How has playing D&D improved the quality of your life?

[wedgeski]

The best side-effect of playing D&D for me has been allowing me to stay in contact with school friends through the years.

Every month or so, a group of my best mates arrives at my house for an entire weekend of D&D. We eat, we drink, we laugh at our characters, and laugh at ourselves. Rolling out PC's that we generated 15 or 20 years ago for a weekend one-shot is just one of the *best* feelings, a connection to times when the most I had to worry about was getting the map drawn in time for the next session. I'm not sure I can think of any other hobby that can do this.

 

[Pinotage]

Met a few really nice people, but I think the main thing was that it dramatically improved my typing skills. Since I only play online in PbP games, I can now type without looking at the keyboard, and quite quickly too. Wouldn't really call that quality of life, but it's a skill that helps.

Pinotage

 

[Dracorat]

It has prompted me to be more creative than I ever was.

 

[Aeric]

It increased my vocabulary, gave me an interest in history (mostly ancient European history), stimulated my reading skills, introduced me to pretty much all of my friends from middle school on to adulthood, kept my imagination engaged, gave me subject matter to draw, and provided an escape from the problems of my mundane life.

Plus, when I got to eighth level, Ms. Frost taught me how to really cast spells!

 

[Ghendar]

How has playing D&D improved the quality of your life?

It's helped me meet new people and make new friends.

 

[Cor Azer]

I met my wife through people I likely would never have met had I not played D&D. She doesn't play herself, and has no interest, but she used to work with one of the players in my gaming group.

Friendships mostly, but vocabulary and self-confidence in public speaking to some extent.

To a lesser effect, it lead me to invest more in some indirectly related topics like anthropology and foreign languages - course that I had to take for school, so I figured out ways to use them in my games to keep my interest, and then finding that they're genuinely interesting on their own.

 

[Odhanan]

RPGs introduced me to some of my best friends, gave me an interest for lots of different topics, emphasized a thirst for knowledge, taught me the value of communication, some important lessons on how to rely to other people, follow or lead them, increased my vocabulary, taught me English, made me believe in my own artistic/entertainer abilities... and I'm forgetting a lot of stuff.

Of course, it's hard to completely isolate the benefits of playing RPGs from RL in the sense that one thing gives you something that's emphasized by the other's circumstances and vice versa. But that's a good approximate enough.

 

[Driddle]

For me, it's a matter of income.
See, a few years ago, I stumbled on this business concept for professional DM'ing services...

((disclaimer: YES, a thousand times YES, I'm just joking. I have NO intent to "stir things up."))

 

[Li Shenron]

It has improved my knowledge of the English language, particularly because as a DM I have to regularly provide lots of explanations and descriptions, and somewhat extended my vocabulary.

It has provided me a few new good friends.

It has improved my finances, because it is a very cheap hobby unless you're a foolish collector

 

[Garnfellow]

D&D has helped me add, maintain, and solidify friendships. A lot of people take friendship for granted and assume it will always be there. But in truth friendship is something you need to work at or it will drift away. I've been lucky enough to have been great friends with some wonderful people throughout my life. But many of those folks have just sort of faded out of my life -- not that our friendships weren't true or that we changed; it's just that we haven't been able to connect on a regular basis. It happens -- you move, you get married, land a job, have kids, etc. Life gets busy.

Gaming has been an activity that has "forced" me to regularly make time for a bunch of great guys. Some of the guys I game with are people I have known for over 20 years, and because we game together we stay in touch and we keep our friendships strong. There really aren't many other activities that can bond a group together for such a long period of time.