RPGs Helped My Mental Health

There’s a such a broad swath of tabletop roleplaying games out there and I’ve only discovered more since working with Nerdarchy. One of the best parts of delving into this hobby is the connections I’ve made with others who share my interests and this sense of community has vastly improved my mental healthscape. With May being mental health awareness month I wanted to share a more personal story, talking about how TTRPGs have helped me with my own mental health journey.

Describing my background

We love delving Dungeons and slaying Dragons around here. It’s always fun to go on a Quest together, and with everything on fire in the world in what now feels like a Fantasy AGE, it feels like things really are just Powered by the Apocalypse. That’s okay, because we’ve got a Cypher to help us decode the Hidden Ballad that’s wilder than an Animon Story. Could you tell I had fun with this?

While not only a story time I want to have some fun with this. For starters I’m going to build myself as a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons character to get to know me then I’ll write about finding a party — my gaming group. I’m not telling this story as a means of condemning anyone and I’m not calling for a rally against any people or ideals. Instead I want to share my experience and offer context for how the communities emerging around the RPG hobby can help people with mental health issues.

Starting with my character race, I don’t get to choose. Human is the way to go because much like the 5E D&D race option I was born with a wealth of advantages and not a lot of identity outside of my background elements.

Like any good character I’ve got my own background story. If I had to label my background in 5E D&D terms I’m probably an Acolyte. You wouldn’t necessarily know by first impressions but I grew up in an extremely conservative religious household. Like many fellow nerds and members of the LGBT+ community I felt from an early age I never really fit in with the people with whom I was surrounded.

My particular religion was the sort that condemned even the concept of community. Anyone who didn’t 100% agree with everything we believed was “the enemy.” Those in my extreme circle were the heroes of our own stories and the narrative was us against the world.

What nerdy kid wouldn’t love this spin on their own life? I ate it up, drank the Kool-Aid — whatever you want to say — but there was always a lingering sense in the back of my head that I didn’t quite belong.

As any good brainwashed person will tell you doubt is the enemy. This meant I needed to delve even deeper into my religion by going to an approved college to get a theology degree. And I earned that degree, earnestly. However, not all was well in the Stepford community in which I found myself.

If you’ve ever been an outsider — as I imagine many of my fellow older nerds have — then you know you can try and try with all your might but at some point your round shape just can’t always fit into a round hole. At some point you’ll stand out and often this puts a target on your back.

Between love bombings and “discipline,” I went through a lot. I’m was never physically abused but I was definitely brainwashed, even to the point  a speaker I willingly sat under stated to a large congregation, “Sometimes your brain could use a good scrubbing to make it clean.” That’s actually a quote that has stuck with me for over a decade now and it was the beginning of my wakeup call.

I did eventually graduate out of that environment, degree in tow. Hey, I never said my acolyte background wasn’t serving a lawful evil theology, just that I was an acolyte.

Choosing my class

When it comes to class you might think I’d be a cleric given my background but you’d be wrong. Being an internet content creator, bard feels like an easy out but I’m not sure I’m really witty or eloquent enough verbally to consider myself a proper bard. Sure, I like writing, but I feel like this goes part and parcel with the whole acolyte background thing.

To figure out my class let’s go back to my childhood again. As a kid I was very othered and I was also a freaking giant courtesy of my genetics. For context, I was about five feet tall going into the second grade at age seven.

As a kid I loved things like Pokemon, Digimon, X-Men and all those other “violent” cartoons I wasn’t supposed to watch but did anyway. This quickly cemented me within a group of very nerdy friends.

When you’re a kid, nerds tend to get bullied though, and whenever my friends got bullied I felt obliged to stand up for them and protect them. I became known as the bullies’ bully. If someone was bullying my friends I confronted that person and I won’t lie, I got into my fair share of fights as a kid (not one of my prouder accomplishments).

Courtesy of my acolyte background I learned about righteous anger as well, and through the guidance of my parents I learned to channel my anger into productive outlets. Even as I thrived in art, music and swimming I drove myself with simmering rage masked with pleasantries and only released for the “greater good.”

I’m probably a barbarian. Also, I started growing a beard at 12 so this checks out.

Forming a party

There I was — an outsider of an acolyte with the barbarian class who had just come to terms with the fact he earned a degree from people who were more of a cult than the religion he’d grown up believing he was actually serving. Sounds like a decent enough setup for a 1st level adventurer.

Toward the end of my tenure in college I met my spouse (a half-elf ranger, because he’s a woodsy man adopted into a human family with no idea of his blood lineage). We jumped around from party to party for a while as we went to various local game shops to play 4E D&D. (Yes, that’s where I started, don’t at me).

Finally I reconnected with friends from high school and we formed a proper party. One is a wizard (computer programmer) and the other a proper bard because of actual eloquence. Over the years we made more connections with people through our friendly local gaming store and out in the community. We formed friendships by meeting weekly to tell stories and roll funny-shaped dice together. We built memories. We formed our guild.

RPGs and mental health

I promised at the beginning this wasn’t just a story time right? Let’s explore what specifically helped me personally grow in my own mental health journey as a result of playing RPGs.

To begin with the very act of creating and portraying your own character is a very cerebral process. Because the character’s only means of existence is through your mind, your character sheet and a roll of the dice, the character is essentially an extension of yourself. I know you can make a character wildly different from yourself or with whom you have very little in common but in my experience everyone puts something of themselves into their characters. This is what gives characters life and makes them interesting.

Even by the nature of taking an action with your character you put a piece of yourself into your character. Every action you describe your character taking is a decision you made as a player. Not taking an action is still a choice, and thus an action, too.

When I craft a character and put myself into the character, I often put in a part of myself I think will make the character more likable or I give them a flaw enabling me to explore an issue in game. Often I find people who make characters with enigmatic parentage want to explore the theme of family, either by blood or through found family — both common themes in fantasy.

Likewise, when someone has their character forced to leave home for some reason these players often want to explore themes of feeling displaced or othered. This is true for me.

When I make characters who don’t have much in common with me I still put something into them directly related to myself as a person even if that something is a deliberate divergence from myself. This often puts me into the position of exploring empathy through this character, learning to relate to a character with whom I don’t have something in common.

When you get groups of people together who collaborate to tell stories — even simple or superficial ones — these people cannot help but learn about one another. Their worldviews, their interests and their distastes all come through their characters in some way. This inherently leads to the group of players growing together through a simple game of make believe.

As these people portray characters to foster empathy and explore deep themes, together we learn our own limits and means of coping. What’s more we get to see how others approach the same issues, offering new perspectives and broadening our understanding of situations.

These experiences in turn allow us to learn to deal with similar situations in real life and to tackle our own thoughts and feelings. Sure, you stole from the shop owner and got away with it but now you have to deal with the fact the paladin saw you and they might confront your character because it weighs on them they didn’t say anything in the moment.

As we play RPGs together and get to know our fellow players we build real bonds and real friendships. We foster real communities and even those revolving around a hobby are still a necessary support system. I’m sad to say I don’t have a close relationship with many of my family members because of who I am and their prejudices. However, it’s my community of friends I’ve made while gaming I know I could count on for anything if I so needed.

RPGs may not be the be-all and end-all but they’re definitely important in my life and they’ve helped me find a sense of belonging and community no matter my past. This helps me cope and their friendship and advice have helped me many times through my life, just as I look forward to helping them in turn.

What do you think?

Do you have a tight-knit gaming group? How do RPGs affect your own mental health? Do you have a favorite story about your experiences within your community? We’d love to hear about it on Facebook and until next time, stay nerdy!

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*Featured image — Art from the board game Arena of the Planeswalkers shows Jace Beleren, a planeswalker with powerful mental magic like clairvoyance and illusion. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]