Role-Playing Games: a way to practice social skills and more…

9 min readDec 23, 2020

Who am I? My name is Pierre. I’m a web developer for Extia, a consulting company based near Paris. You may have read my previous article about video games and how they can help you develop marketable skills.

I’m back with another long time hobby of mine : role-playing games (I will explain what it is in a second). I have been playing for more than 15 years now. I am the Game Master for 2 different groups and am a player in a third group at the moment. I think we can agree that I have some experience on the matter.

Why am I writing this? For a long time, being a role-player meant being an outcast, a nerd. It’s a lot better now but i think people don’t realize how much you can learn from playing this kind of game. And that’s what this article is about!

First of all, what are “role-playing games” (RPGs)? An RPG is a game in which each player embodies a character and lives adventures through her/him.
One of the players is called the Game Master (GM): they are in charge of setting an environment and a story for the group of characters to have fun in. This means that the GM doesn’t play a single character, but several since they will be playing every Non-Player Character (NPC) the group will encounter.

This article will focus on players, with a focus on how the skills required for playing can be of use in the workspace environment. I might write another one about GMs at some point.

Most of my RPG experience has been with the most popular of them: Dungeons & Dragons (more than 40 million players worldwide in 2019). The examples I’ll be using come from that setting.
For those of you who missed Stranger Things and don’t know what D&D is, here is a short explanation.

D&D is a game set in a medieval fantasy world. You invent a character, pick a class for them (wizard, fighter…) and define their abilities, such as Strength or Wisdom. When your character tries to do something difficult, like climbing on a dragon during combat, or aiming a fireball without hurting its friends, the GM will ask you to roll dice. Depending on the result, they will tell you if you succeed or fail.

But the rules are not the focus, here. The point I’m making is that you get to play AS another “person.” For a few hours, you get to be someone else.

So you can experiment being someone you’re not in real life. You get to practice social interactions with little to no consequences.
And to be fair, that’s rare. When did you last manage to get out of your comfort zone in a social environment?

Let’s take Ana, for example. She’s doing a Masters in Physics and she likes to play baseball. She’s very open to people and parties a lot. Her best friend, Elliot is a bit more shy. And sometimes, the two of them have trouble understanding the way the other thinks or behaves. Ana has invited Elliot to play in her D&D group.
So when they gather, Ana becomes Khrom, the male orc barbarian who roars, shouts and smashes things very loudly. And Elliot becomes Narwan, a flirty elven bard.

Playing an RPG is not just about rolling dice and describing things. One of the things that makes it a unique type of game is that you can play your character. You can change the way you talk, behave, and respond to certain situations… In some ways, it’s similar to improv. Ana really gets to be Khrom during those sessions. Although she would not act like that in real life, she gets to try another kind of behavior through playing her character.

And maybe “trying out” another behavior and playing with her friends might show her another way of thinking, another perspective.

I want to make an emphasis here on empathy. Trying out new behaviors, especially if you are inspired by people you see often like your colleagues, can help you understand how they are and how they think. Also, it is professionally healthy to be reminded that your point of view is not the only one that matters.

We can learn and practice a lot of different subjects on our own. But social skills are hard to improve without others, not to mention the fear of shame or being ridiculed…
In a D&D session, you are surrounded by people that you chose to be with and you are playing as someone else. You are most likely in a safe, social environment. So, if you try something out of the ordinary and it doesn’t come out like you wanted to, or if you feel you made a “mistake,” everyone (including yourself) will probably just have a good laugh and move on.

In order to really get inside your character’s head, you need to be able to let go of some things. You need to embrace the fact that you don’t control everything. Your GM narrates how the world interacts with you. Your colleagues are playing, too. And in your work, learning to let go and not feel the need to control everything can help you reduce stress. It can also help you build self-confidence and improve your improvisational skills, which you can totally practice during an RPG session.

But improvisation is not the only creative skill you could learn. Imagination is a big part of pen and paper games. The players will describe what their characters are doing, but if you want to be fully immersed, you need to imagine it.
And to properly do that, you need to listen carefully to what’s happening even when you are not actively taking part in the action. Being able to focus when needed is a great skill for work, too!
Elliot may not be great at public speaking, but he is a great listener. Thus, he becomes a great asset to Ana’s group by taking notes and remembering relevant information at the right moments.

Public speaking is not a skill we tend to develop naturally, especially in France. Extroverts may think that’s easy, only to realize that it’s not by trying it in RPGs. In school, reciting a poem to your whole class or doing a presentation was seen as something difficult and unwanted. Role-playing can help you learn that very skill, whether you are a player or a GM.

In our previous example, Khrom is a more subtle character than he appears, and not just a fierce warrior. He could also be a charismatic speaker, which could lead to him defending his long-lost brother accused of murder by making a heartfelt speech.

And those examples are great ways to learn how to talk to an audience and keep it interested.

You don’t always choose who you play RPGs with. Sometimes you join an existing group, sometimes your friend invites over a couple of their buddies without telling the group… Much like work. This is where conflict resolution comes into play. You might need to deal with people’s egos, frustrations or shyness, and it’s not always easy. But it’s still easier to talk to people you are playing with than people you work with. You can quit a D&D group and all you’ll lose are fun times. Quitting a job is a very different matter. But learning how to handle tough situations and difficult people can spare you a lot of negativity in your work environment.

One of the ways to avoid frustrations and make sure everyone is on the same page is playing Session Zero. It’s not about gaming yet. It’s about everyone sharing their expectations, goals, boundaries…

For example, a very common subject to avoid in RPGs is sex. And it’s important that everyone in the group knows if a topic can be tackled or not. Don’t forget that some people are in it for the story, others want to role-play above all, and others still prefer the combat mechanics. Before starting a campaign, just like before you’d start a project, you need to make sure everyone will attain what they want; also make sure that your game isn’t set around a single character, while knowing it will be impossible to make everyone happy all the time. People will have to compromise. And even you, as a GM or a manager, will have to keep everyone’s needs in mind and make sure the spotlight is shared.

Which leads me to feedback. It’s important to state from the get-go that feedback is wanted and welcomed by all means. Any sort of constructive criticism can help the group get better: it can help the group as a whole, and it can help the GM as the manager of this little team to change course if the group feels like they’re not going in the right direction.
If Elliot, playing as Narwan, starts to take the spotlight all the time and doesn’t let others participate, he needs to be reminded that everyone should have a chance to speak and that he needs to step down a bit. This is similar to David, one of Elliot’s work colleagues, who doesn’t let people talk during meetings and who could use some feedback, maybe from Elliot.

Awesome transition to another skill you could learn by playing RPGs: listen to each other and don’t hog the spotlight. Sometimes, it’s not your time to shine. Sometimes, your character is not the man or woman of the hour. And that’s okay. But it does not mean you should start scrolling your Instagram feed or doing whatever else. Part of the fun in RPGs is to listen. You’ll get to know where the shared story is going. You could have something interesting to say at any moment. Just because you don’t have the spotlight now does not mean you are not a part of this.
And I believe it’s the same at work. Nowadays, a lot of jobs require a team effort. Simply because you weren’t the one to come up with the solution during the meeting doesn’t mean you didn’t participate. And listening to what the others are saying will help you, the team, and the project.

Another benefit of RPGs is that you can forget about ranks and hierarchy… You could be playing with your dad and still “yell” at him if his fireball almost killed you during combat. You could be the GM of a session at work and still tell your real life boss how things are done in your universe.
Since you are playing an imaginary character in a fantasy world, there’s no need for ranks. Everyone is equal.
Which can also help relieve tension. Getting to know how the characters behave could help you get to know your colleagues more intimately or differently…

It can be a powerful tool for team building. Going on a quest together with the people you work with can create bonds that your work environment alone wouldn’t have created.

So, we’ve seen a lot of skills you can improve on and practice by playing RPGs. But I want to end by linking some of these with agile thinking.
We talked about letting it go (I hope I didn’t put the Frozen song in your head!) to embrace role-playing, but also being able to give and receive feedback so you can be on the same page with the rest of the group/team. It also means you need to listen to each other.

I don’t want to drag this out, so I’ll stop here.
If you want to give RPGS a try, learn some (or all) of these skills, and set up a nice team-building exercise, I’ve found two very good and simple RPGs for you :

And as a final thought, you can start playing RPGs with kids as young as 6 years old with this: https://www.wired.com/2010/04/wizards-of-the-coast-publishes-dd-for-kids/

I want to thank my co-author Claire Bresson, agile coach at Extia. She helped a lot with structure and linking RPG experiences to work situations. It’s always a pleasure working with her.

Thank you also to Arthur Camboly, my friend, a fellow role-player and GM, and a professional translator who offered me some really good feedback on his experiences and helped translate this article.

Finally, thank you to my fellow players Thomas Cailliez, Amélie Lefèvre and Fabrice Mallet for their feedback: they sort of gave me the inspiration to write this article.

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Role-Playing Games: a way to practice social skills and more…

Written by EXTIA