RPG School

When I was young, table top RPG's like "Dungeons and Dragons" and "TMNT" and "Marvel Super Heroes" were considered a big waste of time by the "big folk". I was encouraged to do something else more productive. When compared to the new MMORPG games like "World of War Craft" or "Guild Wars" the old table top variety are quiet educational. Especially those games done in the "old fashioned" tradition: games that haven't been assaulted by "marketers".

Here's a list of life skills I acquired by playing table top RPG's.

• Reading, AD&D had a pretty good reading level.
• Logic and Reasoning, traditional RPGs have complex rule sets
• Memorization, see the one above
• Debate, rules have to be worked out in a friendly way
• Event Organization, getting 6 or more players together on the same night is difficult even for adults
• Writing, everyone who plays writes an adventure or a back story
• Math and statistics, can't play RPG's without doing some math or figuring out probabilities
• Imagination, creative problem solving, imagining the scene
• Budgeting, all those books aren't cheap and when you are young you generally have to save up for it
• Self-learning, mastering all that information requires determination and you become a master of teaching yourself
• Extension, imagining what a character or other person would do

Notably I left off acting. While RPG's might inspire someone to acquire the skills of a thespian, I have a cousin in this category, the acting at the table is less then inspiring.

I probably left something off this list. What did you learn?