Context: I was diagnosed as autistic as a child and feel that’s important to mention.
For a number of years I and a friend have been working on a fantasy tabletop role playing system on and off in our free time. Think Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Shadow of the Demon Lord, etc … In the past couple months we have made a very large amount of headway and are getting into the actual play testing stages. We are currently at the point of adding a lot of meaningful content to play test including Player Ancestries (humans elves dwarves goblins etc…). The way ancestries currently work is each ancestry has three things that it gives your character and one thing you can choose to take from a list of ancestry specific abilities.
Now we arrive at the gnome in the room. I don’t particularly like gnomes. I don’t dislike them either, I just have never really cared about them. The only gnomes in fiction I think are remotely interesting are Paizo’s where the entire race is cursed to stay motivated and happy or they become crippling depressed, ostracized by society for risk of getting infected with sad, and die. However, I don’t want to rip off someone else’s universe so I want to find my own way to take these guys. To that end I’m wondering if using them as an allegory for autism may make them more interesting and also be drawing from something that I can write from experience.
My worry is that I do want to eventually release this game into the world one day and I can see easily where “gnomes are coded with autistic traits” could easily become “game author compares autistic people to gnomes”.
There is also the option of just not including gnomes at all, this is the easiest solution by far but comes at the cost of disappointing a few members of my primary game group who really likes gnomes.
Thoughts, opinions, comments, and criticism are all welcome.
Also any other gnome related thoughts are incredibly welcome.
Autism can present in many ways and many “levels.” Are you talking about making all of your gnomes a specific, similar presentstion (ASD 1?) Or are you talking about specific stereotypes of autism? Are you talking about giving them all your very specific brand of behaviors associated with an autism diagnosis?
Because this is all important. If you’re making them all have racial traits that are like you, then I say, have at, but maybe don’t call it autism specifically, because you’re representing a specific type and others might feel unrepresented. Or if you’re making them all have behaviors we associate with a specific type of ASD, then make sure there’s room in there for them to present in their unique ways.
Example: All gnomes have ASD traits. Make a roll on a chart for all known associated behaviors, randomly assigning those traits. Maybe this gnome is bad at eye contact, but maybe that one is bad at eye contact and also hypersensitive to sound. Maybe this one is extremely interested in obscure music, or that one is really great at drawing.
There’s a lot to figure out but I think you can do it! If you want to. It’s cool to write things we’re familiar with but also to be true to our own experience. I have ADHD but my behaviors are very different from my ADHD boyfriend, and both our types are valid.