Life lessons from table-top role-playing
How has an ogre squashing me into goo changed my life? Let me delve into D&D and the wonders of table top role-playing
Sometime in 1987, my high school friends Neil Whalley, Tushar Salukhe, and, specifically, Nick de Graafe invited me to join them in a game called Dungeons and Dragons. I think one part of me only went because I wanted to be one of the gang. I did not know then how life-altering this introduction would become and how firmly this game would change the trajectory of my life. In fact, I have been known to say that role-playing games have taught me more than degrees and courses. This is a statement I do not deny and wholeheartedly believe is true.
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and tabletop role-playing, in general, have never been more popular. Today, there is Critical Role on YouTube, Stranger Things on Netflix is basically a homage to D&D, and there’s even been a proper, and pretty good, Hollywood movie. These days it’s cool if your kids play D&D, and I know plenty of parents who go out of their way to make sure that happens. Back then, in the Hong Kong of 1987 where I grew up, D&D was not at all mainstream.
I don’t know how many people listening have played or witnessed a full session of tabletop role-playing, but let me give a quick introduction. A single individual, called the Dungeon Master or Games Master (the “DM”), creates the story in which a group of people play characters. The entire group, usually about six people, give or take, will be around a table with their rulebooks, character sheets, maps, and miniatures. The DM usually has encounters and scenarios planned, but the players are usually free to figure out and role-play their way through. Oftentimes, the DM may find that their story goes in unplanned directions.
To keep the story and the world together, unlike in real life, the game is run through mechanics that involve rolling different-sided dice, of which the most famous is the twenty-sided polyhedral die—the “D20”. Sometimes things work out as you wish; other times an ogre squashes you into goo before your party members can save you.
By the mid–1980s, D&D was already a fairly big business. By the time I was playing, it had also become a little controversial. Probably because the rule books often had artwork of archdemons and pentagrams, the media pushed the story that D&D was giving rise to satanic cults and that kids were being brainwashed into murder and more. The reality was that in the 1980s, D&D was a game for the nerds. The game was built around math, everything happened in the theatre of the mind, and if you really wanted to do well, you had to do a fair bit of reading. How many kids do you think considered exactly how wide castle walls could be built and what was the best way to break out of a medieval dungeon?
In Hong Kong, while my mother did ask me several times if D&D was bad for me and whether it would keep me from my studies, I don’t remember her saying anything about being worried I would come home and start sacrificing bunnies.
I have now been playing D&D or some form of role-playing game for almost 40 years. My playing D&D morphed into other tabletop roleplaying games such as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, and more recently Daggerheart. When I could not role-play as a teenager, I was reading. Fantasy and Science Fiction were my two favourite genres, and now I devoured books like Raymond E. Feist’s Magician, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and David Eddings’s The Belgariad.
On top of these bestsellers were the books that TSR Inc., the company behind D&D, was releasing throughout the 1980s directly to their D&D fanbase. I remember dragging my mum to Toys R Us so I could buy a copy of R. A. Salvatore’s The Crystal Shard. This book I would read over and over again, so much so that even today, all I need to do is close my eyes to bring back the smell of the pages! I longed to role-play in campaigns that would result in characters such as Caramon and Raistlin Majere from the original Dragonlance novels, which the authors, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, said came from a live role-playing session.
Life lessons from roleplaying games
In truth, it has taken me almost a half-century to realize how the many skills Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing have given me have, in turn, changed my life.
1. Research and History
A successful role-playing session requires preparation. Even though you are playing a fantastical character in a fantastical universe, there is still some semblance of physics in that universe. In the old D&D, myth and history played a large part in the worlds that you played in. You needed to understand why your characters might be motivated to move around in the world. Often, the best stories are not about you going into a dungeon, killing a bunch of monsters, and saving someone. After all, maybe the person didn’t want to be saved; maybe the economics of the world changed the meaning of your quest. From D&D, I learned how to research, understand history, and often the motivations of and reactions to those with power, because in these worlds, you were someone with power.
2. Writing and Telling a Story
The core of D&D and role-playing is the story. As the DM, or even as the player, you are telling a story and reacting to how others tell a story. Most of our lives are about stories that we tell, and much of what we do in our work life is creating stories and explanations that move something forward. If I am to convince my boss of some better way to do something, it is how I explain and guide someone’s imagination that ultimately results in our success or failure. Tabletop role-playing is one of the easiest and most fun ways in which you learn how to spin a tale and convince others.
3. Game Systems
Role-playing systems try to codify life, physics, and a universe into game mechanics. Real life, on the other hand, is messy. However, as you boil things down into systems, you do realize that humans and our weird brains love these systems, and how often we do try to change the “messy” to something much “neater”. It is amazing how quickly your mind adapts to such systems both in game and in real life.
For example, one of the simple mechanics of a role-playing game is that your character “levels up,” meaning your experiences make you more powerful. This search for more experience is modeled and simplified from real life; however, as with real life, it is a real dopamine hit when you finally get that spell you’ve wanted. It is not unlike a salary increase.. If you spend enough time in role-playing games, you start seeing many of the other systems we wander through as nothing more than mechanics to drive you forward. This may sound obvious, but playing with these systems in a simulation like a role-playing game can teach you how you might react in different circumstances. The emotional and dopamine hits do actually carry over.
4. Lateral Thinking and Asking Questions
One of the most under-appreciated talents in life is the art of lateral thinking. Picture this: you have a large chasm before you. A horde of goblins has stolen all your gear and stands between you and freedom; you are left with a small length of rope and a magic ball that can bounce perpetually. What do you do?
Well, I guarantee the reader that there are a sizable number of ways to get across, and they are probably not the most obvious. However, the most important thing to do is not to solve the problem, but instead to ask questions. Start with the most obvious one first: “What’s behind you?” Most scenarios in tabletop role-playing are about asking questions and rarely coming up with solutions, and when you do, it is rarely the most obvious answer.
The best stories have multi-dimensional characters. Even the villain might have a good reason for what they are doing and running in to save the day without questioning could result in death for all. Funnily enough, this is true in real life.
5. How to Lead and Be Led
I was the kid with a stutter. In Hong Kong, if you wanted to stop the bus for your stop in the 1980s, you would have to yell “Gau Lok M’goy”—“Stop Please.” I sometimes missed the stop because I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. As I delved into D&D, practiced playing roles, and spent more time with friends such as Nick, Tush, and Neil, I stopped being so shy.
I think they probably regretted it, because once I got out of my introverted, shy, stuttering bubble, I don’t think I ever shut up. My extroversion, my love of acting, my being unafraid to stand up and take charge when needed, much of that came from D&D and the time I cultivated with those friends. When we lead something, we are all playing a role; it’s not dissimilar to playing a rousing knight-errant ensuring your party does not get crushed by the dragon flying overhead. Even more important was the lesson of when not to lead. Sometimes you need to support, take a back seat, and be the cleric that heals so that your party can survive the big fight. In role-playing games you play a hero amongst heroes, just as in the real world.
Last thoughts
I can think of many other things I’ve learned and I’d love to hear other people’s experiences in role-playing. I have not even stepped into the wondrous world of being the DM. Maybe that’s for a future article.
I have often said that words create the worlds that we experience. Tabletop role-playing is the truest form of that expression. If you have never tried a session, there is no age limit, there is no age barrier. You do not need to be shy; you do not need to be the class clown. In its truest form, you connect with people and with yourself, you see the world around you in many more colors and nuances, and you will most likely have a ton of fun.
I had no idea how much my life would change in 1987. To this day, I doubt Nick, wherever he is, has any clue how much he changed my life. I am so very glad that Nick asked me to play that day.