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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5861075" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've used the same small group management and speaking skills I developed as a DM to:a) Chair a corporate meetingb) Make an academic presentationc) Lead a small group bible studyd) Lead a software development teamI can say with confidence that there would be no way I'd be fit to lead a small group of anything had I not first been a DM.  Prior to DMing I probably would have had a literal panic attack in any of the above situations.  Now, I'm often the person people look to in these sort of situations.As a somewhat more personal revelation, it also would not be an exagerattion to say that I learned virtually all my social skills playing RPGs both as a DM and a player, and its not with irony that I say that when I am being socialable, smiling, engaging in small talk, being witty, and relaxing in a social situation that I'm merely pretending to be a character who does these things and has these skills.  The natural me is a shy, introverted, nearly autistic person who is intensely uncomfortable looking straight at a person's face and still finds normal human interaction to be a game with occasionally baffling rules, but through RPGs and a few other sources I've found enough order in the madness of social situations that I can succesfully fake it most of the time and most people appear none the wiser.   I can even remember back when I was practicing my persona that most people think of is me, consciously going through the effort of leaning forward, standing closer, looking at a person, smiling, and thinking what my self would say in this situation rather than saying what I was thinking or feeling.  Over time, doing those sort of things became more natural, just as over time doing those sort of things in the game had become more natural.In D&D terms, I'm never going to have an 18 charisma, but with the right sort of effort you can end up with enough diplomacy ranks to compensate.  I'll go further and say that having learned this stuff myself, I'm now on several occasions had the pleasure of watching several intensely nerdy people with bad social skills, self-esteem, and assertiveness issues develop more functional public personas while at my table.  That's one of the true pleasures of DMing; watching someone blossum into a great RPer and then see them take those skills out into a larger world.To a certain extent, this isn't surprising.  Before roleplaying was a term mostly associated with gaming, it was a term most associated with training and psychotheraphy.   Because of that, you'll never find me among the crowd that says, "It's just a game."   Yes, it's a game but it's not just a game.  With great power comes great responcibility.  I hear horror stories about encounters with RPers where I can't help but feel that the games that they played made their natural problems worse rather than better, to the point that their deeply dysfunctional play is probably reflective of a deeply dysfunctional social life rather than an improved one.</blockquote>

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