I've been playing DnD for about a year and a bit. I am also autistic and have found it tricky to get to grips with. I've had fun recently understanding my character, playing to his advantage. But sometimes I've found my boyfriend to be quite abrasive with me and only me, when I try and do something he doesn't want me to be able to do. I come from a background of debating and discussing and if I ask 'can I do [x]' and the answer is just a straight up 'NO' I like to ask 'okay, but what about if [y] is the case?'. I just can't help it, it feels natural to add that extra bit of context just so people are the same page as me. I've found that when I do this, my boyfriend takes this tone of voice that I can only describe as 'exasperated'. And it really hurts. I just want to understand and make sure I'm not missing out on something because of a misunderstanding. So to hear the voice that goes along with an eye-roll hurts. I literally never hear him speak to his friends like this - but maybe they're not saying things that piss him off?
Anyway, that's just to explain how my brain works.
Recently, we moved on to a new campaign, it's not DnD, it's another engine (?). We've played two sessions so far. Multiple things happened last night that just got to me.
- I began to ask "can I-" after someone's turn, but because it wasn't my turn in the initiative, my boyfriend just flat out interrupted me with 'NO.'
- I succeeded on hitting a monster, neglecting to specify where (my bad), but when it hit, boyfriend said "your bat crashes into its side" and I corrected him with "head!" because I had intended to aim for the head. He said I didn't roll high enough. Sure. Then later, I rolled the same thing, and boyfriend accepted a hit to the head. This part is definitely my fault and I was projecting my frustrations from earlier, but I kicked up a bit of a fuss about it saying "I rolled the same as last time, how come this hit?"
- Boyfriend asked me where I wanted to go on the map, I said "top right". Later, it transpired, he had misunderstood me as he started to draw my character's path, so before it became a problem (i.e. before he told me stuff I shouldn't know having not actually entered the room), I asked "wait, where do you think I wanted to go?" and he, again, started using that fucking tone of voice. Like I was deliberately causing some big problem.
- I asked whether I'd be 'in the same general vicinity as everyone else' if I were to go in room A. This was apparently a problematic question. I don't know why, but I got the same exasperated tone again.
So I spoke to him after and told him I needed to talk to him about the game we had just played. He told me that I'm disruptive and the game is fluid. I asked him for more gentleness and understanding that I'm not intentionally doing this and that just makes me not want to play when I'm treated like some disruptive school child. I said YES, the tantrum about rolling the same number was completely my own frustration coming out, but the rest of it I don't think it was me. He apologised, and said it's not his intention, but this isn't the first time I've had to ask him not to talk to me in that tone of voice, or to talk to me like I'm stupid.
TL;DR - boyfriend can be abrasive during RPGs and it leaves me not wanting to play
Submitted April 30, 2019 at 01:00AM by ParchedVogue http://bit.ly/2XZ5f5v
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