Good to this site back up and running. I was a lurker for years, and probably will continue to do that very thing.
Been playing RPGs since the mid-80s. Like many others here, I started with the ubiquitous D&D Red Box. I still have mine and it’s near tatters. So, no touchy! I’ve stayed loyal to D&D since then, following and largely DMing every edition of the game over the decades. I’ve strayed a bit here and there into Rifts, various versions of Star Wars, World of Darkness and its clutch of subsystems, and Pathfinder. I always come to good old fashioned D&D.
I have a bit of a D&D testimony. My parents hated that I played. For decades I was told it would, ‘rot your brain,’ and was, ‘a total waste of time.’ Because of D&D in those early years I had to look up words in the dictionary I never encountered in school. I learned to work as a team player. I learned to use my imagination and was compelled by fantasy to read more than my non-gaming peers. I never experimented with drugs or alcohol (we stayed up all night facing Strahd Von Zarovich). I ended up a college graduate (DMing taught me how to prepare), an officer in the army (DMing taught me how to ‘manage’ people), and enjoy life as a financial professional (figuring THAC0 - thank you!). And my parents to this day: “You’re sill playing that damn game?”
Yes. Yes I am and my life has been enriched because of it.
Reach out to me if you’re ever in the Salt Lake City area. In the meantime, happy gaming.
EDIT: meant to put this in Introductions, but goofed it up. Sorry.
Kudos to you for sticking to it and learning from it!
My mother was more pragmatic and was simply worried that I might favor fiction over reality and go astray down an unsavory rabbit hole (like some actual real life examples she personally knew - so it was a valid concern on her part). We peacefully negotiated and worked it out amicably between us. Huzzah for an adult that treats you like a real being with a valid opinion even though you are 12 and have a parent-child relationship!
I also learned many valuable lessons from D&D/roleplaying:
girls are actually humans, not incomprehensible aliens, and they can actually communicate meaningfully about interesting things;
how to talk to others in a social setting;
how to listen to others in a social setting;
how to socialize, period… using characters as test subjects for what was appropriate and not was a great boon to me with my condition;
avoided many unsavory activities of the era because I was too busy gaming, or preparing for gaming;
how to prepare;
how to organize;
memory skills;
conversational skills;
the list goes on…
When used and applied judiciously, roleplaying has great potential for teaching people how to be human, and decent humans at that.
My overall takeaway from a lifetime hobby is that your points above are very good indeed. However, only one like can be given per person.
“That gmae” as my Mother called it (I was 18 when I stated playing, holding down a job even.) took a shy bullied kid from school and made a reasonable confidant adult out of me. Yes, I lay that at the feet of D&D.
