How do I accommodate a player who asks for more structure when Roll For Shoes inherently lacks it?

You and the other players count, too.

Frankly, from the way you describe the situation, there’s nothing you could have done here to accommodate her needs short of running a different game than what you came prepared for — a scenario in D&D or another structured system.

Denise couldn't handle the freeform of RFS, as she told you and as her panic attacks later on confirmed. You came to run a table of RFS with a group of five other players, who were all up for it.

The D&D tables were “full" (maybe because of seating space? One player more at a table of 4-5 shouldn't really be a problem from a game perspective). They apparently declined to make an exception for her and allow her to join one of those tables. So why should she expect you make one that upends your entire game?

She came late and the spots at the game she wanted to play were taken. Tough luck. Maybe she can learn from it come earlier next time, so that won’t happen.

It appears to me, it also is better than going through panic attacks by participating in a game that by its very nature is not suited to her would have been to sit this one out, just go home, kibitz what her friends are playing, or just observe your or another game as a bystander. There’s an old saying that no gaming is better than bad gaming.

You could have suggested this to her: to not play rather than have a bad experience. If she then still wants to, that’s her decision, not yours. But she cannot expect that you warp entirely what you all came to do, just because she wants or needs to play another kind of game.

Make sure they know what they sign up for

You said it yourself, I told you in chat that a games club I am in tries to prevent exactly that: People need to be aware of what they get in for.

Now, let me be frank: not all games are for everyone. Some people can't see the line between sexy funny parody and creepy sexy. So don't play Maid RPG with them! Some players try to outsmart the GM. So force them to tell you the desired outcome or say No. Some players are overly enthusiastic. So you need to channel them. Others try to Mary Sue and Godmode, and those are a huge can of worms in their own with their own handling ways... Either way, tons of different problems generated from Players not fitting the game they joined, due to tone or player disposition.

Now, I said, people need to be aware what they are in for, and I have experience from club gaming. GMs in my club tell upfront what the game's theme and system is, and what tone is to be expected. That does a lot to make people who require a strict corset of rules to feel good from showing up in a FATE or Powered by the Apocalypse or even a freeform game. We are out front and tell people, "This game is rules light," or "This is a game for adults," or "You are going to kill Nazis in droves".

But here you were left with the worst situation: The player did apparently not have a choice to be in that game. You stepped up to run a game when all other tables were already overfilled. The player had the choice between a game they didn't know and which is utterly incompatible with their needs, and no game at all. And that is the problem, but it is not your problem alone. It's the problem of the organisation's team.

It's a problem for the organizers

You did a great thing running a game on negative notice. You can do that with some games, but all of them are more freeform-esque or storytelling-based than classic D&D. Those handcuff games are nigh impossible to be constrained down in a way that would be comfortable for someone with that special need.

And the problems that arose from your game night should allow you to talk to the organisers to make some smaller changes in how groups are assigned and handled. It actually only takes two minor changes:

1. GM should somehow tell what they run, and what the game is about.
2. Players should not be seated at tables just because a spot is free.

Why those two from what my club does different from yours?¹

You told us that tables in your club are assigned first come first served, and that people fill up tables on their own. But the GM could leave a tiny "hangout" at the front desk or message board, telling people what game they run tonight. Like you'd see at a convention. One page at most, but it needs to be enough to tell what the game is about and expects. Like, you could have a slightly more verbose version of "OD&D: Dungeon of Mad Mage. Note: Humans only", "VTM (20): Houston Camarilla. NOTE: Themes of Horror & Blood" or "Roll for Shoes: Donut Shot Spider Cleanup. NOTE: super freeform, rules light shenanigans".

Now, the second rule is more something the organizers have to not do: they should never say "There's a spot at Bobble's table" and leave it at that. They need to at least tell the players about Bobble's game. That's why I said to write the little ad. That is what they can show the player, and only if the player is interested they can approach the game table and learn more.

But what if they chose a bad game for them?

That prevents most of the problem of choosing a game that has incompatible themes (and shifts it to a problem of needing to pitch the game properly), but it does not solve the problem of a player choosing a game that they thought they might enjoy, but then it turned out different than expected.

That is... much harder to solve, and honestly? Timothy said it much better than I. You can't rip out the game's softness to get it into a strict rules corset of other games and keep it that game. The best you can do in that situation is to flag down an organizer for help - and try to get the most for all the others at your table that do not have a problem with the game. They also count. Make it the organizer's problem.

If they can't play your game, maybe the organizer can use their leverage to get her a spot on a different table, or get her any paid room/DM/whatever fees back for that day. Or tell her to be earlier next week. Either way, you can't make her enjoy the game. Sometimes, the best you can do is not to make her suffer and make the other players enjoy what they came for, and that can mean running without Denise. The Organizers have more and different options to make Denise whole again.

Our old verse strikes again: No Roleplay is better than bad roleplay you don't enjoy.

^{1 - We have everyone in the big hall for table search, GMs tell about their games for 60-120 seconds each, then people raise hand to be placed. If seats at a table suffice, those people are assigned there. If more people raised their hands than there are seats, the next table is called instead. Once all tables have been called once, all tables that have been postponed or still have free spots are called once more (with 3rd/4th rounds happening). Emergency "sweep up" rounds are generally announced before the 2nd or 3rd call for rounds. Tables that garner no or not enough interest in the first two rounds to run a game sensibly are canceled, with the person who had offered to run getting a free dibs choice on a game that still has a seat before his would-be players get a call, which still free seat they want. So far, I have only seen 2 occasions of an attendee not getting any game they had interest in}

I'm not sure there's much you can do with such short notice. However, if you have time to prepare, virtually every tabletop RPG can be modelled as having structure. Most gameplay structure can be broken down into constraints and options. It seems like Denise required options more than constraints, but I'll cover constraints first.

The (usual) true constraint of a TTRPG is to tell a story that all players enjoy participating in. This is, however, a very difficult thing to accomplish directly (which can be stressful, preventing the players from enjoying the game – a self-defeating objective!), so we normally substitute a proxy goal: telling a particular kind of story, well. (You have to keep some track of whether other players are enjoying themselves, and prioritise that if there's a conflict, but often the person running / facilitating the game takes on most of that responsibility.)

If the proxy goal is to tell a story where the players are in-character, then keeping track of whether players are enjoying themselves can be as simple as keeping track of whether they remain in-character, and resolving to analyse the situation further if they seem to break character (e.g. hesitating when their character wouldn't). A failure mode of this play-style is My Guy Syndrome.

If the proxy goal is to make the strongest character that the mechanics allow, your players are probably going to break a game like Roll For Shoes: getting to level 5 (a 1.6% chance on every level 4 action, if XP is spent: over 50% chance, given 43 attempts) means you can accomplish "nearly impossible" tasks with relative ease. However, choosing setting-appropriate "artificial" constraints for a character, and then attempting to munchkin within those constraints, recovers this playstyle. Perhaps your character is an apprentice lumberjack, and no matter what skills they end up with (according to the system), everything they do has to relate to chopping down trees, the maintenance of axes, or workplace safety, because otherwise they're not getting the work experience required by their apprenticeship contract.

If the proxy goal is to accomplish a particular goal within the setting, less role-playing is required, and ensuring other players are enjoying themselves can be achieved via getting consensus on plans before enacting them. (A culture of light-hearted commentary on other people's actions helps create an environment where people feel more comfortable saying "why are you doing that? it'll do [thing I don't like]!".)

A game like D&D provides each player with a clear set of tools, each with their own established mechanics. Some people find it a lot easier to make decisions if they have this set of tools to fall back on.

Roll For Shoes doesn't provide these mechanically at the start of the game, but there are ways to recreate this. For example, by giving the character starting equipment: a backpack of useful items, or a utility belt – whatever makes sense for the character to have on-hand when they show up at the donut shop.

D&D provides a character creation framework, which is necessary. A simple list of questions (like a checklist procedure, or flowchart) might suffice for a game with more flexible mechanics, like Roll For Shoes.

How can we apply this to the issues Denise faced?

Denise specifically called out "Do Anything" as something that was too unstructured for her.

"Do Anything 1" could be called "easy tasks": it's anything you'd expect a D&D commoner to be able to do. It doesn't allow you to reliably accomplish average-difficulty tasks, and you're not going to be doing anything remotely "hard" using this skill.

Unlike D&D's class system, where abilities (skills, spells, actions) are specific to classes, Roll For Shoes has only one class, and unlocking skills requires using their prerequisite skills. Higher-level skills are more specific, and more powerful, than lower-level skills: this represents aptitude.

Since you gain new level 2 classes by rolling a 6 on your level 1 skill, the actions you take with the "Do Anything" skill should be considered part of your start-of-game character-building. If you decide ahead of time what sort of character you want to play, you can build up to that. (For example, if you want your character to be basically a D&D rogue, you can start with lock-picking, stealing unattended items, hiding behind trees, etc, and build up the appropriate skills.)

This, incidentally, is the approach suggested by DWeird, one of the early players.

If you're willing to tweak the rules a bit, you could give Denise level 1 (or 2!) starting skills in something more specific than "Do Anything". There's little mechanical difference to starting her off with specific level 1 skills, and starting her with a level 2 skill could be narratively-justified. If the other players are okay with it, I'd suggest the latter approach.

She also had trouble with character creation; my prompt of "tell me your name and why you're at the donut shop"

With a character already in mind, it's a lot easier to answer this question. I assume Denise was disappointed about not being able to play D&D: one might ask her what sort of character she wanted to play, and then ask whether she could play a character like that, or suggest something broadly equivalent that fits in the setting of the one-shot.

It's unlikely Denise will be the only player you encounter who has these difficulties with the game. (And maybe you'll encounter Denise again!) If you have time to prepare ahead of time, I would recommend producing a sort of mini rulebook, starting with a description of the rules (including how difficulty corresponds to numbers), providing an example of a skill advancement occurring (what happens in the game, what's rolled, and what the new skill is), and suggesting some concrete approaches (e.g. DWeird's character-building advice) that could be used to get past the "I have no character and no clue" stage.

I would also include a warning that games with new players can get quite silly, as people specialise their characters in increasingly-absurd ways.

Autistic people can take a while to recover enough from distress to be receptive to new information. However, if the distress is caused by not having clear rules, and you provide a document with rules on it, that might make the initial emotional regulation easier.

Having someone play an NPC, or monster(s), can sometimes make playing feel lower-stakes and less overwhelming. When playing a character there can be fear of letting the group down -- making a bad decision, or not optimizing well. And since the character is you there's a fear of making a bad decision that hurts your little guy. Especially with a monster there's no pressure on those fronts. Monsters are suppose to make poor decisions and be defeated. And you're merely helping the GM so if they override you or make suggestions it's just normal. There's no embarrassment is needing help to play your character.

My first instinct in this case is to give them 3 spiders. The first spider saw the main group of spiders and followed them (i.e.: there's no backstory they need to know), with her two little sisters coming along. Three monsters since a small group feels even less like playing a character (as opposed to helping the GM) and they also have someone to talk to in-game -- it feels better to ask another spider something than to ask the GM, or for another spider to give suggestions than for the GM to.

For an NPC, maybe an overworked assistant to a cruel CEO. They're just now driving up to get 5 boxes of donuts for their boss's kid's birthday party. Maybe they can't decide what to do. No problem. The players see someone drive up, get out of the car, and just stand there as spiders run up. Wonderful. For fun have her cell phone ring and it's the boss who wants to know how it's going. There're no wrong actions -- if she tries to grab the donuts and gets webbed, or immediately drives away with a spider in hot pursuit, well, an NPC's job is to be put in danger and need saving. That NPC was played perfectly.