Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Essay

No. 5 (2024): Welcome to Join: Exploring Access and Accessibility in Analog Role-Playing Games

Autistic Social Advocacy as Accessibility in TRPGs

Submitted
April 2, 2024
Published
2024-11-23

Abstract

The realm of tabletop role-playing gaming has been a popular hobby for autistics of all ages and backgrounds for decades. Many autistics utilize role-playing games not just as a hobby but as a means of social connection and community building. Given tabletop role-playing game’s alignment with autistic populations, it is not a surprise that throughout the years, therapists and social skills coaches that specialize in treating autistics have looked to tabletop role-playing games as a therapeutic modality to teach social skills to autistic youth and adults. However, special attention must be paid to the fact that at a fundamental level, the social skills that autistics need to flourish in their own autistic-centered communities do not necessarily align with the traditional social skills that are taught in generic non-autistic (allistic) social skills curricula. As such, this paper argues that within the case of autistic social skills groups that utilize TRPGs as an educational medium, a whole new set of autistic social advocacy skills can be taught. This allows autistics to flourish in their own communities as well as allistic ones.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.