I'm interested in ways in which the many insightful people here, can or have identified things which they or their group have learned from the experience of playing role-playing games.
Let me backtrack a moment, because this will interest some of you. I use roleplaying games as part of my work in the community with young people. Now before people get too excited about the thought of being 'paid to play' for it's own end, consider this for a moment. D&D can provide a very engaging social metaphor, which is superior almost to any other conceivable tool for exploring choices and consequences in a safe environment.
I'm looking to write some of my practice up, linking it with other learning theory, and may post the results here if it seems appropriate.
While I'm evaluating this process, it would be great to hear from your own experiences. I'm giving no steers as to 'what' may have been learned in your groups. For the purposes of pure research I'd just like to hear simply anything with a real world application that D&D players have gained from the gaming experience.
Your humble narrator,
Arcane Joe
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One of my players is a nerd. A dork. He doesn't fit into society, and I strongly suspect him to be a victim of Asperger syndrome.
The other players include: his brother (quite a social person, well apart from having a major anime schoolgirl fetish :P ) and two grizzled RPG veterans with 15+ years experience.
At the beginning of our campaign the "nerd" had a hard time fitting in. His previous RPG experience was just computer games, so he assumed that if he gets the number crunching right then he will be able to handle anything the game throws at him.
And of course, he found out the hard way that RPGs are not just about combat and dice rolling, but also about social interaction ! He puts a lot of effort into fleshing out his character (honestly, he puts so much focus that I have to tone him down), but as an extension of his stunted social skills he falls flat on his face when confronted with sudden encounters.
He has also problems with handling unexpected situations - while the other players excel at improvisation and spontaneous actions, "the nerd" has hard time every time he has to do something he wasn't prepared for.
However, as our campaign progresses I see more and more improvement from him. Sure, he still tends to stumble in hilarous ways, and I think he will be the party's "mascot" for ever, but I'm happy to see him evolve. At first he was very defensive about criticism and failures, but slooowly he gets around that.
RPGs - helping dorks reunite with society since 1974. Thank you, Gary Gygax !
I think for myself it's a little bit of the same thing as the previous poster.
I've actually gotten more experienced at identifying personality types to the degree that I can usually tell from early on which players will be more difficult to deal with and which won't.
Another aspect I've learned is the critical value of age in social situations. Maybe older folks have more patience for the variety of personalities that might play D&D, but I find that older players generally have a higher capacity for adapting to or tolerating players with extreme personalities.
I'd encourage you, which I assume you might have done already, to read anything on the concept of social intelligence.
You mean besides math and vocabulary? Creativity is very high on the list. Imagining strange new worlds and powerful magics capable of warping reality. What gamer has not been inspired at some point to create something?
Along with the creative thinking comes the improvisational skills. I believe gamers soon realize that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Or, no PC plan survives contact with the GM. Somewhere, a long time ago, I heard that just imagining doing something was one quarter as effective as actually practicing. I am not saying we are all master swordsmen, but I believe there is some weight to that.
Through role playing, we learn to see things from other people’s perspective. We have to try and envision the world and the current situation from our character’s perspective. Killing is wrong, but killing goblins is o.k. because our character perceives them as pure evil. This is an oversimplified example that can be easily disputed, but I believe the concept still holds.
A belated thank you. I'm about to start writing my essay and much appreciate your comments : )
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I am not sure if I am too late to add a comment, but here goes anyway.
This may sound weird, but I have found that RP has made me more aware to let every one have their say (or in character, to have their niche).
I have a tendency (fairly well in rein now) to be a bit of a know-it-all, but now I just bite my tongue and let other people have their time in the spotlight. The funny thing is that as I have started doing this people come to me for advice, as I am told that I come across, as a RPG friend puts it, as if I have a high wisdom score. It is funny how that one little thing, learnt through role-playing, has changed the perception of who I am to the wider world.
My example is more of a personal recollection as a player, rather than a DM/GM.
One of my characters I have roleplayed for years (a Star Wars PbP game), starting off in 1998, back when I was still in high school. After a hiatus of roughly four years, I went back to SWC and picked up where my character left off.
I had a serious problem with my self-confidence when I was younger, especially when it came to interacting with other people. I had plenty of friends, but most of which I had something in common with (gaming, go figure). It was reflected a great deal in my roleplaying posts, and even though I thought I was being both deep and dramatic in character, a lot of it sounded really cheesy.
When I went back into the club years later, a great deal had changed. I had more experience from my military background, I knew who I was and what I wanted in life, and I channeled a lot of that into my character. Running through two or three long campaigns in a few years time, I began to feel somewhat inspired by my character, which was aided and fostered by both my gamemaster at the time and the other players I interacted with.
In the game, my character rose in rank and responsibilities, and established a romantic relationship with one of the female NPCs. He ended up being confident, brave, and even inspiring, nothing like the cardboard cut-out anti-hero character he was back in high school. Overtime, I felt that I could channel that back in the real world and become something better, and for the right reasons.
Turned out, I ended up making a lot of friends where I was stationed, met a wonderful woman of whom I'm still dating today, and became something more than what I was. I attribute a lot of this to my fellow players and the GM who took the time to foster my character's development. I grew socially as a person as a result from roleplaying, and that's a good thing.