How RPGs changed one's life for the better.

[Henry]

A similar thread a couple of years back has us ALL beat: one poster reported that he was usually a stay-at-home person who didn't get out much. One day he felt like crap, but decided to keep his appointment for a D&D game that evening. He showed up, and passed out. The other players, worried, called an ambulance. He was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with a disease (heart attack? Stroke? Lack of oxygen? can't recall.)

D&D, and his fellow gamers, saved his life.

For me, it's netted me several close friends, the entire groomsmen party at my wedding, and many recent acquaintances and friends from going to D&D gamedays. Without it, I'd be a lot more insular person than I am.

 

[Crothian]

THe biggest change wasn't for me, but it did happen through me. I have a good friend that went from bad boy friend to bad boy friend for years, she never could on her own attract someone worth while. But through gaming I found some good friends and one of them became her fiance and they are going to marry next August. So, she was able to find love with a stable guy.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Simply, I would not have survived high school without RPGs.

Furthermore, the area of study I am currently doing my PhD on is something I discovered through RPGs and on which I did my initial research as a GM not a student.

I wish I had survived middle school and high school with RPGs. It would have helped immensely.
I played a little in my senior year and in community college, but am just now getting into being able to join a real continuing campaign. It would have gotten me and my brother out of the house and more independent than we are now.

At any rate, I have a friend that I played with that I'm still in contact with...and all the rest of my high school friends, I don't know where they are.

D&D (and RPGs in general) is a creative outlet for me. If I hadn't gotten into D&D, I would have been writing amateur fiction. My game world developed from writing a fantasy story.

 

[genshou]

I've met most of my current closest friends through roleplaying. I feel I have a good group of people to rely on for social interaction and help if I need it. These friends kept my fiancee from losing it to stress while I was going through chemotherapy last year, and looking forward to roleplaying kept me from losing it too.

I also know a couple who met and got married through roleplaying. They're both ENworld members, though they don't post much. Devo and Jubilee.

I met my girlfriend through a freeform role-playing group on Yahoo. I was invited into that group because the owner saw my talent in another group, in which I was playing a D&D character in whom I had invested hundreds of hours of real-world time playing.

I'd consider the sacrifice worth it since I had fun along the way and it led to meeting a very wonderful girl.

 

[WayneLigon]

A friend of mine (both she and her husband are long-time gamers, still active) has a teenage son, and some of his friends were over playing either C&C or D&D. She was coming up to bring snacks and overhears this:

"Oh yeah, my parents didn’t want me to play RPGs. They thought it would be ‘a bad influence on me".

(…sounds of derisive laughter)

“But I’ve learned more about history and English and stuff reading RPG books than I ever learned in school. I never knew what Dexterity meant, or what Charisma meant either. My vocabulary has increased ten-fold since I started playing.”

(…short pause for thought)

“Ten-fold is a word I learned from RPGs too!”

 

[Jubilee]

I also know a couple who met and got married through roleplaying. They're both ENworld members, though they don't post much. Devo and Jubilee.

I was going to post in this thread but now you've ruined it..

I have also met several very dear friends through roleplaying - both online RPGS (MUDS, anyone?) and in person. I have also had the opportunity to travel to new and interesting places through the people I met in online RPGing.

/ali

 

[wingsandsword]

Gaming in general has given me friends. For the first time in my life I found a social circle in my gaming club that I really could be comfortable with, friends I had common interests with, and a social life.

Tabletop gaming in general helped me learn problem solving, planning, math and statistics, and strategy. To a lesser degree it helped with social skills.

I wouldn't have graduated college without playing Dungeons and Dragons. Simple as that. I'm regrettably no math genius, but to be a good D&D player you really have to learn a lot of probability and statistics. When I finally took my required university math courses for graduation, one was entirely statistics, the other was very heavy into statistics (with exam questions like "If I roll 3 dice, what are the odds of rolling a sum of 18 on all three dice"). I thank D&D with teaching me what it took to pass my college math requirement.

I've learned a lot through Larping, it can be a a real pressure cooker of learning social skills and planning. I consider my masterwork in this department pulling off a plan that took 2 & 1/2 years in a vampire larp that met biweekly, all while playing the same character and having everybody think I'm a weak and insignificant character below their notice (in a bloody game with loads of PvP and a very high mortality rate across several dozen players), while quietly amassing so much power that by the time anybody noticed, it's far too late for them to do anything about it.

Boffer-combat Larping has taught me a lot about being aware of my circumstances, being a light sleeper, always looking for the exits when I walk into a room, tactically sizing up a situation quickly, as well as really getting me into shape (and teaching me a lot about armormaking).

 

[Dwarf Bread]

I met my best friend through gaming in 4th grade--we didn't know what we were doing, but we had fun. We've been friends for 25 years. I've also met most of my other friends through gaming.

RPGs helped me academically, as well, both in stats and in vocabulary. "Fecund" was actually on the vocabulary portion of my graduate school entrance exam...thank you, Gary Gygax!

In addition, I don't have any fear of speaking in public; for a lot of people, fear of being negatively evaluated while in front of an audience can be extremely debilitating, but I'm always eager to work the crowd. I believe this is due at least in part to roleplaying.

Finally, I believe that gaming teaches us quite a bit about group dynamics. In grad school I took a class on conducting group therapy and found that I already knew quite a bit about the different types of group members (the monopolizer, the "lost child," etc.) and how to deal with them.

 

[Altalazar]

I met a lot of great friends and had many many many hours of fun, experiences that to this day I think back on fondly. And I still create new ones when I game today.

For two friends of mine, what they found was each other, when I found both and got them into my game and they eventually got married.

And I had all of my fun without going to meth parties or drinking or otherwise getting into trouble.

 

[jgbrowning]

It gave me something to do for the rest of my life.

joe b.