TTRPG Rules as Accommodations for Autistic Players

22 Mar, 2026

A few weeks ago I recorded an episode with John Machnee for his podcast Christianity on the Spectrum, which reports on his ethnographic study of autistic Christians and ex-Christians. The specific episode, "Autism and Table Top Role Playing Games," which was released earlier today, isn't about religion, however, but tabletop games. I hope you'll give it a listen, as we introduce a range of topics I think are worth further discussion, including how we both as autistic people feel uncomfortable and restricted when GMs use the so-called Rule of Cool and how the autistics vs. theatre kids dichotomy isn't always helpful (not least because a lot of the theatre kids are autistic). At the end of the episode, Jon asks me to discuss a particular Bluesky thread of mine from a few months back, in which I called attention to the way Daggerheart is inhospitable to me as an autistic person; alas, I think I made a bit of a hash of my response (what can I say? it was the end of the night and I'd had a hard few days). I'd like to give the explanation another shot here.

Image source: the Christianity on the Spectrum icon, used with permission

But before I get to that, I have two points of introduction.

• First, welcome to everyone coming here from the podcast. You can look at My Character Sheet for a bit of orientation.

• Second, I haven't talked much about being autistic on this blog before, though in anticipation of this post I've gone back and added an #autism tag to everything that seems especially relevant. The necessary context for now is that I am autistic.¹

That out of the way, let's talk about Daggerheart and rules as accommodations for autistic players.

Daggerheart And Its Discourse

I want to start out by emphasizing that I'm not saying anyone is bad for enjoying Daggerheart. If you like the game, that's great. I'm happy for you. There are things about the game that I quite appreciate, such as the way fairies are insectile, giants grow more eyes as they age, and halflings give their friends hope. ("What are we holding on to, Sam?" "That there's some good in this world, Mister Frodo. And it's worth fighting for.") I have heard only praise for the Hope and Fear mechanics, and I think it's well-deserved. Moreover, although I don't understand from a game-design perspective what motivated the system's particular relationship between classes and domains, that type of artificial symmetry really appeals to the sort of mind that I have.

That being said, I'm convinced that a specific problem I have with Daggerheart illustrates the way some current trends in tabletop games can exclude many autistic players, and I think that's worth discussing. The main thrust of this post will be that consistent and consistently-applied rules are, or at least can be, accommodations for autistic players, and that I hope more people will remember that when designing and GMing games. One thing I'm not doing is making a moral judgement about what anyone does with this information afterwards.

Now, as I said, Jon asked me about a Bluesky thread I wrote in October 2025, which I'll reproduce here so you don't have to click through:

I've been looking at the SRD for DAGGERHEART and so far my overall impressions are that

a) it has lots neat ideas in it, especially (as everyone has said) the systems to do with Hope and Fear,

and b) just reading about the Spotlight system (or, really, anti-system) gives me anxiety.

It seems very much like a system made by theatre kids, for theatre kids.

I don't get much of a sense that Mercer and the others who designed it understand how or why clear, consistent rules give many players comfort at the table and confidence in their choices.

The alternative Spotlight rules make it tolerable but it's still not something I would ever want to run.

Which is a shame because, again, there are some cool ideas in here. But I think I would hate running it as-is.

On the one hand, it's important to be able to say, "This isn't for me, and that's OK." On the other hand, clear, explicit rules are accommodations for players who do not have the social skills to assert themselves at the table, and I think it would be good if more ttrpg designers knew this.

(Rules are also an accommodation tool to protect tables from players with poor social skills who might otherwise monopolize the game or step on other players' toes.)

At some point I am going to write up a longer blog post about this because I think it needs to be said fully and clearly, and not just as a response to DAGGERHEART. Autistic people like me do much better with explicit, consistent rules, and it would be better if more of the hobby understood that.

I see I was accidentally ambiguous in this post.

When I say, "Autistic people like me," I mean, "Those autistic people who are like me (as opposed to autistic people who are not like me)," not, "Those people who are, like me, autistic."

I apologize for the error.

(I am trying very hard not to say, "This is anti-autistic ableism," because I don't think that's true. Right now it feels true to me, though, and I'm worried that feeling has come out in this thread.)

(My social skills are pretty good, in fact, but they require effort, and in my downtime I don't want to deal with a vibes-based non-system like DAGGERHEART's Spotlight.)

Actually, more to the point, I would hate playing in it even more, I think.

In retrospect, I missed something crucial here: I didn't explain what specific presentations of autism cause this problem. I get into that on the podcast, fortunately, but not in the Bluesky thread. Since writing this, it has come to my attention that many people worry about Daggerheart's Spotlight mechanic for reasons similar to me, but what I have not seen is any discussion of how the Spotlight mechanic could make the game difficult for autistic players specifically (though the hobby is big enough now that I could easily have missed it). So I'll explain, starting with the text itself.

Here are the relevant rules from Daggerheart's SRD, page 35:

The spotlight is a symbol that represents the table’s attention—and therefore the immediate focus of both the narrative and the game mechanics. Any time a character or player becomes the focus of a scene, they “are in the spotlight” or “have the spotlight.”

The spotlight moves around the table organically as scenes unfold unless a mechanical trigger determines where the spotlight goes next. For example, when a player fails an action roll, the mechanics prompt the GM to seize the spotlight and make a GM move.

On the next page, it says the following:

Daggerheart’s turns don’t follow a traditional, rigid format: there is no explicit initiative mechanic and characters don’t have a set number of actions they can take or things they can do before the spotlight passes to someone else. A player with the spotlight describes what their character does and the spotlight simply swings to whoever:

A. the fiction would naturally turn it toward
B. hasn’t had the focus in a while, or
C. a triggered mechanic puts it on

It then gives alternative rules:

If your group prefers a more traditional action economy, you can use tokens to track how many times a player has had the spotlight: At the start of a session or scene each player adds a certain number of tokens (we recommend 3) to their character sheet and removes a token each time they take an action. If the spotlight would swing to someone without any tokens, it swings to someone else instead. Once every player has used all their available tokens, players refill their character sheet with the same number of tokens as before, then continue playing.

For those of you who don't understand why just reading this makes me flinch, let me break it down for you. To start with, although the text says, "the spotlight simply swings to whoever [etc]," there is nothing simple about it. That point should be obvious, because what follows is a list of possible candidates, but that's not the worst of it. No, the worst part is that the first two criteria, whoever "the fiction would naturally turn it toward" and whoever "hasn't had the focus in a while," require a complicated calibration between all the players at the table about narrative tastes and expectations on the one hand and turn-taking on the other. Words like "organically" and "naturally" obscure something important, which is that this way of doing things requires a pretty sophisticated assessment of how the other people at the table are feeling and what they expect to see from the game, performed by all or at least most of those same people, on a constant on-going basis. Not everyone will "naturally" come to the same conclusion about who most obviously gets to act next; the trick is to get everyone on the same page. Many neurotypical people (though not all) are able to do this kind of calibration intuitively, at least if they're playing with people from the same milieu as them, so they often don't realize how complicated it is. It is complicated, though, and if you're autistic in the way that I'm autistic, you'll find these assessments quite draining to perform. (That's also true for anyone who has a cultural mismatch with the rest of the table, or who otherwise struggles to get on the same page as the rest of the group.) In short, the Spotlight anti-system requires a person to read the room, and autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impairs your ability to read the room.

Turn-Taking

It might help if I focus on one aspect of this: many autistic people struggle with turn-taking in conversation. I certainly do. (See, for instance, Etana's account in this bit of the previous Christian on the Spectrum podcast episode, "Uta Frith is Wrong About Autism (sort of) - With Etana.") This can show up in a number of ways; some of us are prone to interrupting, while others can go on long monologues without giving others a chance to talk, while others yet have trouble inserting themselves into the conversation at all. Personally, I'm prone to the last two, depending on the situation. If I'm comfortable with the people I'm talking to, I talk too much, while I have trouble entering the conversation if I'm not comfortable with them; either way, I'm much worse for it when I'm tired. I'm self-conscious about talking too much, and sometimes this means I can withdraw instead. In other words, knowledge of the problem helps a bit, but not much.

I've noticed all of these problems come up in roleplaying games; I don't want to dominate planning sessions or social encounters, but I'm never sure where the line is between "full participant in the game" and "overbearing jerk." I sometimes find this stressful. I don't find it stressful enough to stop playing, by any means, nor is it stressful enough that I don't enjoy myself, especially as there isn't as much to worry about if there are only one or two other players, which is usually the case for me. Still, I would be happier if I were better at turn-taking, and I imagine my fellow players would be happier as well. The good news is there's a time when I don't have to worry about this nearly so much: combat encounters.

In many systems, combat is kind to me. There's a specific moment in a sequence when I get to act, and there are only so many things I am allowed to do on my turn. The rules do all the hard parts of turn-taking for me. Something like Dungeons & Dragons is best for this: within each combat encounter, turn order is the same every time, so I know well in advance when it will be my turn; the rules for what I get to do on my turn are quite clear, if sometimes complex; my character is the only one who gets to act on my turn (with the limited and clearly defined exceptions of certain reactions), so I don't have to negotiate with anyone about when and how my character acts. Simultaneous initiative, like the system used in All-Out Apocalypse, is almost as good. Although, depending on how your rolls go, you do sometimes need to negotiate with your fellow players who chooses their actions first, it doesn't matter that much because everyone's actions are resolved simultaneously anyway and everyone still gets to do the same amount each round.² At the other extreme, while I understand why group initiative's tactical and cooperative potential is appealing, for me it takes away so much of what's nice about combat: in group initiative, you have to gauge when you should jump into the conversation and take the action you want to take. At least in group initiative, though, everyone is still limited to a set number of actions per round, so you can't overstep as much in the amount of things you do. And of course there are various other ways of handling turns between these two extremes. Initiative systems are accommodations for my disability, with varying degrees of usefulness. No one likely intended them for this purpose, of course, nor is that all they are; each system for ordering actions in a combat encounter has a different effect on how the game feels and on the tactical possibilities open to players and GMs. But they are nonetheless social accommodations, insofar as they do the hard part of turn-taking for me.

The Spotlight anti-system, unfortunately, is not a social accommodation at all, at least not for me. Not only does it fail to tell you when you get to act, it also fails to circumscribe how much you can do. From my reading of it, it seems like more assertive players not only get to act first most of the time, they also get to do more things each combat encounter than less assertive players get to do. As an autistic person who struggles with turn-taking, that would cause me either a lot of anxiety, because I'd be afraid of doing too much too early; or some amount of disappointment, because I would hang back and let other people do all the cool stuff; or, most likely, both. The alternative rules at least partially limit how much a person can do before the other members of the party gets to act, but they don't do anything about the rest of it. Maybe I could live with these alternate rules, if the number of tokens we start out with are quite low.

Mechanics and/as Inclusion

I'm sure there are autistic players who love the Spotlight. While I'm also quite sure some of those enthusiasts are hogging the Spotlight without realizing it, such that their games would in fact go better for their fellow players if they used a more rigid initiative structure, I'm equally sure that other autistic players aren't doing that and the Spotlight might genuinely be the best way to handle combat for their tables. I don't for a second begrudge them their enjoyment of Daggerheart. And there must be yet other autistic people who don't like the Spotlight anti-system but are willing to put up with it because they love everything else about Daggerheart or because that's the game their friends want to play and it doesn't bother them as much as it would bother me. I'm making no claims about all autistic people here; what I'm saying is that, for those autistic people who specifically struggle with turn-taking, a more structured and, yes, "rigid" initiative system is going to make life easier. How much easier will depend on various factors, like how much background social anxiety they have and how self-aware (or self-conscious) they are about their turn-taking difficulties.² Daggerheart excludes me, specifically as an autistic person, but that doesn't mean it excludes all autistic people and that doesn't mean it's a bad game. No game can include everyone, and the benefits it introduces might be worth the trade-off.

I think many of us are hesitant to say that a game element excludes certain players, and we're hesitant because we think that if we were to say that, we'd have to jettison the mechanic. I don't think that's true, though. Writing your game in English excludes everyone who doesn't speak English, but sometimes that's still the best thing that you, in your context, can do. Similarly, it's OK if there are games that I, as an autistic person, am not comfortable playing. All I'm asking GMs and other game designers to understand is that it is a trade-off: the more your initiative system or anti-system requires your players to implicitly negotiate how much they act and when, the less welcoming it will be to autistic people who struggle with turn-taking. Whether the other benefits your system creates are worth that cost is something only you can decide. (After all, if you only have to consider the needs of a single table and no one like me is sitting at it, then the cost might be very low indeed! You don't need to make decisions for the hospitality of people who aren't there.)

Of course, this isn't just about turn order and this isn't really about Daggerheart. Any mechanic, or lack of a mechanic, that requires your players to gauge one another's expectations and conform their behaviour to unspoken norms will make the game less welcoming for many autistic players. It's worth noting, though, that any such mechanic, or lack of a mechanic, can also make things harder for everyone who plays with an autistic person, too, when the alternative would help us avoid violating a social norm that keeps everybody comfortable. Rules can be like guard rails in that way.³ Again, it's always up to you whether or not that's a trade-off you're willing to make for the sake of whatever benefit your mechanic, or lack of mechanic, brings to the table. To this end, I will recommend again that you listen to the podcast episode, in which Jon and I talk about other mechanics and anti-mechanics, like the Rule of Cool, that some of us find unwelcoming.

(Someday we will have to talk about how "rulings, not rules" is both a philosophically-true statement about how we necessarily play tabletop games whether we acknowledge it or not, and also exactly the kind of anti-mechanic that can make things harder for many autistic players. I'm not sure what to do with that conflict, though, and today is not that day.)

OK but, Really, What I Am Supposed to Do about This?

I think it would be fair for you to ask at this point if I really mean it when I say that I just want you to know this information, and that I'm not asking you to do anything in particular with it. After all, people sometimes say that when they have a very clear idea about what they want you to do. But there are good reasons in this case to say that you'll need to make the assessment yourself.

To start with, even if you have people at your table who benefit from Dungeons & Dragons-style initiative, you may also have people at your table who do not. Mechanics that work well for autistic players might be unwelcoming for players with different limitations. A nice well-defined system might offer the kind of predictability that gives an autistic person like me confidence, but it might also be too complicated for someone who doesn't have the same memory or attention that I do. Some autistic players might be among them. For that matter, there are autistic people who chafe against rules they didn't themselves design (or against ones they did) and who therefore might struggle with the kind of reliable approach to tabletop rules that allows me to flourish. You can call all this "competing access needs" or "evidence of the Fall," as you like. How much this is going to cause a problem for you will depend on who's playing your game.

At the end of the day, as a GM you can only do your best to talk with your players and watch whether anyone at the table seems to have trouble participating. Unfortunately, there are real limits to talking to your players; many autistic people struggle to identify what is making them uncomfortable or articulate it in a way that others will understand. Even when we don't, a history of social exclusion can often mean we don't want to inconvenience anyone by admitting something is wrong or by asking the other players to follow the rules a bit better. In other words, a large part of the reason I think it's worth posting about this at all is that I suspect most GMs overestimate how well they understand their players. But there's not much you can do about your players' alexithymia or social anxiety, you can only do your best, and the limits of the oft-repeated "talk to your players [like adults]" maxim is a discussion for another post. For now I just want to emphasize two points: first, you may not know your players as well as you think you do; and second, your players may not know themselves as well as they think they do. This is a hobby with an unusual high proportion of autistic players, and not all of them know they are autistic (or know they have trouble with turn-taking).

In other words, I want you to know certain things about autism and turn-taking and rules at large so that you can work out what your table needs. I cannot say in advance what that might be.

Conclusion

Altogether, many rules in TTRPGs limit player options and therefore serve as accommodations for those autistic people who, like me, sometimes struggle to gauge how best to behave in a given social situation. The current trend to be more flexible with rules or to remove rules altogether surely feels liberating to some but is not so liberating to me. (The even more recent reaction to that trend, which makes rules hostile or unclear or impossible to follow, is also less liberating to me than it appears to be for others, but that too is beyond the scope of this post.) There are rules that act like guard rails: they protect both me and my fellow players from some of the consequences of my social disability. There are also rules that act like trellises: they give me vertical space to grow. And of course there are rules that act as bear traps, breaking and binding, and rules that act in other ways besides. The task remains to identify which rules act which way for whom, what other costs these rules have, and what to do about it.

(Many thanks to my fellow nerds in the Christianity on the Spectrum Discord server, some of whom have helped me clarify my thoughts on this matter.)

Source: "Guard Rail," mrhayata, 2013, CC BY-SA 2.0.

#All-Out Apocalypse #Daggerheart #DnD #autism #for GMs #game systems