After many hours playing RPG I learnt, and I am still learning 3 main things:
-Patience: Sometimes you just do not know how many times you will have to redo an incredibly boring routine until you earn what you deserve. Call it money, experience or just jumping through that damn rock path (this appeals to many platform games too).
-Usefulness: I used to carry everything I found until my players where full of junk. Spetially important in games as Oblivion. If junk can be just sold out, some real hard times were when you had a great orc killer item and an in general terms better item, but you had to choose. Sometimes you just can bury it and get back to it later. When I was 12 years old it taught me to take decisssions in terms of usefulness for the future. It now looks naif, but hey, it has helped me a lot in real life.
- English language: For non native english speakers, when no game was translated to our languages, RPG, as they have lots of dialogues and backline stories, were quite difficult (remember I was 12 back then). I say, with no doubt, that Betrayal at Krondor and those damn chest games taught me more english vocabulary than Sesame St., Muzzy, English lessons and Oxford's dictionaries together. Yee olde english language!
- Why not saying this! I have a pretty good orientation sense when I get lost in dungeons!