If you’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) before, then the concept of this article might baffle you, and that is totally understandable. When I first started playing D&D, I never thought it would’ve helped me grow in the ways that it has. Originally, I just thought it would be a fun thing to do with my friends. But as I’ve continued to play throughout college, I realize that I’ve truly grown and learned more about myself through this game, something that I never would have expected.
Coming into freshman year, I knew I wanted to be part of the D&D club at JMU. Playing in high school was a lot of fun, and I wanted to have that same experience in college. This, however, terrified me as well. None of the friends that I had come into college with played D&D, meaning that I didn’t have the ability to set up a campaign with people I knew and would have to be randomly assigned a group to play with. I was scared beyond belief. I knew that college was the time to make new friends and grow outside of my comfort zone, but playing a game known for vulnerable storylines and sometimes really heavy topics with a group of people I didn’t know made me feel sick.
But, the desire to play the game outweighed my anxiety, and I signed up to be randomly assigned to a group based on a form I had filled out for the club. In hindsight, there was no reason for me to feel so anxious. The group I was assigned to, a group I still play with to this day, was phenomenal. We were brought together by the common factor of wanting to roll dice and tell stories. I’m still incredibly proud of myself for taking that leap, because it showed me that I could walk into an unfamiliar situation and be fine. That was a great thing to learn so early in my college career, as that attitude helped me decide to go out for other organizations and not feel so scared.
Playing the actual game itself also helped my confidence and my speaking skills immensely. D&D is a communication-based game at its core, and there’s no way to prep for what you want to say in advance. 99.9% of the things I say when playing D&D are improvised in the moment, and there’s no way to know if you said the “right thing” or the “wrong thing” in any one situation. You just say whatever comes to mind and deal with the potential consequences of these words as they arise. The biggest thing that I learned when playing is that whatever you say, you have to be willing to stake anything on it, and be confident in your words. This would normally be terrifying for me (a notorious people pleaser), but playing as a character who didn’t have this anxiety allowed me to speak freely and with more confidence in my words than I would have in a normal situation.
Letting a character (who is now forever linked with me and who I miss playing as dearly) take over and speaking as them showed me that there really wasn’t a reason to be afraid of my words, even in real life. In D&D, the consequences can be dire for either misspeaking or choosing not to speak, and can cause some really terrible aftershocks for the adventuring party. I realized: if I could be bold with my words in a game where the stakes and consequences were so high and felt so incredibly real to me, why couldn’t I do that in the real world where, arguably, the stakes were much lower?
The confidence that I grew in my weekly D&D sessions has helped me immensely throughout my life. Because of this newfound confidence, I’ve pushed myself further out of my comfort zone that I would’ve dared to before college and seen nothing but good things come out of breaking those boundaries. I rushed both an honors fraternity and a music sorority, receiving bids of membership in both, and it grew my circles professionally and socially in a big way. I also took on the role of running the D&D game when the current one ends, something that I would’ve been less ready to do prior to coming to college. It sounds odd, but I can attribute who I am now to playing D&D and the character that I got to play. I highly recommend taking the opportunity to play a campaign and become someone else for a few hours if you ever get the chance.