I’ve had similarly poor experiences, unfortunately. I have two autistic friends, and they’re good people, but they both have very… specific ideas of what a fantasy world must entail, one of which is far more attainable than the other, if they could properly play along. So one wished to be a mary sue-esque elven princess wizard, which I okayed because they were at least trying, although decisions such as weapons, prepared spells, and especially combat were harder for them so I guided most of those. My other autistic friend was particularly difficult though. His favorite character is from a retro video game, and he wanted to play that character, which by itself is fine. However, he wanted to play his fanfiction version, which he said was a “lone wolf” who wouldn’t stick with the party, and he wanted his uber-special one-shot sword. I worked to bring him down a peg and got him to agree that, for the sake of the mission, he should stay with the party and if “lone wolf” is particularly important we can do games outside of the main ones too. Unfortunately that session ended rather poorly because not one of my 5 players could focus.
The last session I tried a year or so ago, and had the same person fanfic-writer attempting to demand control for everyone in the party because he “was the better tactician” because he “played Fire Emblem before”. My players ignored him and he got upset, and I had another player leave for unrelated reasons (D&D just wasn’t their thing, which I understood).
Now he’s been “trying” to make his own campaign, so he can get the control he desires from running the monsters, but that’s been somehow slower than his other projects.
Typing this out made me sad too, I haven’t been able to DM properly for a while.
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I’ve had similarly poor experiences, unfortunately. I have two autistic friends, and they’re good people, but they both have very… specific ideas of what a fantasy world must entail, one of which is far more attainable than the other, if they could properly play along. So one wished to be a mary sue-esque elven princess wizard, which I okayed because they were at least trying, although decisions such as weapons, prepared spells, and especially combat were harder for them so I guided most of those. My other autistic friend was particularly difficult though. His favorite character is from a retro video game, and he wanted to play that character, which by itself is fine. However, he wanted to play his fanfiction version, which he said was a “lone wolf” who wouldn’t stick with the party, and he wanted his uber-special one-shot sword. I worked to bring him down a peg and got him to agree that, for the sake of the mission, he should stay with the party and if “lone wolf” is particularly important we can do games outside of the main ones too. Unfortunately that session ended rather poorly because not one of my 5 players could focus.
The last session I tried a year or so ago, and had the same person fanfic-writer attempting to demand control for everyone in the party because he “was the better tactician” because he “played Fire Emblem before”. My players ignored him and he got upset, and I had another player leave for unrelated reasons (D&D just wasn’t their thing, which I understood).
Now he’s been “trying” to make his own campaign, so he can get the control he desires from running the monsters, but that’s been somehow slower than his other projects.
Typing this out made me sad too, I haven’t been able to DM properly for a while.