How to keep women in the game?

I think you have to differentiate two things here:

I guess what @aramis erak meant was playing in a quasi-realistic historical setting with a bit of magic. Which is okay, if every player knows in advance and has fun playing it. I understand that playing against such challenges can be fun - I wouldn't mind giving a GoT style game a try. And I don't think that he will incorporate such social structures into *every* medieval-tech level fantasy setting.

What I meant is that you should avoid adding "classic sexism" (and only this example) to settings where it doesn't make sense or where there would be no reason to have predominately patriarchal societies all over the globe just "because medieval". Especially if you do not tell your players that you plan on doing so. Settings like FR or Eberron or the generic D&D setting are not medieval. They have baseline medieval technology, but add a lot of magic, and even mage-tech. They don't offer any mechanical or canonical reason to why male and female characters should have different roles, expectations or opportunities at all. Unless you want to incorporate such ideas into your campaign. And if you do (which is fine), I'd make sure to keep things balanced and add different biases to accentuate certain regions, and not to make the baseline assumption that each and every country is normatively patriarchal.

I wonder if there really is such a difference between countries when it comes to female players. No such issue in Germany, at all, although most of them play other games than D&D/PF simply because there are good (and bad) German alternatives and lots of people for some reason still have little command of English. Conventions are swarming with women (plenty of female DMs, too).

Lylandra said:

And for the women NPC: Yep. But in most cases, the reason for "too many males", at least in significant roles, stems from the fact that many DMs are guys and tend to display their own gender as "default". I realized that I did the same when I first GMed a standalone adventure and almost all my important NPC were women. Unfortunately, many modules/Settings out there are written by men who don't know their own hidden bias and so write 70-90% male (and also often human) NPC into their world. Without even knowing it.

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Some companies, like Paizo, avoid this well.

I never noticed me using too many male or female NPCs, one of my DMs however told me he has no real clue how to believably portraying a female woman in power without going back to RL defaults who aren't very heroic. He doesn't want to play them in any way to suggest he might be sexist.

Lwaxy said:

I wonder if there really is such a difference between countries when it comes to female players. No such issue in Germany, at all, although most of them play other games than D&D/PF simply because there are good (and bad) German alternatives and lots of people for some reason still have little command of English. Conventions are swarming with women (plenty of female DMs, too).

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I guess it might be related to systems. The women I know who are playing TTRPGs tend to flock to White Wolf stuff or Shadowrun. In Germany, many also play DSA (the Black Eye) when it comes to fantasy. It might be stereotypical, but dungeon type campaigns are not what my female collegues think of when they talk about roleplaying. And D&D can be very dungeon-hacky where other systems rarely incorporate massive dungeons.

But yeah, from my experience with other players and discussion on "the internet", people living in northern europe also seem to be less gender segregated than people from other countries when it comes to hobbies.

Lwaxy said:

Some companies, like Paizo, avoid this well.

I never noticed me using too many male or female NPCs, one of my DMs however told me he has no real clue how to believably portraying a female woman in power without going back to RL defaults who aren't very heroic. He doesn't want to play them in any way to suggest he might be sexist.

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Paizo does a good job in trying to be as inclusive as possible and I applaud them for their efforts.
For your DM, I can only give the advice to play a female NPC in power just like you would play a male one. If you use a "default" and non-biased setting as a basis, there is only one thing that separates male and female characters: The ability to give birth. And that does not often interfere with your ability to lead, to intrigue or to be a villain. Putting gendered behaviour into your portrayal is the next, albeit much more difficult step, as you should then consider the specifics of your underlying society. And not necessarily use the same old RL tropes.

mythago said:

Unless you're running a Harn-esque straight up simulation of a particular region and time period, "realistic" isn't accurate. It's a matter of which elements the GM chooses to keep and which to discard. Which is fine, but then own it, instead of shrugging and saying that golly gee you just can't help sticking female PCs with discrimination and femme-fatale powers with a helpless shrug and the pretense of Realism Made Me Do It.

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And the PC SJW rears its ugly and ignorant head...

discrimination was the norm for 99.9% of recorded history.
It's still the legal norm in about 40% of the world, and the social norm in 60%.

When I run a historical game, I run it with historical biases. At no point do I tell a player of a female character "You cannot attempt X"... If it's a social task, the difficulty may change severely, but they can try it...

Nothing I hate more than the hyper-lib "You must hate women if you play historically accurate" -which is how I read your whining...

aramis erak said:

And the PC SJW rears its ugly and ignorant head...

discrimination was the norm for 99.9% of recorded history.
It's still the legal norm in about 40% of the world, and the social norm in 60%.

When I run a historical game, I run it with historical biases. At no point do I tell a player of a female character "You cannot attempt X"... If it's a social task, the difficulty may change severely, but they can try it...

Nothing I hate more than the hyper-lib "You must hate women if you play historically accurate" -which is how I read your whining...

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Inappropriate. Please be civil and refrain from namecalling.

aramis erak said:

And the PC SJW rears its ugly and ignorant head...

Nothing I hate more than the hyper-lib "You must hate women if you play historically accurate" -which is how I read your whining...

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Really - there is nothing you hate more? Nothing at all? Child porn, white slavery, murder, etc. Someone having this opinion of you is worse than all of that?

Do you even read your own posts? You sound very defensive, even as you brag about how "historically accurate" your bias against women is.

Just saying...you are doing far more "whining" than the person you are accusing.

aramis erak said:

And the PC SJW rears its ugly and ignorant head...

discrimination was the norm for 99.9% of recorded history.
It's still the legal norm in about 40% of the world, and the social norm in 60%.

When I run a historical game, I run it with historical biases. At no point do I tell a player of a female character "You cannot attempt X"... If it's a social task, the difficulty may change severely, but they can try it...

Nothing I hate more than the hyper-lib "You must hate women if you play historically accurate" -which is how I read your whining...

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You need to do a little critical thinking when you read people's posts.
Also not being such a sensitive type might help.
But the reading comprehension thing is important too.


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Folks, the post was already addressed. That's not carte blanche to respond in kind. Please pretend that post isn't there.


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Lylandra said:

I think you have to differentiate two things here:

I guess what @aramis erak meant was playing in a quasi-realistic historical setting with a bit of magic. Which is okay, if every player knows in advance and has fun playing it. I understand that playing against such challenges can be fun - I wouldn't mind giving a GoT style game a try. And I don't think that he will incorporate such social structures into *every* medieval-tech level fantasy setting.

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"Quasi-realistic" is another way of saying "not realistic".

And it's not about whether a particular setting is or isn't 'okay'. If everyone in the group is happy with things, then by all means, set your game in Aggressively Unrealistic Medieval England and deviate from real history all you like. Port over a thinly-disguised version of GoT. Heck, run a strictly traditionalist game of Murder-Hobo Lords of Gor if that's what the GM and players clamor for.

But it's disingenuous to take a vastly unrealistic setting - cherry-picking bits here and there of "medieval Europe", slapping in new ones that never existed, and excising realistic elements that are boring or distasteful - and then insisting that elements A and B are there because realism demands it. As you note, it's a fantasy setting. So when a GM is happy to have wizards throwing fireballs, open borders, and a distinct lack of enforced monotheism, but insists that women can't be fighters or a lifted skirt clouds men's minds without fail or consequence, well. That's not actually a game with a historically-accurate setting. That's a game where the GM wants particular gender roles, but won't cop to it, instead letting History take the rap. (Poor History!)

Turning back to the actual subject of the discussion: it's a little difficult to get players to stick around for a game when the game itself, or its setting, takes away from their fun. And for rather a lot of people, "your PC is going to have to put up with the same crap as you do in real life! because realism!" is not something that makes a game sound like a fabulous way to spend a weekend.