Asperger and Role-Playing

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"Lack of pretend play" isn't listed in the DSM-IV criteria for Aspergers, and I was diagnosed using the DSM-IV.

Actually, it's not listed in most of the "official" lists of traits that constitutes AS, either.

Personally, I love RPGs.

Just started a Dungeons & Dragons rpg group with my friends, brother and father!
After I got this suggestion that others who have come very far with an ASD love doing Vampire the Masquerade for many years.

It's AWESOME for the following reasons:
-Get to be in a social situation IRL,
-Practice improvisation!
-Play an outgoing, suave, social etc. character. You get to experience how it is to be 100% different than IRL, and get to see how others react to your jokes and whatnot; WITHOUT real life repercussions! Practice makes perfect!
-You get feedback during play and then some real feedback in the end. (Accepting critique/feedback is hard for me, as I have very low self esteem!).

I loved RPG video games in childhood and early high-school
but last years they stopped being so attractive to me
well, I always valued story more then rpg-elements anyway

but if you mean forum paly-by-post roleplaying then, sure, if only most of roleplayers weren't angsty teenagers

never joined a RL roleplaying circle. I don't even know if these exist in my country.

I'm a gamer, enough said, I have always utterly enjoyed making characters, stories, everything you name it. Dealing with reality is the problem.

I don't know of anything specific. But I would think any workshop on assertiveness, dealing with difficult people, negotiation, conflict resolution, interpersonal skills, etc., would probably have some relevent ideas in it. Maybe there are some manuals on the Web?

I like the idea of constructing a challenging social scenario for training purposes.....the archetypical one is probably the guy who gets his friend to take on the role of a potential partner so he can chat her up, but I think the difficulty is in finding people skilled enough to really play the role authentically. The game is useless if the learning can't be transferred over to real life.

I love role playing games. I even loved the single D&D session I attended - unfortunately we were too few people to continue.

Also, one thing that always irritated me is how Aspie children supposedly don't understand or just don't do roleplay. When I was a child I had a collection of little animal figures, and I used them to reenact books or movies. I could do it for hours.

I used to think I was bucking the Aspie trend too, for similar reasons, but then I realised that all I ever did was to plagiarise other people's ideas. We can play roles, but most of it has to be copycatting. In my case, some of the words will be mine but only because I can't remember the original version exactly. The meaning is the same. I can create bits of original comedy by making small, deliberate alterations to well-known lines, or by "pushing the boat out a bit further," but really I'm just riding on the bandwagon. Even with my music, although it often sounds unique to me, that's often because I've failed to imitate the original perfectly, and I just turn it to my advantage.

Ask me to tell a new story, and I'm stuffed.

I've been diagnosed, and I've fallen on both sides of this.

On the one hand, growing up, my little brother and I had long-running and intensely creative story lines regarding our action figures.

On the other hand, I've played a lot of structured rpgs(D&D 3.5 bring my fave) and really enjoy the systems involved.

I think we like creative play, we just require more structure than the average child when engaging in it. Restrictions actually make for the best creativity sometimes.

I really like RPG and cRPG

But

In RPG/cRPG I'm just playing myself - I cant explain it better - think "what will I do in such situation?", "what will I choose", even "what will I wear"

and I can't play character which is clearly different from me

So I don't know: is it a real "role" playing?

Tabletop RPGs are GOLD. They are a safe environment to step out of your anxieties and inhibitions and test drive social interaction.

"There's a girl at the corner table. She's stirring some kind of multi-layered drink with her straw and wincing every time the music gets loud. Your friend says you should talk to her".

What do you do? You're role playing.

What would you say if you had movie-star looks? Or were a robin-hood swashbuckler? Or were homeless?

RPGs are all about interaction and teamwork. cRPGs take the settings of RPGs and strip out almost all of that in order to give you a visual representation of it.

yup. games make rules. rules are great because then you know what to do. games take the guess work out of situations. i play magic and you best believe there are tons of rules and whats better than interacting with the other humans in a setting where there are so many rules. a lot less can go wrong.