Women and gaming

[Finarvyn]

While surfing through the TLG boards, I came upon an interesting comment:

Omote Said:
One of the reasons I'm taking my time in getting them to play is because, both of them have always considered D&D (C&C) a game for the boys. While they both agree that they are interested, they are not interested in the version of the game that we play most often (v3.5). They've mentioned that they have no interest in "learning how to play a game that uses all those books."

My reply:
This is a fantastic observation. Through my 31 years of playing RPGs I have had lots of girls play in my games. Not always a 50-50 mix, but not too far from it, either. My current group has 6 players, 3 of which are female.

A couple observations:

1. Most females seem to value roles over rules. In fact, the girls I have encountered get "turned off" to a game if they are presented with a lot of rules to figure out. (And we're talking about smart girls here -- physics, math, engineering, nurses...)

2. Most females seem to prefer fantasy over science fiction. (The exception here appears to be Star Wars; lots of girls like that setting just fine!)

3. Most females aren't into "wargaming" their way through an adventure. When the master strategist players start talking about how to tactically move their units around, the girls start to look bored.

4. Most females seem to like dragons and magic. While they are fine with an occasional Conan-like gritty S&S game, they seem to love best the High Fantasy scenarios.

Again, this is a limited sampling size of a dozen or so females so take my wisdom for what it's worth.....

So, what do you think? Have you encountered many females in your gaming circle, and if so do they have differing expectations than the males as to how a good game should be run?

[Deleted]

I've got 2 female (my fiancee & her friend), & only 1 male player(s) in the game I run monthly (or so). I've always been fortunate enough to have had the experience to play in groups with at least 1 female player, for the most part. From my own experiences, it's really a mixed bag. My better half has always enjoyed dirty & gritty realism in the games she plays (no pretty unicorns for her [unless she's harvesting their horns... ;D]). I've also played with female gamers on the other side of the spectrum (like the girl who always had to play an elven cleric every flippin' time). Most (but not all) women I know, & have had the pleasure to game with, prefer High Fantasy scenarios. As for lengthy rules, well, down here in S.W. Florida, we have a pretty big gaming community (although it's 99.99% 3rd edders & Vampire players), but it's hard to find anybody who hasn't already been corrupted by a rules-heavy gaming system. Seriously, it's tough to find anyone who is willing to give rules-lite a try...they just won't go for it. But in the past, yeah, most women I've gamed with prefer rules-lite. I agree with your assessment, Fin.

[Falconer]

Regular Group: 1 male DM, 6 male players, 3 female players.

Genre: Well, uh, Gygax's classic modules, so, baseline D&D?

Rules: Somewhere between Holmes and OAD&D. 1975-6 minimalist character sheets. Players know as few rules as possible; i.e., I tell 'em what dice to roll.

So I haven't consciously made modifications in order to make the game more girl-friendly. I figure, it's like WoW. Plenty of girls play WoW. But they're usually more interested in just playing the game and not in "mastery"--the whole character build thing, or knowing the most about the game, or even the most clever possible play. Seems to me that 3.5 emphasizes mastery and casual play is looked down upon.

The only problem the girls really have is that the guys are more outspoken and aggressive. In a game that's largely about cooperative problem-solving, the girls (who usually have better instincts) sometimes have a hard time getting a word out. I started a side campaign with just two of the girls and one guy, which the girls enjoy because they get to dominate the game. They opened up a fashion store in the Keep on the Borderlands, and spend a lot of time intriguing in the Keep. Hey, I'm just an impartial referee...

[tgamemaster1975]

Fin,
I think your observations are mostly right on target. There are always exceptions, I have played with women for instance who were very into and very good at tactics.

[oldgeezer]

My first ever D&D game with Gary had a woman included (NOT one of his daughters).

I've met both of my wives through gaming.

I enjoy gaming with She Who Must Be Obeyed (Wife 2.0). She just thinks in ways the male gamers don't; at least once per combat she comes up with an idea that flabbergasts us all.

Like the time in Star Wars where her Jedi was racing to get to the heavy repeating blaster the Stormtroopers wanted to use, while on a floating platform on Cloud City.

Instead of fighting the Stormtroopers or racing to the gun, she just used Force Push to push the gun off the platform, whereupon it fell umptygazillion miles.

[thorswulf]

My experience with women or girls in gaming was somewhat limited when I was in my teens. I could count the number of girls my age who tried playing D&D on one hand. That all changed when i moved up to Olympia to go to College. Evergreen State College's Gaming Guild had a very strong female presence, probably about a 25%-40% of the total group. And many more had tried games in the past. I think this proably a better reflection of the environment that I was in, and access to gaming material. Not to mention Fort Lewis contributes a fair ammount of gamers too....

My wife is one of those players who seems to get a little drowned out by more experienced/loudmouthed gamers. Oh but she can have a decidedly wicked sense of revenge, or at least deliver very stern tongue lashings to players who underestimate her! On the whole I have enjoyed gaming with most women I have been DM for, or played with. They most certainly tend to be natural roleplayers, as opposed to most guys who are better rollplayers on the whole. My friend Deb had a very memorable character from Call of Cthulhu. She packed a brick in her purse and used it to bash monsters, or player that went nutzo!

[Deleted]

As a female who's been gaming a very long number of years, I really don't think there are many 'most women. . . ' situations. The game I'm running currently has all men but that's really unusual. It's generally more 40 - 60 (with the men in the lead.) Although it never really bothered me, some of the women I know were very put off by the chainmail bikini mentally of years past, and I think doing away with it has had something to do with the rising popularity of gaming among women. While our gaming group at Rice University has a large majority of men, our annual convention (Owlcon) is pretty well divided into the 40 - 60 brackets.

As to how they play, I played for a long time with a woman who's favorite genre was cyberpunk - the badder, the better. Another was really into WoD. Yet another found Hackmaster to be more to her taste. Several high fantasy players I know like to play the big strong warrior types, some like to change up their character with every game, and of course, some want to be elven rangers or clerics every time. Some are real rules lawyers, some are munchkins, and some are drama queens. Some are just darn good roleplayers.

But. All of those things apply to the men I game with as well. : )

[thorswulf]

Many ofthe women I gamed with or knew from the gaming group at Evergreen played a lot of different genres. However there was a very pronounced LARP majority, mainly Vampire and the like. I'm not really a LARper by inclination, but I gave it a try a few times and enjoyed it. Many of the younger players had only experienced gaming via White Wolf games and LARPs, but most of the older gamers had some version of D&D as a foundation of their gaming experience.

[calithena]

Thorswulf - when were you at Evergreen? One of my best friends went there...

[foster1941]

The trend of female gamers being more interested in their character's role within the world/story and less with the technical details and numbers on the sheet matches my experience* (and, FWIW, is the approach that I prefer players, male or female, to have), but I've seen plenty of exceptions to the "women prefer high fantasy to swords & sorcery" and "women prefer fantasy to sf" memes.

*and more broadly, outside of rpgs, women (at least in my experience) tend to be more content-focused and men more form- or technique-focused when approaching art -- be it movies, novels, painting, music, etc. I could probably make all sorts of generalizations on this basis, but instead I'll just leave it standing as a general trend I've observed.

[thorswulf]

Off topic I know, but I attended Evergreen State College between 94 and 96, I have a B.A. in Liberal Arts/Communications. I studied creative writing, particularly the DaDa sound poetry of the 20's, Ethnopoetics, and writing for performance. Yeah, like I said off topic, but now you know why my descriptions of magic items are the way they are!

On topic, some of the women gamers were very involved with the theatre department-big surprise! Actually many of them crossed over into several activities, the SCA, Drama, gaming and so forth.