Everyone at my table has autism. Half of them have ADD.
Any DM's have tardwrangling tips? I love these people to death, but they can not stop talking out of turn, shouting when they think shit gets exciting and talking over each other. Also one of them keeps making the stupidest meme comments and I want to smack him.
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I'm an autist. I encourage you to be clear without being mean.
>Everyone at my table has autism. Half of them have ADD.
Birds of the feather...
Yeah no shit. Especially with this hobby.
They're not doing it to be mean. They're genuinely exciting about the game so even if I tell them to chill, it just builds up again.
My mom used to hold out her hand in my face and loudly say "MODULATE" whenever I was babbling, talking too loud, etc.
In my experience, autists and ADDers really hate silverware sounds. So keep a spoon handy and bang it against a glass when you need everyone's attention. I also like to kill the background music and stare at the person who is being disruptive - this will remind them of times in class when they were sperging too hard and the angry energy coming from their teacher and classmates managed to pierce their autism shields.
It also really helps to burn off some steam before the session even begins. Have everyone go on a quick walk with you through your neighborhood with you. Make this a ritual where you hash out some things and plan for future games. A lot of these guys have been stewing in their own juices at their hellhole call center job and not exercising all week which of course would drive even the dullest normie insane.
Unironically, implement phone jail.
Make it a thing. EVERYONE takes part.
a lot of this is good but also I am contractually obligated as a $JANY holder to say
>get off the internet, varg.
I think a decent ritual setup might be
>Everyone put phones in phone jail
>Everyone go on a short walk together
>Return, immediately begin game
it puts something between your players and the endless dopamine distraction hit of scrolling their socials.
Problem is they use tablets for DnD Beyond.
So the problem is not only are they monkey brain zoomers, but you are playing the most dogshit version of d&d possible, while allowing them to jerk off over some garbage app.
Please remove yourself from the hobby entirely
Yeah, no. I've come to accept people texting under the table when it's not their turn but everyone needs to have a paper sheet and actual dice.
Honestly I think psychology/psychiatry is all nonsense. Like of course you're going to "depressed" if you're disconnected from God/nature and don't exercise or build things. "Oppositional defiance disorder" - more like "I don't have a dad to teach my how to be a man disorder". You don't read books or patiently study new skills and instead stare at a phone and Marvel flicks all day, maybe fix that before deciding your shitty attention span is because of brain chemicals.
You have a midwhit’s grasp on psych anon.
It is very much a science, though it’s one that is more situationally deductive than route procedure.
To avoid just being critical, what you seem to be doing is looking at either presentations, or end results, and not the issue.
A person will stay inside and not make things due to being in a depressive state. A kid with ODD can’t be taught by their father figure because it’s a compulsive behaviour.
Yes, not all moody people/teens and all IS right, and diagnosing pre-adults is generally a bad idea, but there’s a wealth of difference between angsty teen and compulsively does the opposite of what you tell them to do, or gloomy, and physiologically unable to produce a chemical required for body and brain function.
>t.worked with and wrangled people with emotional and behavioural disorders, have one myself, and specifically had to wrangle a kid with ODD
You're the one that doesn't understand what they're talking about. You are not speaking from a place of evidence, or about a practice with scientific rigor, but you are talking about something with a severe replicability crisis. Take it to Ganker, or better yet take it to /x/ because it's horseshit.
medicine has a worse replication crisis, which is a matter or publication practice anyway
Tipped your hand too much on this one.
vaguepost in lieu of substance
I feel like phone jail is something people could learn to really love and look forward to but would be horribly offended and make them quit when you proposed it.
I supposed it would help to have a player in on it with you to encourage the others(assistant tard-wrangler) and make a fun game of it at first, eg the first person who goes for their phone has to pay for the pizza.
the first time I saw phone jail was like 12 years ago when my dad, my cousin and I went to whistler for spring skiing. there was a high school band competition/convention there at the time, and we were people watching the difference between one group of kids who all put their phones face down in the middle of the table compared to the ones at the table next to them, who did not.
Yeah just abandon ship and go play with some functioning human beings
Do they actually have autism that was diagnosed by a professional, or are they pretending to be mentally disabled because they want to feel special and have an excuse for their bad behavior?
Everyone is diagnosed.
Gibe tbh
play beer and pretzels games
Quit fricking babying them, explicitly tell them what you want. If you treat them like children they'll act like children.
t. autism and adhd
This. If they want to be adults treat them like adults. If they want to be children treat them like children
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What is the shtick for April fools exactly, and how do I get tbh
You're late to the party tbh.
See the red text above the thread tbh? That's the blotter tbh, we used to use it for site news. Click the link there, frick around with stocks, and put $tbh in the options field tbh.
Thank you tbh. Been at work all day. I fricking need this.
I stopped fricking around when I got to mogul, but the passive gains didn't stop tbh.
Ganker has unironically been more fun today than it's been for years tbh.
But I have a feeling it might stop at midnight in one of the US timezones and that's soon tbh.
Have fun while you can
For ADD remind them what is going on when they inevitably zone out. Else they will lose track of what is happening and end up in a death spiral of 0 engagement. It's not an insult to your DMing, it just happens.
Tell them that you need them to pay attention. Describe to them how paying attention looks to you (ie., be quiet and listen). Be watchful for and REWARD good behavior. "You've been paying attention for 15 minutes, good work, here's a snack" or something.
Be clear that there are things you need them to do in order for it to be tolerable to you.
you can't really punish your way out of this. Punishing bad behavior is shit. Youll need to thank them for good behavior. Praise good behavior, lather on the praise with a trowel (a lot of praise).
These are adults, not pre-schoolers. You sound insane. They don't need treat bribes. OP is the odd one out, he needs to relax the reins and stop being a stick in the mud.
my tip is to stop thinking about this shit as a significant thing with a big scary label attached to it, just try to understand the people you play with and if you get along it's good
Why do you homosexuals post about your inadequacy like it's a badge of honor?
OP is based for not giving up and looking into solutions to keep the group going, especially with such a hard bunch.
>Everyone at my table has autism. Half of them have ADD.
ADD is part of the spectrum.
They all have autism.
They all have autism. Half of them have autism plus hyperactivity.
>Everyone at my table has autism.
So a normal D&D table then?
Play to the table's strengths. You're not going to get long BBEG monologues or deep roleplay out of them. But you are going to have a lot of fun with autistic reactions to social encounters and unintended slapstick comedy hour. Simply accept that this is the kind of game you are GMing now.
As for tardwrangling tips: give them 10 minutes to socialize and settle in at the start of the session. Give a clear signal that this period is over that you do every time. I like to break in and say "okay who remembers what happened last session?" and let them recap, filling in anything they seem to have forgotten.
Sometimes they will go off track and talk ooc. Allow it a bit but bring them back regularly. It's a sort of pressure release that needs to occur but letting it continue will derail the whole season.
Dude I've come to the conclusion there's nothing you can do. You just need to prune the worst players. I've decided that's what I need to do after our last session when one of our players got "eepy" 30 minutes in and wanted to have a break for the 3rd session in a row. 3 out of 5 of my current players are fantastic, but the problem is the 2 mouthbreathers are girlfriend and other friend who will cry for weeks if we kick him. I swear it boggles my mind how some people can't put their phones down and pay attention for more than 5 minutes at a time. I just want to play my autistic dice game!
>Also one of them keeps making the stupidest meme comments and I want to smack him.
Jesus christ they found me
I would like to recommend the solution our table has for this similar problem: The cup of speaking.
There is a cup, and it goes around the table clockwise. Whoever has the cup, gets to do their thing, and has primary talking privileges. Other people in the area can interact with he who wields the cup and start a conversation with him, but the cup wielder gets to do his actions.
It is considered polite not to hold onto the cup for too long. And thus, everyone gets to share the spotlight.
>It is considered polite not to hold onto the cup for too long.
Anon, they're autistic. They won't give a shit.
t. Autist
Kill everyone involved
this is the real reason I'm a filthy nogames
frick being a human dogsitter
It helps tremendously that people have diagnoses to hold on to so they can be self-aware about their dysfunction. Handling someone who has autism but knows they have autism is a collaborative effort. Handling someone who has autism but doesn't know or actively refuses to acknowledge the possibility is just an unsolvable conflict. A simple "Okay, dial it back a notch." between ADHD players, or explaining something more thoroughly to someone with autism when they get frustrated, is incredibly efficient when everyone knows that these things are done on the premise of facilitating good social hygiene.
Getting everyone on the same page and wanting to have others regulate them is the only "true" solution I've found, and even then our table needs to leave room for conflict. We just remember that at the end of the day we're just temporarily upset, and then we go back to having fun.
>Half of them have ADD.
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons¿???
As a brain-damaged autist with ADHD, I recommend you play a simple but flexible OSR system and hit the players with constant threats and tension to keep them speculating. Social dangers are, if anything, even better for this than combat dangers. Put them in a position to seize some barrier keep in a destabilized wartorn land, have various factions of distinctly fantastical but contrasting ideology, and turn them loose. As long as they're under pressure, they'll make most of the plothooks for you. Best of luck tardwrangling them, you're going to need it.
Bonus group XP that's forfeited if someone checks their phone outside of designated breaks. Just a gentle 'no phones at the table' rule could probably help a lot.
Having a smaller group (max 3) and a system or a style that moves fast (don't linger on scenes, resolution is simple)
Redirect idle talk, tactfully or frankly
Sounds like a normal table to me. It's a fricking game, of course the players will get excited and talk and joke and shit.
Keep a simple base for you game and plan for banter in between stuff. Make it all easy for you and the players to keep track of and flesh stuff out when they ask for, or you think they need more detail. If you try and create a tightly wound watch of a game it'll probably just be frustrating for everyone.
For attitude be calm but authoritative. The simple base helps in that if a player is getting frazzled or anxious you can offer the the one-stop of "chill out, hold up" followed by offering a relevant detail, bit of lore, or a reframing of the situation.
If they like to talk it's better to aim the talk in an actual direction and letting it blow of steam as it moves rather than letting it settle into one moment. Keep things moving. If the party is fixated on one thing, keep it moving by developing the thing they're focused on.
If it's an excited group, it's better to meet their energy in the middle and use it than to constantly have to constant back and forth of overhype and discipline.
>neurodivergent
Just call a moron what it is, anon.
Reral talk: has anyone on this board run a game with a completely non-autiatc player group?
Realer talk: Has anyone on this board run a game with a completely non-autistic GM?