5 Real World Confidence Tips from Dungeons & Dragons

confidence d&d tabletop gaming Jul 08, 2019

 

It turns out that playing Dungeons & Dragons can really boost your confidence. Not only is it FUCKING AWESOME, as are many other tabletop roleplaying games, but you can practice things in a world with defined rules, where stuff goes wrong fairly often, and you have to improvise a solution.

 

PLAY D&D AND GET CONFIDENT

Hanging out with friends, old and new, throwing dice around, a collaborating to achieve goals, learn new things, level your stats, and possibly save the world. Or invent a new sport, get rich, and make sweet love with the locals. 

I am not here to judge your game. I am here to give you bardic inspiration with my words.

 

Create an Enchanted Ring of Confidence.

What if you could have a +4 Ring of Confidence, or boots, a necklace, or a fancy hat?

You very much can through use of the Anchoring spell – first find an item you want to imbue with a confidence bonus. Make sure it’s something you can easily put on; a ring or chain is perfect. Meanwhile, those clompy boots or massive tiara may look amazing, but could also get in the way of real life. Having to say ‘Hang on a minute while I change into my boots before handling this difficult situation’ would make an impact, but also slow you right down.

Picture a time when you were really confident and see it through your own eyes as if you were really there. See all the things you could see, hear all the things you could hear, feel the feelings of confidence come back to you and crank up the intensity. As those feelings get stronger, put the item on – that’s why you need something easy like a ring.

You just associated feeling confident with wearing that item. Put it back on and notice how the confidence comes back. Turns out magic is real and you just enchanted an item.

You can repeat the process multiple times to stack more confidence in there. 

Talk Like You Mean It. With Conviction.

Not ‘convicted’ like that time the rogue decided she really wanted the Mayor’s mayoral chains of office because they granted a Charisma bonus. Conviction. Talk with conviction. Meaning what you say and saying what you mean – and saying it with emotion.

Passing those Charisma checks is easier if you talk like you mean it, believe in what you’re saying, and slow down.

Slow down, think about the words, and any time you feel and ‘ummmm’, ‘errm’, or ‘ahhmmmm’ coming, just stop, take a breath, think, and carry on.

You’ll be more convincing, and your confidence levels will be boosted from saying what you mean, and that extra hit of oxygen.

Go All In.

You find a secret door. It’s easy because it’s already open. It leads to a ladder, which goes straight down to another open door on the back of the tower. 

Ah, man. 

Way to go. 

That’s great. He just got away. 

Hey, you can’t just say he’s gone. You owe us an ending. 

I owe you nothing. I am a dungeon master. I create a boundless world, and I bind it by rules. Too heavy for a bridge? It breaks. Get hit? Take damage. Spend an hour outside someone’s front door, fighting over who gets to kill him? He leaves through the back. He’s out there somewhere. You might find him, if you get your crap together.

Sure, you miss out on life by waiting, by faffing, by needing to be ready. Yes – there are times to plan and prepare. Don’t go on stage having not read the script. Don’t go to an exam having never revised or attended a lecture. Don’t go to a job interview without researching the company.

But don’t wait to act. What if you didn’t get the chance to prepare as much as you’d liked for the interview? You might mess it up, you might come across as unprepared or foolish… or you might absolutely nail it and be exactly the person they’re looking for – as long as you go all in.

If you’re Dungeon Master at D&D, why not put on an accent for the NPCs? Get up and walk around the table as you describe the scene. Go all in here too and your confidence bonus will grow every time you do it. 

Go on a Quest.

What’s your epic quest? What are the missions and side missions needed to achieve it? Keeping your own quest log, setting out to achieve things and recording them, is a brilliant way to gain life XP, and build your self-belief. 

Start small; it doesn’t have to be actual rats in the basement, but that’s the level you want to start with. Drinking water through the day, reading a chapter, going for a walk at lunchtime, watching that tutorial, whatever works for you – set it as your quest.

We have a weekly goal setting thread in the Coaching for Geeks Community so join us and start your quest.

Have a go at DMing.

THE WORLD IS YOURS TO CONTROL! It can appear overwhelming and scary to take the DM’s seat, but you’ll gain so much from it. Crafting stories, changing things on the fly as the party chooses to do the stupidest thing possible, reacting to incredible feats of awesomeness that you never planned for and much more.

Improvisation, quick maths, characters, places, traps, items and more. 

Giving people the chance to play D&D, or indeed any roleplaying game is a great thing and automatically makes you a better person and is brilliant for growing your confidence. And that my D&D friends and fiends, is a fact.

 

 

 

 

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