likely to cause disagreements and create a perception of unfairness or favoritism. If your goal is to teach them to work together, I think the base experience of the game already does that well enough. Give them challenges that require multiple characters to overcome and NPCs that require the players to treat them with respect and interact with them, but I don't recommend trying to shove the social aspect down their throat, because if they are really intelligent they will figure out that they are being manipulated and probably will react defensively.

As far as teaching them the rules, I think establishing basics like rule 0 and how to roll dice without "cheating" is important, but I'd leave most of the rules for the players to read about and figure out. Autistic children, particularly those with high intelligence, appreciate a challenge and generally don't get enough intellectual engagement.

 

[EKal]

For example, ask them to turn to the player to their left and ask them, "How did my character save you that one time?" or "How did your character introduce me to the group, and what was the bad guy we were fighting?" Stuff like that creates cool backstory and requires them to think about each other as part of a team, even if it's eventually just going to become context for fighting goblins and looting treasure chests.

Thanks for replying guys.

Yeah. Will ask a bunch of questions during gameplay. Especially about how their characters "feel" about things and how they think other characters (PC & NPC) "feel" about things. I've already talked to their English teacher and they're going to write a backstory as a creative writing project. I guess the plan now is to have them write their characters up, do the initial meet and greet and short adventure and then go back in time and fill in X amount of time where they do as you suggested.

 

[EKal]

I am not a special ed teacher

Me either. I'm a social studies teacher who happens to work in an outplacement facility. Their special education case manager won't be of much help for a few reasons unfortunately.

People don't like being manipulated or railroaded, and intelligent but insecure people really don't like it. I don't think that the idea of rewarding XP for social goals is going to work. I see it as being very likely to cause disagreements and create a perception of unfairness or favoritism. If your goal is to teach them to work together, I think the base experience of the game already does that well enough.

Two things. I have to be able to sell the use of their "Social Skills" class block to the administration. This means that objectives need to be directly linked to their social skills learning goals. Without that they won't be able to play at all as their "Social Skills" class is my only free block during the day and students don't stay after school in this setting. I figured tying the advancement in the game to meeting those objectives means how can the administration say no?

Give them challenges that require multiple characters to overcome and NPCs that require the players to treat them with respect and interact with them, but I don't recommend trying to shove the social aspect down their throat, because if they are really intelligent they will figure out that they are being manipulated and probably will react defensively.

Except it isn't something that is hidden from them. It would be very open to them. They know they are in a class that for them focuses on them getting along with other people and working on meeting social norms. It is what they are there for during that hour. Not really different than going to an algebra class and seeing the objective on the whiteboard for the day being "Learn the distributive property." The goal can't be "Kill Monsters."

As far as teaching them the rules, I think establishing basics like rule 0 and how to roll dice without "cheating" is important, but I'd leave most of the rules for the players to read about and figure out. Autistic children, particularly those with high intelligence, appreciate a challenge and generally don't get enough intellectual engagement.

Following rules and not being oppositional are pretty standard IEP goals for our kids. Those are the kind of rules I'm talking about. The rules for which they will have to conform (for the most part) for us to be able to actually carry out the activity. I'm not really talking about rules of the game. That won't be a problem.

 

[Ahnehnois]

[MENTION=7563]EKal[/MENTION]
I get what you're saying about educational objectives and needing to make the value of D&D clear to admins, and certainly agree that D&D is a good venue for attempting to teach youths with antisocial tendencies how to cooperate. I'm just observing that XP can, even in non-autistic populations, be a divisive element. I'd suggest creating a story goal that requires cooperation to achieve and rewarding all the players when it's achieved, adding a RL reward if it's feasible.

 

[Rune]

"Everyone wins or no one wins." This can apply to NPCs, as well.

 

[nedjer]

Coherent challenges that call for social skills could meet your learning outcome requirements. Colonising a lost continent, survive marooned on a desert island, prepare and carry out the defence of a city under siege. These map easily into social skills, e.g. respectively, demonstrate diplomacy/ make friends or the continent's against you, collaborate to survive or co-ordinate and execute a plan. So, it might be put forward that the PCs could do with finding a way to rally a city under siege in its darkest hour. Whether they choose a cavalry charge, prepare a weapon of huge destruction or organise a sing-a-long is up to them; but they've gone through the process of having to plan/ consider the practical and social skills outcomes that will follow from their choices/ planning.

At that level you might want to be very explicit about expectations and rewards - plus offering some models. They have difficulty with social perspective taking, so it ain't railroading, it's explaining the possible paths through the gameplay and the outcomes likely to follow. They are likely to have difficulty with this if you don't, as they'll probably optomise. In keeping with that I'd suggest a fairly rules light take on D&D.

HTH