busySome personal examples of how roleplaying has been useful for me:
* Once upon a time, the pumphouse floor rotted out, and the very expensive pump was about to fall through. My gaming experience led me to request a coil of rope, so that we could tie one end to the pump and anchor the other to a tree. This kept the pump from falling down the well, until the repairmen arrived to fix the floor.
* I can sometimes acquire traits I don't possess by playing characters who do. The little bit of good sportsmanship that I have came from a centaur archer by the name of Bayfeather.
* While I have an anti-knack for math, I have picked up some knowledge of statistics and probability, because those are inherent features of dice-based roleplaying games. My mother actually borrowed my gaming dice once, for a teacher-level statistics class. I think she was the only person in the class who was already familiar with the ones other than the d6.
November 1 2010, 15:12:42 UTC 10 years ago
The neighbor asked us in all seriousness if it was Satanic, because her teenage kids were getting involved in it. K. and I stared at each other for a second, then burst out laughing. When we finally caught our breath, we started to explain further, but the neighbor told us we needn't bother - that laugh had said it all.
But I watched a young man who had been raised to be very bigoted lose that in playing role-games. As he said later, once you learn to see a female as an effective warrior, or a dwarf or halfling as a person, it's a lot easier to apply it to people of differing appearance and lifestyle in the real world.
Yay!
November 1 2010, 18:26:03 UTC 10 years ago