Tabletop Role-Playing Game Outcomes

Social Skills

TRPGs are highly regarded as an outlet for creativity. For example, many players exercise their creativty when developing in-depth backstories for their characters. GMs are encouraged to create their own homebrew adventures complete with unique populations, locations, lore, and maps.

TRPGs are useful for developing reading comprehension and critical thinking skills since gameplay is focused on listening to and visualizing what the GM is narrating, paying attention to how characters react to situations, and developing clever strategies to overcome obstacles.

A Case Study

Merilainen conducted a study to learn about the various aspects of role-playing as a hobby and found that TRPGs played an important role in developing new social skills. Nearly all respondents reported that TRPGs had provided some significant social experiences, often resulting in posivite effects on their interpersonal relationships.

Respondents reported that they developed new friendships through playing RPGs and that their social circles grew considerably.

Players also found that TRPGs helped them improve their improvisational, language, and problem solving skills

Merilainen also found that players developed empathy skills the more they played as characters that differed from themselves. TRPGs not only became important facets of players' personalities, but they also reportedly increased players' self-awareness and promoted positive mental development.

Technical Skills

The main skills gained from TRPGs include: research, decision making, calculations, negotiation, and spatial visualization. Playing TRPGs is a multidisciplinary experience as players develop knowledge about geography from studying game maps, making quick mental math calculations from rolling dice and adding or subtracting modifiers, and demonstrate logic from decision making. Players also gain resource management, spatial, and socialization skills.

Visualization

Since much of what happens in TRPGs is verbal, players develop the ability to visualize what is happening in the narrative. Some players utilize miniature figures of characters, enemies, and objects, as well as maps, to further visualize the scene.

Players learn how to convert map space (usually squares or hexagons representing increments of five feet). Players are also required to determine line of sight, how certain spell effects work, and calculate combat ranges, as well as develop tactics to overcome obstacles.

Teamwork and Leadership

TRPGs also assist in developing both teamwork and leadership skills. Due to the cooperative nature of TRPGs, “players must be aware of how their characters’ actions affect the other characters” (2014, p. 39) and must work cooperatively. Moreover, TRPGs provide a fantastic outlet to practice leadership skills, such as mediating character conversations, taking the lead when negotiating with non-player characters (NPCs), or through planning strategies.

A Case Study

In one example, a teacher used a modified version of Dungeons & Dragons with a third grade class which combined the subjects of math, reading, writing, and social studies. The teacher found that the game environment motivated students to learn the material. Students who were not strong in math previously found themselves becoming stronger from playing Dungeons & Dragons and were able to apply their new knowledge to the math that was taught in class. The students showed not only great academic, but also behavioural, success as a result of the program.

Probability and Math

Dice are commonly used as randomizers in many TRPGs to determine if actions succeed or fail. For example, Dungeons & Dragons uses seven different values of dice depending on the action or weapon used, and include d4, d6, d8, d10, d% (used with a d10 for calculating percentages), d12, and d20. In Dungeons & Dragons, the player will use the d20 for the majority of their rolls, including skill checks, saving throws, death saves, and determining whether an attack will hit or miss a target. Due to the randomness of dice rolls, players tend to become interested in probability to enhance their character’s success. In doing so, players learn to leverage math to calculate probabilities of certain actions within the game.

Player Identities

One of the most engaging aspects of TRPGs is the way in which players identify with and role-play their characters.

Blackstock examined this player-character relationship through a series of phenomenological interviews with players who played Vampire: The Masquerade. He found that role-playing as a character not only allows the participant to explore forms of storytelling that normally occur in youth, but also found that the effect is liberating for many role-players.

Through TRPGs, players are able to become any character with few express limitations. Sure, many TRPGs stipulate rules around class and race systems, but players are encouraged to create their own unique combinations. Most TRPGs allow characters to gain experience points to increase levels, and further character customization often occurs when a character levels up.

Players are also encouraged to design characters with the purpose of exploring morality or experience certain cultural or social issues, such as class systems or racism. Some classes within TRPGs have these elements built in.

For example: Rangers in the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons have racism built into the class. At level one, players select a “favoured enemy” which they gain advantage (meaning they can roll two d20 dice and select the highest roll) on tracking the selected enemy.

By creating characters that explore morality or social and cultural issues, players are confronted with new or unfamiliar interpersonal experiences. Players may also consciously or subconsciously create a character that closely mirrors aspects of the player. In doing so, characters may be used as a means to gain insight into the player’s life and motivations. These insights are usually gained through experiencing how player characters overcome challenges and pitfalls within the game.