 Howdy how's it going? My name's DavyChappy and I enjoyed doing these videos enough that I decided to do another one, and the views weren't that bad, so... Today I'm gonna be talking about a type of thing that I don't really feel the need to do a whole video on, but I think is personal enough that it weren't doing something for it. So I decided that I'd crack up my old camera, point it at an angle that's really uncomfortable, and ramble on without a script or anything. So today I'm gonna talk about how to be more confident, not just as a DM or a player, but just in general. I'm gonna frame this in D&D because that is what you're used to, but this can really help in any way, which is a lot of the reason why people like D&D so much. It's because it helps build your confidence, it helps build your social skills, and honestly, just by playing D&D, you're going to build your confidence eventually. So the idea is you are probably a nervous person, a nervous little 13 to 30 year old person that's a bundle of anxiety and weirdness, and you don't know how to talk to people that well, and that's perfectly fine. I don't know how to talk to people either, that's why I use a script. But when you're playing D&D, your goal is to get people to interact with you, which is sort of the opposite of what you want if you are a massive introvert. When you're gaming, you're probably the type of person that sits in the back of the group and lets everybody else do their thing and feels a little bit awkward about it. Now, the fact of the matter is if you're not in a position where you're really comfortable doing it right now, where you're not really comfortable talking about things and playing the game with everybody at the level that they are, that's not something that I expect you to work out on your own. If I'm being perfectly honest, and this sort of goes into my old video that I did a little while ago, whether you're talking too much or too little, when it comes down to being more confident, it's a learned trait. Most of my mannerisms that I have now, I got from watching like David Tennant as Doctor Who or Haruhi from Oran High School Host Club. Dude. Bro. And it's just me watching other people and emulating them for a long enough time that I sort of created this mismatch of personality that is now who I am. And that's part of getting more confident in your game. It's literally just pretending to be someone else. And I don't mean that in a role-playing sense, I mean that in you watch someone who knows how to talk and is super flamboyant and charismatic in all that business. And so you just pretend to be them. You just take on their mannerisms as hard as possible. And eventually that fakeness stops being fakeness because you just internalize it and it becomes who you are. Translate that to D&D, you're gonna watch all your friends play as the different characters for forever. And you're going to eventually decide, huh, maybe that'll work. My suggestion to you is that you should always be finding different groups of people to play with. This is because maybe your sense of self-worth might be because your friends are a little bit dickish and don't know how to really help you blossom as a person. Or maybe they're perfectly welcoming people, but they're more enraptured in their own social politics, which isn't a bad thing necessarily if you have a group of friends. Of course your friends are going to care about each other, but they just might not be expecting to have to walk you through the process of being more confident on your own and so they just don't do it. That's sure a problem with them, but that's nobody's fault if somebody just doesn't notice you. So it's always best to try different groups, especially because the easiest way to hide that you're copying wholesale off of somebody else's personality is just to go to a different group of people that probably haven't seen that personality yet and then they'll think you're super awesome because, hey, I haven't seen that before and secretly you're just doing what somebody else did in a different place. But it does build confidence. It also builds a not unreasonable sense of imposter syndrome, but that's its own business to tackle. Nobody's perfect. We all have to deal with issues. Once you start to build up your attitude and your personality and your behavioral patterns that you're starting to like, a big thing that you have to look out for is people that expect you to be that shy little timid person, get confused when you are not that anymore, and then possibly try to knock you down or challenge you because they want to be the top dog. Those people avoid like the plague because when you're trying to blossom your own sense of self-worth, you definitely shouldn't have a person talking to you, trying to belittle your self-worth just to see how thick your skin is. That's not okay and that's not going to help you at all. What is going to help you is having friends that are surprised that you are coming out of your shell and supportive of it. Again, this is just a thing of you have to find the group that's perfect for you because if you don't find that perfect group, then your own flowering, your own blossoming, your own coming of age is going to be very awkward. And I know that a lot of people don't have the luxury of choosing a bunch of different groups to play with. You don't have the privilege of being a wonderful YouTuber man who can walk into any game store and suddenly flocks of people are saying, please, play with me. And I'll say, sorry, I'm too busy playing with myself. But to that I'll say that honestly, you might want to try doing it online. And I know that online is its own big can of worms. It's this big enigmatic thing that's worrying all on its own just because of the mystery of it. But really, once you figure out how to play online through things like Fantasy Grounds or World 20, it almost makes things easier because while you're fighting more for audio space, the visual space isn't there at all. You're in the comfort of your own home, of in your own room probably, and you don't have to worry as much about making a commitment to it. So even if there's a group that doesn't work out for you, you can just leave that group, go looking for another one, and all you have to worry about is time, which is a very big issue when trying to get a group together, but at least you don't have to worry about meeting up in a place and having stuff put together. Another thing to just accept and acknowledge is that confidence as a thing is very fleeting. I seem probably confident all the time, right? No, no, I'm a bundle of nerves and people annoy me and confuse me and worry me and I don't like talking to them a lot of the time and that's why I stay in my room and make videos all day. But even then I have people talking to me about how confident and charismatic I am and how it's making them feel like better people, so I just keep going with that flow, which is exemplary of the fact that a lot of the people that you see that are really confident go-getters probably are not actually that go-gettery and they're just sort of putting on an act, which is exactly the precursor of properly being a confident person. So when you're going through the strokes and you feel like you haven't gotten the hang of it yet, do not worry, none of us have gotten the hang of it yet. We are all floating around in a weird world, there's a plague going around, half of the people don't believe that it's a plague because of political interests, everything is crazy. We are all of us fools, you are no worse. But yeah, that's about everything that I can talk about in this weird ramble. I hope this was informative somehow or at least just gave you something to think about. Please leave a comment down below on what else you would like me to talk about and if you wanna support me, please check out all of my social media in the description below. But yeah, Davi out.