I was in 8th grade when I realized I was different - or at least I felt different.
I never felt like I was as happy as the other kids. I felt empty. Empty or angry.
I felt stressed by most interactions. I was sent home multiple times because some situation or another caused me to hyperventilate.
It'd be another year before I'd speak to a therapist. I'd find out that I had severe depression and anxiety.
I'd see my therapist twice a month and was put on an antidepressant.
The year after that (sophomore year of high school), my friends introduced to a new kid they had been hanging with, and I was invited to play his D&D campaign with them. First game I ever played was a Third Edition campaign with an all evil party. I made a Tiefling Rogue who would eventually die before his time.
I'm twenty-four now. The days and nights I spent playing D&D with my friends are still some of the fondest memories I ever had. But they were more than that. I could hardly handle being in school. I never wanted to leave my bed - it was nearly impossible even if I wanted to. D&D was somewhere safe. It helped me to grow and overcome. It gave me a place where I could calm and analyze the overwhelming sadness and seething anger.
I am a much better person today thanks to a few friends, a stack of books, and one wickedly cool Tiefling.
No matter how each of us play this game one thing is absolutely clear to me:
It has given many of us much more than just a game.
TiaNadiezja had a beautiful post in another thread that mentions how this game is a force for good.
I felt this idea deserved its own thread.
Feel free to share what you feel D&D has given you.
It's given me the ability to improvise so quickly in almost any situation that people have often remarked at how fast I can think on my feet.
Also it's given me a drinking problem. Although it's not really a problem - I can quit anytime I want, so get off my back.
That's what I tell them as well, iserith!
Thanks for the shot of humor after my long-winded post full of sad.
it's given me an interest in imagination that is often lost later in life as more people become banal.
as long as you have imagination, you can be creative, and being creative in any job allows you not to become stuck in a routine. there still is routine, but i find a lot of people dont like to be alone with their thoughts, so they dont spend time imagining things at all anymore.
I'd intended to say something like "herpes" but I lost the urge once I saw the OP being serious. So I suppose I will go with the truth, an outlet for creativity. I pretty much agree with eveything silentdante posted.
A lot, but I'm going to focus on two things.
High school. I'm depressed, I'm a victim of bullying, there's something wrong inside of me that's trying to rip its way free of my skin and my skin might be what's wrong and maybe what's in me is right but that's even more scary. I have very few friends, my grades are middling in spite of my intelligence and insight - in some ways, because of my intelligence and insight. People want things from me I can't give them - my height has a coach pushing me to try out for basketball in spite of the fact that I can't dribble and walk at the same time, my teachers want me to complete all of the hour of homework a night each of six of them assigns, my parents want me to be what their church tells them a young man ought to be.
I'm good at math. I'm good at writing, but only really interested in writing fantasy, and I'm not good enough at writing to do it professionally - nor do I want to. I'm clever and a good problem solver. Those are the things about myself that I like. Then a friend asks if I've ever played D&D. I'd always wanted to, but never found anyone to play it with. I tell him that.
He hands me the This is not AD&D Third Edition! version of the Player's Handbook. He hands me the Dungeon Master's Guide. He hands me the Monstrous Compendium. And he tells me I'm running a game.
And it's scary and it's big and it's... fun. And I'm good at it. It's everything I'm good at, put into something I can do and make other people happy. It's not the first time that's happened, but it's the first time there was a name and a hobby built around something like that happening. I keep practicing and getting better, because I'm good at it and it makes people happy. I look for more things I'm good at and that are valuable to other people, because doing something you're good at and that makes other people's lives better is a good feeling.
D&D made me a better friend, and probably was essential to me finding the work I do.
Second. I've left college after changing majors for the third time. That thing inside me is squirming and clawing and worse than it was in high school and I want my skin to be set on fire and gone forever because it really is my skin that's hurting and what's inside is just scared and trapped and it should be good but it hurts because my skin is trapping it. It needs to get out. It needs to breathe, if only a little bit, or it's going to shred me to pieces trying to. I'm building a character for a game that's starting at the local game store. I get an image in my mind... a duelist, slender and lithe and skilled with blade and wit. The character's not a man, though, like nearly every other character I've played, since I'm in the South and breaking gender norms is kinda... horribly dangerous. She's a woman. She has a name already - Kaywin. I roll her up, do her equipment, sit down at the table to play her.
The clawing inside me stops, for the hours I spend playing her. Not long afterward, I realize that what I thought was a sharp-clawed unpleasant thing inside me isn't any of that - it's me. I hurt. I hurt because I can't breathe because my skin and my culture and trying to live as someone I'm not is suffocating me, has been suffocating me my whole life. The girl I am in my dreams is me. The girl I keep including in the stories I write is me. Kaywin is me.
Her name was Kaywin, and she was a duelist, built in D&D Third Edition, using a multiclass build with Rogue and Fighter. And she was the first real step toward my coming out as transgender.
Thank you everyone for replying.
It makes happy to see this game do so many different things for different people.
Another special thanks to Tia for another beautiful post. Your words today (as always) are wise and inspiring. Thank you for being awesome.
TiaNadiezja wrote:
AD&D 2e taught me basic Math, English and problem solving skills. Which is more than I can say the Canadian Schooling System ever did for me. It also allowed me to focus my imagination.
TiaNadiezja wrote:
Honestly my first experiences with D&D leave something to be desired but I will not bog down this thread with my negativity. Rather I will say this, D&D has given me something I cannot describe in mere words. From my first character; a Hound Archon Fighter in 3.5 who was a hit and run type of melee striker complete with a huge blade. To now and the shenanigans I get into, D&D has given me a venue to let out my creativity. My love of stories and being able to participate in them as well as shape them with my actions and above all being able to enjoy this with my friends as well.
D&D for me at least goes above just dungeon crawling and goblin bashing, it's a kind of communal storytelling while facilitated by rules at the same time goes beyond that. It's an experience, it's an intangible feeling that, I think, cannot be described in words for they do not do it any kind of justice. I may not know how to describe it but I can say this: It's more than a good book to read, more than a series of episodes for television, more than 2+ hours of watching in cinematic form, it's...D&D. I may not have played it for long, but I do know a good game when I play in it and D&D is it for me at least.
I guess to summarize my feelings it is an awakening to the more creative side of myself as well as that side of myself I keep hidden from the public on a day to day basis. I already deal with Asperger's Syndrome, playing D&D with my friends lets me be myself more so while being able to be genuinely happy.
as a joke, we can sure say according to these forums(me included), D&D never taught people reading comprehension... unless they became an english major or editor after reading the books :-p hahaha
silentdante wrote:
I've never gotten to play as much as I'd have liked. I "started" D&D when I was 7, my Dad has some of the orignal computer games (on floppy disks) and I watched him play, then played myself. I guess that expeirence allowed me to get over the "get uber-strong and know everything" phase of gaming, becuase I was able to adjust my scores to max and I played by the strategy guides. I was quite young.
After that though I never really played until college and 4e. I wanted to, but no one in my family played (my Dad never rally touched those disks again and never seemed very interested in the game so I don't know why he had them) and I was too nervous to bring it up to anyone at school. I've owned 3 edition and 3.5, just never got to sit down and play them.
In college, 3 years ago, I started playing regularly and I've taken the dive into DMing for the past year, year and a half. Still, actually, don't play much DnD but I've got quite a few different systems I'm learning.
Interestingly, I don't think it has given me much, other than some good friends, but lately I'm thinking it will give me more. I am a writer, and DMing, worldbuilding, even playing is great practice for me and hopefully will be a contributing factor to eventul success as a writer.
I met my wife via a D&D online campaign (both our first ever). I count that as much ;)
For roleplaying in general (not just D&D!) I think it was largely that it gave a structure by which it told us a way of working together to actually do something enjoyable without adults commanding us in order to achieve that, or atleast gave some structure toward us working out how to work together.
Otherwise generally adults either commanded you or left you to the wilds (which made their commanding seem nice by comparison, of course). And basically unless you were good at bullying, you didn't handle the wilds all that well. And I wasn't that great at bullying. Too well trained by my parents (who then left me to the wilds five days a week, for most of the day).
That and the creative level, to creatively express oneself in front of others to some degree and not just get derisive s****s (ie, bullying for social ladder position) - sometimes even get appreciation.
It was to become a functional tribe by bootstrapping.
Edit: Wow, the word that got censored is a perfectly legitimate word even if I only just noticed now that if you remove the s's at start and end it's an offensive word in regard to race. For goodness sake, why not censor 'fire truck' as well! Remove a few letters from that (and the space, because madness knows no end) and it's baddy bad as well, isn't it? It was 'sn1gger' , if you replace the 1 with an i. Which is a form of derisive laughter. And mods, I wasn't getting around the filter to say something bad, I was getting around it to say a perfectly fine word.
An outlet for creativity and imagination. A few absolute opinions. And since "my" truly formative edition was AD&D 1e? The ability to adapt - because virtually no two groups played the rules the same. I also get to play with virtually any toy I want while claiming it to be part of my hobby. Easy answer.
32 years of fun that im now passing onto my friends and children !
Decades of great memories and friendship. Confidence, creativity and a much better vocabulary.
Vokarius wrote:
D&D has given me a purpose for all but one of my creative outlets (and I would be able to include that one, music, if only I had a bit more space in my office to set up and record my own gaming soundtracks), and the easiest way I've ever known to make new friends - the following exchange has happened over a dozen times in my life:
Person: "Hey, what are you doing?"
Me: "Doodling some maps for a D&D adventure."
Person: "You play D&D? Rad, we should play together sometime."
I got into D&D relatively late in life compared to a lot of people. It was always a thing I knew existed, but I didn't really have a good idea of how it worked or what it was all about.
Then, in late 2007 / early 2008, the guys from Penny Arcade put out a podcast of them playing 4th Edition before it had come out. As an avid reader of the site and a big fan of theirs, I was willing to check it out, to listen to them play this game that they were raving about at the time. It was... enchanting. Even though I wasn't playing, I would close my eyes and pretend I was there; I could see the things they were describing. I'd never known a game like this before.
So I did the safest and most logical thing I could think of: I found a D&D group somewhat close by on meetup.com. I Basically went and met a bunch of people off the internet, knowing nothing about them except they were starting a new game for the release of 4th edition. Thankfully they were all (mostly) cool. I met some really good friends, people I still hang out with today, at that group. We kept playing for 4 years, most of it all part of one giant campaign.
I do wish I had known about / played D&D in high school, I think it really could have made that place more bearable. But I'm still thankfull that I eventually did start playing, no matter how late it might have been.
D&D gave me friends, confidence to express myself, a new creative outlet, and a sense of wonder and imagination that I thought I'd lost in my childhood.
sailoroswald wrote: